Postmodern

Modernism efficiency and communication

Post-modernism

Pluralsim 

ironic

dualism

Post modernism

Used to note a break with the earlier modernist principles by

placing emphasis on form over function, by reintroducing

traditional or classical elements or by carrying modernist styles

or practice or extremes 

Seen in art design literature architecture

Emphasis on feel rather than rationale 

Emphasis on surface texture and materials

Self conscious and self referencing 

Mixes high and low

Historical reference 

Vernacular 

Wolfgang Weingart

Memphis design group

function secondary to style

Situationist modern dada

Paula Share

Charles Anderson

changed the language of packaging by appropriating vernacular 

Peter Seville

24 hour party people

Von Oliver

Mac shifts aesthetics

April early adapter of computer

Catherine McCoy // Cranbook

David Carson

Sagmeister

Postmodern - more powerful better communication / isnt that modern goal?

mixing high and low

Chip Kid - Choose monkeys

Paula Share

I think that the majority of art being produced today tries to be clever or ironic. I also see a lot of paradoxes like cute things being violent // opposing ideas that don't belong together, and know they don't belong together. I wonder what the future will see when it looks back on Postmodernism. I don't know - I think post-modernism is fun but I think it usually comes off as shallow having more about style than substance. Maybe its a product of globalization where there is so much competition you have to be the most clever. Artists like Bansky take the focus from the content to the artist. To me it says, "look how clever I am." Thats my opinion on the general idea of post-modern.

Bauhaus

Bauhaus  1919 - 1933

Locations:

Weimar 

Dessau

Berlin

Utopian desire to create a new spiritual society

Unity of Artists and Craftsmen to build for the future

Ideas from all of the Advanced Art and Design Movement were explored and applied to functional design

Maholi  Prescribed done year to year

open ended

1923 - first exhibition

Jan Tschichold

-1925 publishes book on typography "The New Typography"

-The aim of every typographic work is to deliver the message in the quickest shortest way

Elbert Hubbard 

Wiener Werkstatte

In what way is Jan Tschichold

Helping propagate ideas for practical expression 

Herbert Matter

-Switzerland

-pioneered photo montage and defined what the modern poster can be 

-extreme perspective shifts scale shifts

-very clear concise efficient 

modernism filters in slowly

Lester Beal
-arrows, bars

-Rural Electrification Administration

-new deal

-limited palette popular easy to produce

-WPA posters use silkscreen a lot

-and seriagraph

Container Corporation of America

Ladislav Sutnar

International Style

looking for universal truths

I enjoyed learning about the Bauhaus, before this I had heard about it and even seen pictures of the school but never really knew too much about it. Its amazing how many times the school was attacked by the public and the Nazis. I admire that they stuck around as long as they did. Its interesting to me how ideas are recycled like looking back to the gothic cathedrals. I enjoyed the work of Herbert Matter. I liked his clean, dynamic compositions that mixed photography but in a minimalist way.  Also liked Lester Beal.

So, this class was just an introduction to many artists that I will be looking at and discovering for a long time.

HAHAHAHA IM ALIVE

Day8

El Lissitsky - proun

-its propiganda, its fuctional

suprematist - should be purely emotional not functional

constructivists

photography- modern way of creating art

montage - Eisenstein 

layering images, cutting sequences  to create
The Battleship Potemkin

Alxander Rodchenko

-Penultimate contructivism

-contructiviism the only true art has function for the people

De Stijl

-utopian approach to aesthetics 

-Rectilinaer planes

-void of surface textures or decorations except pure hues

-mathematical structure

Theo van Doesburg - founder of De Stijl

asymmetrical composition 

Mondrian 

HAHAHAHA IM ALIVE


For me the De Stijl work we saw is boring. I think if you reduce something so much it loses its idiosyncrasies that make something interesting. The Suprematist and Constructivists made interesting work. Dorian talked about them like it was so obvious what they were for, but for me they were a little ambiguous. Such as the kid throwing up cookies or a guy with nails in his mouth. Visually I think they were beautiful but I feel like reduced work is only good if it is in contrast with what is going on around it. So what Im saying is if everything was stark geometric shapes, everything becomes the same. Thats my story and Im sticking to it.

Its More Than Just Grids

Its more than just grids

Visual unity achieved by asymmetrical organization 

objective photography

sans serif type

flush left

rag right

mathematical grids

its socially useful 

distichil asymmetrical grids

Peter Behrens

contructivism making things that are useful

Bauhaus making things that are useful in the home 

Swiss design - The International Typographic  Style

More important than the appearance is the attitude

Design is socially useful

Max Bill died 64

Theo Balmer died 94

students of the Bauhaus

provide link post world war ii swiss design

grid informs or becomes the art

the answer is in the problem - 

Max Bill involved in planning  the ulm

inclusion of semiotics

semiotics - what things mean in relation to other things

Syntactics - order

Semantics - meaning or referred to

Pragmatics - how it is used

Adrian Frutiger

The univers alphabet

Armon hoffman

if you design the negative space the rest will work

Joseph Muller Brockman

European Modernism is theoretical 

Paul Rand

Saul Bass - title sequences

Ivan Chermayeff 

Cut Paper its quick  immediate 

tactile

immediate

Ivan Chermayeff

Paul Rand is cool. I found out today that I don't like artist who begin to stick to one approach for all their work. To me it becomes stale and boring. Its as if they learned how to work one way but then it becomes some sort of dogma. I wonder if a designer should have a personal style like Paul Rand or some of the other people we have seen// or should a designer be invisible and use the style that is appropriate for the project. Again, I like Paul Rand's work but I wish he wasn't so visible when you see one of his ads or something. At this moment I feel like a designer shouldn't draw attention to himself. It reminds me of all these posters that have come out about the Japanese earthquake, its more about the designers than the situation. I don't know I have to think about this...

Bauhaus

Bauhaus

1919-1933

starts in Weimar

first public exhibition 1923

1924 Letter of Resignation / persecuted

1925-1932 Dessau

1928 Groupius replaced by Meyer

1930 Meyer replaced by van der Rohe

1932-1933 Berlin

Area economic depressed put art school

Walter Groupius

Cathedral

(john Ruskin mentioned it)

Groupius uses cathedral as three spires 

painting 

sculpture 

architecture

allegory - a new social unity

Gerhard Marks - Sculpture / Pottery

Lyonel Feringer - Painting

Johannes Itten - Preliminary Courses

Foundation class - study based on contrast

Analysis of old masters

Found object structures

Analyze forms

Something that is hard should CONTRAST something that is soft

Itten leaves 1923 

Bauhas leaves craftsmanship medievalism moves towards design thinking

Bahaus Poster

art and technology

Cubism Deschilt Supremitsm

1923 first exhibition of Bauhaus

Itten replaced by Laszlo Moholy Nagy

scientist, photo montage, resin

type-o-photo

replacing painting

new visual language for new age

(Luscian Benard did something similar - plachenst...)

photo-plastiques

new pictoral expression

1926 building glass curtain windows 

modern building

universal alphabet

doing away with capitols

did away with serifs

experimenting with raging to the right

contrast and hierarchy

bars rules squares and open compositions on implied grids

dominant vertical dominant horizon

"less is more" - Ludwig van der Rohe

Learned about the Bauhaus today...

The designs don't look that dated compared to the other stuff we have seen. Its a shame the Nazis shut them down. Boo Nazis. I prefer the Bauhaus approach to design than Art Nouveau.

It was interesting to see that they not only did graphic design but also dance, sculpture, furniture, pots. I think it continues on the ideas of William Morris, that anything can be designed. Today artists specialize in something so specific that we miss learning about other crafts. It benefits knowing outside our field because we often must collaborate with each other. Walter Groupius's idea of the cathedral also goes back to what we learned earlier about Morris. I guess the main lesson I will take away from History of Graphic Design is that we all build upon what others did before us.

What I know about Bauhaus

The Bauhaus is a cool building in Germany and its a design style...

That is all.

Ooo  and its a cool band from the 80s. Ha

Russia is chill, brrrr

Day 07

Cubism on design

Ludwig  Hohlwein

-german poster designs

Edward McKnight  Kauffer

-ideas of cubism applied to design

-generous use of negative space

Analytical Cubism 

-early phase, new ways of understanding space

Synthetic Cubism

-Picasso making collages

Adolphe Mouron Cassandre

-abstraction

World War I

-people looking for logic systems, universal truths

Dubonnet 

-perfect??  , Dorian suggests godlike

-wordplay

-text and image work cohesively

Prior to World War I

-waves of unrest among workers all over the world

-especially Russia

Russian Revolution

universal truth - what do i believe maybe i can make other people believe

Russian avant-garde

1.Cubo-futorismo

2.Suprematism

3.Constructivsim

Work made of scraps, cut and paste

book made out of wallpaper cut-out

Kasimir Malevich

-Suprematism reflects utilitarian function

-no pictorial representation

-painting be spiritual not pictorial

-1915 red square

Constructivism

-the only meaningful art have function and things that have function are therefore art

Vladimir Tatlin

Rodchenko

El Lissitzky

renounce art for arts sake

art should serve the communist party

Lissitzky

-helps pioneer suprematists  but then works on Constructivism, bauhaus

Different guys:

Kandinsky 

Lissitzky

prun  ??

intersection between painting and architecture

beat the whites with the red wedge

-black bars

-page structure grid

-early expression of modernist

-asymmetrical, balance, san serif

How do you create meaningful art for the proletariat ?

Will good art be understood by proletariat?

I had a class about the philosophy of art. We learned different philosophers' philosophies (heh heh) about what is art, and they all varied widely and yet all made sense.  I think the question, "what is good art" is a hard question to satisfy because its based on opinions; but some philosophers say you can quantify it by the rules of beauty, and harmony. The greeks divided art into Apollonian art and Dionysian art, which were civilization and primitivism, respectfully.  So I don't think there is one answer for something so ambiguous we call "art". I think its more of a compliment given if it transcends what it is. I think good art is good at communicating something relevant so, I believe it should be understood by the proletariat if that's who its aimed at.

To create meaningful art for the proletariat I think familiar elements have to be used to communicate in a way that is familiar enough to come across effectively. For example, it would be infective to use an obscure literary reference to an illiterate population. Yet some people may like the ambiguous nature of unfamiliar subject so it doesn't necessarily make it bad art. I guess in the end you just have to experiment and if it works, it works...  And when you die someone will call it good art.