Week 5: Chapter 11-Chapter 12

Chapter 11: Art Nouveau

Ukiyo-e “pictures of the floating world” was the art movement happening during Japan’s Tokugawa period, which was the ending phase of traditional Japanese history.  During this time, the Shogan declared a national policy of seclusion to try to prevent the influence of European expansion and Christian missionaries on Japanese culture.  Citizens were not allowed to travel or return from abroad and foreign trade was prohibited.

The Ukiyo-e style combined the emaki (traditional picture scrolls) style with decorative arts, and used wood block screen printing.  Book illustration was becoming a popular art form during this time.  There were many artists who influenced the Ukiyo- style, the most well known being Katsushika Hokusai who created thirty-five thousand works during his life including “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fiji”.  The Ukiyo-e style had a huge influence on what came next, Art Nouveau.

You can spot Art Nouveau by its organic, plantlike lines “vine tendrils, flowers, birds, and the human female form were frequent motifs from which this fluid line was adapted”.  It was used in all of the design arts; graphics, fashion, interior decorating and architecture.  Something that really caught my interest in this section was the line “In earlier three-dimensional design, ornaments often were decorative elements applied to the surface of a building or object, but in art nouveau objects, the basic forms and shapes were formed by, and evolved with the design of the ornament”.  I found it interesting that they would design an entire structure around an ornamental object.  It would be like designing an entire outfit around a pair of earrings, instead of finding earrings that matched your outfit.  “Art nouveau graphic designers and illustrators attempted to make art a part of every day life”.

In 1881, a French law was passed for freedom of the press, which allowed posters to be displayed anywhere and “the streets became an art gallery”.  Jules Cheret established a printing firm and produced a design for the theatrical production “La biche au bois”, which made him the pioneer of the visual poster.  He started using color in his posters, and “his publications transformed the walls of Paris” with his posters for music halls and theatre and his designs used on products including beverages and household products.  He created “Cheretts” in his art, who were “neither prudes nor prostitutes, these self assured happy women enjoyed living life to the fullest, wearing low-cut dresses, dancing, drinking, wine, and even smoking in public”.  I can certainly appreciate that!  It sounds like a lot of other people appreciated his art form too, as he was named to the Legion of Honor for “creating a new brand of art that advanced printing and served the needs of commerce and industry”.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec designed the poster “La Goulue au Moulin Rouge”, which is a very popular and well known poster, and it “broke new ground in poster design”.  The design of this poster really moves your eyes from the left side all the way through to the right side of the poster, something that is very important in graphic design.  It is a very expressive poster.  He also produced 30 other posters, which are still recognized today by most people.

A good friend of Toulouse-Lautrec’s and a fellow poster artist is Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen.  He created one of the most recognizable posters in the world “Tournee du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis”.  His fluid reportorial lines and flat colors were very similar to the designs by Toulouse-Lautrec.  Steinlen was a big time cat lover, and his first commissions in Paris were drawings for Le Chat Noir.  

Ethel Reed was the first woman graphic designer and illustrator to receive national prominence.  She was a well known book illustrator and poster designer by age 18.  For four years, from the age of 18-22, she created posters and illustrations for publishers, then mysteriously at age twenty-two she disappears from the historical record.

Edward Penfield, who was an art director for Harper and Brothers publications, was influenced by Japanese prints and made popular what we know today as “white space”.  His style was “contour drawing with flat planes of color”, and “by eliminating the background, he forced the viewer to focus on the figure and lettering”.

Henri van de Velde was a jack of all trades; he was an architect, painter, designer, and educator.  He unified many styles into one and made it his own.  He believed all past art styles should be integrated into the new ones.  “He taught that all branches of art-from painting to graphic design, from industrial design to sculpture-share a common language of form and are of equal importance to the human community”.  This really struck a chord with me.  Often I hear people say that something isn’t art, just because it isn’t interesting to them, or that a piece of art is boring or too simple.  I think every form of art is important, and I think different kinds of art are important in different ways.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  

Chapter 12: The Genesis of Twentieth-Century Design

At the turn of the century, art nouveau was becoming less and less popular, and artists, architects, fashion designers, and product designers were looking for new techniques for artistic expression.  They were transitioning from the organic flowing curves of art nouveau into a more linear, geometric art form.  Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect at the forefront of this movement.  He used repetition of rectangular zones and asymmetrical spatial organization in his designs of architecture, furniture, graphics, fabrics, wallpapers, and stained glass windows.  His approach was very influential to other designers.

The Glasgow School refers to four collaborating artists who “developed a unique style of lyrical originality and symbolic complexity”.  They were: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, J. Herbert McNair, Margaret Macdonald, and Frances Macdonald.  They were innovators of a geometric style of composition using flowing curves with rectangular structure.  Their work was very influential on twentieth century art.  

The Vienna Secession came into existence when artists wanted freedom to exhibit and they were limited by the government.  Secession artists used clean sans serif lettering and linear art techniques.  The art from this time is very geometric and modular in its design.  The Vienna Secession was the bridge between art nouveau and geometric formalism.

Peter Behrens has been credited as “the first industrial designer”.  Some of his designs include teapots, streetlamps, fans, and electric motors.  He had a very influential geometric structure in his design.  He was the artistic advisor for the AEG, and designed their trademark logo along with a new typeface exclusive to them.