VISION  & DESIGN  

Margaret Priest & Rolph Scarlett : November 24, 2000 – January 18, 2001

Roger Fry : November 17, 2000 – February 4, 2001

Introduction 

Historically, there has been a distinction between art and craft.  Objects were designed according to need, conforming to fundamental criteria in order to be useful (a tool or piece of furniture, for example).  But taste often governs the final appearance.  Taste is a matter of preference, dictated by the prevailing style of the times.  Works of art are also objects, but differ fundamentally in that their usefulness is not determined by function, but express an aesthetic vision as well as the design of pictorial space in two and three dimensions. 

By the mid-nineteenth century the distinctions between applied and fine arts were overturned by the impact of the industrial age.  Artists were influenced by the images and dynamism of the machine and technology, and designers of utilitarian objects for the modern age often saw their work as comparable to that of fine art.  A prime example of the inter-disciplinary, modernist vision was that of the Bauhaus, a centre of design established by German architect Walter Gropius in 1919 that continued until 1933. Under its roof, artists, architects, craftspeople and designers worked together, an approach influenced by the earlier English Arts and Crafts movement.  The Bauhaus credo of form follows function – the development of “pure and essential forms” – was, in many respects, still an objectification of preference.  But it established an international style that we think of as being “modern”.  It continues today in “high style” as well as mass-produced utilitarian objects.

Vision and Design presents the work of three artists engaged in the complex visions that circulate through modern art and design.  Roger Fry (British. 1866—1934) was educated in the age of Pax Britannica (the height of the British Empire’s “enlightened colonial influence”) in the latter half of the 19th century.  As a critic and author, he is recognized as one of the influential writers who shaped ideas about modernity in the early 20th century, but also participated in the modernist movement as an artist. Rolph Scarlett (Canadian. 1889—1984) was active in the United States starting in the 1930s.  A painter in the non-objective style, he was also a designer of functional objects, stage sets for theatre and creating sculptural jewellery, and working in an era when America asserted its economic position and cultural authority.  Margaret Priest (b. 1944) grew up in England in the post W.W.II era.  Her interest in public and domestic modernist architecture and design has informed her work in various media – drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture – and has been involved in the design of public art and the urban landscape.  She has addressed the legacy (and some may say the burden) of modernity over the past 30 years.  Appropriately, the exhibition title Vision and Design, is taken from the title of a collection of essays by Roger Fry, published in 1920, exploring the relationships between art and everyday life.   

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Department of Canadian Heritage, through the Exhibition Circulation Fund, Museums Assistance Program, in bringing Rolph Scarlett: Art Design Jewelry, circulated by the McDonald Stewart Art Centre, to the Kelowna Art Gallery.

The Artists

[click the artist name for more information and photos]