Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
Nancy Skolos
Second Advisor
Andrew Sloat
Third Advisor
Bethany Johns
Abstract
As a generative process of visual form, styling and artifice are co-dependent. Styling mediates visual and sensorial elements for aesthetic benefit, and artifice produces a fantasy otherwise unattainable. Together they are a rebus — an orchestration of symbols and shifted realities — that impacts modes of representation and subsequent shifts in taste.
In Not Not Real, the logic of “real” life is moot. Relevance and subjectivity are the only fixed parameters that govern stylistic intuition. The image produced — however candid or authentic it may appear — is artificial. But this imagery supersedes reality in provoking aspiration, rendering the image more compelling than the context from which it emerged.
Style is the outward expression of an internal narrative; it is a pragmatic method of classification and a means of visual communication. In fashion and design, stylistic representation is both fantasy and fiction. In the process of collecting, editing, and arranging objects and contexts, a world within a world emerges, through which we project fantasy. Artificial but real, plastic but resonant.
Recommended Citation
Mascatello, Sophie, "Not not real : exercises in styling" (2014). Masters Theses. 78.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/78
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