Rant: Here, the 21st century, we still have to deal with prejudice and insecurities in the arts. I recently had a discussion with a couple of architects who proclaimed that architects may move freely between buildings, consumer products, graphics, or whatever field they choose because there is some [magical] element in architectural studies which does not exist in other design disciplines. I of course fully endorse and encourage multidisciplinary activities, but, being intimate with both architecture and industrial design, loudly point out that a good design education is a good design education, and to suggest that an architect may design a chair, but an industrial designer may never dream of designing a house is as preposterous as taking the old testament word for word. It's not a matter of scale, it is a matter of design process, and anyone with fifth grad education should be able to grasp this. The reason I'm so upset this morning is infact in defense of architecture from the even more intangible territorialism of fine art criticism. My personal heroes, Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller, have made a career of destroying the walls built by insecurity and frivolous title chasing. They simply do what they do, and do it with absolute quality, beauty and passion. Is it art or is it architecture? It doesn't make a damn bit of difference, my dear. Apparently art critic Jerry Saltz is so offended and threatened by this divergence that he wrote a scathing review of not only Diller+Scofidio's mid-career retrospective at the Whitney, but criticized every detail of their public persona, down to how they use punctuation. The critique reads like a temper tantrum by a spoiled child who's neighbor just beat them at their favorite game. Can we please fucking grow up and just appreciate good work when it happens? Lets reward people for breaking the rules and working in the spaces between the boxes, not be indignant because we blindly worked hard, according to the rules and found its a dead-end street. Following the rules is almost always a dead-end. I suppose it takes establishment defenders like Jerry Saltz to show what pioneers people like Diller+Scofidio truly are. Consistently, the best designers have a solid foundation in fine arts, and the best artists have a solid foundation in design. It's just sad that this argument still needs to happen. Mr. Saltz is a very good art critic, but clearly doesn't understand design or its capacity as a medium for intellectual exploration and social commentary. I appreciate that he doesn't throw up academic credentials to defend his opinions, but his fixation with the Art World (note caps) is the core problem with this most recent crit. The Art World is BS: there is only Art, and just like design, often the best comes from unexpected places.

fire away: mike@burnlab.net

Anyway... thanks for the great DEMF scoops, Josh! [below]