Gustav Klimt, Woman in Gold, 1907
Dear class. Plenty to talk about:
Josef Hoffmann's Stoclet Palace, Marcelo Dudovich's poster for Campari, the Viennese Secession, and Peter Behrens' work. Gustav Klimt (his Secession poster and now destroyed fresco), the Wiener Werkstätte (and last but not least, my manifesto).
To Ed Schmid, the Expressionists were not photographers but people overcome by visions, concerned with catching not the "momentary effect of a situation" but "its eternal significance."
 | ||
| Poster by Max Pechstein |
printmaking and drawing were integral to Expressionism on both practical and conceptual levels.
why? prints and drawings were quicker and less expensive to produce.
woodcut was the ideal artistic vehicle. with a long tradition in european art, and so represented a return to an older, truer form of expression.
Die Brücke artists strove to distance themselves from the traditional academic style of the time while manipulating traditional subject matter to their own end. undergoing a dramatic transformation at the hands of the Expressionists, portraiture became a depiction of the sitter's (and artist’s) inner psyche.
what do we get here? 
* formal distortion,
* emphasis on the physical attributes to provoke an emotional response,
* flatness,
*angularity,
* primitive,
* existential.
There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. Proficiency in his craft is essential to every artist. Let us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist. Together let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.
a movement is a social thing where people share and defend creative forms,
these forms are presented over and over until they become socially accepted,
what is the role of design in all this?
Early on, the Viennese Workshop looked for a symbolization of modernity.
It initially emphasized the creation of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total work of art," that sought to create a unified aesthetic across an entire designed environment, though this effort eventually fragmented into a highly diverse set of fields, with less and less emphasis on architecture and large-scale interiors, largely due to the financial constraints of the group's clients.
We get:
1- rectangular patterns,
2- modern abstraction,
3- sans serif typeface,
4- superb craftsmanship,
Elbert Hubbard was a charismatic and zealous American missionary who promoted social reform through common sense, honest work and entrepreneurialism. After visiting Morris on his deathbed he started a peculiar style of production: affordable lamps, chairs, and other household objects conceived and designed in the spirit of Morris' work. The Philistine boasted a subscriber base in the hundreds of thousands. This cover reveals an Arts and Crafts influence, but the magazine celebrated a folksy attitude (rather than studied, elaborated or refined pose).
