Post Modernism

Post Modernism started to creep in around the 1950’s, but I’m going to focus on the late 70’s/80’s as that’s what I associate Post Modernism. For Modernism and Ludwig Miles Van der Rohe “Less is more.” but for Robert Venturi and  Post Modernism “Less is a bore.” I disagree, less generally is better, but then again I’m not a great fan of the visual aesthetic of the 80’s. Warhol’s pop art prints are great when you first see them work and the Buzzcocks Orgasm Addict cover is really cool but it all becomes a little abrasive and garish after a while. I find a lot of 80’s design a little ugly, as the song say “It was acceptable in the 80’s”. Its just really not my cup of tea.

Buzzcocks, Orgasm Addict, picture from : http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2008/august/constructivism-the-ism-that-just-keeps-givin

I quite like the above image, its quirky and made from parts of an Argos catalogue. I have a we chuckle when I see because its funny in its own subversive way. Post Modernism, rejected and recycled the old, it was avant garde but also the artistic style of the time. We had a two part lecture on Post Modernism. The second half being about commercialism, mass production and reproduction, which I feel sums up Post Modernism really well. Now I wasn’t around in the 80’s so my view is a little bit skewed by films, to me the 80’s was very much about money, sex, power, rebellion and punk.

Neville Brody, The Face. picture from : http://johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/guitars-and-graphics/

On one side their were the rebellious anarchic punks with the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm Garret. I quite like punk but it is very hard to explain, sometimes it was just trying to be shocking for the sake of insulting people because why not it could. This was counterbalanced by brightly power dressed people talking on giant mobile phones. The 80’s and Post Modernism all just seems to be a little bit done in bad taste, at the time I’m sure it was less so or maybe it wasn’t. I have asked a primary source (my Mum) and she described the 80’s as an age of “visible consumption” in other words if people had money, they bought what was in vogue and made sure everyone could see. Yuppies and Sloane rangers, with giant shoulder pads, a soda stream and the whole family watching E.T and Gremlins.

David Carson for Ray Gun. picture from : http://jacobarmitage.co.uk/most-influential-designers/influential-designers-david-carson/

In terms of design, I was rather irked by a David Carson quote, now I quite like some of Carson’s work, but this I don’t really get and I suppose its this aspect of Post Modernism that I just don’t get. Carson say “Don’t confuse legibility with communication.” Now that’s all fine and dandy for some things but, in a commercial sense what’s the point of having a poster promoting an event or exhibition that either nobody can read or that takes the average person like myself ten minutes to decipher. It can look as abstract and as conceptual and cool as it likes but if doesn’t get the message across before the viewer is either bored, confused or alienated. Post Modernism was new for the time, but its a bit like what happens when you let a three year old lose with coloured paints, its messy, it has some merit but it lacks control. They have all the tools but want to be different and not like what’s gone before but are still inspired by them. And what you get is a huge money spinning, commercial, multi – coloured Frankenstein’s monster that keeps popping up and trying to be cool again. This has happened recently in fashion. The 80’s and Post Modernism have a lot to answer for. They made bad taste kind of acceptable and fashionable and a thing so to speak in art, design, music and fashion. It sometimes leaves you wondering why and also feeling a little bit nauseated.

oh the 80’s…
picture from : http://womens-fashion.lovetoknow.com/Eighties_Fashion_for_Women

References and Links to webpages that helped me write this post :

“Less is More” Ludwig Miles Van der Rohe 1886 – 1969 :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe

“Less is a Bore”  Robert Venturi 1925 – ? Available at :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe

“It was acceptable in the 80’s” from Acceptable in the 80’s by Calvin Harris 2009. Available at : http://artists.letssingit.com/calvin-harris-lyrics-acceptable-in-the-80s-2mxpk7h#axzz2lmaOMdU7

Acceptable in the 80’s by Calvin Harris. Available at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOV5WXISM24

“Don’t confuse legibility with communication” David Carson, 2007, Helvetica. Available at :  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0847817/quotes

CATSPARELLA. 80 totally awesome things from the 80’s. Available at : http://www.buzzfeed.com/catsparella/80-totally-awesome-things-from-the-80s-1ruv

Wikipedia Postmodernism. Available at :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

Wikipedia Postmodern. Available at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art

All of the above links were accessed on the 26.11.2013.

Narrative – Fairy Tales

One of the things that interested me from the narrative lecture was the work of Vladimir Propp. I have always enjoyed folk and fairy tales. So my interest was piqued at the mention of an analysis of the narrative structure of Russian folktale. Propp was a Russian critic who in 1920 decided to study the components that made up Russian folktales. Character that remained constant were the hero, the villain, the donor, the dispatcher, the false hero, the helper, the princess and the princesses father. And between these characters certain situations always occur and are key to the plot such as the struggle between hero and villain followed by the villain being overcome and the hero being recognised and rewarded with a kingdom and/or a princess. And a happily ever after but often a moral lesson is also learnt.

One of Pienkowski’s silhouette fairy tale illustrations. picture from : http://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2008/dec/19/booksforchildrenandteenagers#/?picture=340934959&index=4

Two of my favourite folktales books are “The Amber Mountain and other folk tales” by Agnes Szudek, illustrated by Jan Pienkowski, who is better known for his work with Helen Nicoll on children’s favourite Meg and Mog, and “The Wise Doll” by Hiawyn Oram and illustrated by Ruth Brown. The former being a collection of folktales from Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Germany.  Some the story’s are familiar as they have been retold such as ” The Amber Mountain”. You may also know this story as “The Seven Brother” or “The Six Swans” or “The Twelve Wild Ducks” or “Udea and her Seven Brothers” or “The Wild Swans” or “The Twelve Brothers”. At the core its a story about a daughter trying to save her brothers of varying numbers.

Illustration for The Swan princes by Anne Anderson. picture from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Swan_Princes_-_Anne_Anderson.jpg

Some versions include the sewing of shirts, seven years of silence, infanticide by jealous Queen mothers, two daughters named Rosy red and Snow white who sound very familiar, cannibals, various forms of execution, treacherous aunts, moon people, princesses, peasant girls and evil flying toe nails. Some are rather gruesome, with beheadings, burnings, disfigurements and quite a bit of blood-letting and blood smearing. I think the original fairy tales that are a little bit more grisly have more merit that the watered down versions that are told to children now. Even the big bad wolf doesn’t die in little red ridding hood anymore. Some hero’s have to kill their villain, in cinema and literature we are returning to dark fairy tales. For example I was never a big superman fan, I’d only seen the squeaky clean ‘kid’ version so was adamant about seeing the Man of Steel reboot. I was pleasantly surprised but the death of the antagonist was very violent and emotionally fraught. Superman (the hero) doesn’t want to kill Zod (the villain) but he has no other choice. Something as permanent as a death of a character in a story line should be a resolution of the conflict and disorder but also define the hero’s morality. One example where I felt robbed of this resolution was in Thor: the Dark World. SPOILER ALERT do not read if you don’t want to know what happens at the end, concerning Loki and Thor, look away now.

picture from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Hiddleston_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg

So Loki dies, but he has redeemed himself and aided his brother and has been honourable. And though this was sad, the upset relationship that Thor and Loki shared through the first film and the Avengers movie was finally at rest. But no,  the joy of the money spinning franchise that is the Marvel superhero movies the last two seconds of the film and the story were ruined for me at least. For once Thor has told his Father of Loki’s redemption and Thor leaves to be with his mortal love. Odin shape shifts into a smirking Loki. I am sure Vladimir Propp would not approve or would he? Do characters like Loki inhabit both the villain and false hero role. Though it feels very much like Marvel money grabbing for more films because people will pay to see Tom Hiddleston as Loki the lovable and hateable trickster of Norse mythology.

The Wise Doll by Hiawyn Oram and Ruth Brown.
picture from : http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-45947-7

But I digress. My other book is “The Wise Doll” by Hiawyn Oram and illustrated by Ruth Brown. It a retelling of the Vasilia the Beautiful. Which included the Baba Yaga, who is a key character in many a tale. This retelling is very much for younger audience so emits some of the original stories more complex aspects but is still very gruesome and scary in places. One particular illustration of Baba Yaga her eyes glowing orange like hot coals still freaks me out, this book used to really scare me when I was younger. But I still wanted it read to me and I still read it. Baba Yaga is a villain and a tester of people. That’s what she’s there for, a good scare the book tells us. Sometimes we need to be scared. Like hiding behind the couch from the monsters on doctor who, or fearing that certain page in the children’s book where you really see the villain for the first time.

Illustration from Vasilisa the Beautiful by Ivan Bilibin. picture from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vasilisa.jpg

Fairy tales will always be retold, whether it be in cinema with superhero’s, or in children’s books with classic tales. They will or they should retain the key points that Propp analysed and if the don’t do they still have any constructive effect on us. As they say the moral of the story is that fairy tales are ingrained in our minds and our society and if they are tainted where does that leave us. Manically holding on to a wish of a sugar sweet happy ending or the complete opposite, humbugging our way though life without any belief or want of redemption.

Also just to point out I did really enjoy the second Thor movie, it was far better than the first and Tom Hiddleston is great as Loki. Just wish Marvel would, and this goes for many other comic book/ superhero franchises, would just let some characters die… permanently.

References and Links to webpages that helped me write this post :

Here is a link to a vimeo video of somebody ready “The Wise Doll” :http://vimeo.com/10822274

Szudek, A. (1976) The Amber Mountain, and Other Stories. Hutchinson.

Oram, H. (1997) The Wise Doll. Andersen Press Ltd.

All of the above links were accessed on the 19.11.2013.

Moving Image

There has always been something fantastical about animation to me. The word animation comes from the Latin Anima which translates as the breath of life. Animation is associated with energy, exuberance and liveliness. It is described technically as being a photographic technique in which successive 2D or 3D forms are captured and played back to create a moving image. Animated images have fascinated and beguiled man since the technique was created. The earliest known animation is not the thaumatrope or the zoetrope. It is believed that the earliest known animations can be found earthenware and ceramics from Greece and Iran. The thaumatrope, which became a popular Victorian toy,  was invented in 1825 by Dr John Paris.

From : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taumatropio_fiori_e_vaso,_1825.gif

The thaumatrope worked due to persistence of vision. A card with for example a flower one side and vase on the other would have two pieces of string or elastic attached to either end which could be wound and when released cause the card to spin. when looked at whilst spinning, the human eye sees the first image, holds it and before it can release this image, the second enters its vision thus merging the images. A flip book works in the same way but with more images just like any piece of animation.

“Bouncing Totoro” 3D zoetrope by Studio Ghibli from : http://www.ghibliworld.com/museumspecial.html

One of my favourite things featured in the moving image lecture was the Studio Ghibli 3D Zoetrope. It features one of the most beloved Ghibli characters, Totoro. The “Bouncing Totoro” Zoetrope was made using 347 3D figurines and it took a year to complete. The 3D Zoetrope is a predecessor of William Horner’s Zoetrope. The fundamentals of drawn and 3D figurine animation have not changed greatly. It is the technology and the craft of animation that has evolved. Early lightning sketches animations didn’t have the realism that exists in modern animation.

Link to J. Stuart Blackton’s “The Humorous Phases of Funny Faces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dRe85cNXwg

Disney is very well-known for this but earlier is the work of Eadweard Muybridge, who was a very interesting character, was a pioneer of moving image. Even if this only came about due to a bet about whether or not when a horse runs if at one point all its hooves leave the ground. It turned out to be true though some mocked Muybridge’s discovery, it was true he had photographic evidence and an animation to stun the public. Muybridge’s books which contain series of successive images of people and animals are still highly influential to this day. If a little bit naked in places. I love a good animated movie, I am a huge studio Ghibli and Disney fan. I think I may actually prefer to look at Ghibli than Disney. Mostly because I don’t think I have ever seen a Ghibli film that was not visually stunning whereas some of the Disney sequels are somewhat lacking in the lustre that the first films had. Which is usually the way of sequels but it’s also rather disappointing. For example Mulan which had both a great plot and was visually stunning is rather let down by its sequel which doesn’t have the impeccable background and character art that the first movie had. Whereas Ghibli is just so lush. The scene in Spirited Away where Chihiro is running to the pig sheds through the flower bushes ( which I’m pretty sure are rhododendrons) is so vivid and so real, you really are pulled into that world. Like with a good book, a good animation draws you in and takes you into its world and a really good animation lingers in the memory. Persistence of vision.

References and Links to webpages that helped me write this post :

Muybridge, E. (2000) The Human Figure in Motion. Dover Publications Inc.

Eadweard Muybridge website. Available at : http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/

All of the above links were accessed on the 19.11.2013.

Summer project – What is Illustration?

Cave painting of a bison is the Altamira caves in Spain – taken from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AltamiraBison.jpg

What is illustration? This was a question I asked myself when I started my summer project. For which I had to pick one artist or movement to research and write about. So I began with illuminated manuscripts which were featured in the Image lecture.

I began with the dictionary and the definition of illustration and illustrate : http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/illustration?q=illustration Oxford dictionary definition. To illustrate comes from lustrare which means to illuminate thus leading me to illuminated manuscript. Most illuminated manuscripts were created predominantly in the Middle ages and laterally in the Renaissance. The word manuscript comes from the Latin for handwritten. which makes sense as illuminated manuscripts were handwritten over long periods of time by monks for the most part. If a manuscript was to be illustrated it would be sent to an illuminators. When moveable type and the print press came to the fore front want for the expensive and labour intensive manuscripts died out. Manuscripts like the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels were written one vellum which was made of sheep or cow skins. So large manuscripts could use a herd of sheep to make.

Image of Christ from the Aberdeen Bestiary. Taken from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AberdeenBestiaryFolio004vChristInMajesty.jpg

Here’s a wee link to a YouTube clip of a Horrible Histories episode that explained it better once it gets past monk sign language : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wVTP2016G0

Illuminated manuscripts are viewed as one of the earliest examples of illustration however some argue that ” Art was illustrative long before it was holy” ( Illustration, A Visual History. Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast.  Abrams, New York, 2008) Therefore can cave paintings such as those at Lascaux and Altamira be viewed as illustration. Cave painting can be seen as man recording and illustrating the world around him albeit before text. I believe that cave painting can be viewed as illustration as it was integral to the visual mass communicative language of early man.

Now this lead me to the age-old question of what is the difference between fine art and illustration. In “Illustration, A  Visual History” by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast, states that ” illustration is a clearly defined act of making art, the goal of which is to illuminate the printed page.” Illustration is not as some view it a lesser art in comparison to what is viewed as high or fine art. Illustration is art for the populace. It is a form of mass communication for a mass audience. There are many similarities between illustration today and the fine art of the Renaissance period. Whose artists, such as Durer used mass communicative processes such as printmaking to sell their artwork or to make it for themselves. There is no denying that illustration is sometimes very commercial but then again so is fine art. I feel that the idea at fine art is a higher art form is false and that it is almost impossible to completely separate fine art and illustration. They both have as much merit as each other.

References and Links to webpages that helped me write this post :

Oxford definition of fine art : http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fine-art?q=fine+art

Here is Illustration Art’s view on fine art and illustration : http://illustrationart.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/old-question-finally-answered.html

Heller, S. Chwast, S. (2008) Illustration: A Visual History. New York. Abrams.

All of the above links were accessed on the 10.11.2013.

Text: the Evolution of Written Language.

Yesterday, I posted a sign continuum, which leads into this next post all about text. A pictorial language like hieroglyphs is representative of certain things like a goat or a bit of grass but like in my continuum that I posted about yesterday this representative language transforms into a abstracted language that as to be learnt as it has no resemblance to what it really is. Hieroglyphs are  probably not the best example of a pictorial language as until the Rosetta stone was discovered nobody knew what they meant either.

Here is a wee link to the Arty Factory website : http://www.artyfactory.com/egyptian_art/egyptian_hieroglyphs/hieroglyphs.htm

Carrying on with hieroglyphs which in its day was a language of the elite and was generally unfit for general note taking as it was time consuming and complex. So Egyptian scribes created hieratic and then demotic which were further abstracted forms of hieroglyphs and themselves. Egypt needed these simpler, more abbreviated texts for trading and record keeping. Written text was needed by most settled human communities who traded. Through trade language spread and when the Greeks got a hold of demotic and other trade languages they created the first alphabet with phonetics. Which expanded further during the Roman empire. Examples of Roman typeface show spacing, layout, serifs and upper and lower case, this could be seen as one of the turning points for typography as an art form. Moving on from hand craved or written lettering which was inefficient and expensive came moveable printed text. The first example of this in the western world is the Gutenberg printing press which could make 240 impressions a day and was quicker and cleaner than the work of scriptoriums. However, this is not the first ever moveable text, the Tang dynasty in China in 868 AD had moveable wood block typing and even further back again to the Greeks and the Phaistos disc (1800 – 1600 BC) which despite being having disputed authenticity would be the earliest known example of moveable type. But back to Gutenberg and the age of enlightenment. Mass produced text is wonderful, books galore and in own modern age many other forms of mass communication. But have we become lazy, for example in this post spellcheck as told me my spelling is wrong several times and helped me fix it as well as auto correcting it, sometimes to the wrong thing. Walter J. Ong argues that text takes a living thought and objectifies it and at the same time makes us and text a little bit dumber. Which I can agree with as when I was watching Fry’s Planet Word he featured at tribe Asia which up until recently recorded all its history orally but with some recent generations being taught writing they found they could no longer remember as much as their forbearer’s had as they had become reliant on text. We probably are very reliant and trusting of text, probably because we are taught that it is important, it will help us and that it is part of life from an early age. Yet, it wasn’t always like that, we evolved and grew into it. When we first started using text it created a new kind of power, one that can be used wisely but also snobbishly.

Like uncle Ben said “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

Oh dear I just quoted Spiderman, I don’t even like Spiderman. I should probably stop now.

Also here is a link to the Fry’s Planet Word’s programme page : http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015h1xb

The picture is of the Norse Viking runic alphabet, which was briefly mentioned in the lecture. Some of the characters are similar to the lettering we use today.

All of the above links were accessed on the 19.10.2013.

Hand prints – its all about hands tonight

My first lecture of the semester showed us among other things cave art. Cave art is something I find really fascinating, especially the stencilled hand prints. There is something really powerful about them. they are a direct physical link to the past. The reason I’m talking about them today is that I read an interesting article on the National Geographic website, which I will link at the end, which concerned a recent study of cave art hand prints made by a archaeologist Dean Snow. Snow has examined and measured hand prints on cave walls from several different sites and concluded that contrary to belief, that three quarters of the hand prints belonged to women. Snow theory follows in the workings of John Manning, who worked out differences in hand and finger size between men and women. Now I’m kind of sceptical about this male/ female definite hand size difference. Manning worked on the difference between finger lengths whereas an evolutionary biologist by the name of R. Dale Guthrie performed a similar analysis but he measured the width of the palm from the thumb. He deduced that most the prehistoric hand prints belonged to teenage boys. But with all things prehistory we can only imagine their society and its structure, we will never really know. In my opinion the hand prints are like signatures. But why create artwork at all. Some believe that if the women created the artwork it would have a lot to do with the wellbeing of the group and to record events. However others believe that if it was teenage boys creating the cave art they would draw only what they liked, hulking animals and naked ladies, sex and violence in other words, which paints the adolescent male in very broad primitive strokes. Which links in to the outdated perception that cave art and sculpture, such as the Venus figures were prehistoric porn. This has pretty much been disproved as they were most likely fertility figures, made for good luck, protection, religion or spirituality. Most likely the handprints were made by men and women, it just so happens nobody’s said so before. I always assumed the hand prints were the artists (of both sex) making there mark or some sort of group ritual. In my mind cave art would have been a shared experience for an entire community.

National Geographic article: HUGHES, V. Were the first artists mostly women? Available at : http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131008-women-handprints-oldest-neolithic-cave-art/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20131011news-caveart&utm_campaign=Content#close-modal

Also here is a link to a BBC clip of some very early cave art featuring handprints from the Altamira cave in Spain :http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18459492

All of the above links were accessed on the 13.10.2013.

I’d also like to say thank you to all the people who have liked, commented on and follow my blog. 🙂

Fridge face

Pareidolia fridge plus magnets. He looks bored and full. Full of food.

Light switch Pareidolia

They’re everywhere. Light switch Pareidolia. They all look so sad. I thinks it because they have no mouths.

More Pareidolia hunting.

A wee light switch face. can you see it? More to come.

Hide and Seek – Pareidolia edition

I’ve been hunting pareidolias today. This one is vaguely face like if you really squint. More to come.