When Good Designers Go Bad
Following up on my previous post about natural landscapes, we have an article from the Daily Telegraph (UK) about what happens when garden designers get too full of themselves. They start ignoring the rules of design, and just start trying to create the most outlandish possible designs.
That may be true, but repeat after me, plants are not furniture, again, plants are not furniture, again... They aren't knick-knacks to pretty up the garden. They ARE the garden. They're the architecture of the out-of-doors, and are necessarily natural.
I have no problems using non-traditional materials, or with exposing the influence of society in the garden (how can you ignore it with a huge honking house right there?), but the goal of the designer is then to harmoniously blend the two, not to outright reject natural forms in favor of complete artificiality.
Martha Schwartz's creations may be excellent art pieces, in fact I could see them as statements of how you can't reject natural forms, I mean look at her work, this stuff is surreal:
But would you want to live there? I could see them in some large-city Museum of Modern Art, but they aren't the place for a human being to actually experience nature.
Lastly, can you imagine the maintenace on a garden like that? I rest my case. What are your thoughts?
I think there is a vast difference between private and public spaces, and I think you can get away with a lot more in a public space precisely because people are merely moving through it and not living with it. But I wouldn't call what she does garden design. Landscape design, maybe. But it is really closer to sculpture or other outdoor art that just happens to use plants as material or stuff in its creation. I don't get why people call her a charlatan or a trickster, though. Is she claiming to be or do something she's not? It seems to me anyone who hired her would have to know what they were getting into--and they would deserve what they got! The same people who dislike abstract modern art (me) are not going to like abstract modern garden design. And the reverse is probably also true.
Posted by: Kathy at April 3, 2004 08:38 AMI wouldn't call her a charlatan or a trickster either. I don't think she says she'll put in a natural pond and then put those weird wedge-shaped topiaries, butI would say she's creating a "meaning" to her designs that's as artificial as her creations.
I remember in high school I was failing art, so for extra credit I twisted some wire clothes hangers into odd shapes, then wrote a paragraph or two about how they represent the tortured soul of humanity. This reminds me of that. Create something that will get some shock value, then build up a philosophical veneer around it.
Maybe I'm being to harsh, but I have to say "bleech"!
Posted by: Patrick Rogers at April 3, 2004 10:47 AM