ARH Notes and Reaction 4-10-12

Notes:

Swiss Design and International Typographic style

Swiss Design is more than just grids.

It is visual unity though asymmetrical composition.

Embraces objective photography,

Sanserif type,

Flush left and rag right,

Mathematical grids. A grid is just a game that you set up rules for.

Design is socially useful.

More important is the appearance than the attitude.

Has it’s roots in distil, Bauhaus, the new typography.

1950 Max Bill is involved in creating a new school in Germany called Ulm.

At the school they introduced a study of semiotics (the philosophical theory of signs and symbols – what things mean in relationship to other things).

Semiotics

/Syntactics–order

/Semantics–meaning or referred to

/Pragmatics–how it is used

*There is no inherent or independent meaning

Armin Hofman b.1920

Swiss design

“Design the negative space, the rest will work.”

Josef Müller Brockmann - looking for an absolute and total graphic expression

Used intensity and clarity

Swiss Moderism vs. NYC Modernism

Paul Rand, Saul Bass & Ivan Chermayeff

1940 begin to see effects of Modernism in advertising

European - theoretical / NY- pragmatic

“The Big Idea”

Paul Rand

From New York

Studied Swiss design

Making powerful imagery and putting it in the American landscape

Gave us the UPS logo among many other well known logos

Sal Bass (1920-1996)

Known for his movie posters and credit sequences

Also did logo design. AT&T, Minolta, United Airlines

Ivan Chermayeff

Did branding and logos for many, many companies. Educated at Yale

Used construction paper, punched wholes, and teared edges to make his designs.

Post Modernism

The break with Modernist ideas (structure, order, harmony)

Emphasis on feeling rather than rationale

Emphasis on surface texture and materials

Self-consciousness or self-referencing

Mixes high and low culture

Historical references

Vernacular

IE. Meta, players interacting with audience, movies referencing itself.

“It is the hangover of modernism”

Wolfgang Weingard – Swiss Designer

Teaches in the Basil School of Design

Put things together in a seemingly random arrangement.

Uses a letterpress in a very difficult way

Easily imitated

Dan Freedman 1945-95

Student of Weingard. Coined “Radical Modernism”

Brought a the new style of typographic design to the U.S.

April Graiman

Starts the wheel going in 80’s design

Riffs off of Lissitzky

Memphis Group

Texture, color, pattern, more, more, more.  Essential 80’s design. Orgy of color and texture.

Personal Thoughts:

I thought that this was one of the most interesting eras of design that has been discussed thus far. I always found that Post-Moderistic design was fun but over the top. I remember having a white button-up short sleeve shirt that had lots of colorful paint splatters. It is the most Post-Modernistic piece of clothing I remember having. Whenever I see the “orgy of color and texture” I think of Will Smith’s The Fresh Prince of Belair and movies like White Men Can’t Jump.

I completely agree with Dorian when he said that the big logo designers would be spinning in their graves if they saw their logos being redesigned into the 3 Dimensional ones we see today. 

ARH Notes and Reaction 4-3-12

Notes:

Herbert Matter

Known for his use of imagery and scale shift

Skewed Mountain pictures – Swiss Tourism

Angled Type

In 1936 Matter comes to U.S.

Part of the New York Club that included Paula Cher and Jackson Pollock

Does ad for Knoll – abstraction of form speaks about the form. Embraces negative space. Uses chair as art in itself to advertise it. Very successful

Saramin Chair

In U.S., Modernism was not easily embraced.

Liked visual contrast in corporate movement.

Liked dots and diagonals in graphics.

Reuses elements in many works.

Walter Pipic got rich inventing the cardboard box. Innovates the industry.

Tchischold typography is savagely attacked in the U.S.

Lester Beal (1903-1969) distilled it down for America. Works as a designer. Moves studio to NYC like Madmen.

1935 – Pioneers in Peoria; Loves arrows and fill lines.

At this time people resist having running water installed on their property from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA).

The Works Progress Administration (WPA), part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, is a huge step in bringing Modernist ideas to the U.S.

Initiatives, Posters, and Events.

Abstraction becomes popular.

Personal Thoughts:

Herbert Matter was a very interesting man. Fascinating how one man could do so much to change public perception of modernist ideas. He broke a lot of ground for the people that came after him. It is remarkable how he was interested in so many different mediums. I enjoyed looking at his photography quite a bit. It is a shame that he never really enjoyed taking pictures of his son and grandson for posterity. It seems to me that he missed out on a good bonding experience. From what he film showed, it seemed like his family highly respected him but could not get very close to him. The film showed that as Herbert got older, the more distant he got from his family and the more obsessed he got with his work. Worst of all is that his best work seemed to be when he was more connected to his friends and family, not to say that his work with Giacometti wasn’t interesting.

Questions:

Did he have any other notable romances that inspired his art? Was his wife the only woman to pose nude for his photographs? Was nudity a part of his lifestyle as a young married man or was it just something his wife did for him for inspiration?

3-20-12 Class Notes and Reaction

Notes

 

Bauhaus

14 yrs

33 faculty members

1250 students

1919-1925 in Weinmar – Walter Gropius

1925-1932 in Dessau - Hannes Meyer,

1932-1933 in Berlin - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Dessau is a factory town. School’s art is used in regularly in production.

School in Berlin is an abandoned shoe factory

1923 is the first public exhibition

A utopian desire to create a new spiritual society

Unity of Artists & Craftsmen to build for the future

Ideas from all the Advanced Art and Design Movements were explored and implied to functional design

Walter Gropius-the first director of the Bauhaus(1919-1925). Wanted technology work for society.

Council of Masters: Gerhard Marks-sculpture/pottery. Lionel Feringer-painting. Johannes Itten-preliminary courses(most important).

At the beginning they printed out the manifesto of the Bauhaus. Displayed a woodcut print with stars in a triad symbolizing Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. The idea was that these elements should all work together and overlap.

Itten said there needs to be a core of knowledge that every student should have and then go into specialization.

At the Bauhaus there was an emphasis put on contrast.

Schmidt, a student, produces a poster for the first student exhibition(has elements of cubism and constructivism.

Laszlo Moholy Nagy in a Hungarian constructivist. Experiments with photography, montage, resins, etc. Has incredible influence in the Bauhaus(considered Gropius’ Prime Minister). Looks to unify typography and photography. Typophotography. Essence must be on total clarity. Communication should never be impaired by an aesthetic.

Nagy develops photoplastics

The Bauhaus produced books in where they

Herbert Bayer(a Bauhaus student) creates the universal alphabet, rethinking the communicative property of letters(not successful).

Moderism in a nutshell: Sanserif, asymmetrical, active negative space, implied grid.

1923 young Jan Tschichold goes to the Bauhaus exhibition. It rocks his world. He writes a book explaining the news ways of using typography. In 1928 he writes another typography book with an English translation, which becomes the bible for graphic designers. “The aim of every typographic work to be the delivery of a message in the shortest most efficient manner.”

He furthers modernist typography

The Gestapo kicks in Tschichold’s door and arrests him for subversive activities – his book on typography. Tschichold was considered a “Cultural Bolshevic”. His typography book is confiscated for it’s subversive ideas and promoting communism. He leaves Germany and lives the rest of his life in Switzerland.

Personal Thoughts

Nice to recap on the Bauhaus. It helped to make the information stick. I found it interesting to find out more bout the directors of the school. Also interesting to find out how the Bauhaus inspired Tschichold to write a book on typography. I found it strange how the instructor held it in such high regard and with such enthusiasm. Still blows my mind how the government cracked down on artists such as this typographer and threw them in jail to prevent the spread of their seemingly innocent ideals inspiring new ways of thinking. It really makes me realize how much we take our freedom for granted and that we are even encouraged to constantly find new ways to express any idea we have.

Questions

Even if Ringling started pushing the envelope like the Bauhaus did, do you think it would make a similar mark in the history of art? Has society changed so much that art is now seen as a corporate asset and exploration in art is perhaps not as valued or encouraged in modern day Corporate America? I seems like even though we have some freedom of expression in our classes and independently, we are restricted from exploring new ways of expression in the corporate structure. It seems that as far as projects that make it to the public consciousness, they are just the same things put into a different colored boxes. Has the business world replaced the dictator governments of the past? 

Notes and Reaction 3-13-12

Notes

Suprematists were about pure color and pure emotion.

*Art never evolves without risks.

El Lissitzke questions where art styles and mediums meet and intersect.

Influences De Stijl.

El Lissitzke starts in suprematism but illustrates the shapes in receding planes.

Creates many PROUNs (projects for an establishment for a new art). PROUN-19D and so on were the titles of many of his works. Based in suprematism but uses receding plans.

“Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” was a propaganda piece against the Bolsheviks.

He wrote a book called “Isms of Art” which used a unique way of titling the sections of German, French, and English with black bars, asymmetrical balances, a new way of using white space, running sanserif, semi opaque images over text, and grids.

*The more clearly you define a problem, the easier it is to solve the problem

Experimentation in photography and film begins to happen at this time. Develops the photomontage and it emerges as a popular filming and photography style. ie Battleship Potemkin

Alexander Rodchenko(1891-1956)

Attends school from 1910-1914 experiments in spatial construction and suprematism

He then moves into constructivism- leading towards modern graphic representation. 1923-1925

Constructivist art is Product-useful design. Creativity has to have a social need

De Stijl 1917-1931

Also known as neoplasticism. Ends abruptly with its Netherlands creator, Theo Van Doesburg.

It is a utopian approach to aesthetics. Based on functionalism.

Two-dimensional rectilinear planes that are void of any decoration aside from flat color.

A mathematical system for the Universe and universal harmony

Best known member was Piet Mondrian (Colored squares, white voids, and black lines)

Theo Van Doesburg went diagonal in many paintings. He also added more planes.

The theory of De Stijl was applied to most everything throughout the decades including the Partridge family bus and contemporary architecture.

Dada movement that comes from the ideal that the world has no meaning and art should reflect that.

“Everything is shit, so let’s reflect that.”

Dadist game – Exquisite Corpse; each person adds and changes the image created before them

Theo Vandosberg ironically embraced Dadism. In order to embrace a new art you had to destroy the old traditions and styles.

Bauhaus (1919-1933) was a school much like RCAD but not as wealthy. 33 faculty members. 2,300 students.

It is after the loss of the First World War; Germany is in ruin.

The school was conceived to gentrify the area and bring in more money to the community.

It’s utopian ideal was to change the world. Looking for a unity of artists and craftsman - to bring them together.

1923 was the school’s first exhibition. There were 3 incarnations of the Bauhaus in very different locations.

It is now during the rise of the Nazis.

The Nazis forced the school from one location to another through fear and violence.

Personal Reaction

I thought that the videos told the story of the artists well. I liked that they showed how the artist of the museum interacted, sometimes in great conflict with each other’s ideas on art. I wonder how close the Russian Revolution came to victory or if it had a chance at all. The video gave a very interesting angle on the Revolution through the aspect of art and how the emerging movements were major casualties in the conflict between freedom and oppression. It was mind-boggling to find out that an artist could get arrested and sent to a concentration camp on the Artic Circle because of his art, which did not seem political or subversive at all. It is terrible how personal expression was wrung out of the people through fear and sometimes violence. I never really knew much about the Russian Revolution before this. Taking history through the angle of art has made it much easier to get interested in these events. The video on the Bauhaus was enlightening. Didn’t know anything about this before – the movement or the school. I felt that I could connect with the students that were depicted. However, it seems that artist back then had much stronger convictions in their art and their ideals than we have today. I suppose it’s because we have had it much easier throughout our lives and haven’t had to fight and struggle, like previous generations did, for our needs and ideologies.

Questions

What influences in art today can be traced back to the school of Bauhaus?

How was art so different from craft before the Bauhaus?

Were there other artists in that movement that have left a lasting impression on the field of art?

Were there other artists that were sent to concentration camps or prison because of their art?

And how many of those were incarcerated for just doing what they loved and not for being political?

Class Reaction and Notes for 2-28-12

Notes:

Artists of the Vienna Secession were just rebelling against the old way of thinking (the older generation that only liked the traditional styles).

Abstraction is a continuum. It is anything other than literal reality.

The secession group had their own magazine. They wanted an aesthetic continuity in the magazine so any ad required that their magazine artists design the ad. It was a radical way of thinking.

There was a big Art Nouveau exhibition in L.A. in the 60’s and from there it caught on and took the form of our popular psychedelic posters.

Art Nouveau really pushed the envelope of typography. Developed many new and unique type faces.

Peter Barrens (The Kiss) changed the landscape of graphic design.

In 1907 Barrens is hired by AEG Becomes the design consultant for the German Power Company. He was the first to experiment with running san serif type.

He was an early advocate of san serif type. Before him, San serif was just a novelty.

He was the first man to create a comprehensive identity package for a company.

Pioneered the concept of non-loadbearing walls.

While in art school (1904) he gets influenced by a forward thinking professor that works with squares and circles in new ways. The principle of intervals between circles and squares. The Pavilion Exhibition.

He creates the AEG logo: A honeycomb representing worker bees. Established ridged rules for consistent logo, typeface, and layout design.

Takes the principle of interchangeable parts and applied it to products of the power company. Applied these principle to their electric tea pot.

At this time, the first electrified underground cars are seen in London.

Lucian Bernard starts out a starving painter. Enter competition. Makes a last minute work. The dignitary judge is bored with the entries, pulls Bernard’s work out of the trash pile and selects it as the winner. This starts a whole new style in advertising design called Plakatstil.

There is a “We are producers”/”We are artists” battle in AEG

Plakatstil (poster style) becomes very popular in advertising. Large areas of flat color, cartoonistic, simple, minimalistic.

The Axis Power propaganda art is abstract, sometimes dark, and often needing decoding.

Allies feed their propaganda art to you with a spoon. It is about straightforward quality of illustration, not as much about symbolism.

Uncle Sam riffs on a British poster.

Ludwig Hohlwein becomes a major artist in the plakatstil WWI propaganda posters, but takes it to the next level.

His success was overshadowed by his alliance with the losing team twice in a row.

Hitler did not like the German artist’s approach to design. He writes in Mein Kampf that the Allies have much better posters because they speak clearly, even to the uneducated masses.

Hohlwein uses emotional impact through dramatic lighting. Likes to use a multitude of symbolism in his posters. ie. The Und Du poster.

Kauffer presents the first examples of cubist abstraction in his flying birds.

Cubism starts around 1907.

A.M. Cassander 1901-1968 Uses geometry and cubism for his telegraph poster. Cassander is most known for his travel posters. He uses sophisticated structured abstraction for his posters.

Suprematism(art for art sake) happens at the same time as cubism. Influenced by futurism and cubism. Rejects utilitarian function. Rejects pictorial representation.

Dinofuturism?

Kazimir Malevich was the premier Suprematist painter

Avant Garde simply means out in front.

Constructivism:

Tatien

Alexander Rodchenko – things that are functional are art.

Lissitzke – starts out as a suprematist but goes into architecture.  

Personal Thoughts

The art tonight was fascinating. I’ve never seen German wartime poster art and American Wartime poster art of WWI juxtaposed before. It was even more interesting to find out that Hitler thought that the American poster art was more effective. As an art student, I think the German art was far more interesting, but I can understand Hitler’s point - that when you are trying to deliver a message, you want to make it as simple and clear as possible so as to be understood by the broadest possible audience. I think that the reason German poster art was more symbolic was because the creators and promoters themselves wanted to feel intelligent and powerful for being able to understand the symbolism depicted. Maybe they felt that because they were the master race, all Germans should be able to understand the higher meanings behind the abstract ideas of the posters.

It was also a good introduction to suprematism tonight. I liked how the structure and ideas behind composition were explained. It took me a while to see the airplane in the one Malevich painting. Although it is entirely possible that other people saw the plane in completely different ways. I also appreciated the little bit of background when introducing Lucian Bernard to us. Good story about him painting his dad’s house in wild colors. I would like to hear more stories like this with other artists. It makes me care about what they did more.

Questions

How can you tell a good suprematist painting from a bad one?

Isn’t all art functional? Some just functions as entertainment and entertainment is a function, is it not? I suppose that could be debated as well.

Week #6 Notes and Reaction 2-21-12

Notes:

John Ruskin born early 1800 becomes the philosophical leader of the arts movement. He calls for social reform. How can we consciously restructure society for a cooperative and prosperous outcome?

William Morris 1834-1896: Atheist. Wrote over 90 books, illuminated manuscripts, set up a print shop, founded socialist league, most popular poet of his day.

Started off rich from father’s copper mines.

Started a career as an architect, but quit it to become an artist.

Crafted 644 illustration blocks (Kelmscott style). Produced borders, title pages, and other designs.

Arts and crafts react against industrialization. Leads to Art Nouveau.  

Aubrey Beardsley(sex obsessed) also produced vine-work woodblock illustrations in the Kelmscott style.

Morris threatens lawsuit against Beardsley tarnishing the Kelmscott style.

Sarah Bernhardt hires Alphonse Mucha to do a lithography. She loves it. It elevates him to fame and puts his work in high demand.  Mucha went on to make all kinds of advertisements for a wide variety of products.

Whiplash Hair, tile work, plays with depth, flat abstract forms contrast to foreground subjects. Sexuality.

Turn of the century - Pattern work becomes popular. Form is abstracted

Will Bradley. Produces Book covers. Abstraction, black and white pattern. Plays with dimensionality and abstraction of forms. Influenced by Japanese woodcuts. The patterns in his work is flat but the way it is cut plays with 3D form.

Penfield’s work in Harpers Magazine is an example of how Illustrations become flatter, moves towards 2D look.

In Germany, Art Nouveau  is called Jugendstil(youth style)

The Kiss, 1898 Peter Behrens - Jugend Style. Intertwined locks of hair. Both figures androgynous, pushing boundaries of sexuality.

Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts (Scotland)

Founders: Margret and Francis McDonald(sisters), Herbert McNair, and Charles Renee Mackintosh. Known for geometric styles that have curvilinear elements with a rectilinear structure, floral motifs, and symbolism.

Talwin Morris. Bookmaker. Took basic visual elements to make cover and spine designs. Mass produced and widely collected.

In Austria, Art Nouveau is called Sessionstil. Artist of this form break off from.

An example: Gustav Klimt. Koloman Moser.

1889 Klimt work shows outrageous use of negative space.

_­Personal Thoughts

Although the movie was unexpectedly long, it stressed how important William Morris was to art in his time. I liked seeing the slides of his work after the movie. His vine work is amazing. It reminds me of the intricate Celtic knots of the Book of Kells. Those designs always amaze and inspire me.

As always my favorite part of class is looking at and analyzing the different works of art. I would like to see more works of art in the Jugendstil style. Love the way women’s hair flows in that style.

It was interesting to find out how much influence the four founders of the Glasgow School had on the Art Nouveau movement. Would like to learn more and see more of their work.

Questions

What is the Glasgow institute of Art doing now?

Are they currently similar to Ringling or are they more specialized?

How much of the four founder’s style is carried on today at the school?

What was Koloman Moser’s influence on Art Nouveau?

What popular examples produced today can be traced back to the beginnings of Art Nouveau? 

Week 5 Notes and Reaction

Notes for Week 5 (2-7-12)

Pictorial forms evolve into Cunieform.

Cunieform develops out of efficiency.

For the test we need to identify Capitalis Quadrata, Capitalis Rustica,

Caroline Minuscules, and the book of Kells

Xylography is printing from wood.

Earliest expressions of woodblock printing are playing cards and a devotional.

Ars Memorandi: instructions on how to die. Examples of Block Books – books using block printing.

Textura, Black Letter, and Gothic are used interchangeably.

Gutenberg used textura on his early press because it was the type of the time.

He wasn’t an artisan. His foreman was.

Recognize: the punch, matrix, and type mold.

Identify the Letter of Indulgence(an early example of letterpress printing).

Define: Xylography(printing from wood), Ligature, Icunabula(the first 50 years of printing), Fleurons(a flower or decoration within the text).

An exemplar page is a preliminary sketch done before you do the set.

Calendarium included a tippin(moveable page insert).

Steven Daye’s Book of Psalms was an example that he was not an expert in printing.

Romain du Roi(Royal Typeface) identified by the dot on the lowercase el.

Remember: French Rococo – fussy and decorative.

Copper plate engraving allowed for greater contrast between thick and thin.

Rococo evolved into modern style type.

Bodoni was invented in the style of 18^th Century Neo-classical

Bodoni typeface was similar to Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in they way that it had interchangeable parts within the design(serif, width, etc.).

Large poster style fonts were from Wood Type. Made possible by the router.

Point size is simply highest to lowest.  Leading is baseline to baseline.

Joseph Niepce took the first photograph from nature in 1826.

Louis Daguerre famous for long exposure Paris street photo.

The first ad men were not creators in any way. They were brokers of space aka advertising solicitor.

Victorian era was visually confusing.

Late1800’s early 1900s:

Scrap cards so called because they were printed to be disposable. They were an example of ephemera.

Late 1800s had lots of expositions going on. Allegory was popular at the time. Trump Loy Effect(sp?) – illusion of pages curling and pictures overlapping. Lots of Chromolithography exposition posters.

Chromolithography begins to be applied to tin containers. The product was beginning to replace the shopkeeper with images being put on the product.

The product became recognizable and name brands became popular.

Corporations begin to form when farmers came together in a consortium instead of competing with each other.

It is a time when the public starts to get manipulated by the media.

Journalists won’t mention the products in order to build trust with the reader, but they put an ad of a product that might be used the recipe next to the article.

Signage gets plastered on any available surface. It becomes a culture of advertising.

People begin to pull back and reduce the ornate style in reaction to the overt advertising culture.

Toy books come into existence. Changes from preaching to entertaining and educating. ie. Walter Crane’s Absurd ABC, 1874

Influence of Japanese prints.

Caldecott – The dish and the spoon. Ridiculousness.

Kate Greenway, Under the Window. Known for images of freely playing children. Uses a generous amount of white space – unusual at the time.

Harper’s becomes an empire of books and magazines for just about everything. The beginning of visual journalism.

Thomas Nast of Harper’s Weekly was an illustrator that helped bring down Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. Although many people couldn’t read, they could understand Nast’s political illustrations.

John Henry Heinz begins by selling horseradish. Starts releasing a line of prepackaged foods (57 of them). He puts up the first large scale electric sign (the giant pickle). The first one to figure out that your employees are your marketing. Hired lots of pretty young girls and had them work in store fronts for people to see. Even gave them a sunning deck to keep them looking good. In a era of grueling working conditions, this company was the diamond in the rough.

Personal Thoughts

It was good to review what was going to be on the test. It helped me to retain the information for the topics to be presented again, but in a slightly different way. What more can I say about the review information that I didn’t already post. As for the new information, I found it interesting, because it started to become more graphic. There was a lot more chromolithography, which I very much enjoy looking at. It is a unique art form that has pretty much disappeared from todays illustration styles. I would love to see a resurgence of the old chromolithographic style. I think it is crazy how overboard the plastered advertisements got. It is interesting to look back on, but I can’t imagine living in an area where there are advertisements on every surface. I suppose there are ads everywhere we go today, but it is a lot more subtle. The advertisements then were right in your face. It is neat to find out where the 57 came from in Heinz57. I thought the whole creation of visual journalism was a fascination part of the presentation. I would like to learn more about that.

Questions

Is the Heinz Corporation still at the same location and if so, how much has it changed?

I wonder how difficult it was to get a job at Heinz, being that it was so rare to find good working conditions at the time.

Were there any other companies that took as good care of their employees as Heinz did?

What companies were the first to follow suit behind Heinz in that respect?

I would like to learn more about Caldecott and the Caldecott Awards.

What did the first toy books with color look like?