james goggin, olafur eliasson, the weather project, 2003
A month or two ago, James Goggin did a lecture at Pratt. I attended, arriving late, when the lecture was already about 15 minutes in. This being my first experience with what could subjectively be called a "Big Deal" in the design world, I was interested in the experience. The lecture confused me, since much of the work Goggin showed, was kind a re-appropriation of other people's work, with many of them, it was almost a direct lift of the other design. When I asked a professor the next day, "When does that [re-appropriating other people's work] become OK?" to which my professor quickly replied, "Never," with a smile, it kind of affirmed my belief, now I only wished I had asked Goggin the same question.
He is afterall an artist though, and his reply I imagine would have been a well thought out reply that he had prepared since he started his DuChamp-ian approach to "ready-made design". I still wonder how far one can take that though. Many artists attempt to copy others as a means of finding their own voice. Picasso directly copied artists of the past until he developed the style he was famous for later in life. Realistically I always look at the work of others as a means of inspiration, even if I end up biting on it pretty hard, but to directly copy the work of others into my own design, I'm still not comfortable with that.
For now, I think I'll leave that to the established artists like Goggin for now, but his credibility to me will always be in question (even though like the piece above, a lot of his work is pretty amazing, this current though withheld).
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