Postmodernism is often used to poke fun at things. It is a fusion of contrasting styles, and asks ‘why do we have to be these things anyway?’ Keywords:
• Innovative
• Individualism
• Progress
• Purity
• Experimentation
• Originality
• Seriousness
Postmodern Condition:
• Exhaustion
• Pluralism
• Pessimism
• Disillusionment with total knowledge
Modernism: Expression of modern life
Postmodernism: Reaction to modern life
Origins
1917- German writer Rudolph Pannwitz spoke of postmodern men. 1964- Leslie Fielder.
Is the Postmodern a culture reserved for the rich/elite?
Visual culture: 1990s- popular
‘After Modernism, historical era following modernism; contra-modern’.
Late Capitalism, Stylist Eclecticism
The ‘global village’ phenomena referring to globalisation and the homogenised world
1977- The Language of Postmodern Architecture
Jencks: 1532 15th July 1972- demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe development St. Louis. Le Courbusier- not consistent with the diversity of human life.
Utopia: Postmodernism rejects this idea. It also rejects the idea of technological determinism.
Park Hill Flats, Sheffield (1960).
AT&T Building, NYC - Philip Johnson 1982
Guggenheim, Bilbao – J F Lyotard
‘The Postmodern Condition’ 1979 ‘increduity towards totalising belief systems results in crisis in confidence’.
There is a directionless society which is a reflection of the simplified aesthetic, utopia and truth to materials.
Roy Lichenstein
Las Vegas
Postmodern city; the idea that it has given up in trying, but is also a city that pokes fun.
Claves Oldenburg – Depped Cave 2001 Koln
Postmodernism – Dystopia
Red painting- Brushstroke 1965 Lichenstein
Jenny Holzer – uses adverts to make art
High art/low art divide crumbles.
Memphis Group
Crisis in Confidence: questioning old limitations. Freedom and new possibilities emerge.
Conclusion is disputed, but most agree PoMo questions conventions and encompasses multiple aesthetics.
Saturday 13 February 2010
Friday 12 February 2010
The Document
Documentary Practice
A photographer in a way is perpetuated peace. The images are not just documenting/recording, but an intervention in a human agenda.
Joseph Nicéphone Niépce (1826)
View from a window at La Gras. The ability to capture the world brings an element of responsibility to the photographer as they record reality. James Nachtwey says we don’t just need to record but we need to expose the world. ‘These events I have recorded should not be forgotten or repeated’/
Frances Frith (1857) ‘Entrance to the Great Temple’
A subjective western depiction of Africa.
William Edward Kilburn ‘The Great Chartist Meeting at the Common’ (1848)
Hallmark of neutrality- no-one looking at camera and a bird’s eye panorama. But because the photo is staged, it is not neutral.
Roger Fenton (1855) ‘Into the Valley of the Shadow of Death’
A romanticised scene of war.
Cartier- Bresson
Capture a split second that represents human condition. A ‘sound-byte’ of the situation. Aesthetics, such as the ballerina, are important.
Jacob Riis (1888) ‘Bandits Roost’ / ‘A Growler Gang in Session (Robbing a Lush)’
Photograph real life and squalor. Not real though- all people in the photo are looking at the camera; they are all aware of the camera. It is a construction, not a snapshot of slum life.
Lewis Thine: Russian Steel Workers- Homestead 1908, Child Labourers in glassworks, Indiana (1911).
FSA Photographers 1935-1944
Department of Farm, Security and Administration. Roy Striker was the director. The government had to try and sort out migration problems.
Photograph as both photo journalism and emotive lobbying tool. Photographers looking for a certain response. Photographs are invalid as records of history.
Margaret Bourke-White ‘Shore Coppers Home’ (1937)
• Elicit and emotional response
• Peasant, child and dog
• Consumer culture images as wallpaper
‘Migrant Mother’ Doretha Lange (1936)
Mimics a residential shot to give impression that the subject is thinking ahead.
FSA- for a government agency, not individual photographers. Although the archive photos are mostly neutral, they are rejected by the FSA. FSA don’t want the ‘real’ reality but they want to create an image of the reality they want to expose.
Walker Evans- Graveyard Houses & Steel Mill, Bethlehem Pennsylvania (1935)
Scientists used photographer as a means to document people. In this case, photography is hiding its real agenda. Images supposedly used for science but not really.
Cesore Lombroso ‘Portrait of Melancholy’ / ‘Portraits of Italian & German Criminals’ (1889)
Theory: If you collect several photos of criminals, it will create the perfect image of criminality and you can judge criminals by their looks.
Robert Capa 1945- Normandy Landings
Neutral because of the subject. Famous for a blur- did he do this purposely later?
Magnum Group
1947 founded Cartier-Bresson & Capa.
Ethos of documenting the world and its social problems as well as internationalism and mobility.
Roberta Capa- 1939 ‘The Falling Soldier’ 1936
Seems staged; could be fact but really?
Nick Ut (172) ‘Accidental Napalm Attack’
Don McCullin (1968) ‘Shell Shocked Soldier’
Don McCullin was banned from going to the Falklands during the war because he would have produced negative images.
Robert Hoeberle (1969)
Took pictures of people about to be shot because he had given up trying to stop it/accepted he was part of the machine.
William Klein, St. Patrick’s Day Fifth Avenue (1955)
He accepts the photography is always somewhat staged, so he makes it explicit rather than trying to hide it and keep it a secret.
Bernd and Hilda Beeher
To try and remove subjectivity/aesethetics, they set rules on how to take pictures so they are netural and just record.
Conceptual Art
Richard Long (1981) A long line and tracks in Bolivia, tries to make art that can’t be bought or sold by trying to make a point- not trying to be bought and commissioned in galleries.
Bertol Brecht (1931): ‘You can’t capture reality’.
Allan Sekula- Fish Story. Lukacs ‘Theory of Novel’.
Narration vs. Description
In this book, there are essays and images- not just photos. It tries to represent reality as widely and neutrally as possible.
Andreas Gursky (1999) ’99 cent’
Jeff Wall (1992) ‘Dead Troops Talk’
Gillian Wearing (1992-1993) ‘Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say’
Jeremy Deller ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ (2001) Miners Strike.
Recreate/reconstruction of a scene. Channel 4/UK Art Angel with director Mike Figgis.
John Harris
Everyone has cameras now- we are all powerful. No need for Magmum- there is a reversal of power.
A photographer in a way is perpetuated peace. The images are not just documenting/recording, but an intervention in a human agenda.
Joseph Nicéphone Niépce (1826)
View from a window at La Gras. The ability to capture the world brings an element of responsibility to the photographer as they record reality. James Nachtwey says we don’t just need to record but we need to expose the world. ‘These events I have recorded should not be forgotten or repeated’/
Frances Frith (1857) ‘Entrance to the Great Temple’
A subjective western depiction of Africa.
William Edward Kilburn ‘The Great Chartist Meeting at the Common’ (1848)
Hallmark of neutrality- no-one looking at camera and a bird’s eye panorama. But because the photo is staged, it is not neutral.
Roger Fenton (1855) ‘Into the Valley of the Shadow of Death’
A romanticised scene of war.
Cartier- Bresson
Capture a split second that represents human condition. A ‘sound-byte’ of the situation. Aesthetics, such as the ballerina, are important.
Jacob Riis (1888) ‘Bandits Roost’ / ‘A Growler Gang in Session (Robbing a Lush)’
Photograph real life and squalor. Not real though- all people in the photo are looking at the camera; they are all aware of the camera. It is a construction, not a snapshot of slum life.
Lewis Thine: Russian Steel Workers- Homestead 1908, Child Labourers in glassworks, Indiana (1911).
FSA Photographers 1935-1944
Department of Farm, Security and Administration. Roy Striker was the director. The government had to try and sort out migration problems.
Photograph as both photo journalism and emotive lobbying tool. Photographers looking for a certain response. Photographs are invalid as records of history.
Margaret Bourke-White ‘Shore Coppers Home’ (1937)
• Elicit and emotional response
• Peasant, child and dog
• Consumer culture images as wallpaper
‘Migrant Mother’ Doretha Lange (1936)
Mimics a residential shot to give impression that the subject is thinking ahead.
FSA- for a government agency, not individual photographers. Although the archive photos are mostly neutral, they are rejected by the FSA. FSA don’t want the ‘real’ reality but they want to create an image of the reality they want to expose.
Walker Evans- Graveyard Houses & Steel Mill, Bethlehem Pennsylvania (1935)
Scientists used photographer as a means to document people. In this case, photography is hiding its real agenda. Images supposedly used for science but not really.
Cesore Lombroso ‘Portrait of Melancholy’ / ‘Portraits of Italian & German Criminals’ (1889)
Theory: If you collect several photos of criminals, it will create the perfect image of criminality and you can judge criminals by their looks.
Robert Capa 1945- Normandy Landings
Neutral because of the subject. Famous for a blur- did he do this purposely later?
Magnum Group
1947 founded Cartier-Bresson & Capa.
Ethos of documenting the world and its social problems as well as internationalism and mobility.
Roberta Capa- 1939 ‘The Falling Soldier’ 1936
Seems staged; could be fact but really?
Nick Ut (172) ‘Accidental Napalm Attack’
Don McCullin (1968) ‘Shell Shocked Soldier’
Don McCullin was banned from going to the Falklands during the war because he would have produced negative images.
Robert Hoeberle (1969)
Took pictures of people about to be shot because he had given up trying to stop it/accepted he was part of the machine.
William Klein, St. Patrick’s Day Fifth Avenue (1955)
He accepts the photography is always somewhat staged, so he makes it explicit rather than trying to hide it and keep it a secret.
Bernd and Hilda Beeher
To try and remove subjectivity/aesethetics, they set rules on how to take pictures so they are netural and just record.
Conceptual Art
Richard Long (1981) A long line and tracks in Bolivia, tries to make art that can’t be bought or sold by trying to make a point- not trying to be bought and commissioned in galleries.
Bertol Brecht (1931): ‘You can’t capture reality’.
Allan Sekula- Fish Story. Lukacs ‘Theory of Novel’.
Narration vs. Description
In this book, there are essays and images- not just photos. It tries to represent reality as widely and neutrally as possible.
Andreas Gursky (1999) ’99 cent’
Jeff Wall (1992) ‘Dead Troops Talk’
Gillian Wearing (1992-1993) ‘Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say’
Jeremy Deller ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ (2001) Miners Strike.
Recreate/reconstruction of a scene. Channel 4/UK Art Angel with director Mike Figgis.
John Harris
Everyone has cameras now- we are all powerful. No need for Magmum- there is a reversal of power.
(Art), the Mass Media & Society
1. Characteristics of new digital media
2. Definition of, and critical look at, mass media
3. Relationship between art and mass media
‘Late Age of Print’- Media Theorist Marshall McLuhon
He believes that the age of print begins in 1450 with the invention of the printing press by Gutenburg. The press brings a new society. Knowledge becomes more freely available and more people can get it as it is wider circulated, not just to those few.
Computer Literacy
We can now consumer knowledge but also distribute it. Press has changed the way we read and engage with the world.
Ebook
• Are ebooks democratic?
• Will they replace books?
The digitisation of literature changes the way we think & read. Ebooks allow the reader to subvert the dogmatic authority of the authority. This is because the reader can ‘control’ the way they read. The reader can take on the role of the author.
Computer Media
Hypertext: ‘Surf through knowledge’. Hypermedia problems:
Hypertext can allow you to ‘skip’ knowledge and skip through it. It gives you the sense you have read up on an issue well, but you have only touched upon it and some aspects of it. Schools support this because the learner constructs the learning.
Definition of Mass Media
Modern systems of communication and distribution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers, but directed towards large groups of consumers. I.e. A few people have control of most knowledge creation. The internet doesn’t fit with this however.
Critical Analysis of Mass Media
1. Superficial, uncritical, trivial. Little content, not much to learn. Re-iterated entertainment.
2. Viewing figures measure success. Nothing changes because of this.
3. Audience is dispersed.
4. Audience is disempowered. Makes the feeling that viewers have power such as the XFactor
5. Encourages the status quo- conservative. It encourages the popular consensus and doesn’t challenge.
6. Apathy. Can’t do anything to change the world- only watch.
7. Power held by a few motivated profit driven people- propaganda.
8. Bland, escapist and standardised.
Positives
1. Not all media is low quality
2. Social problems and injustice are discussed by the media
3. Creativity can be a feature of mass media
4. Transmission of high art reaches broader audience
5. Democratic potential
John A. Walker- Art in the Age of Mass Media
What happens to art when it is being filtered through the mass media and the ignorant can engage with it and criticise it.
Leeds 13- pretended to go on holiday. United Colours of Benetton; art into adverts.
Can art be autonomous? Can it exist on its own within a vacuum? Should art be autonomous?
Jackson Pollock- elitist art that is ‘above society’. Thomas Gow says art vs. media is untrue and art has always been linked to mass media. Pop art- art revelling its own relationship with mass media. Lichtenstein takes the piss out of high art- but it is still high art.
Warhol Green Coca-Cola bottles says something about the ‘same-ness’ of modern society- of how boring media is today. ‘Mask’ on Marilyn Monroe. Celebrity glamour is repeated and given to us consistently with all its imperfections.
‘Campaign Fatigue’
Images fed to us so much that we are insensitive to it. Art becomes a subject of mass media. The meaning of art is shifted. Art is claimed by society e.g Jackson Pollock- Stone Roses and L’Oreal – Piet Mondrian.
Always has been a relationship between mass media and art. Symbolic- media is better artists reciprocate.
Myra Hindley – Marcus Harvey 1995. 1997 in Sensation in London. Handprints make up Hindleys face. Our relationship with Myria is 100% concerned with the media. Attacked the press. Iconic connotation with evil. Meditation with media not subject.
2. Definition of, and critical look at, mass media
3. Relationship between art and mass media
‘Late Age of Print’- Media Theorist Marshall McLuhon
He believes that the age of print begins in 1450 with the invention of the printing press by Gutenburg. The press brings a new society. Knowledge becomes more freely available and more people can get it as it is wider circulated, not just to those few.
Computer Literacy
We can now consumer knowledge but also distribute it. Press has changed the way we read and engage with the world.
Ebook
• Are ebooks democratic?
• Will they replace books?
The digitisation of literature changes the way we think & read. Ebooks allow the reader to subvert the dogmatic authority of the authority. This is because the reader can ‘control’ the way they read. The reader can take on the role of the author.
Computer Media
Hypertext: ‘Surf through knowledge’. Hypermedia problems:
Hypertext can allow you to ‘skip’ knowledge and skip through it. It gives you the sense you have read up on an issue well, but you have only touched upon it and some aspects of it. Schools support this because the learner constructs the learning.
Definition of Mass Media
Modern systems of communication and distribution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers, but directed towards large groups of consumers. I.e. A few people have control of most knowledge creation. The internet doesn’t fit with this however.
Critical Analysis of Mass Media
1. Superficial, uncritical, trivial. Little content, not much to learn. Re-iterated entertainment.
2. Viewing figures measure success. Nothing changes because of this.
3. Audience is dispersed.
4. Audience is disempowered. Makes the feeling that viewers have power such as the XFactor
5. Encourages the status quo- conservative. It encourages the popular consensus and doesn’t challenge.
6. Apathy. Can’t do anything to change the world- only watch.
7. Power held by a few motivated profit driven people- propaganda.
8. Bland, escapist and standardised.
Positives
1. Not all media is low quality
2. Social problems and injustice are discussed by the media
3. Creativity can be a feature of mass media
4. Transmission of high art reaches broader audience
5. Democratic potential
John A. Walker- Art in the Age of Mass Media
What happens to art when it is being filtered through the mass media and the ignorant can engage with it and criticise it.
Leeds 13- pretended to go on holiday. United Colours of Benetton; art into adverts.
Can art be autonomous? Can it exist on its own within a vacuum? Should art be autonomous?
Jackson Pollock- elitist art that is ‘above society’. Thomas Gow says art vs. media is untrue and art has always been linked to mass media. Pop art- art revelling its own relationship with mass media. Lichtenstein takes the piss out of high art- but it is still high art.
Warhol Green Coca-Cola bottles says something about the ‘same-ness’ of modern society- of how boring media is today. ‘Mask’ on Marilyn Monroe. Celebrity glamour is repeated and given to us consistently with all its imperfections.
‘Campaign Fatigue’
Images fed to us so much that we are insensitive to it. Art becomes a subject of mass media. The meaning of art is shifted. Art is claimed by society e.g Jackson Pollock- Stone Roses and L’Oreal – Piet Mondrian.
Always has been a relationship between mass media and art. Symbolic- media is better artists reciprocate.
Myra Hindley – Marcus Harvey 1995. 1997 in Sensation in London. Handprints make up Hindleys face. Our relationship with Myria is 100% concerned with the media. Attacked the press. Iconic connotation with evil. Meditation with media not subject.
Advertising, Publicity & the Media
Mass Advertising
Times Square: A bombardment of adverts; the epitome of capitalism.
There are 11,000 new adverts per year, and 25 million print adverts per year.
Pop ups- they invade our lives.
Karl Marx 1818-1883: Communist Manifesto 1848
A Marxist would argue that we live in a commodity culture where we are governed by markets and materialism. In our capitalist culture, our identities are build upon commodities. What we own defines who we are. Stewart Ewen terms it ‘the commodity self’. Judith Williams says ‘instead of being identified by what they produce, people identify themselves through what they consume.
We perhaps believe in the commodity culture because the adverts lead us to believe that our lives will get better by it. CKI lead us to believe that buying perfume- aka flavour water- will turn us into sophisticated, sexy, popular people. Our purchases make us believe we are those things.
Traditional adverts used the virtues of the product to promote it. The Stanley Range ad says your life will be improved by a better cooker where as the Milady Pipe tries to attach a lifestyle to the pipe.
Commodity culture perpetuates false needs by bringing aesthetic innovation, planned obsolescence and novelty.
Aesthetic Innovation: iPod
If a product looks nicer, it becomes ‘needed’ because it is nicer.
Planned Obsolescence
Products in the commodity culture are designed to break so that you will feel you have lost something when you don’t have it, thus meaning you are compelled to buy more.
Commodity Fetishism
Advertising conceals the background history of products. Theorists would say that we know each other through the things we own rather than our genuine personalities. Our relationships are mediated through commodities.
Niked trainers are marketed as empowering females, but they are produced through sweatshops where females are slaves.
Reification
Products are given human associations. When we associated humans with commodities so much, the commidty gains a ‘human’ aspect and becomes a character. In the mini advert, the family are bounded by the car as it becomes part of the family. With this, people become less ‘human’ and are judged more like commodities. Rather than describing their personality, they describe their physicial attributes. Lip Gloss- becomes sex.
Frankfurt School 1923
Herbert Marcuse- One Dimensional Man: Commodity Culture stops us seeing things in several ways.
John Berger- Ways of Seeing: Advertising shows us we become richer when paradoxically we become poorer. Both of the images in adverts show we are inadequate until we gain the product.
Painting
A painting of a guy who is identifying himself through the trappings of their lives; their commodities.
Adverts are tricks, but there are positives; economy, subsidising the media quality, stereotyping. But it makes us unhappy with what exists, it manipulates people, encourages addictive, obsessive and acquisitive behaviour. It distorts the language and encourages bad grammar. It is specially indoctrinated in children because it encourages us to buy unhealthy products. It encourages people to deplete the worlds resources. www.anti-ipod.co.uk Culture Jamming.
Victor Burgin
What does possession mean to you? 7% of our population own 84% of our wealth.
Times Square: A bombardment of adverts; the epitome of capitalism.
There are 11,000 new adverts per year, and 25 million print adverts per year.
Pop ups- they invade our lives.
Karl Marx 1818-1883: Communist Manifesto 1848
A Marxist would argue that we live in a commodity culture where we are governed by markets and materialism. In our capitalist culture, our identities are build upon commodities. What we own defines who we are. Stewart Ewen terms it ‘the commodity self’. Judith Williams says ‘instead of being identified by what they produce, people identify themselves through what they consume.
We perhaps believe in the commodity culture because the adverts lead us to believe that our lives will get better by it. CKI lead us to believe that buying perfume- aka flavour water- will turn us into sophisticated, sexy, popular people. Our purchases make us believe we are those things.
Traditional adverts used the virtues of the product to promote it. The Stanley Range ad says your life will be improved by a better cooker where as the Milady Pipe tries to attach a lifestyle to the pipe.
Commodity culture perpetuates false needs by bringing aesthetic innovation, planned obsolescence and novelty.
Aesthetic Innovation: iPod
If a product looks nicer, it becomes ‘needed’ because it is nicer.
Planned Obsolescence
Products in the commodity culture are designed to break so that you will feel you have lost something when you don’t have it, thus meaning you are compelled to buy more.
Commodity Fetishism
Advertising conceals the background history of products. Theorists would say that we know each other through the things we own rather than our genuine personalities. Our relationships are mediated through commodities.
Niked trainers are marketed as empowering females, but they are produced through sweatshops where females are slaves.
Reification
Products are given human associations. When we associated humans with commodities so much, the commidty gains a ‘human’ aspect and becomes a character. In the mini advert, the family are bounded by the car as it becomes part of the family. With this, people become less ‘human’ and are judged more like commodities. Rather than describing their personality, they describe their physicial attributes. Lip Gloss- becomes sex.
Frankfurt School 1923
Herbert Marcuse- One Dimensional Man: Commodity Culture stops us seeing things in several ways.
John Berger- Ways of Seeing: Advertising shows us we become richer when paradoxically we become poorer. Both of the images in adverts show we are inadequate until we gain the product.
Painting
A painting of a guy who is identifying himself through the trappings of their lives; their commodities.
Adverts are tricks, but there are positives; economy, subsidising the media quality, stereotyping. But it makes us unhappy with what exists, it manipulates people, encourages addictive, obsessive and acquisitive behaviour. It distorts the language and encourages bad grammar. It is specially indoctrinated in children because it encourages us to buy unhealthy products. It encourages people to deplete the worlds resources. www.anti-ipod.co.uk Culture Jamming.
Victor Burgin
What does possession mean to you? 7% of our population own 84% of our wealth.
Wednesday 10 February 2010
Graphic Design: A Medium for the Masses
Cave paintings and paintings that depict religious scenes demonstrate the earliest indications of visual communication to an illiterate world.
John Everette Miallais paints an image of a boy blowing bubbles; fine art. But when text is added by Pears’ soap, does it become graphics? Graphic design is a recent term for a concept that has existed throughout history.
The square paintings on the wall resemble a comic strip.
Images with block colour indicate they have been produced for mass production as it’s cheap and easy to copy. LNER poster & other UK design follows a different fashion to the mainland.
Graphics & Advertising
Herbert Spencer mechanises art in Europe. Paul Rand claims a strong link between graphics and advertising because the designer is trying to persuade and inform. Eskilson challenges this by saying that advertising originates from capitalism.
Birth of views Cabonel- Fantasy Love Godess. Fictional.
Olympia Manet- realistic representation where Manet shows a class divide. This is an early origin of graphic design.
Courbet- Origins of the World 1886- crude and impersonal with no face.
Art & Power: Europe under the Dictators
Abram Games, Saul Bass, Paul Rand (ABC logo, IBM logo)
Savile Lumley was a pioneering British WW1 propaganda designer.
Julius Gipkens challenges tradition in war posters (like the Alfred Leete & Montgomery flag) in Germany by producing ‘Trophies of the Air War’ in 1917. Odd angles, block colours and unsymmetrical designs characterise the new modern designs. Lissitzky depicts the Russian Revolution with ‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge’ in 1919.
Graphic Design Later
The Great Bear- Tube Map. Link between art and design illustrations rationalisation.
Under the Nazis, the Bauhaus moves out of Germany. Hitler rejected modern values and reverted to tradition, stalling progress in design- at least in Europe. There is a lack of ambition.
Graphic Design: An art that responds to social & political views.
Advertising: A divisive tool that gets people to buy more & more.
Postmodernism in Graphics
Hipgnosis in the 1970s began the period of postmodernism. A meaningless and detailed (ie not minimal) image on a record cover marks this.
Neville Brody, David Carson, John Lydon
Hard-Fi used their cover art to illustrate the expensive black and white images used on many CD covers. Spiritualised album by Jason Pierce was disguised as a packet of tablets.
John Everette Miallais paints an image of a boy blowing bubbles; fine art. But when text is added by Pears’ soap, does it become graphics? Graphic design is a recent term for a concept that has existed throughout history.
The square paintings on the wall resemble a comic strip.
Images with block colour indicate they have been produced for mass production as it’s cheap and easy to copy. LNER poster & other UK design follows a different fashion to the mainland.
Graphics & Advertising
Herbert Spencer mechanises art in Europe. Paul Rand claims a strong link between graphics and advertising because the designer is trying to persuade and inform. Eskilson challenges this by saying that advertising originates from capitalism.
Birth of views Cabonel- Fantasy Love Godess. Fictional.
Olympia Manet- realistic representation where Manet shows a class divide. This is an early origin of graphic design.
Courbet- Origins of the World 1886- crude and impersonal with no face.
Art & Power: Europe under the Dictators
Abram Games, Saul Bass, Paul Rand (ABC logo, IBM logo)
Savile Lumley was a pioneering British WW1 propaganda designer.
Julius Gipkens challenges tradition in war posters (like the Alfred Leete & Montgomery flag) in Germany by producing ‘Trophies of the Air War’ in 1917. Odd angles, block colours and unsymmetrical designs characterise the new modern designs. Lissitzky depicts the Russian Revolution with ‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge’ in 1919.
Graphic Design Later
The Great Bear- Tube Map. Link between art and design illustrations rationalisation.
Under the Nazis, the Bauhaus moves out of Germany. Hitler rejected modern values and reverted to tradition, stalling progress in design- at least in Europe. There is a lack of ambition.
Graphic Design: An art that responds to social & political views.
Advertising: A divisive tool that gets people to buy more & more.
Postmodernism in Graphics
Hipgnosis in the 1970s began the period of postmodernism. A meaningless and detailed (ie not minimal) image on a record cover marks this.
Neville Brody, David Carson, John Lydon
Hard-Fi used their cover art to illustrate the expensive black and white images used on many CD covers. Spiritualised album by Jason Pierce was disguised as a packet of tablets.
Modernity & Modernism
Modernity & Modernism
The modernist project can be roughly defined as the era starting circa 1760 and concluding around 1960. Today we are living in the Post Modern world.
What do we mean by modern?
Modern implies that something is better than it was before. Things are not modernised to make something worse. Modern has positive connotations and can be linked to words such as ‘progress’, ‘change’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘new’- an ideology linked to commodity culture. Using the example of ‘new’, New Labour can be seen as a political example of how the new, the modern, is seen as an improvement on what preceded it. The Tate Modern implies the idea of a new, forward thinking institution.
Hirling Shepherd: William Holman
Not everything in the modern era is modernist. The Hirling Shepherd is a painting from the modern era but has been executed in a classical style. Both the style and subject of the image is traditional. The concept of a shepherd seducing a girl on a farm as the animals run wild is not at all modernist.
The City
By 1900, Paris has become the world’s most modern city. Previously, like other European cities, Central Paris had narrow and awkward street patterns that promoted unhygienic conditions, fit only for the poorest residents of the city. The modernist project welcomed Haussmann with his grand plans for Paris. Wide, spacious, tree-lined boulevards improved efficiency, but most importantly helped control society more easily. Flanking the boulevards were extravagant new buildings, equipped with balconies. The rich moved in as the slums were swept away, and they admired man’s creation from the balconies and terraces of the buildings.
Paris didn’t just ‘build the modern’, it revelled in it. The Grand Exposition brought many new structures to Paris including the famous Eiffel Tower. These grand steel and iron icons of modernity and industrialisation dominated the cityscape.
Later, New York became the world’s most advanced city. As New York was laid out, the grid pattern ensured maximum efficiency. Skyscrapers maximised available space in the city. An image illustrates a park surrounded by buildings; Central Park is a manmade creation within the urban jungle. These artificial environments demonstrate how nature had its place within the order and rationale of the human creation.
Modernism
Modernism can be defined as the cultural interpretations to the experience of the modern world. It is seen as utopian. From a design perspective, a few concepts are raised:
1. Truth to Materials
2. Embrace new technology
3. Function over Form
4. Progress
5. Anti-historicism: Not looking back at the past and the hierarchies of the old.
6. Globalisation: Making things universal and accessible to all. A new international language, perhaps somewhat born out of the fall of colonisation.
7. The idea that changing environments would change people’s thinking.
8.
The modernist project can be roughly defined as the era starting circa 1760 and concluding around 1960. Today we are living in the Post Modern world.
What do we mean by modern?
Modern implies that something is better than it was before. Things are not modernised to make something worse. Modern has positive connotations and can be linked to words such as ‘progress’, ‘change’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘new’- an ideology linked to commodity culture. Using the example of ‘new’, New Labour can be seen as a political example of how the new, the modern, is seen as an improvement on what preceded it. The Tate Modern implies the idea of a new, forward thinking institution.
Hirling Shepherd: William Holman
Not everything in the modern era is modernist. The Hirling Shepherd is a painting from the modern era but has been executed in a classical style. Both the style and subject of the image is traditional. The concept of a shepherd seducing a girl on a farm as the animals run wild is not at all modernist.
The City
By 1900, Paris has become the world’s most modern city. Previously, like other European cities, Central Paris had narrow and awkward street patterns that promoted unhygienic conditions, fit only for the poorest residents of the city. The modernist project welcomed Haussmann with his grand plans for Paris. Wide, spacious, tree-lined boulevards improved efficiency, but most importantly helped control society more easily. Flanking the boulevards were extravagant new buildings, equipped with balconies. The rich moved in as the slums were swept away, and they admired man’s creation from the balconies and terraces of the buildings.
Paris didn’t just ‘build the modern’, it revelled in it. The Grand Exposition brought many new structures to Paris including the famous Eiffel Tower. These grand steel and iron icons of modernity and industrialisation dominated the cityscape.
Later, New York became the world’s most advanced city. As New York was laid out, the grid pattern ensured maximum efficiency. Skyscrapers maximised available space in the city. An image illustrates a park surrounded by buildings; Central Park is a manmade creation within the urban jungle. These artificial environments demonstrate how nature had its place within the order and rationale of the human creation.
Modernism
Modernism can be defined as the cultural interpretations to the experience of the modern world. It is seen as utopian. From a design perspective, a few concepts are raised:
1. Truth to Materials
2. Embrace new technology
3. Function over Form
4. Progress
5. Anti-historicism: Not looking back at the past and the hierarchies of the old.
6. Globalisation: Making things universal and accessible to all. A new international language, perhaps somewhat born out of the fall of colonisation.
7. The idea that changing environments would change people’s thinking.
8.
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