Design's Dilemma Between Art and Problem-Solving

The design dilemma is based on the historic separation of design and art
since the late Middle Ages. It describes the transformation of design
from an art discipline to a problem-solving discipline. On the one hand,
this great divergence is accompanied by myths that construct opposites
of free art and unfree design, of aura and loss of aura, or of distance
and touch. On the other hand, the avant-gardes have often invoked the
unity of art and design, which museums or marketing also take up again
today.
In order to better understand design's wandering between art and
non-art, its 600-year history of ideas is now traced for the first time
in the fields of art and industrial history as well as the philosophy of
pragmatism since about 1900. Special attention is paid to the original
ideas and their overformation by technicism, capitalism, functionalism
or Darwinism. They create the design dilemma that shapes the "attitude"
of its actors.