Assignments for FSAD 125


Assignment: Take home exam paper due October 5

Exercise: Historical and Cross-Media Sources for Visual Ideas


The assignment is due Monday November 19 Objective:
*To demonstrate your ability to recognize and identify stylistic influences in design, based on the material presented in class on the history of fine arts, dress and decorative arts.

*To demonstrate how designers can draw on the past history of design to create contemporary designs

Although you cannot know exactly what was in a particular designer's mind, there is no doubt that the repertoire of historical art and design is an important source for new design. This exercise is intended to help you understand how the historical repertoire of visual ideas can be used in the creation of new work.

General Instructions: For this exercise you will need to identify three contemporary functional designed objects in three separate clippings that exhibit featuresderived from the historic design or art styles discussed in class. The contemporary designed objects may be fashions, furnishings, or accessories. The historic sources of design ideas may be similar objects from an earlier era; or the source may even be from another medium; for example, a dress or furniture design that quotes from themes of an established designer or design style, or a dress that borrows ideas from architecture or interior design styles.

Limit yourself for historic sources of influence to choices within the Euro-American design traditions discussed in class.

Historic Source examples should not be earlier than 1800 or later than 1955

Procedure:
1. To start with select six to eight contemporary examples of fashion, fashion accessories, or furnishings.

In selecting images that appear to display historic influence, do NOT choose designs that are intended as historic reproductions, such as period theater or masquerade dress, or period reproduction furnishings intended as copies made for the purpose of creating a "traditional" interior.

Look for examples that are presented as modern in style, but which nonetheless seem to borrow ideas from the past. Such examples will typically incorporate selected features from traditional models, but will not share all features with that source. Also avoid generic styles such as tailored suits or shirts, dresses with tight bodices and full skirts, or very simple pieces of furniture-- that is, styles that have been worn/used in almost every period (unless you find a match that is exceptionally close in detail).

2. Go to the library You can go to the stacks and look at costume history or furniture history books. A quick online search using the keywords "costume history," "furniture history", or "decorative arts history" will get you to the right sections of the library. Costume history books will be mostly found in Mann Library, but Furniture or decorative arts history may also be found in the Art Library in Sibley Hall. You can use online sources, providing the historic examples are clearly dated and are from a museum or university sponsored site, or a published book that has been placed online. Private historic costume and decorative arts sites are frequently unreliable in their identification of items. Printing out the online textbook pages for images may be helpful in reviewing the possibilities before you head to the library, but you may not copy images from the FSAD 125 online course textbook for inclusion in the assignment. You need to provide a dated image from a reliable source as defined above.

3. Mount each image on a separate piece of unlined white paper. STAPLE all the images together with pairs in sequence and numbered: (1a, 1b; 2a, 2b: etc).

4. Label all images with their source:

5. Write a BRIEF (few words or 1-2 sentences) statement on the same piece of paper with the image. Merely indicate what specific feature(s) you see as a historical or cross-media borrowing.

The assignment is due Monday November 19
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