Much About Mucha

During the Art Nouveau time period, Czechoslovakian artist Alphonse Mucha was considered the “father” of this time period. At this point in time, this “new style” of art and architecture became popular at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The art style was most noted for it’s organic, free-flowing, curvilinear forms. After Alphonse took it upon himself to make an advertisement for the debuting play Gismonda, in Paris, his art style became the talk of the town. Thus being the reason why “Art Nouveau” was nicknamed “Style Mucha”. The art style was very popular around Europe and eventually branched into many different areas of the world.

Mucha’s works were seen in advertisements, books, jewelry, wallpapers, etc. Most of his works focused around beautiful, idealized women who often had long-flowing hair and clothing. The colors he used often consisted of pastels and organic, floral values. For as long as Mucha’s style and popularity set the world on fire, it was later put it out to rest. When Alphonse Mucha died in 1939, due to pneumonia, his style was considered “outdated”. Twenty years later, Art Nouveau appeared to have risen from the dead because it found itself plastered on many psychedelic posters and music albums for music artists like Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and the Incredible String Band. British musician and Stuckist artist, Paul Harvey, was greatly influenced by Mucha as well. Stuckism is an art movement that promotes “figurative paintings in opposition to conceptual art.” You can definitely see a Mucha influence in some of Harvey’s works.

Antoni Guadí

When you think about architecture and the creativity and ingenuity that is backed behind it, you usually think of something that has never been done or seen before. I remember reading Dr. Seuss books and being fascinated by the whimsical structures illustrated in many of his stories and wondered if there were any buildings that bared any kind of resemblance. When I was 11, my dad ended up taking a military assignment over in Germany and he brought my family along as well. We ended up living there for three years and over that time period, we were able to do a lot of traveling. We got to visit many different countries, including Spain.

I actually had the chance to view some of the buildings constructed by Antoni Guadí. I can honestly say, viewing his works in books, on the internet, or in magazines doesn’t do the real thing any justice, especially the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. Despite the building being very big in size, the intricate detail that Guadí wanted to design is amazing; considering the fact that back in the 1900s, when the project first began, all of the details in the stone were hand-carved. Even though Guadí passed away before his masterpiece was complete, his work was continued under a long list of other architects and researchers. Luckily technology has advanced far enough workers to be able to use a CNC milling machine to add in the detail, but much of their designs are based off of "reconstructed versions of his lost plans and modern adaptations". It is estimated that the Sagrada Família won’t be completed until 2026. I wonder if the completed version will end up being what he had in mind.

Helvetica - Top Font Choice

Like a lot of graphic designers, I find Helvetica to be one of my top choices for font usage. Its almost hard to put in words how this simple, sans-serif font has had such a huge impact and significance in society. Who could have guessed that this well-known font, created back in 1957 by Swiss typeface designers Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman, would be such a huge hit. I can totally agree when Mia Fineman says, "Miedinger's letterforms were smooth and well-proportioned, with a pleasing roundness that feels friendly yet sleek and efficient, like an amiable, perfectly groomed flight attendant in business class."

In a way, this font takes on its own personality and speaks to us as a way of saying, "Hey, I’m simple, readable, and I won’t put a strain on your eyes. Choose me, if you have a hard time choosing from another font-face." It has enough power to be corporate or friendly, boring or exciting, plain-jane or illustrative. After watching "Helvetica" in class, I found myself driving and looking for any and everything that Helvetica might have been used for, on the way home. I immediately became amazed by the number of business logos and street signs the typeface was responsible for. Target was easily among the few recognizable business, along with JCPenney, the Toyota dealer, and even the lettering on the back of my iPod.

http://www.slate.com/id/2166887/slideshow/2166963/fs/0//entry/2166966/

Merchants of Cool

After watching the web video, "Merchants of Cool", my mind started to wonder a million times a minute on how intelligent, manipulative, cunning, and productive the media can be. It’s evident that as time changes, so do people, and as people change, so do trends. Teenagers and young adults are primarily the targets observed by the media (advertisers, marketers, graphic designers, etc.) Between that teenage and young adult time frame, it almost seems as they’re the only ones’ with an opinion and 9 times out of 10 many of these young people want to voice how/when/what/why they feel about certain subjects. For this very reason, the target area is closely examined by the media in order for them to be able to determine "what’s hot" and "what’s not" in society.

It’s not hard to believe that more than half of America is consumed by what they see on TV or on the internet. Of course, there are those who have their own unique style and think of themselves as "non-comformists", but if they find the time to hop on social networking sites or the latest gossip blogs, they have a part in it as well. I believe as a creator of such sites and companies, you have to strategically have the ability to reach a certain target area that will cause other target areas to take part as well. If a trend among young adults and teenagers takes place, you’ll have a few million older adults who still think of themselves as "cool" trying to pull of the same thing. All it takes is enough strategy and focus for something to spark. For example, Facebook..the targeted audience was initially just for Harvard college students and over a period of 6 years, the site has been able to reach a mass of individuals from different backgrounds, all across the globe.

Comic Book History

The beginning history of comics can be traced back to the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century.  There’s a unique diversity to the comics that are commonly present today, but I wanted to explore the history of black comic book characters.  We’ve seen black superheroes in movies and TV shows like Hancock, Blankman, and Meteor Man, but what about them actually being present and printed in comic strips?  The only superhero I could think of in present day comic books would be X-Men’s own, Storm.  After doing some research, I came across the first black super hero to have his own comic book solely dedicated to himself.  Famous comic illustrator, Stan Lee, was responsible for The Blank Panther aka T’Challa.  He made his first appearance in a Fantastic Four comic in 1966.  Diving deeper into my research, I came across a comic book that was illustrated and printed by Blacks for Blacks in 1947.  Coincidentally, the name of the comic book was called “All-Negro Comics”; introducing the first "independent" black heroes: Ace Harlem and Lion Man.

Black comic book characters actually ended up being a very important piece of history all across the world.  Many of these characters were often depicted as being humorous characters; having extremely dark skin, kinky hair, and worn out clothing.  Most of the time, the characters were shown as being able to dance, play music, dominate in sports, or eat chicken/watermelon.  Of course this all sounds stereotypical, but from an artistic stand point, the overall look of simplicity that that these characters possessed developed into greater detail with over-exaggerated muscle on top of muscle, chiseled abs, and a perfect face.  Artists took these black characters and had them evoke the same kind of feeling we're supposed to get when we see Batman or Superman.

  

http://poisonousparagraphs.blogspot.com/2009/02/dart-adams-presents-black-like-me.html

Illuminated Manuscript

During the Medieval time period, illuminated manuscripts were considered marvels and modern-day pieces of graphic art.  With precision and carefulness, these manuscripts were “illuminated” and “enlightened” with bright, bold, and very vibrant colors, such as golds, reds, and silvers.  An illuminated manuscript could not considered as such, if gold was not present in the illustration because gold was a way of “exalting“ the text.

Today most books are mass-produced and the hard work that was once put in, somewhat lacks originality and it‘s own unique appeal.  Back then, it took patience and skill to come up with a layout incorporated with color, decoration, and text.  The Limbourg Brothers were great examples of artists who took the time to actually exercise patience.  They were contracted by the Valois duke of Burgundy, Philip II, to work on illuminating a bible and it taking them four years to complete.  Coincidentally, Philip II ended up dying before the illustrations were complete.

It is evident that photographs were not present back then, so it made since that men and women of power would go out there way to make sure that they had an artist(s) who was able to record and illustrate their life’s accomplishments because they knew that their story would be told centuries and centuries to come.  For instance, Simon Marmion’s “Grandes Chroniques de France” recalls the history of France; beginning under the reign of Saint Louis and chronologically progressing through his successors until 1461.  It’s safe to say that we’ve came a long way and owe many of our advancements to the artists and innovators in earlier civilizations.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/manu/hd_manu.htm
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/book/hd_book.htm

Graffiti Movement

It’s amazing how we, as artists, are told that we are some of the most innovative, imaginative, and creative people to ever walk this earth. Even more amazing is how many artists have been ridiculed, chastised, and even killed due to their own artistic freedom of communication. I guess we can say that graffiti is probably the most relevant to the topic of artistic expression. Graffiti is everywhere..whether we realize it or not. We see it in bathroom stalls, sides of buildings, highway overpasses, etc. The movie we watched in class really hit hard on how difficult and dangerous it is to be able to communicate to the world without being accused as a troublemaker, "gangsta", or vandal. The fact that graffiti started out as just figure drawings and engravings on cave walls and ruins and how it has evolved and found its way onto much larger platforms shows just how elaborate, unrestrained, and influential societies are across the globe.

This graffiti, by Banksy, depicts the removal of graffiti.  If you notice the animal figures in the illustration, they resemble the cave art found in Lascaux.



After doing a little research online, I found a couple of websites like weburbanist.com & open.your.eyes.free.fr that had several different pictures and touched on a very interesting type of graffiti called "stencil graffiti". Stencil graffiti is illustrated with the use of graffiti. Some may consider it "cheating" because it's not entirely freehand. Instead, an image is cut out and designed on some kind of media, like paper or cardboard, and then the image is transferred onto the surface with spray paint or roll-on paint. Even though the idea and concept sounds pretty basic, artists like the mysterious Banksy are able to design and illustrate some pretty detailed & elaborate pieces in a matter of minutes and still be able to get their point across.