Brad Holland, Junkie, 1972
this is a great moment in history for the graphic arts: children's books, calendars, cards, comics, puck, chromolithography, gibson, nast, pre-raphaelites, reception, morris, the idea of gesamtkunstwerk, victorian design vs. arts and crafts, a bunch of figures: millais, gaudy, pisarro, mckmurdo, madox brown, grasset, beardsley.
go ahead!
15 comments:
Last class I was particularly interested in the Gibson girls, the Vargas Pin-Up, and Alphonse Mucha. I enjoyed the art styles of all of these artists. Gibson and Mucha being more similar in style than the soft Vargas style. I become inspired by the way these artists render the human form. I drew some Gibson girls when I got home and I noticed he used references when drawing his figures. However, similar to Mucha, the final product is a style unique to the artist. Mucha takes the artwork a step forward to Art Nouveau and designs intricate backgrounds with the figures. Vargas focus is on the figure. His backgrounds are atmospheric but plain. They give the illusion of depth without clashing with the figure. The backgrounds are rendered like the figures, soft and delicately. These three artists all render figures but their styles vary. I enjoyed seeing that variation in style.
-Ana Gonzalez
Arts and Crafts is one of the most fascinating architecture movements because it is of the victorian era but manages to have a certain subtly while still being overtly stylized. In Chicago I live next to a church that is a combination of arts and crafts and neo gothic with the facade on the outside being neo gothic and the inside arts and crafts. It manages to create a space that manages to walk the line of decoration and awe inspiring this beautifully haunting but not overwhelming space. The discussion about the death of artist dying young due to tuberculosis has a connection to this church. One of the Gargoyles on the church fell off the church and killed a woman on the sidewalk. While tragic, the death helps cement the aura of the church due to its design
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/05/chicago-woman-killed-by-gargoyle-falling-from-landmark-second-presbyterian-church/?utm_term=.8fdbc8237b8f
Dante Petersen Stanley
The subjects that I found most interesting from last weeks lecture were the Vargas pin-up girls and Charles Gibson’s Gibson Girls. Vargas shifts from studying women as an art form to appreciating them for their: sensuality, beauty, independence, and strength depicts women in a feminist way. Vargas does not exploit the women for their nudity, but the attention to light detail conveys attention to detail. Whereas Gibson takes a more elegant, dominate, feminist approach. In the link that you provided with Gibson’s drawings, Gibson portrays these women enlisting in the army to earn a wage, reading newspapers, and as you described, “master of marriage intimacy”. Both Vargas and Gibson portray women as creatures of independence, free of criticism, and persuasive.
-Bryan Vargas
It was interesting to follow your online examples with the information missed in the lecture; I felt a little cheated out for missing last lecture yet there were still points made that were insightful. The progress of how graphic design address the public is one of these examples. From lectures past, advertisements were used to spread ideas and political satire, but with the evolution of more sophisticated and efficient methods of producing design work, we see the focus move to an industry focused on consumerism. The idea of stores targeting its customers is a creepy from the consumer point of view, but very knowledgeable from the business and marketing stance. The use of Chromolithography is evident in the clearer and more visually beautified examples of graphic design. The clarity in detail is important when trying to use the canvas to its fullest potential and allow for metaphors or symbols to create a more efficient allegory.
-Adrianna Rivera
One of the most interesting parts of last week’s lecture was the discussion on how children became a major group of consumers that the industries started noticing. The importance of children in consumption created a whole industry dedicated to them in terms of literature. This is something that I think is extremely important because it is something that shapes the children into people. Caregivers reading to children has been repeatedly proven to have extreme benefits for the development of the children, as well as creating a love and interest in reading for the children in the future. The images and the way the books are arranged are extremely impactful to the kids. To this day I relate certain stories to the images on the books, and things that appeal to me visually are closely related to or similar to those things I was exposed to as a kid.
Martina Sandoval
One of the most interesting things I took away from last class was Margaret MacDonalds White Cockade Tea Room Menu from 1911, as well as A.H Mackmurdo’s elaborate chair from 1883. I found this interesting because it exemplifies how graphic design touches so many different mediums and how something as simple as a restaurant menu or the carved back of a dining room chair can push the art of graphic design forward. Graphic design is an integral part of books, posters, advertisements, newspapers, menus, furniture, interior decorating, architecture etc., and I find it fascinating how each of these different mediums influence each other and push the boundaries of art because of the graphic design elements common to them all.
--Will Uelk
As someone who loves and appreciates fashion, I found the Victorian-era catalogs and fashion sketches to be the most interesting. The sketches are very beautiful, and stand in stark contrast to the photographic catalogues we have today. The similarity though, is that the sketches were drawn "in the best light," as in the clothes marketed were drawn to look the best and the sketched models were drawn with ideal bodies. Today, clothes are shown on models that makes the clothes look the best, oftentimes a thin, tall model. Thinking of fashion as something that is "designed" also intrigued me. I was unaware of the idea that consumerism is pretended independence, but when I thought about it, it does make sense. I purchase things because I want them, not because a company wants me to buy it. For example, if I'm watching a beauty tutorial on YouTube, I don't buy from someone who is clearly touting sponsored product, but I am more likely to buy something if the product is used and praised without clear sponsorship. Some retailers are more transparent about their designed method to "trap" consumers, while others are more sly.
kb
From the last class, I enjoyed the idea of yellow journalism and comics drawing more consumers to buy newspapers. The yellow journalism, or tabloid, printing drew people in with the emphasis on topics such as sensational crime stories, astrology, and gossip columns. They rose to high popularity with their hyperbolic, as well as cheap or sleazy, headlines. The idea of the sensationalized story influencing a broader audience than the true news seems baffling. “The Examiner” essentially started the Spanish-American war by stirring up so much interest in the need to stand up and fight. These writers and printers were able to draw people in with the sensationalism and instill their own agendas through the placement of large, screaming headlines. Similarly, the introduction of comics enabled the message to reach people through different mediums. With the people whom bought the newspapers just for the pleasure of the comics, they were also absorbing the ideas of the paper. With the idea of political satire, people were absorbing the paper’s opinions of political leaders, through a way that they were too busy being entertained to realize that they were being swayed.
-Tami Lake
What I found most interesting in this lecture was that advertising was the first specialty to become fully established. Since my major is creative advertising, I am constantly learning about what the now and current of the advertising world is, I had no idea when it even started. It was interesting to learn that at first the agencies were brokers for advertising space, and then there was a shift allowing the agencies to take on the responsibility for the actual advertising content. Another part of the class I enjoyed learning about was the “how do you design ‘shopping’” topic. Although I have learned a lot about this topic in my marketing classes, something that stood out to me was “being a ‘consumer’ means pretending independence. I also thought it was interesting about how the pregnant people never wanted to buy when they thought they were being “spied on.”
-Emily Warren
The Art Nouveau movement was the most interesting innovation and evolution in design, it opened so many doors in industry, advertisement, social influence, and freedom of thought. Yet, the most memorable factor of art nouveau is the use of line and artistic representation of the figures. Out of several nouveau artists, Beardsley stands out as the most interesting to me. His use of delicate line work and controversial subject matter for the time period, really pushed the handle in challenging the nouveau’s uprising. His work really expressed the change in design of the era, expressing not only the creativity in artistic representation, but the freedom of free though in the arts, for example is lysistrata illustrations really pushed the envelope on what was appropriate at the time, and the fact that the artist himself refused to publish the images really expresses the tolls that the societies mentality and morals for the time period had on the artist. Beardsley is one of the very few artists that illustrated inner most desires in a way that no one before him dared, his depiction was as raw and straight forward as it could be, with no censorship while using such decadent line work and presentation.
-Liliette Ferro
The subject I found most interesting from last week's lecture was the medicinal advertising. It shows just where the roots of the modern medical industry come from. It looks crude and primitive to us nowadays, but some things have remained the same. It basically evolved from an age where the drug dealer could openly label and market his drugs to now when some substances are illegal and new drugs must be approved by the FDA and sold by licensed pharmacists. The design of the old school labels have a certain style that I did not expect: with people's faces and fancy script, it doesn't reflect the clean and bare design that most medicines today take on. But it has a charm that I'm sure made the potential customer feel as though it would be trustworthy.
Agnes A
What interests me from last class is Thomas Nast’s use of animals to represent political parties. In his cartoons the Democratic Party was a donkey and the Republican Party an elephant. And he developed Uncle Sam to represent the United States. Politics has always been considered as a quite a serious problem. People usually treat it as careful as possible. However, Thomas used elements from cartoon and used them to reflect political problems. Although it is making fun of politics, it helps to make politics being more attractive to people. In one of Thomas’s artwork for Harper’s Weekly, he overdo the physical characteristics of the figure to emphasis his point. Other artists may also use cartoon for symbolism. They use simple objects to stand for larger concepts or ideas, which has became a popular design method nowadays.
-Yiming Zhou
What interested me the most about last class was the growth of the advertising industry. especially how companies were reaching their costumers with graphic design in ads. I really liked the advertisement of Cycles Gladiator. The bike advertisements are so different in this time, the most bicycle advertisements are just a photograph a bike. This advertisement of the Gladiator bicycle advertisement gives just so much more feeling to it. This ad makes you feel like you will feel like you’re flying on this bicycle. The advertisement almost looks like an art piece. I also found the medicinal advertising interesting, I can’t believe that people thought that alcohol, drugs and cigarettes would cure illnesses. And that it would treat so many different illnesses with just one substance. Also the ads are so different from ads in this time. The ads in this time look like a joke to us now. Also I liked the typewriter. When I was little we always used to go to a place (I don’t remember what or where it was) and there was always a typewriter standing on a shelf, what supposed to be decoration. I always went to it to just to type on it, I loved it.
Although technology has caused people to send less cards over recent years, the art of card giving is not completely lost. Billions of cards are expected to be mailed during the holiday season. Since receiving a card is not a very common experience, it is a special experience. Unlike receiving a text message, email, or phone call, receiving a card usually means that someone took time out of their day to look through an array of cards to find a card that they thought would put a smile on your face. Even though text messages, emails, and phone calls can make you happy, they do not necessarily require people to take time out of their day. With that being said, cards are typically more meaningful than text messages, emails, and phone calls. Further, cards can be put aside and saved along with other things that have sentimental value.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-12-17/fewer-holiday-cards/52013882/1
-Emily Griffith
What I found the most interesting in last lecture was A. H. Mackmurdo’s works. A. H. Mackmurdo was a progressive English architect and designer, who influenced the Arts and Crafts Movement. I found he prefer uses flamelike and undulating rhythm elements in his works. From the lecture, this kind of pattern established a positive and negative interplay between black ink and white paper. This technique made the work looks not rigid and depressing. And also from my opinion, I found three distorted birds in his black and white painting. I’m not sure these bird are existed or from his imagining, but I think they really look like Chinese ancient mythical creature --- Fenghuang (Phoenix) which born in the fire from the ashes. That’s why I think A. H. Mackmurdo’s works interested me from the last lecture.
-Yaoli Wang
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