Camouflage, Functional Object, & Yellow Submarine

Camouflage

 

Functional Object: Head Board

 

Yellow Submarine

The Psychedelic Poster & it's Nouveau Roots

Designs of the 1960's

• Berkeley 1965 exhibition of Art Nouveau work
• 1965 New York @ MoMA: included non-relational painting, OP art, minimalism, Responsive Eye

Mr. Bing- Why was he such an influence?

• mid 1600's to mid 1800's Japan was closed, isolationism
• seeing Japanese art/objects was brand new to the rest of the world
• Rococo taken to the masses
• new flatness, calligraphic line

Japanese prints' influence on Art Nouveau

• Ukiyo-e - floating cities (Districts in cities in Japanese E-do district, similar to Monmartre: entertainment, brothels, artistic area.)
• Moving from fine popular to applied arts
• more affordable to the masses, not just the wealthy
• actresses as subjects, kabuki actors
• vernacular, popular scenes from everyday life

Hokusai (Mt Fuji)

• organic line describing organic shape, highly stylized & symbolic
• lines like flowing smoke

Ando Hiroshige  "The Six Tama (Jewel)"
1850's
Closed off from outside influence, only influenced from other artists inside.

Berkeley 1960's: Mucha, William Bradley

• Kicked off Modern Art style, influenced textile & graphic designers, architects (more than just the same genre & medium - unlike a movement in painting)
• Psychedelic artists used Art Nouveau in the same way that Art Nouveau artists used Ukiyo-e

Lautrec & Monmartre documentary
Art Nouveau - organic becomes part of the structure (architecture)
Victor Horta Museum

Op art

• Bridget Riley "Fission" & "Movement in Squares"
• Victor Vasarely "Vega 200"
• Frank Stella "Fez (2)"   - non relational painting

minimalist sculptures
Donald Judd "Untitled (Progression)"

Gestalt (right before or after post-modernism) *word for the day to put in blog

• philosophers @ beginning of 19th century, stroboscope
• Max Werthheimer
• thinking about vision differently & it's physiological influences
• perceptual consequences to messing with light, etc.

Gestalt spelled with 3 different type faces:

• different typefaces come with different connotations
• typeface influences the meaning of the word to each viewer (varies with their relationship, memory of each typeface)

psychological

• integrated field, investigation of physiological perception

Graphic Design rules & consequence

Wimbledon University students - faces painted with lines to camouflage
gestalt vision
attachment with system of symbolic meaning

psychedelic posters
"Young Bloods" poster: values are all the same, creates vibration.
bringing value & contrast together

Non-relational painting means? It's no longer about communicating (symbollically or allegorically) but trying to effect the viewer physiologically. "Fez(2)"
Andy Warhol's "Exploding Plastic Inevitable"

Elaine Mays "The Wildflower"

Hokusai's & Kunisada's Ukiyo-e prints

Tiffany's glasswork

 Max, Moscoso & Mays psychedelic posters

 Albers Op Art

Notes from "Mr. Bing" Documentary

Mr. Siegfried Bing & L'Art Nouveau

•  rejuvenated the decorative arts
• He died alone, possible no one attended his burial.
• import/export store
• ceramics - father Jacob Bing's shop in France - Louisya Fese & Bing
• Gold medal awarded from the French government for success as a manufacturer of ceramics & porcelains.
• decorative objects made by industrial means
• He was a very secretive man.
• During the 1870's , Japanese objects began leaving Japan.
• 1876 his 1st auction sale of Japanese art/objects
• Exposition Universelle of 1878
• Opened 1st shop for the sponsorship & promotion of Japanisme.
• 1880 he took a trip to Japan for 1 year.
• A photographer named Craft created a Japanese garden steeped in enchantment.
• Bing was the mysterious art collector.
• Le Japon Artistique was a magazine publication to promote Japanese art, created by Bing.
• brings glimpse of endless horizons & total freedom
• Ecole des Beaux Arts Exposition - large show of Japanese prints
• Edmond Michotte collected from Bing's collection.
• A working relationship between Bing & Vincent Van Gogh allowed for a Japanese influence on Van Gogh's work.
• @ end of 1880's Bing was more interested in the dynamism of the USA. (Achievements in decorative arts & promotion of Japanese art to the USA)
• Louis Comfort Tiffany - filaments & thin streaks of color characterized his glass work. He employed an army of craftsman of every sort. Allowed French painters to create stained glass panels in the Tiffany studio (among the 4 painters, Toulousse-Lautrec was included). 
• Brussels- Maison D'Art - inspired the remodeling of Bing's shop
• named term L'Art Nouveau
• stencil designs placed randomly on the facade
• Henry Vandevelder - the architect
• 1895 L'Art Nouveau Exposition - received negative press attention because not enough French artists were featured, the art was bundled together without taste.
• Bing didn't give up, he became more determined to streamline the exhibition & what was presented.
• Bing displayed Edvard Munch's artwork.
• Bing decided not to just show other artists' work, that he wanted to show his own style.
• Eugene Galliard - furniture designer Bing employed
• Limoge (GDA) - production relationship
• whiplash curves & embeded motifs are added to the ceramic decoration
• 1900 World's Fair: Bing had own pavillion designed by Galliard, Cologna, & Defer. The outside was like an elaborate advertisement poster. Each room had a different ambiance.
• Cologna's designs were: fluid, graceful, slender, & had a homogenaity.
• Defure's boudoir furniture
• How many of the prototype models were ever recreated from the ateliers?
• 1904 bankruptcy
• Bing died 12/6/1905, on his 75th birthday. A defiinitive close of Art Nouveau.
• He was a popular dealer for museum directors.
• Bing combined the refinement of the far east with the best of western tradition.

Art Nouveau part deux

A Production Designer's Perspective
What do you see re-presented in the film Moulin Rouge that you see foregrounded in the documentary, in the artwork of the time?

How does Catherine Martin's (Moulin Rouge) Monmarte differ from Moore's (documentary) and why?

How might Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings differ from his posters in terms of their possible influence on the design of the film?

Post one painting and one poster each from Toulouse-Lautrec that you feel had an influence on the production design of Moulin Rouge, 2002 and briefly explain.

Art Nouveau part 1

Theophile Steinlen's posters featured the bold simplicity of the Japanese print: planes of even color, crisp contour lines, and two dimensionality.

Theophile Steinlen
A La Bodiniere
1894
ARTstor link

Theophile Steinlen
Compagnie Francaise des Chocotats et des Thes
1895
ARTstor link

Theophile Steinlen 
Lait pur de la Vingeanne Sterilise
1894-1895
ARTstor link

Privat Livemont employed traditional use of the allegorical figure, tying commercial art to the fine arts & presenting a powerful sexual fantasy. His use of color was subtle with slight gradations, derived from & ennobling the product being advertised. Evocative sensuality, ethereal atmosphere, & young beauties wearing revealing, diaphanous drapery were integral to the unfocused atmospheric imagery of a fantasy beauty inhabiting an undefined space.

Privat Livemont
Bec Auer
1896
ARTstor link

Privat Livemont
Absinthe Robette
1896
ARTstor link

Privat Livemont
Bitter Oriental
1897
ARTstor link

Jules Cheret created brightly colorful posters with a wide range of hues, values & intensities. Frequent subjects were star performers from the world of dance, music & theatrical productions. His dynamic compositions & profuse colorism was influenced by Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints & the French 18th century Rococo style. His version of Rococo is dramatic with an updated sexual energy. Text and image are spatially integrated with hand designed lettering. A minimal amount of text creates an overall feeling of jouissance (joyfulness), capturing the excitement of live performance.

Jules Cheret
Pantomimes Lumineuses
1892
ARTstor link 

Jules Cheret 
Revue Fin de Siecle, Alcazar d'ete
1890
ARTstor link 

Jules Cheret
Pippermint
1899 
ARTstor link