Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Bibliography

Images:
Video:
Books:
  • Newman, O., 1970, "Creating Defensible Space".
  • Britt, D., 2007, "Modern Art: Impressionism to Post-Modernism".
  • Lista, G., 2007, "Futurism".
  • Kennedy, A., 2006, "Bauhaus".
  • Droste, M., 2002, "Bauhaus, 1919 -1933".
  • Sheppard, M., 2000, "Modernism - Dada - Postmodernism".
  • Finkel Chanzit, G., 1987, "Herbert Bayer and Modernist Design in America".
Word Count: 3445.
Posted by at No comments:

Evaluation

As I have come to the end of this brief, I have found it very helpful and efficient  in helping me look back to periods of time that have influenced all that I do today in my artwork and design processes. I have found delving into various designer's work whom I wouldn't have usually referenced eye-opening in the way that I now have a more in-depth knowledge of artsts and designers both historical and contemporary who can in some way, shape or form come in very handy for future briefs and work that I create.

I've found this brief very enjoyable to do, which I originally didn't think I would as I don't like written tasks however the knowledge and insight I have gained from doing it has been very rewarding to my studies and own work.
Posted by at No comments:

Camp Little Hope

Every Thursday I have attended morning lectures delivered from various speakers from various fields of design from animation to fine art and applied arts. One of the most interesting that stood out to me was one of the earliest I went to, delivered by the art collective "Camp Little Hope".

A multi-disciplinary collective consisting of members from all over the world, they were based in the nearby by village of Corwen near Llangollen where they were responding to a brief there about rejuvenating the area through interaction with locals and tourists and making Corwen much more sustainable and functional than it already is.

"The Wayfinding Project"
Tasks included working with local schools to create illustrations to be placed on posts along a new footpath through a meadow (called "The Wayfinding Project"), using village notice boards as informative installations and also the placement of aesthetic elements such as flowerbeds and gardens and enhancement of a nearby meadow directing travelers from the train station into the village and finally turning what was once a public toilets which was blighted by vandalism into a new staffed art exhibition (called "The Toiledau Residency").

Although I am in no way, shape or form a fine artist, I can appreciate the thinking and the passion behind Camp Little Hope's work and their ambition to use their artwork as a form of sustainable improvement and enhancement due to their emphasis on elements and various sustainable factors that affect all of us as human beings.
Posted by at No comments:

Postmodernism

“The artist gazes upon a reality and creates his own impression.
The viewer gazes upon the impression and creates his own reality.” - (Brault, R., 2010)
Postmodernism is obviously a movement which came after and stemmed from it's predecessor, modernism. Postmodernism saw that apparent realities are only social constructs, subject to change with time and place and had a large emphasis on the roles of language, power relations and motivations in today's world. Another big part of postmodernism is their challenges of categorising, for example race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, gender etc. A good example of somewhat challenging this is the singer, actress and model Grace Jones who burst on to the scene in the 1970s with her androgynous style combining with her supermodel appearance - a combination of masculine and feminine.

Another interesting element of postmodernism is how heavily it uses surfaces and signs in it's which can be applied to many other areas. For example the singer Madonna is known for her many transformations over the years from disco diva to goth to classical beauty, all of which she has used postmodernist thinking to create; taking elements of the past to apply to a new genre of music to a new audience to completely something totally new.

Grace Jones (left) and Madonne (right) have both used postmodern thinking to
 further their careers.
The postmodernists aimed for many targets through their work which included questioning the general narrative, creating distinctive characteristics, the inclusion of social and political commentary, disconnected use of typography and also used pastiches in their work where they would reference styles of the past and recreate them in their "new" style. This obviously shows that postmodernism is not at all closely associated with the Futurist movement as they embrace historical design and appreciate it within their own style of working through obvious reference and recreation.

A multi-disciplinary area, Postmodernism regularly mixed their media and focused heavily on narrative in their work. A 'grand narrative' was always something that they would challenge, as a famous quote by Barthes shows their thinking and idea process:
"The birth of the reader must come from the death of the author"
View of the smashed windows in the poverty-stricken
Pruit-Igoe development.
An even which can be credited as starting the postmodernist movement or perhaps planted the seeds for a change in direction is Pruit Igoe, once a large urban housing area of blocks of flats and apartments in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, USA in 1954. The properties were created to be a sustainable and "new" way of housing that would see masses of people able to live in single accommodation in shared buildings (what was deemed as a very 'modernist' way of thinking). Not so long after it was built, the project fell into decay with gang crime, poverty and other negative factors which led to the demolition of the buildings in 1972, just eighteen years after it was built. This showed to many designers how the old 'modern' system of thinking and creating ideas was flawed and signaled for the new postmodernist era to begin.

The legacy of Pruit-Igoe showed how there was a sociological "clash" in cultures, possibly high culture and low culture which is what many postmodern art or design is based on, the meeting of two seperate ideas which are usually associated yet come together to create something totally new and "postmodern".

I find postmodernism a fascinating blend of old and new and how they can see originality in previously done tasks, pulling them apart and repackaging them with new elements to create something totally unknown yet somewhat honouring those who have gone before.
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, 25 November 2013

Constructivism

The Russian movement of Constructivism first surfaced in the early 1900s was a group of designers and thinkers who saw art as a vehicle to be used for social purpose rather than just the "way it looks" or for aesthetical purposes. The constructivists had a major part to play in inspiring and influencing 20th century movements of their future, even the previously mentioned Bauhaus as well as the De Stijl movement. This movement in particular had a major emphasis on architecture as well as traditional art and design areas.

First appearing in the 'Realistic Manifesto' (1920) by prominent Russian sculptor Naum Gabo, constructivism went on to play a major role advertising and more so in the use of propaganda (for example, best known being Mayakovsky's famous 1919 poster "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge"). This links in with my previous discussion of post-war Bauhaus with Ludwig Hohlwein's use of propaganda in his work.

To focus on the architectural element of the movement, one of the most well known pieces of constructivist art (that never actually came to exist) is Tatlin's Tower, named after it's designer Vladimir Tatlin. The tower was intended to be situated in St. Petersburg in 1917 and 'dwarf' the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which itself stands at over a thousand feet, hosting Third International congresses annually. Geometrically-based, the tower was to be constructed with steel and contain multiple cylinders that would rotate, each at different speeds. The whole tower would take a full year to fully rotate and was considered to be a "giant" of architectural design and innovation. Another interesting element to the tower was that it was to be angled at the same angle which the earth is on it's axis, 23.5 degrees. Although the plans never finalised and the tower was never built, many replicas of a smaller scale were created to pay homage to it and the tower's design is now considered to be 'the' defining expression of construtivist architecture even though many quibble it's structural practicality.

I am a huge fan of constructivist architecture and believe that the world's cities wouldn't be half as advanced or recogniseable without this movement, especially with their innovations regarding skyscrapers and multi-story, glass buildings.

Posted by at No comments:

Futurism

"……since our past is the greatest in the world and thus all the more dangerous for our life!… …We must smash, demolish and destroy our traditional harmony, which makes us fall into a ’gracefullness’created by timid and sentimental cubs" - (Boccioni, U., 1912, "Sculpturist Manifesto")
The Futurists first came about at the beginning of the 20th Century as a movement of designers who chose to confront society through the medium of design and through the work that they produced. Emphasising themes of political downfall, rebellion and unrest, they believed that war should be interpreted as a positive thing as it cleansed the past and put more focus on the future (their aim within their work). Futurism was heavily disciplinary and designers involved worked across almost all fields within art. As their name suggests, they were absolutely focused on create a new way of working that had never been seen before and chose to produce work that would be considered completely different to that which came before, totally despising anything that was not totally and completely new.

Their motives were clear, focusing on the integration of art and life (with an emphasis on new technologies not seen before as they deemed conventional technology as "destructive"). They loved war, speed, light, sound and noise, anything that pushed the senses and allowed people to create for themselves a new way of
thinking and interpreting pieces of work.

A big focus for the futurists were the two 'esias'; synesthesia and kinesthesia. Synesthesia is the process of a stimulation evoking the sensation of another, something which can be seen alot today in the form of audio displays on music players and other audio devices as well as the classic cult 1970's show "Knight Rider",
which starred David Hasselhoff who's car "Kitt" used a red strip of lights to represent when he was speaking, thus suggesting that his voice is evoking the sense of light and movement. Kinesthesia on the other hand is a sense that detects bodily position, weight and movement.
"Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash"(1912)
A famous futurist was Giocomo Balla who's piece "Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash" (1912) still today holds as a classic despite the movement being quite short-lived. It shows a small, fluffy dog illustration out for a walk. What makes this piece "revolutionary" however is the way in which the legs of the dog are described, in almost a wheel-like motion, showing movement and speed. However was it so revolutionary? It appears not. Many years earlier, in 1886, photographer Edward Muybridge created "Horse In Motion" a series of photographs showing a horse galloping and the movement of it's legs as they land and leave the ground. This really isn't too dissimilar to Balla's piece and considering, as a futurist, he was meant to ignore the past, surely some sort of inspiration had to have come from Muybridge?

Muybridge's "A Horse in Motion" (1886)

Although I do like the way of thinking that the Futurists strived for, I do feel a sense of maybe they were slightly "rebels without a cause" and maybe should have thought of a perhaps softer way to explain their intentions through a less controversial and softer manner which may have enabled them to be a much longer-lived movement in history.
Posted by at No comments:

Post-war Bauhaus

"Und Du?" - Hohlwein (1929)
After the lengthy period of fighting and brutality that was World War II, The Bauhaus eventually crumbled to the pressure of Nazi Germany and the government and closed it's doors.

Many within the art field feared that this was the end of what was and is still considered a revolutionary 'engine' for producing a new way of designing and therefore producing the artists and designers of the future, post-war. Thankfully, the masters from The Bauhaus didn't view the closure as an end of an era, but a window of opportunity to migrate and share their methods and ways of working with the rest of the world and more prominently the United States of America.

This happened at a perfect time when, after the atrocities of war were finally dealt with, the world saw a great improvement within the fields of technology and the beginning of mass media, with the ability to easily and cheaply be able to use outputs such as radio, the low cost usage of printing and also the rise in money
allowed for easier advancements for artists to access advertisement and produce much, much more than they had previously in the way of work.

One of David Klein's gorgeous
posters
One prominent post-war designer to establish himself in the now popular genre of poster design was Ludwig Hohlwein. Heavily involved within propaganda and using the war and everything that came with it as subjects in his work, Hohlwein created many memorable pieces including "Und Du?" (1929) ('And you?') as a Nazi/German spin on the classic British "Your Country Needs You!" (1914) poster of Lord Kitchener from the First World War as well as America's "Uncle Sam: Your Country Needs You!" poster (1917) by illustrator J.M. Flagg. It is believed that if it wasn't for the heavy use of propaganda within his work, Hohlwein would have become more successful than he was, as it was apparent he was doing the Nazi's work for them, if you like.

A major link between genres came from the new idea of coming out of the poor, war-torn, deprived slums and entering into a new world of money, ambition and luxury. The American artist David Klein was a huge trailblazer in this ideology, who's posters for airline TWA cited a new, colourful way of representation with luminosity and even sparkles to emphasise "a better way". This is thought of as many as being the real start of Modernism, showcasing a hope of new beginnings for everyday people who strove for a better quality of life.

Another link that I find can be made is again with Futurism where the whole idea of a new start, fresh beginnings and leaving your past behind you in order to go forward in a new direction is very similar to the manifesto of futurist designers who obviously said they discount the past and only aspire to the future and moving forward.

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)