To Know a Lot About a Little or a Little About a Lot

     Looking at "The March of Progress", the famous illustration drawn by Zallinger, it is quite obvious how humans' appearance have changed through time. We have, however, not only gone through great physical changes, we have also changed on a psychological level. Comparing today's society to how it looked just 20 years ago truly shows how humankind's knowledge has developed.

Zallinger, Rudolph. The March of Progress. 1965. Early Man volume, Time-Life Books

     Alongside the development of knowledge itself, our self-awareness has also changed. In "Modern/Postmodern: A Study in Twentieth-Century Arts and Ideas" Silvio Gaggi explores how our view of our own knowledge changed through the shift between modernism and post-modernism. He gives an example using the famous Marilyn Monroe images by Warhol, explaining how the audience's knowledge about the person in the image and the awareness of the process to make it changes the way they perceive the image (57).

Warhol, Andy. Marilyn Diptych. 1962. Tate, London.

Duchamp, Marcel. Fountain. 1917.
Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington.

     During modernity, in the early 20th century, the industrialization helped us become more aware of the different design processes and hence more conscious of how our knowledge is incorporated into our creations. Gaggi writes that "Postmodernism can be understood as differing from modernism either because it extends modernist principles further than modernists themselves did or because it rejects them" (19). So, knowledge started to be used in new ways and the post-modernists were trying to grasp over as many areas within art, politics, music etc., as possible. We still value this mentality today when we're living our lives trying to get the most done out of as little time as possible and searching for new knowledge and information whenever the opportunity arises. In this process of gathering knowledge we also have to remember the idea of how knowledge about an object will enhance its beauty (Gorman 133). So if we're just scratching the surface of everything it might start to be hard finding beauty in anything the way we once could. Can we see the beauty in Duchamp's "Fountain" without having knowledge about the artist and the work itself?
     Knowledge has and will always be a value for us, especially within the area of design, but could it be that the progress of how knowledge is used both as a tool for creation and for interpretation has steered us into a reality where quantity is valued more than quality when it comes to knowledge? Henry Miller's famous words "In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance" might have more relevance today than one would initially think.



Works Cited
Gaggi, Silvio. Modern/Postmodern: A Study in Twentieth-Century Arts and Ideas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Print.
Gorman, Carma R. The Industrial Design Reader. New York: Allworth Press, 2003. Print