john williams water house, cleopatra, 1887 (a pre raphaelite)
let's go back to the 2/25 lecture.
there's plenty to talk about: chromolitography, yellow journalism, the presentation of fashion in magazines, photojournalism, natural science illustration, pictorialism, victorian design, the pre raphaelites and their aesthetics, star designers like william morris, dana gibson, privat livemont, thomas nast, randolph caldecott, etc.
an observation: in your comment try to dig deeper, i.e., be less casual and more deliberate. use wikipedia if needed to amplify your ideas. there is plenty in here to write 150 words.
9 comments:
Throughout the 2/25 lecture we discussed many different avenues of design one of which interested me particularly, natural science illustrations. As a creative myself much of what I draw comes from my head or imagination so the concept of illustrations rendered biologically accurate with precise anatomical, cellular, and physical forms fascinates me. Not only do I find there to be a certain beauty in science but there are many aspects of these illustrations that make them naturally appealing. For example many animals are naturally symmetrical, something that artists have been replicating dating all the way back to Ancient Greece with the construction of symmetrically balanced buildings such as The Parthenon around 447-438 B.C.E. In addition to symmetry many of these natural science illustrations feature labels that describe what the viewer is observing, something used very infrequently in the rest of the art world. There is a particular beauty to being told what you are seeing, even more sometimes than being left alone, stranded by the artist to understand their piece. Throughout the rest of this course I hope to discover more ways that an artists can communicate his or her message to the observer.
-Charles (Harry) Reid
Looking at the drug labels from the 19th century is so fascinating. The fonts are bold, each label evokes a personality with different designs, which are so contrasting with the ones we see on shelves nowadays. It reminded me of watching Disney kids movies' old science labs or witch potions glass jars. “Patent medicine makers were prolific advertisers, and at the turn of the century, ads for their products accounted for roughly half of newspapers' entire advertising income (Young 1961). These advertisements routinely made exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of their products and seldom disclosed their ingredients or risks.” Looking at these early drug advertisements makes it clear the power design and product packaging have over costumers. Its ability to seduce and convince the audience just through visual languages, but how they may also extremely miss leading. With this reality in the early 20th century regulations already began to tackle this troubling freedom. “The 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act also prohibited the interstate transport of unlawful food and drugs. The basis of this law rested on the regulation of product labeling rather than premarket approval” you could no longer just sell drugs, you had to advertise the truth. Obviously, as the years passed the more regulated the market became. Our pharmacies have a clear pattern and identity, labels are clean and simple designs, not packagings with appealing statements and bold fonts. The uniqueness is gone but so are the false claims of drugs that sound more like magic potions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690298/
Julia M Martins
In the recent lecture the work that stood out to me the most were the illustrations of Charles Dana Gibson. The “Gibson Girls” were not only a beautiful work of illustration with immense detail by only a few strokes of a pen, but they were also a symbol of a new beginning for women at the turn of the 20th century. Gibson’s depictions of women have been cited by critiques and art scholars for ages. The Library of congress websites says, “Writers in the 1890s and early 1900s described the “New Woman” as an independent and often well-educated, young woman poised to enjoy a more visible and active role in the public arena than women of preceding generations.” The girls were a visual representation of the new role of women in a modern world, one that gave them more independence and freedom and would push them towards the beginning of feminism and the fight for equality. It is refreshing to see women depicted as less of a silent keeper of the home and more as a capable human—especially by a male artist.
Olivia Ginsberg
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to watch TV, drive your car or go for a walk without being bombarded by big pharma advertisements. When watching cable television with my grandfather, it’s almost as if every single commercial is a company attempting to shove a drug down your throat. I thought this was just current times and an attempt for the industry to make the most money, and I saw this type of advertising as being within the last few decades. I was shocked to see the Merchant’s Gargling Oil Almanac ad in class dated back to 1886 and the early medicinal advertisements. It was stated in class that, “early medicinal ads used outrageous rhetoric to claim the virtues of drugs, cures, products for health, beauty or virility. Any enterprising could make, bottle label and sell something that promised to renew lost vigor, promote longevity, cure baldness, or treat hysteria – often with the same ointment.” We see this same type of advertising today, but the contradictions are less in-your-face and more hidden. We have drug commercials trying to sell a medicine that will aid your depression, but the fine print tells you it will heighten suicidal thoughts and negative emotions – how does that make sense! It’s the same idea as Dr. Batty’s cigarettes that will help soothe asthma – the ‘medicine’ itself causes what you are trying to escape from. (Clearly Dr. Batty is, well, batty!!).
Meghan Morrison
With his simple yet sophisticated drawings, Charles Dana Gibson helped revolutionize and modern what a woman looked like at the turn of the 20th century. The women of the time inspired the artist Gibson, and Gibson then inspired the women. It is like the saying “Does art imitate life or does life imitate art.” After the industrial revolution, there was a surge of women entering the workplace. Most “working women” worked in places such as clothing factories and thusly their wardrobe needed to adapt. This is why woman’s fashion began to take on a more “masculine” shape. Gibson’s drawings depicted a middle-class woman of this new industrial age. She was confident, independent, and inelegant, but always beautiful and elegant. The social impact that Charles Dana Gibson had in the Edwardian era made me reflect on the influence graphic designers and photographers power over the way we view ourselves today. At the time of Gibson photography was still a newer invention and cameras did not reach the middle class till early 1900 with the invention of the Kodak Brownie Camera (Khan Academy). So the images of the “ideal woman” were still just drawings. Even though drawings are able to convey a more unrealistic portrayal of a person. The viewer is less likely to internalize it so deeply because there is still that layer, a fourth wall, that stands in the way. This can be compared to the work of artists such as photographers today that put this image of the unattainable woman on magazines, billboards, and all over the internet. It is harder for us today to see a photoshop image of a celebrity and not create a body dimorphic reality. The problem with what is happening today with Instagram compared to the Gibson girl is that when we see a face we know, such as someone like Bella Hadid, we cannot decipher what’s real and what’s fake in the image.
Sam Zeigler
It utilizes not only hyperrealism, but also seems to have heavy medieval influence. While that era happened centuries before this painting, it has a similar style and bias towards realism. It’s as if they wanted to be more connected and enthralled with the past (in fact, art from the Pre-Raphaelite era tended to be more heavily influenced by medieval painting techniques). While the subject chosen isn’t a religious or European figure, she is an historical figure that people are still enthralled with today. She is painted with the real emotion seen in many Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Her power and dominance is evident with the simple look in her face and simple pose - again, amazing the amount of subtle emotion they’re able to portray. In a way, this art shows the influence of powerful figures and our need to idolize people in general - rather in the sense of believing in a higher power or with fawning over popular celebrities. In a way, this era is a love letter to the style of painting that those in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood held highly and wanted that style to be reborn again.
Student: Briera Crockett
Of the topics we discussed in class, Charles Dana Gibson's ability to define the feminine ideals of generations with just pen and ink captured my interest the most. The proverbial 'Gibson Girl' became the model of American femininity, revolutionizing fashion and typifying everything desirable in a modern woman. Although Gibson captured many types of girls throughout his career, he was able to imbue each one with character, humor, and refinement that not only influenced societal standards but originated an art style that illustrators have tried to emulate for decades. Although the movements he was inspired by and inspired himself have passed, Gibson’s illustrations have not lost their poignant effect. The purity of the moments he captured and the people he portraited carries such expression that even viewers from a century later can identify and empathize with them. The fact that he was able to accomplish that with the bold strokes of black ink on white paper astounds me. The way that Gibson perceived line and light is nothing short of genius, and illustrators of all kinds should strive to make visual indications as intelligently and impactfully as he did.
Above comment: Lauren Maingot
Eugene Grasset’s exhibition poster for Salon des Cent was one of the works we discussed that stood out the most to me, primarily because it seemed so timeless. The use of what seem like watercolor and the expressions reminded me of Oda Iselin Sønderland’s work, and the whole premise of her work is using the aesthetic design of children’s illustrations while inserting what seem like images from a dream or slightly off-putting figures that seem out of place. This is reflected, from what we saw in class and others, in many ARt Nouveau posters of the time. Grasset’s other posters are more obviously very Art Nouveau with their choice of typeface (which would later be developed as the Grasset typeface by Georges Peignot in 1897) and the way the female figures are depicted. Like many other Art Nouveau posters, his designs were very influenced by the fashion, furniture, and architecture of the time, especially since he was a furniture and jewelry designer prior to his graphic design work. However, it is still his illustrations like the exhibition poster for Salon des Cent that leave the most lasting impact on me personally.
Alejandra Moros
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