Pop art

Pop Art

Pop art originated in Great Britain in the 1950s and later came out of America in the 1960s.
It was a response to the post war optimism and social tensions which were being aired on TV for the first time, e.g. race relations, women's rights and colonial exploitation.
It coincided with the emergence of pop music and the rise of film stars, who often featured in the work.
The word 'Pop' originates from 'Popular' culture, which sums up what the movement was about.
Some artists such as Andy Warhol used elements from popular culture, like advertising and packaging in his work, for example this campbell's soup tin.



The pop art movement was revolutionary in many ways and has influenced so much of modern design since then. Artists often used bright bold colours, like red, yellow and blue. Pop art combined different styles of painting, sculpture, collage and street art.
In the US, artists used to duplicate, reproduce, overlay and combine visual elements.

Album cover design from this period also reflected popular culture of the time.

Peter Bakes work

Pop art was influenced by surrealism, abstract expressionism and Dadaism.

Leading artists of the era include Keith Haring (see below)

Claes Odenburg and Coosje an Bruggen were known for bringing pop art to the masses by enlarging every day objects in public places.

Robert Rauschenberg was known for his 1950s collages made from non-traditional materials and objects.  He combined painting and sculpture.

Richard Hamilton was famous for this collage combining references to newspapers, comics, advertising, appliances, food, packaging, television and movies.

David Hockney is a British artist whose early work had a humorous mood, vivid colour and magazine style images.

Massimo Vignelli

Vignelli was an Italian designer, who worked on packaging design, furniture design and public signage.   He studied architecture in Venice.

His work was part of the modernist movement, focusing on simplicy and geometric forms.

He used very few typefaces in his work that he considered to be perfect, e.g. Bodoni, Helvetica and Garamond No 3.

He is most famous for designing the New York City Subway map.

Vignelli admired architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. He moved to New York in the mid 60s to introduce America to his design style which was inspired by their ideal for functional beauty.

He was responsible for taking modernist European graphic design to America.

His clients included American Airlines, Ford, IBM, Xerox and even St Peter's Lutheran church in Manhattan.

He described himself as an 'information architect', structuring information to make it more understandable.

His map of the New York subway received criticism for missing out streets and for its use of non conventional colours, like grey to represent water. Vignelli preferred to call it a diagram rather than a map, an ingenious work of streamlined beauty.

Vignelli opened a design company called 'Unimark International' with 6 other designers in the mid 1960s, which became one of the world's largest design firms.

Swiss Design

The International Typographic Style
Swiss Design

This graphic design style emerged in Switzerland in the 1950s with an emphasis on cleanliness and readability. The style is recognizable by its asymmetric layout, grids, sans serif typefaces and flush left, ragged right text.

Many of the early pieces of design, featured typography as the main design element, which is where the name came from. The grid was considered the “most legible and harmonious means for structuring information.” Information was meant to be presented clearly, without the influence of propaganda or commercial advertising. Order and clarity was the goal. Keen attention to detail, precision, craft skills, system of education and technical training, a high standard of printing as well as a clear refined and inventive lettering and typography were at the heart of the International Typographic Style.

Swiss style is all about using less, so instead of adding more elements to work with, they prefer to remove as much as possible. It’s very common to spot the use of font-size contrast in the works of the Swiss Style. (See below)

The initiators of the Swiss Grid Style were of the belief that the designer is a visual communicator not an artist, and that design should be grounded on universal artistic principles, and using a scientific approach should provide a well-defined solution to a problem.

The early years of the International typographic style has its roots in two swiss design schools, the school of Design and the Zurich School of the Applied Arts. The foundational course at the school of design was modified in 1908 to include a design technique based on grid work.  Ernst Keller began to teach at the other school in 1918 and developed a typography course. Led by designers Josef Müller-Brockmann at the Zurich School of Arts and Krafts and Armin Hofmann at the Basel School of Design, the style favored simplicity, legibility and objectivity.

Josef Müller-Brockman

He is one of the most well known swiss designers, influenced by Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus. He is most known for his poster advertisements for  the Zurich Town Hall theater productions. He taught at the Zurich School of Arts. He wrote the book Grid Systems in Graphic Design which helped to spread the knowledge about the grids thorough the world. As a graphic designer, Müller Brockmann's skills included letterpress, silkscreen, and lithography. 

Joseph Müller-Brockmann, Auto Club of Switzerland Poster, 1955

Joseph Müller-Brockmann,  Zürich Town Hall Poster, 1955

Ernst Keller’s work used simple geometric forms, vibrant colors and evocative imagery. Other early pioneers include Théo Ballmer and Max Bill.

Max Bill

Max Bill was an architect, painter, typographer, industrial designer, engineer, sculptor, educator, and graphic designer, born in Switzerland. He studied at the Bauhaus school.  Max Bill, alongside Otl Aicher, founded the Ulm School of Design in Germany, a design school initially created in the tradition of the Bauhaus and that is notable for its inclusion of semiotics.

After WW2 international trade increased and there was a need for clarity in typography and design to help these relationships progress.  The style expanded beyond Switzerland to America. The work of american designer Rudolph de Harak was heavily influenced by swiss design.

Utopia

Cultural Impact

Utopia

"At the core of Modernism lay the idea that the world had to be fundamentally rethought" (Modernism: Searching for Utopia, V&A ).   http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/m/modernism/

Utopia is the idea that a society can possess highly desirable or near perfect qualities.  Modernism was not so much a style of design but a collection of ideas whereby designers believed that technology and art could be

used to create a better world and social improvement. The end of WWI led to these new utopian ideas.  

There were different steams of utopian views including Communist utopia, Social utopia, Spiritual Utopia, Dionysian utopia and Rational utopia. 

Communist utopia relates to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the art that became part of everyday life.  Artists and achitects designed new types of buildings and innovative propaganda, sometimes referred to as constructivism.  Constructivism was not so much about decoration but functionalism and organisation.

At the heart of Social utopia was the idea that the machine and industry was a way of creating equality. Some designers incorporated the spiritual aspect (The Dutch group, De Stijl) while others like the Bauhaus school, abandoned it.

Spiritual utopia was a way of thinking that abandoned sterile materialism of the modern world and found expression from the intellect and soul. German Expressionist design was a prime example of this. 

Dionysian utopia was the idea that science and technology could transform the world.  Futurism was emotional and sensual, celebrating energy, violence and dynamism of modern urban life. 

Rational utopia had a more rational and practical approach to social change.  It held the views that mechanisation could improve daily life. 

Communist Utopia – Constructivism

The term 'construction art' was first used in 1917 to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko.

'Dance', 1915

The movement developed from Russian Futurism after World War 1. 

Constructivist theory derived from the Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow, from 1920–22.

The founders of this abstract art movement are considered to be Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Vladimir Tatlin was largly influenced by cubism and Pablo Picasso.

Initially the constructivists worked on three dimensional constructions but later the term was used to describe two dimensional work too.  Montage and factography were a bit part of the two dimensional work. Factography refers a series of stories created by the communist regime out of real pieces from the past, changing the facts to create a greater truth.  The Constructivists were early developers of the techniques of photomontage.

The artists worked on designs for industry and also street designs for public festivals. One example is this propaganda poster by Lazar Markovich Lissitzky called 'Beat the whites with the red wedge'.  The red wedge represents the bolsheviks defeating their opponents in the Russian civil war.

The key work of Constructivism was Vladimir Tatlin's proposal for the Monument to the Third International (Tatlin's Tower) (1919–20). Tatlin's Tower was a design for a grand monumental building by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, that was never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917,

Constructivists posters featured bright colours and geometric shapes, for example the work of the Stenberg brothers, Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg.

Poster for Dziga Vertov's The Man, Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg.

Some of the constructivists taught at the Bauhaus school in Germany.

Dionysian Utopia – Futurism

It was an artistic and socialist movement originating in Italy in early 20th century.  The artwork focused on the concepts of speed, youth, violence and technology. Its goal was to liberate Italy from its past. The founder of the movement was the Italian poet, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.  

Giacomo Balla, Abstract Speed + Sound, 1913–1914

Many Italian Futurists supported Fascism in the hope of modernizing a country divided between the industrialising north and the rural, archaic South. Like the Fascists, the Futurists were Italian nationalists, radicals, admirers of violence, and were opposed to parliamentary democracy. After WW2 many Futurist artists had difficulty in their careers because of their association with a defeated and discredited regime.

Semiotics

Notes taken from Semiotics for Beginners, Daniel Chandler- Chapter 7

Denotation, Connotation and Myth

• Denotation is literal meaning (signifier). Can be referred to as digital code.
• Particular word or sign can have many connotations (signified). Can be referred to as analogue code.
• Denotation is what any culture at any given time would recognise the image as depicting.
• Connotations refer to socio-cultural and personal associations
• Signs are more polysemic in connotation than in denotation. (Open to interpretation).
• Fiske explained that 'denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed' (Fiske 1982, 91).
• Barthes concluded that that connotation is more obvious, it is the first meaning that we see, even though the literal sign pretends to be. Connotation creates the illusion of denotation. (Naturalization. Connotation is also a natural meaning)
• Most theorists say that all signs have connotations. David Mick and Laura Politi said You cannot separate denotation and connotation any more than you can separate comprehension and interpretation. (Mick & Politi 1989, 85)
• Denotation and connotation use codes.
• Levels of representation refers to different levels of meaning or signification. Roland Barthes adopted this idea from Louis Hjelmslev.
  FIRST ORDER =  DENOTATION = SIGNIFIER AND SIGNIFIED
  SECOND ORDER  = CONNOTATION = SIGNIFIER AND SIGNIFIED
  
  Denotation leads to a chain of connotations
  
  
• Changing the form of the signifier can generate different connotations.
• Barthes argued that denotation and connotation combine to produce ideology or Myth. Some have described this as a third order signification.
  He argued that myths serve the function of naturalization, to make dominant cultural and historical values seem normal/ natural, e.g. femininity, englishness. 'Bourgeois ideology... turns culture into nature,' he declares (Barthes 1974, 206).