What is Gesamtkunstwerk?

Victor Horta's tassel hotel in Brussels, 1894. this is one of the first examples of Art Nouveau. horta is obviously evoking the vital force of nature. the whiplash curves resembling vines literally overtake the house, and iron support columns are cast in the form of a stem or root that is bursting alive at the top. horta designed literally every element of the interior, including the window frames and stained glass, the metal radiator covers and the floral light fixtures, floor tiles and stair rails.

architect charles rennie mackintosh & his wife margaret mcconald on designing several interiors in their entirety, including their own home (1906). each room presented a different, unified color scheme, with furniture, light fixtures and wall paintings conceived by the couple.

frank lloyd wright's Robie House (1910) is just one example of the american architect's mastery of gesamtkunstwerk. wright took the concept even further than some of his peers by joining different interior elements into single pieces. in the Robie House's dining room the light fixtures are actually a part of the dining table. wright placed the sconces within the ceiling strapwork. 

 

The Barcelona Pavilion, an emblematic work of the Modern Movement, has been exhaustively studied and interpreted as well as having inspired the oeuvre of several generations of architects. It was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich as the German national pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. Mies writes: "The design was predicated on an absolute distinction between structure and enclosure—a regular grid of cruciform steel columns interspersed by freely spaced planes". The floor plan is very simple. The entire building rests on a plinth of travertine. A southern U-shaped enclosure, also of travertine, helps form a service annex and a large water basin. The floor slabs of the pavilion project out and over the pool—once again connecting inside and out. Another U-shaped wall on the opposite side of the site also forms a smaller water basin. This is where the statue by Georg Kolbe sits. The roof plates, relatively small, are supported by the chrome-clad, cruciform columns. This gives the impression of a hovering roof. A masterpiece!

 

in 1956, SAS commissioned arne jacobsen to build their royal hotel in Copenhagen. jacobsen not only designed the architecture of the building, but also the interiors, from the furniture to the flatware and the door hardware. it is for thisproject that he created his famous Egg and Swan sofas and chairs.

Art for art's sake

A term Oscar Wilde made famous: l'art pour l'art. 

A view known as aestheticism, which is synonymous with symbolism or decadence (decadentismo in Italy). 

What does it mean really? The artist doesn't do art for any other reason than art's sake.

Art is autarchic!  

The movement happened from around 1870 to 1901. It's generally ended with the trial of Oscar Wilde.

Ramon Casas, Decadent Youth, 1899

Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, 1919

Dora Carrington, Litton Strachey, 1918

James Ensor, Dunkards, 1883

Gustav Klimt, The Virgin, 1913

charles rennie mackintosh's hill house

house for an art lover by charles r. mackintosh and margaret macdonald

let's start with this video,

hill house, front

hill house, side view with side garden

what do we see here?

1. bare, harled, brutal exterior...
2. the vast colliding masses anticipates Le Corbusier and 1960s brutalism.
3. the prominent gables and conical-topped turrets, point to Baronial and vernacular design,
4. the interior features ornate, organic stencilled designs and coloured glass in light fittings and balusters.
5. the Hill House Chair are influenced by Japanese design.

a masterpiece!

fire place, furniture, moldings (all designed by charles and margaret mackintosh) 

living room

Early women photographers

Genevieve Elizabeth Disdéri, Plougastel Cemetery (1856)

Bertha Wehnert Beckmann

Hilda Sjolin portrait of Ida Hultgren (1863)

Thora Hallager, portrait of Hans Christian Andersen (1869)

Mary Steen, Queen Victoria and Princess Beatrice, 1895

Julia Margaret Cameron 

Clementina Hawarden 

Wikipedia has a good page of early women photographers.

The Harper's Dinasty

The rise of American editorial and advertising design begins with the Harpers brothers. They started their publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. The company changed its name to "Harper & Brothers" in 1833.

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, March, 1858

Harper & Brothers began publishing Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1850. The brothers also published Harper's Weekly (starting in 1857),

First Harper's Bazar's Cover, 1867

Harper's Bazar (starting in 1867). Harper's New Monthly Magazine ultimately became Harper's Magazine, which is now published by the Harper's Magazine Foundation.

Here are five key contributions: 

1. Harper’s covered major national and international issues, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and industrialization. It helped shape public discourse by providing in-depth reporting and political commentary. 

2. The magazine featured works of the most notable American authors, such as Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Henry James, helping to establish a uniquely American literary voice. 

3. It was one of the first American periodicals to use extensive illustrations, making news and literature more accessible. Political cartoons, such as those by Thomas Nast, were instrumental in influencing public attitudes on issues like corruption and civil rights. 

4. The magazine provided a blend of fiction, essays, and news that catered to the growing literate middle class, reinforcing cultural and intellectual trends of the time. 

5. Harper's documented westward expansion, urbanization, and technological advancements, providing readers with a broader understanding of the rapidly changing nation.

Margaret MacDonald: The White Cockade tea room menu, 1911

 

This menu design for a tea room at the Glasgow Exhibition shows the evolution toward geometric and modular form. The composition of motifs, borders, and delicately defined solid volumes established a language of interlaced lines and flat shapes that works abstractly. The attention to order and arrangement of forms moves dramatically ways from the illustration, although the female face, rose, and hand hint at sensuality. The degree of abstraction of this work indicates the readiness for the repeatable modularity essential to design in an industrial context. The patterns echo the geometric system that Mackintosh used to organize his architectural elements (GDCG).

or this,

or this,

Primarily drawing from her imagination, she inventively reinterpreted traditional themes, allegories, and symbols. For instance, immediately following the 1896 opening of her Glasgow studio with her sister, she transformed broad ideas such as "Time" and "Summer" into highly stylized human forms. Many of her works incorporate muted natural tones, elongated nude human forms, and a subtle interplay between geometric and natural motifs. Above all, her designs demonstrated a type of originality that distinguished her from other artists of her time. (Wikipedia)

Aubrey Beardsley's exquisite decadent style

the mirror of love

Aubrey Beardsley is the enfant terrible of Art Noveau, with his striking pen line, vibrant black-and-white works, and shockingly exotic imagery. He was intensely prolific for only five years and died of tuberculosis at age twenty-six (MHG). 

Beardsley did illustrations for The Yellow Book, a leading journal for Aestheticism (England's foremost decadent movement). Above, right, poster for Isolde (1895). 

Here are some of Beardsley's infamous Lysistrata, 

Nice video produced by the Tate Britain . 

Selwyn Image, The Century Guild Hobby Horse (1886), how to represent an ideal integrated graphic design

Artist Selwyn Image, writer Herbert Horne, and other founding members of the Century Guild used the Hobby Horse to represent an idea of integrated graphic design and the fine arts.

Selwyn cover design for The Tragic Mary, 1890.

1. The Hobby Horse was a quarterly Victorian periodical published by the Century Guild of Artists in England. The magazine ran from 1884–1894 and spanned seven volumes and 28 issues. It featured various articles on arts, design, and other subjects, including literature and social issues.

2. The Century Guild Hobby Horse was one of the last versions of the literature and art journal, a genre born with the Pre-Raphaelite Germ in 1850.

3. Unlike The Yellow Book and The Savoy, The Hobby Horse was not solely committed to elite aestheticism.

Here's a link to an excellent text about the Hobby Horse by Rebecca Mitchell

The typewriter

commercially viable typewriters were patented in the period just after the civil war. the challenge of mass-producing precise movable parts was met by refinements of earlier industrial methods. the typewriter helped standardize communications and behaviors.

Women entered the workforce as clerks and typists, their roles partly defined by these mechanized processes and protocols. It proved to be a tool in helping women's suffrage. 

Since typewriters were faster and more accurate than handwriting, they allowed for quicker and clearer documents, as well as making corrections and producing multiple copies which helped standardize the appearance of documents, which was necessary for businesses. 

(here a cool video of the history of typewriters)

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As a side note: here's my Olivetti graphica (1958), with its Cassandre typeface. 

I wrote my first papers here. The best so-called "proportional typewriter" (it's all about spacing between fonts) and that carbon ribbon's indelibly superb mark!

natural science gets illustrated

flowers (and its different parts)

fruits,

vegetables,

in natural science illustration the goal is to render the image as didactic as possible, clear, faithful, but also beautiful.

insects,

take a look at this amazing biodiversity heritage library of images!

after Morris, movements took up the challenge of social design

Morris' design is far removed from Victorian aesthetics

what do we see here? honesty = beauty!

(here a good video about William Morris)

nouveau (tatoo artists)

fabio maduro, buenos aires

chinese canadian artist nomi chi

unknown artist

based on a Mucha design, Cesar from Ithaca, NY

 

The nouveau touch of Eugène Grasset

Eugène Grasset (1845-1917) was an admirer of Egyptian motifs and Japanese art, both of which influenced his creative designs. Grasset worked as a painter and sculptor in Lausanne and moved to Paris in 1871, where he designed furniture fabrics, tapestries, ceramics, and jewelry. His fine art decorative pieces were crafted from ivory, gold and other precious materials in unique combinations and his creations are considered a cornerstone of Art Nouveau motifs and patterns. He turned to graphic design in 1877, producing income-generating products such as postcards and, eventually, postage stamps for both France and Switzerland. However, it was poster art that quickly became his forté.

(Above, Grasset's exhibition poster for Salon des Cent, 1894).

Grasset's self-portrait, 1866

L'eventail, 1890

Grasset was a skillful "natural" artist and contributed to important 19th-century natural treatises. 

Here's a pretty good virtual exhibition of Grasset's works (via Meister Druke).