murnau's nosferatu and the expressionist influence in british and american cinema

                        the poster for f.w. murnau's nosferatu: eine symphonie des grauens. the film shot in 1921.

what's the importance of Nosferatu?

1. it's a key example of german expressionism, a film movement that rejected realism in favor of creating imaginary worlds where stylized and distorted set design expressed psychological states of fear and despair. 

2. the film's visual style, with its use of shadows, eerie lighting, and surreal landscapes, is a hallmark of the genre and continues to inspire filmmakers today. 

3. don't forget. this is a silent film! meaning it relies heavily on visual storytelling and atmosphere to create a sense of dread and terror. 

following some influences:

 psycho, 1960, alfred hitchcock

 downhill, 1931, hitchock photomontage

                                                                                 orson wells, citizen kane, 1941

 orson wells, lady from shanghai, 1947

 orson wells, citien kane, 1941

Bruno Taut's "outfit for the soul" Glass Pavilion

 

structure from outside

interior, 2nd floor

interior stairs and walls 

there are four elements things here: 

form: the pavilion was a multi-faceted, rhombic structure with a fourteen-sided base, designed to evoke the complex geometry of nature. 

cupola: each part of the cupola was designed to recall the complex geometry of nature. 

interior: the interior featured glass-treaded metal staircases, a seven-tiered cascading waterfall with underwater lighting, and prisms that produced colored rays from the outside sunlight. 

inscriptions: the frieze of the Glass Pavilion was written with aphoristic poems of glass by the anarcho-socialist writer Paul Scheerbart. 

So what's the importance of the Pavilion?  

Glass Pavilion is a prime example of Expressionist architecture.

Taut's work explored the idea of a "glass utopia," where architecture could foster a more spiritual and harmonious society. 

Tauts's design incorporated prisms and colored glass, creating a dynamic interplay of light and color to evoke a sense of wonder and transcendence. 

Glass Pavilion has inspired architects and designers, influencing the development of modern glass architecture and the use of glass as a structural and aesthetic element. 

foster + partners’ swiss RE building

EXPRESSIONISM!

click here for a short video, 

More Expressionism: DIE BRÜCKE

A group of young germans people, their names are: Fritz Bleyl (1880–1966), Erich Heckel (1883–1970), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976).

they met at the Königliche Technische Hochschule (a technical university) in Dresden. 

they named themselves "die brücke" meaning "the bridge." 

they invented the printmaking technique of linocut, although they initially described it as traditional woodcuts, which they also made.

why printmaking?

1. printmaking allowed them to create and distribute art more quickly and affordably than painting.

2. the boldness, flatness, and simplicity of woodcuts resonated with the Expressionist movement's focus on emotional expression and simplification of form. 

3. the different graphic techniques, especially woodcuts, enabled a more direct and forceful communication of emotions, which was a key goal of the Brücke artists.

what do we have here?

1. NOT OBJECTIVE EMOTIONS, 
2. SUBJECTIVE EXTREME EXPRESSION, THROUGH
3. EXTERNAL DISTORTION & CLAUSTROPHOBIC SPACES, 

Der Blaue Reiter, what a gang!

Franz and Maria Marc, left, Heinrich Campedonk (second from right), Kandinsky seated, 1911

franz marc, blue horse, 1911

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."

 

Don't try to describe us. We're concerned with the force of experience. Expressionist creation is a constant aura of never-ending excitement (From Bernard S. Myers's German Expresionists: A Generation in Revolt).

 

Poster by Max Pechstein

 

 

what are they doing? 

* blue is the color of spirituality (Kandinsky),

* the connection between music and the arts,

* they are into European medieval art and primitivism, 

* the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France: Cubism, Fauvism, and Rayonism,

* an inclination towards abstraction.

Aleksey von Jawlensky, early 1900s

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the mystic primitif

Christ has not manifested , 1918

The miraculous draught of fishes, 1918

portrait of Emy, 1919

In 1912 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff had an epiphany. He participated in the graphic exhibition of the Blaue Reiter in Munich & his art changed into mystical imagery.

Deutscher Werkbund: the path to german modern standardization

 

The Deutscher Werkbund was founded in 1907 in Munich as a response to widely held worries that Germany's rapid modernization was coming at the cost of its national culture. It brought together professors, craftsmen, industrialists, fine artists, politicians and designers. 

The group’s main intellectual leaders were Hermann Muthesius and Henry van de Velde. 

werkbund exhibition, 1914, bruno taut, gas pavillion, 

Werkbund was greatly influenced by William Morris' Arts and Crafts movement which proposed that industrial crafts be revived as a combined effort between both designers and craftsmen. 

Yet, The Werkbund was primarily interested in the link between the artistic and the economic aspects of mass production. The Werkbund was against revivalism and believed that architecture should be a representation of the spirit of the age (zeitgeist).

Here we have a middle point: The Werkbund set out to produce architecture that utilized mass production while still utilizing craftsmanship.

The Werkbund saw the potential of mass production and wanted German designers to take advantage of it. 

1. It was believed that mechanized production was incompatible with ornamentation (see Adolf Loos' influence here) and that products should be simplified to their basic forms. To attempt to introduce its ideas, the Werkbund implemented a program of product certification.

factory building, office building, walter gropius, 1914 

2. There were two camps, and each had its issues, which is why Werkbund split into two different factions: 

The first, led by Muthesius, championed the most excellent possible use of standardization and mechanical mass production. 

Van de Velde headed the other faction and maintained the notions of individual artistic expression.

Muthesius' ideas won. 

¿Werkbund's motto? Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau.

see how the mark of "symbolism" mutates between romanticism and modernism (gaugin, redon, munch)

what unites these different different marks is the emphasis on emotions, feelings, ideas, and subjectivity rather than realism. the work is personal and expresses the artist's own will to reveal truth. symbolists combined exotic, religious mysticism, the perverse, the erotic, and the decadent.

Gaugin goes for the exotic.

Symbolist subject matter is typically characterized by an interest in the occult, the morbid, the dream world, melancholy, evil, and death.

Redon goes for the bizarre.

Instead of the one-to-one, direct-relationship symbolism found in earlier forms of mainstream iconography, the Symbolist artists aimed more for nuance and suggestion in the personal, half-stated, and obscure references called for by their literary and musical counterparts.

symbolism provided a transition from Romanticism in the early part of the nineteenth century to modernism in the early part of the twentieth century.

Munch goes for the decadent,

In addition, the internationalism of Symbolism challenges the commonly held historical trajectory of modern art developed in France from Impressionism through Cubism.

expressionist graphic art

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? 

* exaggerations of features, gestures, and expressions, 

* formal distortion,

* emphasis on the physical attributes to provoke an emotional response,

* flatness,

*angularity,

* primitive,

* existential.

Bauhaus Manifesto: There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman.

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.

twentieth century opens with a mix of innovation and persuasion

herbert bayer, poster for kandinsky's exhibition, bauhaus, 1926

1. innovation, because from here on, things get old fast and they are replaced for and by better things.

2. persuasion, because of the message, and the design. 

3. but we have a new development here: the design is the message!

keep this in mind:

"the design is the message," is a variation of a phrase "the medium is the message," coined by Marshall McLuhan that suggests that the form or channel of communication itself, rather than the content, profoundly impacts how we perceive and understand information, shaping our societies and consciousness. 

the medium through which we communicate is as important, if not more so, than the message it carries. 

what's the medium? the avant-garde!

we're in the 20th century. now the mark becomes an "ISM"

the "ISM" is a movement, 

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? 

what is the Wiener Werkstätte?

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.

maria likarz strauss

We get: 

1- rectangular patterns, 

2- modern abstraction, 

3- sans serif typeface, 

4- superb craftsmanship,

a very good site with important work.

Arts and craft manifesto (for ARH 346)

Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1933

Painting, sculpture or performance art are no better than bookbinding, stucco ornament, hand hammering, dry set masonry, or violin making.-- Anonymous exploited craftsperson 

The do's and don'ts

Stop cannibalizing art. Be original. 

Don't try to be popular. You can't please everyone. 

Craft is the slow food of art. Bring craft back into your art. 

Don't explain your design. Good design doesn't need explaining.

Don't be sloppy. Whatever art you do, learn it thoroughly. 

Don't be a Mammon-sucker! If you hire someone to do artwork for you, credit them for the work.

Don't do art by just looking at art magazines. Imitation is a form of limitation.

Seek effect and affect. Appropriation is cheap.

Avoid Photoshop. Bring back your drawing skills!

What's your truest mark? YOU.

Bring more free-hand design! Trace your own experience of a process resembling its past development!

Go back to calligraphy! Free your hand and mind from the tedium of the mouse. 

Don't cheat. Achieving style is a slow process. 

Don't delegate any art/skill that you can master yourself.

Art doesn't comment. Stop making art to make comments about comments.

Art-making is community. Build community!

Stop mimicking Postmodern mimicking.

Good art is not political. It is political because it's good.

Don't cheat. Learn your craft from scratch. 

No shortcuts! 

arts and crafts dissemination effected the evolution of graphic and other disciplines throuout europe and the US

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).  

Gustav Klimt's first secessionist exhibition poster 1898 (and the sad story of "philosophy, medicine & jurisprudence"

Gustav Klimt is one of the most important and controversial artists from the early 20th century Viena.

now, why secession?

 medicine, detail, 1901

which is this,

medicine, the whole painting

then, 

jurisprudence, 1901

then, 

philosophy, 1901

the critics raged, and this was klimt's answer:

the goldfish, 1902

here a good video about klimt's life and times.