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.
No comments:
Post a Comment