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.

Modernism – Bauhaus – ” House of Building”.

Dessau Bauhaus school.
picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bauhaus.JPG

I’m going to talk about the Bauhaus as it ties in quite nicely with my summer project. Though the Bauhaus’s relationship with German Expression is much disputed. I believe it must have had an undeniable influence on them as they were joined by Wassily Kandinsky a member of the Der Blaue Reiter one of the two groups of German Expressionism. The Bauhaus was set up in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany. It was the coming together of the Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. This joining of the fine arts and the applied arts was much inspired by William Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement with wanted to combine and reinforce the importance of both form and function in art and design. Gropius would be joined by artists and designers such as Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks and would have visits form the De Stijl arstist Theo Van Doesburg and Constructivist artist and architect El Lissitzky. Gropius would be followed by Hannes Meyer in 1928 and Meyer would be followed by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe in 1930 as heads of the Bauhaus. Despite only running for 14 years.

On White II by Wassily Kandinsky 1923. picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kandinsky_white.jpg

The Bauhaus’s influence spread widely throughout the western world due to the fact that many of its members emigrated after its forced closure in 1933 by the Nazis. The Nazis presence and disapproval of the Bauhaus and its ideas was felt very early on its short flourishing. Weimar had been and ideal situation for the Bauhaus as, it was where Germany’s new democracy was laid out, hence the Weimar republic, and the state government of Thuringia (where Weimar was situated) was until 1924 held by the social democrats. But in 1924 the NSDAP (Nazi party)  gained control of the Thuringia state government and promptly but the staff of the Bauhaus on six month contracts and cut their funding in half. This caused the Bauhaus’s move to Dessau, more problems arose as the school fought not to labelled as a hot-house of the Bolshevism that the right feared so greatly. Though Hannes Meyer the new head of the Bauhaus at this point was slightly more towards the left, he didn’t want the school to become politicised. As support for the NSDAP grew, it spread to Dessau prompting the schools move to Berlin where they remained for  their last ten months before closing in 1933. The Bauhaus was labelled as Degenerate Art and  ‘un – German’ for all its Communist and Jewish ties. Yet despite it short life, Bauhaus is still influential today.

Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar 1919 – 1923 by Herbert Bayers. picture from :http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2001.392

Red/Green Architecture , yellow/violet gradation by Paul Klee, 1922. picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Green_Architecture_yellow_violet_gradation_by_Paul_Klee.jpeg

Its influence on modernist architecture was great but so was its art and its experimentation in typography and colour theory. Herbert Bayers and Laszlo Moholy Nagy did much work with experimental typography it. Bold text laid out in geometric formats was a big departure from the norm. It may not have always be successful in that it was not always functional. In that it was hard to read but it made and still makes an impact on the viewer. Colour theory was also important to the artists of the Bauhaus, Itten, Feininger and Kandinsky can be seen as examples of this. They are described as Expressionists but they sought to find a scientific theory behind the use and the feel of colours and shapes and there relationships. You can take a Kandinsky colour test here :

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/bauhaus/Main.html

Farbkreis by Johannes Itten. picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Farbkreis_Itten_1961.png

The Bauhaus aim was to do what Morris had attempted all those years ago to create a “new guild of craftsmen, without class snobbery.”  Walter Gropius, Bauhaus pamphlet, 1919. Germany was a new country of sorts with new ideas and had been greatly changed by WWI and was still recovering from its effects. The Bauhaus ‘s modernism wanted to bring together art and design, form and function in order to better both fields and so that they could learn from each-other. The Bauhaus system is what most contemporary art colleges have been modelled. That is a pretty good legacy for such a short-lived movement that faced so much adversity.

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

WINTON, A, G. The Bauhaus 1919 – 1933. Available at :http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Bauhaus. Available at :  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/56418/Bauhaus

MOMA. Bauhaus 1919 – 1933. Available at : http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/bauhaus/Main.html

Bauhaus online. Walter Gropius Bio. Available at : http://bauhaus-online.de/en/atlas/personen/walter-gropius

Bauhaus Online. Available at : http://bauhaus-online.de/en

“new guild of craftsmen, without class snobbery.”  Walter Gropius, Bauhaus pamphlet, 1919 from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus

All of the above links were accessed on the 21.11.13.