Post 8 - Chris Nowlan - The Bauhaus

In the 1920's and 30's the Bauhaus was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught.

The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. 

The School became one of the best-known progressive institutions for art and design instruction in the twentieth century. The major goals of the school were to encourage craftsman and artists to collaborate, to elevate the status of crafts, and to maintain relations with industry and craft leaders in order to eventually become independent of government control.

At the Bauhaus, typography was conceived as both an empirical means of communication and an artistic expression, with visual clarity stressed above all. 

Artist 

Albers, Josef - 1888 - 1976
Feininger, Lyonel - 1871 - 1956

http://www.germanculture.com.ua/library/weekly/aa022101a.htm 

http://wwar.com/masters/movements/bauhaus_school.html

http://myweb.dal.ca/agirling/bauhaus.html

http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/C20th/bauhaus.htm

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/b/bauhaus.html

Consumer Product Graphics of the 1920sThe 1920s were a decade when the past and the future collided. The explosive growth of the radio, Jazz and baseball were hugely popular. In design, if the second decade of the 20th century was noted for significant changes in typography, the 1920s were a time of significant changes in the use of illustration. The influences of popular illustrators as diverse as Maxfield Parrish, Beatrix Potter, James Montgomery Flagg, and one of my favorites C. Coles Phillips.This decade was also a time when new package design themes were originated. In many cases these themes still have a profound influence on the conventions of contemporary design. This also seemed to be a time when interesting design precedents were being established. Some categories would become design leaders and others would become design followers. Labels for products where changing perfume bottles where taking on a new look they were certainly breaking new ground. The fragrance industry, until this decade, had been heavily influenced by designs that relied on historical references, were complex, organically modeled feminine forms, and still heavily influenced by the complex motifs of the late 19th century gilded age. These new 1920s brands offered a radical mix of simplified bottle shapes, and label typography. The notion of using simple black sans-serif typography on an unadorned white or gold label would not have occurred to a perfumer previously.Fruit Crate Art was also changing radically new printing techniques could inexpensively reproduce bold, full color illustration. There was an explosion of graphic icons, bold color, and dramatically simplified layouts and typography. These layouts often depended solely on the strength of the illustration for their communication. Cigar label art was also changing While this category benefitted from the same opportunities afforded by the new printing techniques, the marketers were far more conservative with their brand equity, preferring to continue with design themes from the previous two decades. Typography was still heavily influenced by the 19th century hand-drawn letterforms, with the use of art nouveau inspired textures and patterns. But the use of bright colorful illustration was truly a break from the past. Previously cigar labels, and many other types of label graphics, had used a limited palette of 2-3 line colors and the illustrations were often rendered, like old-master etchings, in a black line drawing style. While the graphic style might be intentionally traditional, these new cigar labels do explode with full color, tonal drawings.

luke post 8: futura

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed between 1924 and 1926 by Paul Renner. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933. Commissioned by the Bauer type foundry, Futura was commercially released in 1927.

The family was originally published in Light, Medium, Bold, and Bold Oblique fonts in 1928. Light Oblique, Medium Oblique, Demibold, and Demibold Oblique fonts were later released in 1930. Book font was released in 1932.

Although Renner was not associated with the Bauhaus, he shared many of its idioms and believed that a modern typeface should express modern models, rather than be a revival of a previous design.
Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. The typeface is derived from simple geometric forms and is based on strokes of near-even weight, which are low in contrast.

In designing Futura, Renner avoided the decorative, eliminating non-essential elements. The lowercase has tall ascenders, which rise above the cap line. The uppercase characters present proportions similar to those of classical roman capitals.
Original Futura design also included small capitals and the old-style figures, which were dropped from the original metal issue of the type. The digital versions of these glyphs were first produced by Neufville Digital under the Futura ND family.Futura typeface is based on strict geometric shapes, which give an overall effect of simplicity and clarity.



http://www.faces.co.uk/topfonts/futura.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futura_(typeface)

STACY POST 8: 1920's and 1930's graphic design styles

The 1920's and 30's were rich and diverse in graphic art styles- Art Deco, Bauhaus, Constructivism and the beginnings of International style from Switzerland to name a few. Discuss an aspect of graphic design from the two decades.

1920's

the roaring twenties, flappers, cocktails invented, the jazz age, charleston, new feminism, prohibition of alcohol 18th ammendment, coco chanel, burberry, jaeger, merz magazine, schwitters, million mark note herbert bayer, edward johnston - railway type, quaker oats, a.m.cassandre, bakelite candlestick telephone, philips 2514 radio and speaker, mussolini becomes prime minister of italy, al jolson appears in the jazz singer first full length talking film, kodak developes colour 16mm film, wall street crash, 'vanity fair', paris exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes in 1925, el lissitsky, futurist poster stamp 1931, binder, clarence underwood, raoul dufy textiles, gunta stolzl, neophone 1929, universal font 1925, futura font 1927, offset magazine, paul renner, gills sans 1928, beginnings of jazz, held, malevich, constructivism, "elementare typographie", great gatsby,turkey abolishes arabic alphabet and adopts roman, mah- jongg craze, tutankhamans tomb opened, black friday crash of wall street, bauhaus movement, abstact expressionism, chanel pallette- biege488/taupe4645/ gray warm/black, celery614/pale pink 691/lavender664/powder blue 650 light green 622, art deco bronze 8960/chrome, steel 8002/and glass, bright colours as spot colours,fonts eagle bold, cheltenham, cheltenham bold, kabel black, kabelbook, kabel heavy, kabel light, monotype broadway, ozwald, parsons, futura, erbar, franklin gothic, news gothic, gill sans, coronet

1930's

us "dust bowl" saville row tailoring, sheath dress, trouser suit, manray, graham sutherland, piet zwart, ekco ad 65 radio, peoples radio, hitler appointed chancellor in 1933 then fuhrer in 1934, spanish civil war begins 1934, 'blanco y negro', herbert bayer, 'die neue linie' , life magazine first issue, world war 11 begins 1939, ramazzotti posters, seneca, hohlwein, bonal posters, edward mcknight kauffer,ruth reeves textiles, enid marx textiles, desk telephone, times new roman 1931, bmw logo,scarface jailed, dionne quintuplets bornedward VIII abdicates to marry wallis simpson, dixieland jazz,boogie woogie, jive, swing era, gone with the wind,suntans, ballpoint pen by laslo biro, nylon stockings, falling water by frank lloyd wright, colours somber gray 432 black, brown 4625, white off white ivories, and soft pastels 9042, 9060, 9061, 9021, 9023, 9381, 9041 gilding, perwinkle blue 2725 with taupe 264 and dijon yellows 110 with charcoal gray 426, the little black dress, shocking pink211 fonts piranes script, stymie elongated, goudy stout, radiant, huxley vertical, times roman, futura , gill, granby, metro, memphisis, keynote script, kaufman script, greco solid, hollywood deco, dynamo, bernhardt bold, bernhardtmedium, bernhardt light,

post 7: mirra AUBREY BEARDSLEY

"I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." 

Aubrey Beardsley died in 1898 at the age of 25. In 1892 he had become one of the most admired, most imitated, and most notorious artists of his time, his brief, brilliant career - saw him celebrated, but also saw him disgraced.

Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the art nouveau era. He was renowned for his dark and perverse images and the grotesque erotica-which were the main themes of his later work. Some of his drawings, inspired by Japanese shunga, featured enormous genitalia. His most famous erotic illustrations were on themes of history and mythology.

Most of his images are done in ink, and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all.

He produced extensive illustrations for books and magazines like The Studio. Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale based loosely on the legend of Tanhauser.

  

Aubrey Beardsley was not at home in the Victorian society in which he lived. His images poke fun at that society and its values- he made people think and question. Aubrey Beardsley was unknown in 1892, but by the time of his death in 1898, he had broken through the Victorian unconscious and hurled England into the 20th century with his use of imagery, symbolism and graphic style.

   

Through his entire career, Beardsley suffered frequent lung hemorrhages and was often unable to work or leave his home. These recurrent attacks of the disease that would eventually take his life.  Beardsley was active till his death. Despite his illnesses, Beardsley created  prolific amounts of work. He is well known for his POSTERS, which are still reproduced and popular today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley

www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/beardsley_aubrey.html

www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/bio1.html

www.google.com/search?q=aubrey+beardsley+biography

Post 7 De Stijl from 1917

De Stijl

De Stijl pronounced da stail, after style; from the Dutch for "The Style" —

also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. By designer and painter Theo van Deosburg in 1917 in Leiden. Other founders of the group included the sculptor Vantongerloo, architect JJP Oud, designer Rietveld, and the painter Mondrian

According to the Tate Gallery’s online article on neoplasticism, Mondrian himself sets forth these delimitations in his essay 'Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art'. He writes, "... this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour,

The Guggenheim Museum's online article on De Stijl summarizes these traits in similar terms: De Stijl was posited on the fundamental principle of the geometry of the straight line, the square, and the rectangle, combined with a strong asymmetricality; the predominant use of pure primary colors with black and white; and the relationship between positive and negative elements in an arrangement of non-objective forms and lines. "

In many of the group's three-dimensional works, vertical and horizontal lines are positioned in layers or planes that do not intersect, thereby allowing each element to exist independently and unobstructed by other elements

De Stijl proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting, by using only straight horizontal and vertical lines and rectangular forms.. The works avoided symmetry and attained aesthetic balance by the use of opposition.

De Stijl movement was influenced by Cubist painting as well as by the mysticism and the ideas about "ideal" geometric forms The works of De Stijl would influence the architecture as well as clothing and interior design.

http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tarahuttongallery.com/de-stijl-contra-constructi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /De_Stijl

http://www.arthistoryguide.com/De_Stijl.aspx

1900 - 1920 - Robyn Rand - Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

"Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with the strings."

A Russian artist, he is one of the most famous early 20th Century artists and painted some of the first modern abstract works. A successful lawyer, he chose to study art at the age of 30 and only 26 years later was teaching at the Bauhaus. Mostly he learnt to love colour and contrast as a child and, as the quote above implies he related the act of painting to that of creating music.

From 1909 to 1911 Kandinsky painted a large series of paintings he called 'Improvisations', these were a great development in the painting style of the time and he called this style 'Expressive Abstraction' in which he displayed his own 'inner nature'. 

In all of his work, particularly in his Improvisations, Kandinsky used colour to find forms of expression that would be capable of representing inner visions, associations and emotional or intellectual matters in pictorial form, as if seen through the senses. He seems to show us a conflict between line and colour which brings release from the traditional painting of an object. Using shape, space and colour to help with placement and represents the object rather then trying to imitate or reproduce an exact image of the object. Doing this he seems to have achieved a 'floating in space' state for the image which exceeds the limits of traditional perspective and presents a sort of 4th dimension through the use of weight, placement and colour, which gives his paintings amazing visual energy. 

 Kandinsky co-founded a number of movements with in the two decades we are looking at, the most well known are: The Phalanx in 1901, The New Artists Association in 1909, and Der Blaue Reiter in 1911. He was also well known to, and worked with some of the most influential artists of that era.  His experiments with colour, space and placement have had and still is having a huge impact on the art world. Kandinsky was always adamant about the importance of including text, music and movement to make a complete work of art, so I think he would be thrilled to use the materials we have available to us today (and probably would be a huge contributor to youtube).

http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Kandin.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky

http://www.thefineartcompany.co.uk/abstract/abstract-LW13.htm

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/