Interview with furniture design legend Vladimir Kagan
I had the great opportunity to interview Mr. Vladimir Kagan who’s work is both functional and sculptural, a true combination of art and design.
This is a small section from our interview.
Q: Does a designer have a responsibility to society? If so, what is it?
A: A designer has to be (a good designer) an interpreter. If you are a designer for products you have to challenge yourself and work toward coming up with a presentation that is ultimately acceptable to a client so it’s an interpretive process.
You have to be a good listener, not come in with preconceived ideas. If you come in with an empty bowl and you fill it then with the ideas it’s better than coming in with a lot of baggage and saying “I’ve been dying to do this and this is the perfect client for it”.
What you want to do is find really what are the client’s needs and how to manufacture it. That’s a personal challenge I have to face. The client doesn’t give a hoot how you do it just as long as it fits in the elevator. From a furniture designing, interior-designing perspective, one more ingredient is the committee. If you’re dealing with a family, even though they think they’re on the same wavelength, they’re not and you have to meld that together. I become the psychiatrist and try to amalgamate different perspectives.
In the industrial sense, it’s a committee, it’s the boss that’s going to pay for it, it’s the utility needed from the office, it’s the whole board of directors that has an input, so it’s never a monolithic thing. Essentially it is finding a compromise and sticking to your own guns on what is right for the job. So I will not do something for the benefit of a client if I don’t believe in what I’m doing. People come to recognize that in my work and by the time they become my clients they trust what I do.
Q: What would you say is the fundamental difference between an artist and a designer?
A: A fine artist is not bound by any restrictions. The only consideration he has is that he has to eat, so does he want to sell the painting and therefore pander or cater to an audience or does he not give a hoot about selling and he just expresses himself?
The artist also has an editorial role to play. Artists express dissatisfaction and dispute with society. A designer doesn’t have that issue. The artist has a tremendous amount of freedom. Is he doing it because he’s compelled, compulsive, must do it or is he doing it because he feels this sets him apart from the other people? When you go to art shows you sort of marvel, you look at the details, and the half a million strokes it takes to make a pointillist painting. It’s a different mindset.
An artist as a designer has to have a practical point of view. This is the artist, designer as opposed to a guy who’s just a mechanical designer. We have parameters that limit what we can do (dimensions in a chair for example). There are certain formulas that work, so you have to work within the framework of that sort of thing. And I think that’s really what separates the designer from the artist. The designer is restricted and has to work within disciplines, the fine artist doesn’t. I wouldn’t want to be confronted with a blank canvas and make a painting. I don’t have an urge to fill a canvas; my stimulation comes from a client.
