Wolfgang Weingart

Wolfgang Weingart was a German Post modern graphic designer in the 1950-60’s. His artistic career started in the Swiss design style. He contributed immensely in post modernistic graphic design and was the founder of New Wave design. His style adopted an electric and anarchic approach which he applied to his graphic design work.

Influences

Weingart was heavily influenced by the work of Armin Hoffmann and Emil Ruder, two of the major designers during 1950s and 1960s.  These two designers were associated with the International Style, or Swiss typography.  The International Style was based on the Bauhaus movement and used grid systems as the foundation for type and image layout.  Sans serif typefaces were often used due to their practicality for clear and functional communication.

One of the major ideas behind the International Style was the belief that all typography should be "unobtrusive and transparent" in order to clearly communicate the design's message.  While he had been trained under this school of thought, Weingart had no difficulty breaking away from it, and at times, doing completely the opposite within his work. 

Weingart started experimenting with type and breaking of the grid and began pushing to the limits of the qualities of type while still maintaining it's purpose.  While the International Style called for type to be simply functional, Weingart called for typography to be both functional and noteworthy.  Wiengart adopted the impression that a designer should ignore the "traditional" rules of layout and feel free to experiment with how type interacts with the rest of the composition.

Weingart deconstructive approach toward gaphic design principles was a great influence to emerging punk and grunge designers such as Neville Broady in Holland and David carson (Ray Gun magazine) and Jamie Reid.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Weingart

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=6289

http://www.designhistory.org/PostModern_pages/NewWave.html

The Thames and Hudson

 Dictionary of Graphic design and Designers

1992-98 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London UK

Accessed 24/1/2014 1900 approx

Post Modernism movement

Post modernism emerged in mid 60’s which was the new response towards modernism. The new style influenced various disceplines of design including architecture, graphics and applied arts. There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use of words prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture.Post modernism was directly influenced by elements of Dada, Constructivism, pop art, Bauhaus and International typography 

poster by Tissi

Wolfgang Weingart

The principle behind postmodernism was their opposition to modern philosophy fundamentals which were established by modern art that came before. The postmedernist rejcted and challenged the elements of discipline and order which were established by the Bauhaus. They based their work on the swiss design principles of graphic design elements. By the late 60’s with the some designers were fed up with following these rules which in their opinion restricted the page and started to break the rules to create less of a predictable outcome which would be a reflection of their expression(i.e. Destructivism). At the fore front of this new approach were designers, Odermatt and Tessi in zurich and Wolfgang Weingart in Basel..

Weingart became a famous figure and influencer in the 70’s. Weingart rejected dogma typographers like Tschihold, Ruder and Gerstner. His style adopted an electric and anarchic approach which was known as New Wave. Weingart often sacrificed legibility for expression.
Postmodernism was to spark the emergence of punk and grunge style in graphic design which would adhere to its philosophy of rejecting the rules and adopted the deconstructive and anarchic approach.



References

The Thames and Hudson
Dictionary of Graphic design and Designers
1992-98 Thames and Hudson Ltd,

 London UK

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html

http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10174

http://ha065.wordpress.com/gamswen/postmodern-graphic-design/

http://gds.parkland.edu/gds/!lectures/history/1975/postmodern.html

All accessed 24/1/2014 1700

Underground Comics: ROBERT CRUMB

Robert Crumb and R. Crumb, is an American cartoonist and musician. Crumb is noted to be the most influencial underground comics artist that emerged from the psychedelic era His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contemporary American culture. His work has attracted controversy, especially for his depiction of women and non-white races. Crumb approach towards his story line is that he rarely starts a comic with a clear idea of where he wants to go, and usually employs a stream-of-consciousness method when drawing. Placing himself as the narrator in certain scenarios. The main characteristics of his drawing is the exemplary use of cross hatching in his work.

Robert Crumb was born on August 30, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a Catholic household of English and Scottish ancestry. At a young age Crumb was inspired by the works of Walt Kelly, Fleischer Brothers animation, and others, Crumb and his brothers drew their own comics and sold them door to door. Crumb started his career working for greetings card company American Greetings. At this stage he worked with another famous cartoon illustrator Harvey Krutzman who published some of Crumbs satirical comics in his editorial ‘Help!’. During the period crumb started using LSD and could not bare working at American Greetings. He moved away to New York city. His work was discovered in underground newspapers by the Califonia Counter culture and moved to California in 1967. In 1968 Zap Comix #1 appeared early that year, followed by #2 and #0; later issues also featured work by Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez, Robert Williams, and S. Clay Wilson. Which all were influential artists of the Psychedelic movement.

   

Crumbs comics were filled with gratuitous sex, drugs, and violence; it sold well, and marked the beginning of the comics era. Crumb was a prolific cartoonist in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He produced much of his best-known work then, including his Keep on Truckin' strip, and strips featuring characters such as the bohemian Fritz the Cat, spiritual guru Mr. Natural, and oversexed African-American stereotype Angelfood McSpade.Through the fame of his cartoons Crumb would later also work designing music album covers. Crumb has illustrated many album covers, including most prominently Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company and the compilation album The Music Never Stopped: Roots of the Grateful Dead. Between 1974 and 1984, Crumb drew at least 17 album covers for Yazoo Records/Blue Goose Records, including those of the Cheap Suit Serenaders. He also created the revised logo and record label designs of Blue Goose Records that were used from 1974 onward. Besides music Crumb also was the first to have a cartoon which appealed only to adults. The movie was based on a cat character he created Fritz the cat. This was shown in the theatres in the early 70’s.

Robert crumb was an influential cartoonist and graphic novelist of the underground comic culture. His work influenced coming counter cultures punk and grunge which would emerge in the 70’s and 90’s.



http://www.biography.com/people/robert-crumb-9262692

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlT4QZchxQw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlT4QZchxQw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ym5n-ZZWUs



accessed 24/01/2014 1500

Psychedelic Art Movement

The psychedelic movement was an alternative art and design movement that developed in America, especially in California during the social unrest of the mid-1960. This new art movement was influenced and associated itself with popular culture including rock music and the growing ‘Hippy’ culture. Also at the time the introduction of psychedelic and mind-expanding drugs, such as LSD were being used by artist. The visual sensations of the drugs were portrayed in their works, which were made up of distorted imagery, illegible lettering and vivid and garish colours schemes. These elements were highly applied to music posters, magazines and record covers. Pyschedelic art combined various elements from previous art movements and the main influences on psychedelic art derive from Art Nouveau, Surrealism, Op art and Pop art.

Milton Glazer poster

Add caption

Key characteristics

• Fantastic, metaphysical and surrealistic subject matter
• Kaleidoscopic patterns
• Bright highly contrasting colors
• Extreme depth of detail or stylization of detail.
• Morphing of objects 
• spirals, concentric circles
• Repetition of motifs
• Innovative typography and hand-lettering
• warping and transposition of positive and negative spaces imagesof art

The most important figure in psychedelic art were Victor Moscoso, Wes Wilson and Peter Max. An important fact about these influential desuigners is that they were self tought and this was first time in the history of art that the artist didnot have any traditional artistic knowhow.

As the movement progressed, many other artists became associated with the artistic style of Psychedelic Art. Some of these artists included Peter Max, Mati Klarwein, Pablo Amaringo, Roger Dean, and Robert Williams. Even the artist Salvador Dali became associated with the Psychedelic Art style. The Psychedelic movement had a strong influence on comic book artists who created an underground genre of comic book art known as “underground comix.” Robert Crumb was one of its chief proponents. By te early 1970’s psyched elia was an important visual component of youth culture through Europe and the U.S.

Vctor Moscosso poster

Victor Moscoso

The most important figure in psychedelic art were Victor Moscoso, Wes Wilson and Peter Max. An important fact about these influential designers is that they were self tought and this was first time in the history of art that the artist did not have a baisis of traditional artistic knowhow.



References

http://visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com/psychedelic-60s/

http://www.arthistory.net/artstyles/psychedelicart/psychedelicart1.html

All accessed 24/1/2014 1300

The Thames and Hudson
Dictionary of Graphic design and Designers
1992-98 Thames and Hudson Ltd, 
London UK

Op Art

Op art or Optical art was a new style of art which developed out of the United States in the 1960’s. Op Arts invention of new abstract designs was inspired by the desire to create an art which relied on the use of optical illusions which would guide the eye and provided a distorted abstract expression. The use of optical illusions intent was to fool the viewer’s eyes. The Op artists were highly influenced by psychology and how the human brain worked.

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The main influences of the style Neo-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Dada. Op art also was influenced from Trompe-l'œil and Anamorphosis elements.Victor Vasarely was the main figure who pioneered the movement with his 1938 painting Zebra. Important artist in the movment include Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Liberman, , Victor Vasarely, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Wen-Ying Tsai, and Bridget Riley whose art contributed immensely to the movement.

 CARACTERISITCS

• First and foremost, Op Art exists to fool the eye. Op compositions create a sort of visual tension, in the viewer's mind, that gives works the illusion of movement.

• geometrically-based nature, Op Art is, almost without exception, non-representational.

• The elements employed (color, line and shape) are carefully chosen to achieve maximum effect.

• perspective and careful juxtaposition of color

• positive and negative spaces in a composition are of equal importance. Op Art could not be created without both.

• Op Art represents a great deal of math, planning and technical skill

BRIDGETE RIELEY

Op art was a short lived movement which only spanned for 3 years. Although its life was brief optical art would be a great contribution and would be one of the influences for psychedelic movement in the US which would incorporate the elements of both op art and pop art.

REFERENCES

http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa990.htm

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/op_art.htm

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/o/opart.html


The Thames and Hudson
Dictionary of Graphic design and Designers
1992-98 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London UK


All accessed 24/1/2014 1100

ANDY WARHOL

Andy Warhol was the quintessential figure that highly contributed to the pop art movement in the 50’s and 60’s.Warhol worked with Glamour magazine in and went on to become one of the most successful commercial artists of the 1950s. He won frequent awards for his uniquely whimsical style, using his own blotted line technique and rubber stamps to create his drawings.

In the late 1950s, Warhol began devoting more attention to painting, and in 1961, he pioneered the concept of "pop art"—paintings that focused on mass-produced commercial goods. In 1962, he exhibited the now-iconic paintings of Campbell's soup cans. These small canvas works of everyday consumer products created a major stir in the art world, bringing both Warhol and pop art into the national spotlight for the first time. 

     

Warhol art became more and more famous and his next step was the creation of his renowned celebrity portraits which h were portrayed in vivid and garish colours; his most famous subjects included Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor,Mick Jagger and Elvis Presley . As these portraits gained fame and notoriety, alos did Warhol. He began to receive hundreds of commissions for portraits from socialites and celebrities.



Warhol's life and work simultaneously satirized and celebrated materiality and celebrity. On the one hand, his paintings of distorted brand images and celebrity faces could be read as a critique of what he viewed as a culture obsessed with money and celebrity. On the other hand, Warhol's focus on consumer goods and pop-culture icons, as well as his own taste for money and fame, suggest a life in celebration of the very aspects of American culture that his work criticized.

Andy Warhol contributed immensely to consumer art and his studio pioneers new techniques that portrayed art in context with the emerging society. Warhol was the Pioneer of introducing video as an art form. This today is seen as a common and run of the mil technique.





http://history1900s.about.com/od/artists/p/warhol.htm



http://www.warhol.org/



http://www.warholfoundation.org/



http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_describe_Andy_Warhol's_art?#slide=1





All accessed 23/1/2014 2200

POP ART

Pop art emerged in the 1950s in Britain and the United States. The Pop art movement challenged the traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the cultural and social attitudes that led to it. Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and everyday cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism,

Hamilton's 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?

The popart movement main influence include Dadaism (collage and photo montage), cubism (abstraction) and surrealism. Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular notion as opposed to the traditional art form. It emphasises on the banal or kitschy elements of society, most often through the use of irony.Key Characteristics of Pop Art
Two important painters in the establishment of America's pop art vocabulary were Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. While the paintings of Rauschenberg have relationships to the earlier work of Kurt Schwitters and other Dadaists, his concern was with social issues of the moment. His approach was to create art out of common materials and using topical events in the life of everyday America gave his work a unique quality. Johns' and Rauschenberg's work of the 1950s is classified as Neo-Dada, and is visually distinct from the classic American Pop Art which began in the early 1960s. Of equal importance to American pop art is Roy Lichtenstein. His work probably defines the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody. Selecting the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produces a hard-edged, precise composition that documents while it parodies.








CARACTERISTICS



· Recognizable imagery, drawn from popular media and products.

· Usually very bright colours.

· Flat imagery influenced by comic books and newspaper photographs.

· Images of celebrities or fictional characters in comic books, advertisements and fan magazines.

· In sculpture, an innovative use of media
Another important figure for the pop art movement was the American born artist Andy Warhol. He is famous for his re interpretation of commercial product imagery (Campbell soup) and also the use of popular figures and celebrities (silkscreen prints of Marylyn Monroe) made him no less than an icon of the style.



References

http://arthistory.about.com/od/modernarthistory/a/Pop-Art-Art-History-101-Basics.htm

http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2010/06/chapter-33-pop-art.html

http://speckyboy.com/2012/01/16/20-things-you-didn%E2%80%99t-know-about-pop-art-
graphic-design/

The Thames and Hudson

 Dictionary of Graphic design and Designers

1992-98 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London UK

All accessed 23/1/2014 2100