Monday, March 1, 2010

Your turn #6

10 comments:

AlliHeathe said...

I enjoyed looking at the creativity featured in the works you chose to display for this class. One piece that I saw as very creative is the poster for Tropon food concentrate. The design and illustration in the piece is very fluid and organic and brings to mind the idea of egg yolks dripping into a puddle. It’s also kinda cool that the staircase has the same rounded, fluid shape as the poster design. However, I feel like the typography chosen for the poster could have been a bit more fluid in its shape.

I also like the work of Jean Delville. The brush strokes have a very soft, fuzzy feel that I find interesting. However, his work is also incredibly creepy; it seems like the woman is possessed with her hair ablaze and her eyes rolling into the back of her head. Either way, the piece really caught my eye before you even explained it.

The Bitter Campari piece of Dudovich definitely reminds me of modern day posters. I feel like it has a sensual, forbidden feel to it with the choice of red, symbolizing both passion and danger. This definitely must have also been one of the first to utilize the “sex sells” ideal that most advertisers use today. Although the dress is definitely not of the style of today, it still seems like an ad that we’d find in a magazine now.

The pattern on Bradley’s work with the bird-like figure (Modern Poster?) is also really cool and seems to look like an optical illusion. Because the lines are very close together, it makes it feel like the bird is in motion, which is what I’m assuming the designer desired.

- Allison Brown, ARH346A

Anonymous said...

Jean Delville's work caught my eye in particular. Before I learned anything about this artist, I was immediately drawn to the blurring colors, soft lines and shapes that seemed to melt into to each other. Each image seemed to symbolize otherworldly or metaphysical topics, and reminded me of dreams. And as I came to learn, Delville was a part of the Salon d’Art Idealiste movement in Belgium during the end of the 19th century. His paintings fit perfectly with this artistic movement, demonstrating his Neoplatonic beliefs that the visible physical world was only a symbol, and that humans life on three planes of existence: the physical, spiritual, and the divine. This shows through in Delville's work. Much of his paintings remind me of religious scenes from the Bible, depicting heaven, hell, God, and the various planes of existence. His paintings are dreamlike and capture a feeling that is often hard to verbalize. I also thought it was particularly interesting that his personal beliefs were so visibly apparent in his works.

Kendra Zdravkovic
ARH346

Sarah said...

During last week’s class I really enjoyed the art pieces by Privat Livemont. He was an artist that worked in Paris. His artistic style was quite gestural in nature.

I found his work very interesting. His paintings seem to tell a story. In Livemont’s Rajah Coffee poster, (1899), LIvemont’s gestural techniques makes the aroma of coffee almost jump out at the viewer. When studying the piece, it feels like one can smell the freshly brewed coffee beans. I thought the artist’s gestural technique made the art piece come alive because he incorporated the steam from the coffee into the wording of the poster: Rajah.

The rest of the poster is similar to that of Alphonse Mucha, specifically when referring to the woman’s clothing and hair. The woman sipping the coffee is very extravagant. Her clothing has many details and its very ornamental in nature. Every little detail in the woman’s hair, dress and hat are all well thought out and expressed by the artist. This style was most likely influenced by Mucha.

Finally, the artist really displays a cut and paste type quality to the poster. It appears that he painted the vibrant red background, and then painted the words in Rajah and the steam from the coffee. But, the rest of the piece looks like he cut it out of a magazine and pasted it on. In some ways it looks odd as if the two parts of the piece don’t belong together. But, because of the artist’s gestural qualities he is able to make the whole piece connect.

I think Privat Livemont was very talented in his gestural and cut in paste artistic techniques.

Sarah Gruhn
ARH 346

Ping said...

One of the movements we have learned that attracts me is Futurism. Futurism began with the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His Futurist Manifesto, published in the early 20th century, expressed his rejection of the past. Passionate nationalists, futurists celebrated speed, machinery, technology, youth and violence, cars, aircraft and industrial cities—all on behalf of representing how technology, and by extension the conquest of nature, helps us overcome our human limitations.

In their quest, the Futurists explored every medium of art and experimented in five main areas: simultaneity of view, abstracts of light and color, plastic dynamism, interpretation, and prismatic. They analyzed movement (like Balla’s “Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash,” which tried to capture the effects of light and motion), employed investigation of form, merged different elements of work into each other, and borrowed from Cubism to create a “shattered” effect (“The Blue Dancer” by Gino Severini).

The piece I always admired is “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space,” created in 1913 by Umberto Boccioni. This bronze sculpture shows an expression of motion and fluidity. In it the artist portrays speed, aerodynamics, and forceful dynamism. Even though it is nearly 100 years old, the sculpture still appears futuristic and original.

Although Futurism was totally opposite from Art Nouveau, which mimicked nature. I like futurism because it shows the epitome of human advancement. It also influenced many other art movements, including Art Deco, Constructivism, Vorticism, and Surrealism.

Sau Ping Choi
ARH346

Anonymous said...

I love the idea of Les XX. It reminds me of current music festivals that I love going to. At these festivals there is a great mixture of music and art. I think that they should incorporate literature into these festivals more like they did back in the 19th century. I wonder if the band ‘The XX’ from London was influenced by the Belgian group; probably.
I love the smoke in the lettering by Privat Livemont. I do that a lot in my artwork. I have found that this Art Nouveau style is very similar to how I draw. I do a lot of the whispy curves seen in Jan Toorop’s art as well as William Henry Bradley’s stuff. I see a lot of Art Nouveau posters in college dorms these days and I try to incorporate this style in my graphic design for the posters I make for my job. Plakatstil’s bold graphic design is another style I find myself replicating in my posters.

Sam said...

Last week I particularly connected with some of the artistic forms of advertising that we observed. Modern day advertising is something that i find incredibly oppressive and somewhat egotistical, particularly here in America. Turning on the tv in the US leads to a bombardment of senseless imagery, trying to sell you cars, beer and enough fast food to kill off a small country.

Now the advertising posters we looked at last week, particularly Marcello Dudovich's bitter Campari image, I found to be incredibly beautiful as well as classy and tasteful. I suddenly found myself incredibly drawn to the idea of Campari, which would indicate that this particular advertisement is fulfilling its role. Even the coloring of the poster was subtle, with its various simple shades of red creating the design.
The products in these posters do not feel thrust into our faces, but are rather quietly and suggestively placed into our subconscious. Some people may find this invasive in someway but to me it is much more preferable to the crass manner in which companies foist their products upon us.

Anonymous said...

Of topics recently discussed in class I Most enjoy hearing about cubism. I took an art history course last semester that cover everything style of art from the renaissance up to Dadaism. I really like some cubist work, which is strange because, while I appreciate more modern art, it doesn’t affect me nearly as much as other styles such as impressionism, realism, etc. I think because I paint, when I look at certain works of modern art I hate when any viewer can basically say, “I could have done that”, and it be true. While I know that conceptually modern art is in fact art, I sometimes feel it lacks the evidence of skill. I hope it doesn't seem like I hate modern art, there are just so many pieces that basically just frustrate me (as do many pieces of other styles). Regardless, the artist is getting a reaction out of me which is essentially what every artist is looking for; to provoke.

However, when it comes to certain works of cubism, such as Picasso’s “Still Life with Chair-Canning” or his “Portrait of Ambroise”, I am really impressed and just love them. I think everything about both pieces work so well, from the color palette, to the composition. You mentioned analytic cubism was about the pulling apart of subjects into planes, while synthetic cubism is more of a pushing of several objects together. It made me think how fascinating it was because, in essence, you are saying that analytical and synthetic are complete opposites. I find it intriguing that something of the same foundation can be so opposite in definition.


Nasha Wallin

Unknown said...

I found the architecture we discussed in class to be very interesting. In particular I enjoyed the design of the Leyland's Peacock room. I found it very interesting that Whistler had completely redecorated this room without Leyland's permission. He was originally just asked to suggest colors for the room that housed one of his paintings. Leyland refused to pay Whistler. It is due to dispute over money that Whistler actually painted the peacocks fighting. He titled the work Art and Money, the story of the room, and would never see he work again.

Unknown said...

At your recommendation, I spent quite a bit of time looking through the archives of Jugend magazine covers! The history that is chronicled here is AMAZING. I, too, highly suggest that you all spend some time looking through these artworks that Jugend has chosen for the covers. Some of my favorites include the severe portraits and scenes just before and during the War, some of the high fashion portraiture, and some of the fanciful worldly (often based on Japanese Ink paintings) works.

Onto a totally new topic, I would like to discuss the color scheme in both analytic and synthetic cubism. In general muted tones, or unsaturated colors are used, neutrals, grays, etc. While some people may see these colors as dead and dull, I find them quite the opposite. A certain hue of gray is much more expressive often than the saturated version of that color, i.e. primary blue is nowhere near as interesting and telling as a blue-gray. Plus the full range of value really changes muted colors more than bright ones: the feelings of a light range blue gray is reminiscent of dawn or dusk while the medium range cadet blue reminds me of a military uniform or even the dark range that is the color of water that never sees the light of day. I think these colors are true to form yet still exaggerating, exploring, dissecting, much like the two styles of cubism.

Thanks, Elizabeth Rice

AlexBroadwell said...

I find the cubism work we looked at extremely interesting. I really like how the color palettes used at first appear dull, but upon further inspection many actually incorporate a very effective mixture of warm and cool colors. The color palettes here do not draw attention to themselves, which is a good thing. Rather than be overwhelmed with color, the viewer is able to focus on the interesting lines that come together to make up the subjects of the paintings. That's not to say color was an afterthought, it was probably very meticulously planned. But in this case less is more.

I also enjoyed the posters, especially the simple Beggarstaff ones. I find the thick lines and large areas of single colors very effective, and see its influence all over the place in modern concert posters. The bold black type on the light backgrounds is extremely easy to read, and I think a lot of the appeal stems from that.