The Art Snob Archive

Aesthetic Revolt - March 03/06

Throw your Macs out the Window!

An aesthetic revolt finds an outlet in Waterloo.

Art snobbery, dear readers, is about evolution. From the penny-farthing bicycle came the moped, from Paris’ Montmartre came Brooklyn’s Williamsburg. Constant change, you see, is necessary to stay above the ignorant masses, especially when history has shown that they often catch up.

Years ago, we elitists were the focus market of the Apple Computer company. We needed their technology to edit our short films, their creative suite to design our gallery posters, and in return they got priceless indie cred. But then they went and got all “accessible”. The iPod exploded on the markets and suddenly everyone had those sexy little white laptops. The clean ‘vector’ image art snobs had made popular (see www.julianopie.com or The Best of Blur album cover) became commonplace.

Art snobs don’t like it when their little sisters are able to use Adobe to advertise their eighth grade dance. They get angry. They start breaking things. Then they start looking for new ideas.

There is a movement developing, dear readers, an “aesthetic revolt” some have called it. Perhaps it is a reaction to Apple selling out, perhaps not, but it is certainly exciting. A new approach to design is sweeping the world, and has found a strong foothold in Canada – in Waterloo, no less! Your daring, fore-sighted columnist has stuck his massive nose into this new phenomenon, barely surviving to tell the tale!

Artists and designers, quite simply, are starting to move away from the computer, hoping to find a new means of expression in something grittier and less-refined. A new fascination with cut and paste design, pencil crayons, and silk-screening is taking hold of bright young things like Marc Lecompte of CTRPLLR, an independent zine published right here in Kitchener-Waterloo: "Things are too sterile, boring, non-offensive and hardly stimulating from an aesthetic standpoint. Layout for newspapers and magazines are done on computers to make sure they look perfect; the pictures are not incorporated in to the page, but merely placed beside text as a point of reference. I like to make the visual design of the page just as interesting as the articles themselves.”

Lecompte accomplishes this noble task through collage. CTRPLLR’s pages overflow traditional margins with images cut and pasted from old furniture magazines and outdated textbooks, anything that may relate to the article. It is an incredibly stimulating experience, with Lecompte and his CTRPLLR cronies choosing obscure images and wrapping them over and around the article text, creating a busy and interesting page: "I think there are so many great photos trapped inside old books and magazines that people will never read, so I take what I think are some of the best ones and work with them when doing the design for the zine.”

Heavily influenced by the independent music scene, Lecompte speaks of bands like Chicago's Owls and Seattle's Soiled Doves, who have utilized the collage aesthetic to make their album artwork stand out. Indie music has certainly been the teat at which the unpolished look suckles, acting as an outlet for everything from the pencil and graph paper singles of LCD Soundsystem to the crayon-colored posters of Waterloo’s Silent Film Soundtrack.

Canada has become very associated with the revolt, with Montreal outfits like Seripop becoming internationally recognized for their gritty silk-screened concert posters, despite their lack of training. Their website biography relates that "neither of us ever took a design class because we thought the design art students were lame sell outs.”

It may seem as if the world is crashing down, my elitist friends, when even design students are no longer cool, but this is the direction art is heading in. The mark of the art snob is no longer his mouse-clicking index-finger, but rather the paper-cut, the ink-stained hand, the box of pencil crayons in the pocket. Art snobs must prepare for this new step, be eager to follow CTRPLLR’s mission to “abolish traditional forms of media, or at least try new ones.” So throw out your Macs, pick up some old National Geographics, and create. While you’re at it, grab a CTRPLLR from the Turnkey Desk, the Grad House, or any other place of fine taste in K-W.

posted by HLL @ Friday, March 24, 2006