Final Field Study Entry

My journey for this course, The History of Graphic Design, through the pages of Meggs text, and the vast knowledge extended through my instructors lectures etc. , has been nothing short of revelation. I began with the briefest of interludes into a scan of the text, the Aubrey Beardsley's immediately caught my attentions, as I have always been a fan. That, and a bit of a paragraph on the Vienna Secessionist movement, and I was instantly intrigued. I had never considered the art of Beardsley in the context of graphic design, or as he as graphic designer, but the text made clear my notions of the medium and it's history were soon to be challenged , and my own mind enlightened on the subject.

With an initial delve into the early history and leanings of primitive man, his petroglyphs and pictographs, such as the ancient Maori, I was versed into the true bedrock of man's need and effort to communicate graphically, and quite effectively, from the advent and dawn of written communications. I wandered from there mentally to the subsequent chapters which had investigations into the chronological timeline of graphic communication.

I was avidly interested in the Art Nouveau movement and the variables of the medium at the time, poster arts having been a favorite inclination, as I have been a collector much of my life of the period.  My son Parrish, is named after the painter Maxfield Parrish, however a later artist of the time, but his work prominent in advertisement and graphic design. I was enthralled with the posters in the text and the descriptive historical data tying in all the various movements and regions, and impetus for the work. Jan Toorop a Dutch artist, was unknown to me before this course, and now without question one of my favorites. His work is a catalyst for style and truly inspiring to me, I think it humorous his wife's name was Annie Hall, I wonder if perhaps Woody Allen was a collector.

I found the chapters on the Surrealist movement quite engaging, Salvador Dali is ever present an influence in all mediums, but I had never considered him either, in the history of graphic design. But from Joan Miro to Max Ernst, and being led to the new stable of Surrealists, such as Mario Sanchez Nevado, and the technological advantages of contemporary artists of the medium, a window to unlimited self expression and an exciting frontier of the history was opened.

The opportunity to write about Herbert Bayer, an old family friend, was such a pleasure. I grew up with his work, and always felt such an affinity for it's simplicity of form. His history in graphic design was unknown to me, the Bauhaus movement incorporated so many talents and offshoots from which I know I will personally draw inspiration in my future graphic endeavors.

By far and away the most inspirational and profound, as well as relatable graphic designer I learned about in this course, was Gunter Rambow, what a force of provocation and magical expression. His work pushes the proverbial envelope in the best of ways and should be an inspiration to all to use the medium to open doors, give voice to those who have none, and make us all utilize bravery in our creations.

All in all my most interesting course in the GID program to date, an elegant finish to two years of beautiful knowledge.....

Field Study 9

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, a designer known best for her association with the Supergraphic Movement of California, was a student of dance in San Francisco, before moving to Basel Switzerland as a young widow, in 1956 to study graphic design at Basel Art Institute under Armin Hoffman. 

Her most significant and influential designs utilizing Super Graphic style were for the Sea Ranch Architectural development in Gualala California in the 1970's, who's timeless quality and innovation still remain a hallmark of the design foundation of the region.

Solomon has continued to practice and teach, both at Harvard and Yale to name a few, and expanded upon her graphics into architecture, fine art painting as well as landscape design. Her feminist leaning sensibility I find refreshing in a world during her time which was permeated by glass ceilings. 

In an interview with Creative Review Magazine 2011, Solomon, an aware feminist,  spoke upon the subject of her male peers, and their seeming requisite career freedoms to indulge, without limitation and constraint, their creative expression in the field, against her own struggle to balance her personal art practice with that of her life demands as a mother and homemaker:

"Now that I happily live alone with my dog I have time to think, and realize that I was always so frantically busy making money to live, taking care of my daughters, and worrying about men, that I never had the time to think, least of all about my work. At my office I just drew up the first design I visualized so i could leave to pick up my daughters from school, shop for dinner, cook and clean, play wife and do all the stuff working mothers do." (Barbara Stauffacher Solomon).

"Clever verbal architects used my skills to promote their projects; mostly real estate developments. I designed good design covers for many questionable commodities. I worked fast and well and my projects in or below budget. I flattered the men, got paid, and then went home to cook dinner." (Barbara Stauffacher Solomon).

Filed Note 8

                                                                 GUNTER RAMBOW

I choose to focus my inquiry this week on the work of Gunter Rambow, a German Graphic designer who's work I had seen in past yet was unaware of the volume and breadth of his talent and resume, wanted to know more. 

Rambow himself was born in Mecklenburg, Germany, in 1938 and grew up in  the post war Communist East German society. His initial training was as a glass painter before transfering to a graphic design program at the Academy of Design in Kessel West Germany, where he eventually taught for two decades as a professor of graphic design later in his career. 

When he was 22 he began his own graphic design studio in Kessel, and as years progressed was joined in his creative quests by Gerhard Lienemeyer, and Michael van de Sand, moving the studio eventually to Frankfurt. The group focused upon creative posters which dealt with the social and political quandaries of the time, very progressive and left leaning in their scope.  

His Theatrical posters pushed boundaries, and were a caustic interpretation on everyday life. Confrontational imagery is and has been the hallmark of Rambow's stylistic leanings. Through use of documentary photography, another of his mediums, he manifests his abstract ideas on subject matter in his compositions which juxtapose controversial images with graphic texts that confront modern societies problems and seeming shortcomings. 

To say his provocations are powerful is an understatement, he has taken the graphic medium , along with his photography to uncharted territory, and brilliantly so.

Field Note 7

Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer was a painter, architect, graphic designer, sculptor, photographer,industrial designer, and considered one of the last master's of the Bauhaus Design School, founded in 1919 in Weimar Germany.

                                                Umeskinder, 1933, Herbert Bayer, private collection                                                                                                             



Bayer was a pioneer in experimental typography design, using the photomontage technique creating advertisements based in the avant guard arts as an art director for clients such as the Container Corporation of America, working under Walter Paepcke, the CEO. Also work with Paepcke included design consultation on the unique and enduring architecture of the Aspen Institute, in Aspen Co.

                                                          Aspen Institute, Herbert Bayer, Architect, Aspen CO



At one point  Bayer also served as the art director for Vogue Magazine's Berlin offices, before having to flee with his family from the Nazi propaganda officials, in 1938, to America, with only $25 to his name, as he was considered on of Hitler's Degenerate artists and was married to a jewish woman. In his later years he worked for the Atlantic Richfield Company as an art director, while also continuing to create fine art works and architecture for his own expression for museums, galleries, public institutions, as well as corporate and private collectors.

                                       
Bayer also studied under Vasily Kandinsky, when he was first enrolled in 1921 as a student at the Bauhaus, where he specialized in mural painting. I think his later works still retain elements of those early Bauhaus influences.

Herbert Bayer was born in Haag Austria, in 1900, and died at his home in Montecito CA, in 1985, at the age of 85.

 

                                                 Chromatic Gate, 1991,Herbert Bayer, Santa Barbara CA

Field Note 6

Paysage Catalan, Joan Miro

The word ‘Surrealism’ was coined by writer Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917. Surrealism, according to Apollinaire, is ‘truth beyond realism’. 

After the World War I, artists and intellectuals were looking for an escape against the harshness of reality. They wanted to reform the world their own way, greatly influenced by Freud and Jung for instance, they sought to investigate through their mediums into the unconscious aspect of the mind. In 1924, the Surrealist group was formed; its principal members being Max Ernst, Joan Miro and Andre Breton.

Artists were very interested in portraying artistic expressions of the subconscious, dreams, hallucinations and all manner of the worlds of the inner psyche. The surrealists created artwork and, poetry at times under hypnosis and utilized the process of automatic, stream of consciousness writing. These processes often manifested surreal, dream-like and unconscious works. 

Gala Of Spheres, Salvador Dali

To quote, Salvador Dali, "Surrealism is the symbolic language of the subconscious, truly a universal language, it doesn’t depend on education, culture or intelligence."

                                                               Deliberation, Mario Sanchez Nevado

Surrealism as an artistic movement of the past, has a profound and strong influence in the contemporary world of graphic design. The tools and ability to render the elements of the unconscious mind, from the world of dreams and the astral, to the well of unlimited imaginary worlds, can be more readily fabricated with the tools of our technological age, in ways the surrealist founders could only themselves dream. 

The digital mediums, in combination with photographic technologies, with their advances, are the vehicle for elaboration of the subconscious with such profound realism and ability to alter as such, that the line between real and imagined is indistinguishable. 

                                                          Temptation    Mario Sanchez Nevado

Field Note 5

I was so moved by the myriad imagery of our chapter studies this week, and many of the artists and designers I had familiarity with, but the one which stood out to me most was the small seeming vignette of the Three Brides by Jan Toorop, a dutch artist involved with the Art Nouveau. I was unaware of his work or history , so I sought more information, I found little yet quite a few more of his enchanting indescribable works of which I share here. These periods of graphic history and the requisite arts which accompanied the periods are the springboard dreams in my estimation and a well of beauty and ideas to farm from for future work.

FATALISME 1893 / Jan Toorop

Jan Toorop was born in Java in 1858. In 1872 he moved with his family to the Netherlands, and began his studies in Delft as well as Amsterdam. In 1880 he became a student at the prestigious Rijksacademie in Amsterdam.

After his studies he lived in Brussels Belgium where he became a member of the Les XXX, a group of artists. who were inspired by James Ensor. He at the time was primarily an expressionist painter , yet investigated impressionism as well as realism in his many works.

ANARCHIE 1894 / Jan Toorop

He married in 1886, and english woman Annie Hall, and moved between England,  Belgium and the Netherland where he developed his personal style for which he became recognized, Symbolist in nature it had dynamic , unpredictable lines based in javanese motifs, with willowy figures and curvilinear designs.

He became part of the Art Nouveau movement in his stylistic leanings there after, creating religious works, book illustrations, grapic designs and stained glass windows.

VROUW ANN DE RAND VAN EEN  MEER / Jan Toorop

Field Note 4

The Art Nouveau French Poster

Art Nouveau was an artistic movement which was popular around the turn of the century, form 1890 to 1905, short lived but made a significant mark in the design world. It infiltrated it's stylistic leanings in the field of not only art, but architecture, garment design, typography, furniture, and all manner of aesthetic artisan practice. Nouveau, the french term for " new art", is based upon organic curving lines found in nature and highly stylized expressions of this motif. The term whiplash, was often employed to describe the extravagant curves and lines of the forms. It was most often utilized in the print world in book production as well as that of poster art and advertising. The typography was often ornate and unique to any previous styles.


Alphonse Mucha,(July 1860- July 1939), was a Czech artist known for his elaborate and beautiful posters primarily designed for French advertisements, as he spent his latter life living in Paris. 
Mucha's work was exhibited at the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris which allowed him an international exposure and frequent imitation. He felt his works were created to communicate a spiritual message of beauty and nothing more. I have been fortunate to have had the original prints I feature on this blog, they have long since been sold, but I never fail to be nostalgic about their beauty which once hung upon my living room walls.

The Gyptis Protis

Poster created for the commemoration of the foundation of Marseilles, by Dellepiane, David ,(1886-1932), is a poster still in my possession. It is a work based upon the Greek Myth of 600BC of the Gyptis Protis, a love story about a king Nanus's daughter Gyptis and her choice of husband determined by whom she offers water in a beautiful vessel, for whom she chooses Protis a young Phocaean sailor. The typography is very bold and highly indicative of the period, with elaborations and designs true to the curving forms of the Nouveau era. I treasure this work above all.