Otto Dix, War Cripples, New Objectivity, 1923
Dear class. After hours of careful work over the weekend preparing interesting legends for each image in your list for the midterm, my blog page froze and I lost the whole lot (I couln't believe I had not saved it). I have to do it again and will have it ready for this afternoon (Monday). In the meantime, this is the post for this week's class.
There is so much to talk about: Futurism, Synthetic Cubism, Suprematism, Constructivism, New Objectivity, New Typography, Dada... wow.
Pick your theme and stick to the idea of graphic design.
11 comments:
From our discussion last class, what I took away as the most interesting was the talk on Dadaism. We saw an image of a toilet I believe that was displayed as art. I found this particularly interesting because the whole concept of Dadaism seems to be just one big way to piss people off, and in my opinion that's the best kind of art. It stirred up controversy and discussion as to whether or not it is art, and from that came the ever existential question, what is art? If the original idea of art as being anything man made holds true, then technically, non-"artistic" objects such as the urinal w=could be classified as art.
Ethan Punal
I have always been a huge fan of Dali. I think his sporadic, unnarrated design of the unconconscious inspires the idea of endless creativity. As if each piece of his decoupage is a dream sequence, his structures vaguely lead into one another to shape a storyline similar to that of our dreams. After class, I was inspired to discover more about the work of another great surrealist, Max Ernst. The fanatical, novel worlds he creates are profoundly compelling. His unique combination of midground complexity with background simplisticity pulls the viewer into his paintings - leaving the onlooker inquisitive, but not overwhelmed. This aspect of discovery in his work (and Dali’s) is almost scientific, a characteristic that has compelled me to his paintings and surrealism in general. In addition, the uniqueness in Ernst’s surrealism work (and somewhat devoid in Dali’s) stems from his anthropomorphic touch - his painting emulate a touch of reality. The composition of human-esque body parts, movement and emotion piece together a sense of familiarity within the foreign world he creates.
Ryan Berkun
I found Futurism's geometric and photographic imagery one of the best examples of graphic design that reflected the values of its movement. They sought to radicalize modern ambitions in the technology, movement and speed. Last week we spoke about how designs can have masculine or feminine energy and this is an example of extremely masculine design. I would argue however, from a graphic design perspective that there are moments where the futurists are careless with their use of color. To emulate new masculine ambitions, some of the futurist works use too much color to reflect their functionalist ideologies. They speak in their manifestos of the importance of the color red, but do not always use it effectively. The importance and introduction of photographic imagery can also not be ignored. At the time Alfred Stieglitz was working in America trying to prove that photography was an art form in its own right. I wonder if he would have been satisfied seeing posters and photographs used as they were by the Futurists or in DADA collages, or would he deem the photographs as 'low art'.
- Gemma Finegold
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B52VwDSHo6nicjF0eE0yT2lXS2s/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B52VwDSHo6niNV9hRkRNRktJckU/view?usp=sharing
Several elements of the lecture last class, particularly our discussion of photocollage and New Typography reminded me of Bezbozhnik. Bezbozhnik was an anti-religious propagandistic magazine propagated by the League of the Godless in the Soviet Union, with support from the Soviet government. I scanned some images of various Bezbozhnik magazines that are held at the Wolfosonian museum on Miami Beach for some research I conducted last semester. I attached links above to some images that I thought touched on topics we discussed last class with regard to Soviet and modern graphic design. In the first image, we see an emphasis on the colors red, black, and white, although there is some other color (green, yellow, and blue) but all of the colors are primary and symbolic. The first image brings to mind the copy and paste trend due to the photographic image implanted within a political cartoon. The second image in my opinion more-so portrays the juxtaposition of photograph with drawing within in a single magazine page, perhaps reflecting a competition between the two mediums of art for dominance. Later issues, such as the one I have from 1929, contain significantly more photographs, and less drawings.
-Abbie Auster
Suprematism artist caught my attention because they used basic geometric forms to try and explain deep political issues. By using this form of art these artist broke away from the real world and displayed Utopian ideals. I found that very cool that simple shapes can inspire people to believe in such a concept. Suprematism was artistically revolutionary and sought a new freedom of expression in total abstraction.
- Chris Green
What caught my eye was when we spoke about constructivism. I noticed all of the colors used were very stark in contrast: reds, whites, blacks, etc. I also noted how bold all the designs were in the posters, including the fonts. This art style seems to catch the eye with so much intensity, making it impossible to ignore. I think that was the point though, making it excellent political propaganda and excellent pieces of graphic design work.The characters drawn in this style look extremely grotesque making the posters have this overall stressed vibe that reflects the restlessness of the working class at the time.
-Gianfranco Blanco
I really enjoyed learning more about Cubism and its many facets. I found the earlier Analytic Cubism the most engaging, especially in terms of graphic design. The angular repetitive shapes create form, allowing you to still be able to find some kind of human form within deep abstraction. This can be seen especially in my favourite Analytic artwork, Duchamp's Nude Descending the Staircase. The multiple versions of the abstract nude create a sense of energy and movement, that could almost be associated with Futurist ideals. The small dots in between the rotating nude visibly track this almost monotone image. It creates a symbol of a woman rather than the woman herself, an idea I found really interesting in conjunction to the often bold nature of graphic design and use of symbols to convey an idea.
Charlotte Leseberg Smith
During you past lecture, I really enjoyed the modernist style of typography in the asymmetrical posters. I really enjoy the mixture of abstraction and the usage of typography bending with the overall graphic theme. I am talking about the Jan Tschichold posters, in which the artist aligned the typography with perspective lines and circles. This typography was known as the Die Neue Typographie (New Typography), in which modernist style posters represent. Another aspect that really drew my attention was the usage of cubism in DADA’s pictures and collages. His collages are very unique and the mix of objects and colors can really draw you attention to a picture for a long time because their is so much going on in the pictures.
Duchamp took objects that he did not create and turned them into pieces of art. These pieces such as the urinal, Duchamp, 1912 are known as ready-mades and questioned the formal definition of art at the time. I found the tone of Duchamp’s work almost comical as he seemed to be sort of mocking the art world by declaring urinals and bicycle wheels art. Never the less, it’s not my job to judge his art since the whole point of the movement is that anything goes and to break down formal bonds of art. Dali also broke down formal art traditions with his decoupage. He used a similar principle because he often took existing pictures or literature and transformed them into his own work of art. However, Dali placed a stronger emphasis on the result of his work being automatic instead of deliberate.
A couple of things stood out to me last class. One of the more interesting things that pertain particularly to my major is the way advertisements were made for instance the Chesterfield cigarette advertisement. Unlike other types of art forms, the message of the image is cultivated with a goal in mind: to sell as much of the product as possible. Around this era, the way to best achieve those goals while using imagery is by created an idealistic social scene where the viewer could picture themselves in the scene that looks almost like a perfect alternate reality. Another thing that I found interesting is form of cubism, especially analytical cubism. This is one of the earliest forms of cubism, but I have seen things that resemble this structure in modern pieces. It seems like the message these types of pieces are to find a different perspective to a mundane image. For instance, the cubomania black and white collage is a close up of lips and face which are cut and repositioned to what seem like a random order but is obviously carefully considered by the artists.
-Camila Chediak
On last class lecture we had last class one of the topics that caught my attention the most was the Dadaism movement. This movement originally came from Zurich; it was based on using mass media, combining objects with performance. These artists rebelled against the emotionally charged paintings of the movement of abstract expressionism. It interests me how these artists mocked and celebrated our consumer culture and expressed it by uniting abreaction and realism. They encouraged their viewers to look beyond traditional standards and interpret a process of critical thinking. Although I admire this movement, not many would agree with me. The Dada movement generated contradictions, it would evoke mix feelings and signals instead of what the artists wanted to convey. This movement, on the contrary of others before it, would consist on encouraging the viewer to be part of the artwork and not base it only on the artist’s intent.
Sara Valbuena
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