Aubrey Beardsley.

Aubrey Beardsley was born on 21 August, 1872, in Brighton, England. Growing up in a middle class family with a piano teacher as a mother, both him and his sister were considered musical and artistic child marvels. At the age of nine he wrote his first play which was proformed by him and others at his school. in 1884 appeared in public as an "infant musical phenomenon", playing at several concerts with his sister. His sister later went on to become an actress.

As a young child he was often sick which was a condition that followed him into his adult years. At nine he had his first reported attack of tuberculosis, the disease which was to reduce him to an invalid several times and finally cause his death.

In 1883 his family moved from brighton to London, where he attended Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School. A year after this his art work was being published in the school newspaper. After leaving school he worked as a clerk in an insurrance office. It wasn't till 1891 that he took up art as an actual profession and in 1982 he started attending art classes at Westminster School of Art. He also travelled to Paris where he fell in love with artist and poster designer Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the obsession with the Japanise prints that had kicked off in paris at the time. this later went on to be major inspiration for his work.

He can definatly be described as an art nouveau artist but his work was probably the most contreversiol of the work that was produced in the era. He was known for his pictures being only black and white, both quite sharp bold colours, where as it was much more common for light colours and pastels to be used. he also used some quite disturbing and erotic themes in some of his work and some have described some of his work as 'grotesque'. He played on this fact and was quoted to say "I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing."

In 1897 he converted to Roman Catholicism. He begged his publishers to destroy any work that would be considered unholy or obscene but this wish was ignored and his publisheres 'Smithers' continued to sell prints and also forgeries of Beardsley's work. Many think that the reason he had such a turn of heart was because of worries he faced due to his illness and fear of dying and what would come next, if anything does.

His private life and sexuality has been constantly questioned. Beardsley was associated with the homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde. Most people believed that he was asexual (not interested in having a relationship with anyone, man or woman) which would make sense because of his re-occuring chronic illness and his devotion to his work. Some rumors came out that he had an inncestual relationship with his older sister mabel and that she misscarried with his baby. During his entire career, Beardsley had recurrent attacks of tuberculousis. He suffered frequent lung hemorrhages and was often unable to work or leave his home. In 1897 deteriorating health prompted his move to the French Riviera, where he died a year later on 16 March 1898 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Menton, France.

Here are two of his more controversial works. I think it can be agreed that as an artist he is very good at what he does but I am not sure if I particularly enjoy his images. They are interesting to look at but for me personally they leave me feeling quite perverse, especially the ones featuring genitalia. But it can be questioned weather this is because it is disgusting or because society has made me feel like it should be.

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is slightly more than an art style, or a architectural style, for some people it is seen as more of a lifestyle. One that is eco friendly calm and peaceful. The word its self comes from the french language and means 'new art'. Art Nouveau aimed to get away from the academic art seen commonly through the 19th century and before. Noted academic artists include Sir Edward John Poynter, Albert Moore and Alexandre Cabanel. Art Nouveau was much more abstract and elegant. It was inspired by nature. The natural shapes made by growing plants and tree's. 

I found a quote on art nouveau although I cant find who it was spoken by but it sums up the subject perfectly. "Think of a sensuous line, of a flowing line, a line which bends and turns back on itself. Think of a feminine form, swirling and curving. Think of plant forms growing and flowering. Think of lines which seem not to confirm; think of waves, think of womans hair; think of twisting smoke. Think too of contured lines, lines which begin parallel but converge and actually contradict each other."

It was most popular at the very end of the 19th century through to the first few decades of the 20th century. Mainly in Europe but it did effect design across the world. Art Nouveau was not the styles original name, and it is called different things in different courtries but in 1895 German art dealer Siegfried Bing set up a gallery Maison de l'Art Nouveau (House of New Art) that was exclusively showcasing modern art. The gallery gained a lot of fame quite quickly and at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, he exhibited installations of modern furniture, tapestries and sculptures. The beautiful abstract curves became very popular and they were so heavily associated with the style that the name from his gallery became the name of they style that we hear of so commonly today.

It took a lot of influence from japanese work. Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters.

Famous artists from this time include Gustav Klimt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Koloman Moser, Koloman Moser, William Bradley, Aubrey Beardsley, Ernesto Basile and many more.



Here is a good example of art nouveau in architecture. You can see it especially on the cast iron bars which is a common thing that you see all over cities on and inside buildings even now. 

This is a poster designed by famous art nouveau artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. These colours are colours often used in art nouveau works. The beige and yellow, all light colours that work well together, nothing to gaudy and bold. 

This is a famous piece by Alphonse Mucha, a czech artist who was well known for his inclusion of woman in his work, often with long flowing hair and always looking beautiful. 

"Less is More".

Earlier on I was talking about how I thought that the bauhaus and the swiss style have really influenced a lot of graphic design and packaging design that we have seen come about in the more recent years so I thought I would find some pictures and give you some examples of what I am talking about. 

This woman's body spray is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Simple sans serifed fonts and block colours. Also the shape of this bottle is really interesting, the smoothness yet unusualness is another thing that is defiantly descended from swiss and bauhaus styles. 

I think these bottles are really impressive. I love the use of misted glass on the bottle in the middle and it ties them together really nicely as a trio. The alignment of the text all being to the right hand side is another common thing you see with the swiss styles and I love the effect the text being on its side has to the overall look. Very Impressed. 

These bottles are quite similar to the last one but the black with bright coloured type packs a little bit more of a punch than the last ones, which were much more elegant and airy.

Even Pantone probably the biggest paint company on the globe are using this style, and the matt effect of the colour finishes these tins of nicely.

Festival of Britain.

The festival of Britain was held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. It was to give the people of Britain a sense of unity and strength to help them recover from the aftermath of World war 1. It was a series of exhibitions promoting british technology, science, architecture and the arts. The main part of the festival took place in London on the south bank of the main london river the thames but there were also events in Poplar, South Kensington, Glasgow, Cardiff, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath, Perth, Bournemouth, York, Aldeburgh, Inverness, Cheltenham, Oxford and many other cities and towns. In total there were 187 shows the official programme map with events and exhibitions around the country.

A view from across the thames of the festival of Britain's main event. 

The festival, organised by the labour government, aimed to celebrate the best of Britain and give people a real sense of national identity. It was an exiting thing to happen after the long boring years of the war and a good way to set people on the path to 're-building Britain', showcasing lots of design and architecture to inspire people.

Displayed in the main part of the festival was lots of modern, and modernism architecture which also helped the boom of artists working in this style, such as muller-brokmann, come to light in the years to follow, and is where lots of the inspiration of the new architecture that was see around our cities comes from today. 

Here is one of the images that was displayed at the modernistic section of the south bank exhibition. It is a bus shelter.

Henry Moore is another artists who's sculptures could be seen at the festival, based at the Tate gallery. In 48 Moore had won the International Sculpture Prize at the Venice Biennale which was a major achievement for him. His sculptures were seen as modern but also accessible which made him a leading role model for sculptures in the years to come. 

I couldn't find any imagery of Moore's work being showcased at the FoB but here is an example. As you can see it was around this time that things really started changing and becoming much more minimal and abstract and the FoB defiantly had a big part to play in that. 

Even the poster for the festival is pretty modern looking with a simple use of colours and some quite abstract and stylised shapes. Though a serifed typeface has still been chosen. 

The festival was something devised by the Labour Government and was associated with Clement Attlee, the prime minister at the time. When the Conservatives were elected and Winston Churchill came into power the exhibition at the south bank was soon demolished.

Josef Müller-Brockmann.

Josef Müller-Brockmann was one of this first designers that really brought the Swiss style to light. He was a swiss designer and teacher who had studied architecture, design and the history of art himself at University. He opened his own design studio on 1936 and this is when he really started focusing on the style of design that made him such a big name in the art world in later life. He also wrote books on design, "The Graphic Artist and his Design Problems", "Grid Systems in Graphic Design" , the publications "History of the Poster" and "A History of Visual Communication".


I quote " I became a graphic designer by accident". At school I was loth to write much for compositions so I put in illustrations instead. My teacher enjoyed them and thought I had talent. He suggested that I should pursue an artistic career: gravure etching or retouching, for instance. So I was apprenticed as a retoucher in a printing works. I lasted one day because I said that this wasn’t artistic work. After that I was apprenticed to two elderly architects. With them I lasted four weeks. Then I went to see all the graphic designers I found listed in the telephone directory because I wanted to find out what they did. Afterwards I enrolled to study graphic design at the Zurich Gewerbeschule." - Josef Muller-Brokmann



He has been noted for his clean and simplistic style of design, his interesting use of geometry and colours and his love of the helvetica typeface. A sans serifed typeface, now widely used and developed by Max Miedinger in 1957. His skills included letterpress, silkscreen, and lithography.


Here are two famous posters that he made, the first for a Beethoven concert in Zurich. The were supposed to represent the flow and harmony of Beethovens music. It was made in 1955 and many people were impressed with the modern looking design. It was something a lot of people hadn't experienced before and it represented the future.


Again I quote "In my designs for posters, advertisements, brochures and exhibitions, subjectivity is suppressed in favour of a geometric grid that determines the arrangement of the type and images. The grid is an organisational system that makes it easier to read the message...The grid is an organisational system that enables you to achieve an orderly result at a minimum cost. The task is solved more easily, faster and better. It brings the arbitrary organisation of text into a logical system in keeping with the conflict. It can demonstrate uniformity that reaches beyond national boundaries, a boon to advertising from which IBM, for instance, has profited. Objective-rational design means legible design, objective information that is communicated without superlatives or emotional subjectivity."

The second one, made in 1959, pictures the overlapping of the two words which is meant to remind our brains of the flicker you get on the film, much more common in older black and white films. And this is why he has used the black and the grey also. Apart from anything I think it is just a really nice example of what you can do with text and the idea of text being the main object of a picture not just the support. I think it is a impressive thing to be able to make a poster look good without the use of any imagery at all and this I think is something that I would be really interested in doing in my own work. 

I really like the swiss styles and the idea of simplicity as a form of beauty. It is also something I think that is coming back into light quite a lot in design recently especially since we have the importance of being eco-friendly and not using so much packaging or paper or ink. You see a lot of packaging today that has taken obvious influence from the swiss style and the phrase 'a little is a lot' springs to mind in both areas.

Swiss International Style.

The Swiss International Style was something that came about in graphic design in the late 1950's. It was clean and sharp and direct, often not featuring any imagery at all. Either just text or single tone shapes. It used sans serifed typefaces and the text would often appear to the left or too the right, rarely centred. Famous artists from the time of the Swiss Style are Max Bill, Afrian Frutiger Josef Muller-Brockmann, Paul Rand, Jan Tschichold and many more. However although the style only really started appearing around the 1950's its origins can be seen in lots of other artistic movements that came before its time.

Akzidenz Grotesk - 1896

This is the name of a typeface that was released by the H. Berthold AG type foundry in 1896. It was one of the first sans serifed typefaces to be widely used and was inspiration to a lot of people that were first designing when the Swiss Style came into swing.

Neoplasticism - 1917

This movement started in 1917 in the Netherlands and sought to bring peace and harmony and order. The work was completely abstract, using only the basic colours and shapes often using horizontal and vertical lines. Piet Mondrian is probably one of the most famous artists known for working in this style. 

One of Mondrians most famous paintings.

Bauhaus - 1919

The bauhaus was a college in Germany specialising in the arts and was famous for the specific styles of art that it taught and the work that came out of that. It influenced every aspect of design that be architecture, graphic design, interior design, art, typography even industrial. It was about keeping things simple and functioning and taking away all the ornamentation and frills, but still keeping it sleek and beautiful. 

Here is a picture of the Bauhaus school.

And here is the Bauhaus centre it Tel Aviv, the curved white walls are common features of bauhaus influenced architecture.

Negative Space

Negative space, in art terms, is the space around an image, and the space inside it. So if you imagine a black background with a white silhouette of a bird in the middle, the black part would be negative and the white part would be positive, or the other way round. One negative and one positive.


Here is a well know example of the use of negative space. This picture, made in 1915, by Edgar Rubin who was a Danish psychologist is called Rubin Vase and shows the when you make the tone around the outside of the vase darker than the inside of the vase, and make it a silohette image, your eyes focus on the white and instead of a vase you can see the profile image of two men.

 

This was done as a psychology test but has now become a popular thing among artists and designers all over the world.