On Late Style
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“O but they say the tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony”
—Richard II
—Richard II
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Is there such a thing as “Late style” in Design?
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"Late style" (as you’d imagine) refers to the work done by artists towards the end of their lives or careers.
"Late style" can occur almost as a symptom of
advanced age. "Late style" emerges with the artist's awareness that
death is, if not necessarily approaching, then inevitable. This intimation of
mortality, coupled with a career's worth of technical mastery leads to
"late style." Examples of “late style” would include Shakespeare's The
Winter's Tale, or Tempest; Melville's Billy Budd; Tolstoy's Hadji
Murad; Matisse's cut paper; Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations; Beethoven’s opus 132…
(Late Beethoven,
the Beethoven of the last quartets, for Adorno, Said, and others, is the very
paragon of "Late Style.")
"Late style" is generally thought to describe,
not only an artist’s autumnal works, but also his/her best works.
Therefore “late style” is always assigned to works ex post
facto.
"Late style" is not necessarily the result of a lengthy career:
Haydn, for example, throughout his long working life, never
developed a "late style." Keats's "Late style," arrived
during the six years before his death at 25. Keats achieved in poetry what he
never achieved in life: a "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."
"Late style" is made up of strange, almost
warring bedfellows:
Wisdom and rebellion; Nostalgic longing and philosophical
detachment; Existential sobriety and religious reckoning; Stubborn, hard-won
intransigence and nothing-to-lose flexibility...
"Late style" generally includes liberation from
the strictures of established form.
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"Late style" presumably occurs in all media.
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Where is the "late style" in graphic design?
Amongst designers, whose "late style" do we
ponder and admire?
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There
are many older designers in the
public eye. There are many experienced
designers garnering their fair share
of attention from the design community. But it seems that, as designers age,
they tend to evolve into statesmen
rather than as master designers; much like ball players who become coaches and
play-by-play announcers. (Of course, with athletes,
physical limitations mark a necessary end to their careers. Which is to say: why do designers go to pasture so
early? eye-strain??) There is a common assumption that older designers give talks, teach, and write books whilst
younger designers create the groundbreaking design work. We have "Young Guns" awards, and, at the other end
of the spectrum, medals for lifetime achievement.
Of the elder statesmen and women who are still active designers—the
highest accolade one gives is to remark on the enduring freshness of
their approach. This kind of praise indicates to me that Design prizes vigor
and novelty over substance and gravitas.
Of a design hero of mine, my senior (and better), a mentor of sorts, I
always say: "she designs like a twenty year old." This is meant as,
and is, a high compliment indeed. (In case young designers are unaware:
maintaining a fresh, ever-renewing eye, over time, is very, very difficult. Few
actually accomplish this feat.)
I notice that we occasionally admire the very fact of an older,
still-functioning designer, but expend very little thought on the nature and
quality of the work produced. When the work is
praised as representing a summation of a life’s work, I’ve observed that this
work tends to be categorized in the “fine art” bin, rather than in the “great
design” bin; as the “serious” work tends to be, say, the paintings or collages
that the designer had always maintained as a sideline. Have you noticed this?)
In other words: is it that the medium of design isn’t robust enough to
support "late style?"
Is the only work that rises to the level of "greatness,”
necessarily, work without clients?
i.e. Fine Art?
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Of a recent article about an elder design statesman, I noticed how the
article's writer edged away from discussing this designer's work, and that the
gist of the piece concerned the subject's writing, his philosophy, his mutating
relationship with clients. This article had all the trappings of a "late
style" paean, but it stopped short of describing what, from a graphical
perspective, would have been the interesting bit, the meat and potatoes: the
design work.
Can you imagine an article on Monet in his later years that wasn’t
deeply preoccupied with his water lilies?
A quote from this particular article's subject: "There are three
responses to a piece of design - yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim
for." If these are the only three responses to a piece of design- is it
any wonder Design has no "late style?"
“Late style” might provoke, if not “wow:” “Hmmn…” or” Really?” or “Aaaaah.”
Maybe even “What the hell…?!”
If Design itself is predicated on youth (certainly the preponderance
of things sold, are sold to the
young—or so it would seem, if our mass media is to be believed) then
“late style” isn’t feasible.
If Design is not predicated
on youth; perhaps it demands timeliness.
Familiarity with the zeitgeist is integral to Design.
Conversely, Repudiation of the zeitgeist is integral to
"late style."
Is the very paucity of older, working, in-house designers itself the
necessary result of Design's deal with the devil—its dependency on the
marketplace with all of its attendant fashions?
Designers, if they are good at their jobs (sometimes even when they
aren't) eventually become art directors or creative directors- jobs that rely
less on one's skill as a designer. I myself am one of these art directors (though God knows I try to keep designing as much as possible) so I
tell you from experience that nothing
atrophies one’s taste and skills so much as art
direction—with its necessary reliance on other
hands.
A general lack of older designers in in-house design departments could
thusly be blamed on upward mobility— Fewer older, working designers leads to
less “late style” around to notice, and praise.
Though I believe there is more
to it.
I fear that Design is for the
young.
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Of a well-known established designer: as he ages he becomes more and
more tone-deaf to typography. And who could blame him? He’s
probably set tens of thousand pieces of copy in his career. His emphasis now is
on The big idea, not the paltry minutiae. But: (speaking of deafness:
Beethoven was famously irascible about the prissy details of his métier. Of
course the sheer glory of his genius subsumed his idiosyncrasies; his bad taste. Beethoven’s genius made of his spastic ugliness: “late
style.”) Design
cannot support such a disregard for detail. In the case of design: the
typography, the detail, IS the design. Without, say, pretty type, you have ugly, ineffectual
design.
Worse, of course, than an ugly
newness, is a cookie-cutter sameness.
“Boilerplate” is a symptom of aging.
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Is design for the young? Is it?
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What will become of me as I age?
I am no spring chicken myself—having come to the whole mishegoss
rather late.
I am “midway through my life’s journey.” (did Dante enjoy a “late
style?” In the Divine Comedy, his (literally) middle aged avatar is guided by the
wiser Virgil. In the field of graphic design, wouldn’t
we prefer young Beatrice as a guide? To remind us of those trivialities and
trends we care not one whit about anymore? The diagonal slashes? The reflex
blues? The crossed-out type and multiple format books that grace the Tmblrs of
a million design aspirants? Beatrice would know what the cool kids were up to.
Beatrice would be on Pinterest.)
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I repeat my question: What will become of
me as I age?
I don’t know— and maybe this is why I'm so intent
on solving the mystery of:
Whither all the mature design?
Mathew Arnold believed growing old meant:
“Los(ing) the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye.”
I can't help thinking that if we apply this verse to the commonly held
design virtues of "form" and "eye," then I'm in for a sad
professional dotage.
In
which case I might as well consider returning to the piano.
