The Vienna Secession and Futurism

 'In Austria, the Vienna Secession, with its Sezessionstil, came into being on 3 April 1897, when the younger members of the Künstlerhaus, the Viennese Creative Artists’ Association, resigned in stormy protest. Technically, the refusal to allow foreign artists to participate in Künstlerhaus exhibitions was the main issue, but the clash between tradition and new ideas emanating from France, England, and Germany lay at the heart of the confl ict, and the young artists wanted to exhibit more frequently. Painter Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was the guiding spirit who led the revolt; architects Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867–1908) and Josef Hoff mann (1870–1956) and artist-designer Koloman Moser (1868–1918) were key members. Like the Glasgow School, the Vienna Secession became a countermovement to the fl oral art nouveau that fl ourished in other parts of Europe.' - Megg's.

This movement was founded by the Secessionists: Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser and Fritz Waerndorfer.

 Koloman Moser was an Austrian artist who had considerable influence on twentieth-century graphic art and a co founder of Wiener Werkstatte. Wiener Werkstatte was a company established in 1903 by Moser and Hoffman. It was a community of visual arts in Vienna, bringing together designers, artists, architects, working with ceramics, fashion, silver, furniture and graphic arts.

 

Moser's designs in architecture, furniture, jewellery, graphics, and tapestries helped characterise the work of this era.Moser's style was continuing upon the clean lines and motifs of classical Greek and Roman art and architecture in reaction to the Baroque decendence of his 'turn-of-the-century' Viennese surroundings.
 In about 1902 he published a portfolio titled Die Quelle, of beautiful and elegant graphic works for such things like tapastries, fabrics, and wallpaper.
Then in 1903, Moser and Hoffman founded Wiener Werkstatte, whose artists and studios produced a number of designed household goods, like flatware, glassware, silverware, rugs and textiles.
Moser designed a 100 Austro-Hungarian krone note over-stamped and used as provisional Hungarian kronen in 1920. 

In 1907, due to internal conflicts, Moser withdrew from the Wiener Werkstatte. 
Moser was one of the designers for Austria's leading art journal 'Ver Sacrum.'
This paid great attention to design and was designed mainly by Moser, Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffman.

One of Moser's most prominent designs used in a building(The Steinhof Church), was chosen to be a main motif of the Austrian 100 euro coin. 

   

 So as we have seen, especially Moser, they have been a big influence on the history of graphic design where designers keep building on another designer's work.


Futurism

Futurism was an artistic movement that started in Italy in the early 20th century. This movement was different to any other type of artistic movement. As the name says, it wanted to show and possess a futuristic feel to it. Therefore, it emphasized speed, technology, youth, violence and obstructed objects.

How did Futurism affect graphic design though? A few factors are simulteneity, lines of force, repeated motifs, inclusion of typographical elements and collage. 

Marinetti's revolution stated that futurist designs should have:
    - different typefaces of different shapes and sizes on the same page,
    - with 3 or 4 colours of ink, with the use of italics or standard type to reflect smooth of swift sensations as indicators of onomatopeias.

Marinetti advocated 'the destruction of syntax'. The futurist expression had to reflect the futurist thought, with no association to the past typography, method of painting or conventions. 
He was after the destruction of harmony on the page, in favour of 'flux and reflux, leaps and bursts that run through the page.'  

In the 1920's the style's commercial version is best manifested through Fortunato Depero whose covers for Vanity Fair magazines and Campari as well as his own book Depero Futurista.

   
Words are overlaid and set in different directions.

 

Art Nouveau

By the late 1800s, art in Europe had taken a decidedly academic turn. To be considered a serious artist individuals had to attend one of the many arts academies. They needed to commit to a rigorous study of line, shape, form and texture with the ultimate goal of producing paintings of idealized figures and landscapes.
And of course, for all the artists who did just that, some thought academic art was rubbish and reacted accordingly. They believed art isn't meant to be studied like science or math. They though art flows through the soul and twists through the consciousness and decorates life with its beauty.
These rebel artists driven to create their own style in the art world were the innovators of the very short but highly influential movement known as art Nouveau. 

Lasting from approx. 1890 to 1910, Art Nouveau which means new art in French moved away from imitation of real subjects and moved towards the flowing and twisting lines and shapes of nature. Art Nouveau contains a lot of what art historians call whiplash curves decorating every available surface.

Due to the opening of foreign relations with Japan, the flowing lines of Japanese woodblock prints became a new inspiration for European artists. The simplicity, muted colours, and rich 2-dimensional imagery, are prominent features of Japanese prints and Art Nouveau design.
Art Nouveau artists were also influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movements' emphasis on hand craftsmanship and the highly expressive paintings of post-impressionists.

Common features or characteristics of Art Nouveau are muted colours like all of green, carnation pink and periwinkle blue, wiving and swirling lines as well as natural imagery.
 All these characteristics can be seen in all different types of work at the time including painting, sculpting, jewellery, architecture, household items and graphics.
 Artists wanted to replace the mishmash of mass produced items, antiques and classical imitations with well made and original decorations and furniture.

 Art Nouveau was the first artistic movement to give serious credibility to the graphic arts, especially the poster as an art form. The immensly popular posters designed by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec for example, contain illustrations and decorative lettering that practically foretells art's later emphasis on graphic design. In addition to posters, art Nouveau's graphics beautified book covers, catalogs and playbills.

 The twisting organnic lines of Art Nouveau can also be found in the paintings and illustrations of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha. His elongated depictions of actresses and fantasy women, decorative advertisements, theater posters and more. Mucha's best known works are a set of decorative panels 'The Seasons' that personifies the seasons as sensuous women that show both character of each season individually aswell as the harmony of seasons throughout the year. Like many other designers at the time, Mucha first captured public notice for poster designs, but he also received commissions for magazine covers, book designs, packages, publicity materials, and even postage stamps. In this way, the role and scope of graphic design activity steadily expanded throughout the period.

Art Nouveau had a great run, and even though it lasted for only 20 years, the work produced during this period made a lasting impression on the art world. Art Nouveau eventually gave way to the more industrial lines of Modernism and more predictable forms of art deco. However, Art Nouveau's prolific form and ornamentation has lasted through today.

Art Nouveau (part 2)

 'At age eighteen ( Jules Chéret )  he went to London but could only find work making catalogue drawings of furniture, so he returned to Paris after six months.  Chéret was convinced that pictorial lithographic posters would replace the typographic letterpress posters that filled the urban environment, but he could not convince advertisers of this. At age twenty-two he produced a blue and brown poster for Offenbach’s operetta Orphée aux Enfers (Orpheus in Hades, imagle below) When further commissions were not forthcoming, he returned to London, where he soon mastered the more advanced English color lithography. A poster commission for a family of clowns he had befriended was the turning point, leading to label commissions from the philanthropist and perfume manufacturer Eugène Rimmel. '

 Art Nouveau graphic designs often utilized stylized abstract shapes, contoured lines, and flat space inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. 

Artists in the West became aware of ukiyo-e prints to used for trade and communication between Eastern and Western nations increased during the last half of the 19th century.

One of the most innovative posters of this particular movement(Art Nouveau) was Toulouse-Lautrec's 1893 poster of the dancer Jane Avril. In this poster the lively atmosphere was captured by reducing imagery to simple flat shapes that convey an expression of the performance and environment. Although Toulouse-Lautrec only repoduced about three dozen posters, he was very influential in graphic design. His application of the ukiyo-e influenced graphic design toward more reductive imagery that signified, rather than dipicted, the subject. He also often joined lettering with his work by drawing the letters in the same technique as the elements of the picture. Below you can see his poster of the dancer Jane Avril.

Will Bradley was a self-taught American designer who also emerged as another Art Nouveau practitioner. His magazine covers, lettering styles and posters displayed a wide range of techniques and approaches. Bradley was inspired by European Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements. 
By the 1890's photoengraving was perfected. This allowed much better and precise works than hand engraving. Bradley's works were done using this 'new technology' at the time.

Cover for the magazine, 'Inland Printer', designed by Will Bradley

 For some reason, Art Nouveau rejected historicism and emphasized formal invention, so it became sort of like a transitional stage from Victorian design to the modern art movements of the early 20th Century. This transition like state is very evident in the work of the Belgian artist and designer Henry van de Velde. He changed from being a post-impressionist painter to furniture and graphic design in the 1890s. He used shapes and lines which was inspired by the natural world and then abstracted them to a point were they look 'pure',meaning that they look like abstract forms created by the designer rather than forms of nature. 
In his poster for Tropon food concentrate(1899), linear movements, organic shapes, and warm-hued colours combine into a nonobjective graphic expression. Although this poster has been interpreted as seperating egg yolks from egg whites, most viewers view it as pure form.

 Similarly exploring issues of form, architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh along with other fellow architects joined Margaret and France Macdonald in a revolutionary period of creativity beginning in the 1890s. This group combined rectangular structure with romantic and religious imagery in their unorthodox furniture, crafts and graphic designs. In a poster the group made for example, thereis obvious emphasis upon rising vertical composition.

The Arts & Crafts Movement

The Arts & Crafts Movement was an international design movement that reacted against mass production, both the low quality of design and the demeaning conditions under which products were produced. The movement began in England in the late 1800s, and spread th the United States in the early decades of the 20th Century.

The Arts & Crafts Movement typically tried to rejoin art and industry together, however the economies of scale worked against their goal of bringing good design to the people. In the graphics arts field, small private presses, forming under a model created by William Morris, reawakened fine printing and revivals of classic typefaces. They were fluid and exotic.

 The Arts & Crafts movement was also a socialist movement, which embraced architects, designers, artists, writers and any craft workers and all in between. Followers of the Arts & Crafts Movement, believed that industrialization isolated labor and created a 'dehumanizing' system between the designer and the manufacturer so they vowed to destroy the commercial system. The Movement was all about attention to design itself and a return to craftsmanship, hence the name Arts & Crafts movement.

The Movements Top Figure was William Morris. Morris and friends showed a way back of art to craft in the man-made environment. They wanted truth in the use and nature of materials and they wanted individual expression by designers. William Morris's small printing company, Kelmcott Press, produced 53 books of superb quality and refinement. Morris inspired book and type  designers to work with private presses who were more receptive to experimentation.

William Morris:

The Arts & Crafts Movement did not promote a particular style, but the common nature and simplicity form. Infact, architecture, pottery, jewelry, patterns, books, furniture and stained glass from the 1860s to 1910 reflect this. An important development in this movement was the formation of workshops and guilds that trained artists in many crafts - from pottery to furniture.

Arts & Crafts Designers 

Frederic Goudy(1865-1947)
Goudy was an American typographer and also a printer who designed over 100 typefaces that are considered outstanding for their lasting strength and beauty. 

 With an amiable and witty personality and wonderful writing ability, Goudy linked everyday printers to William Morris and his ideals. His readable books include The Alphabet (1908), Elements of Lettering (1921), and Typologia (1940). The two journals he edited, Ars Typographica and Typographica, impacted the course of book design.
 
Walter Crane
Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific children's book creator of his generation. 
Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. 
He was part of the Arts & Crafts Movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, ceramic tiles and other decorative arts.



 'The influence of William Morris and the Kelmscott Press upon graphic design, particularly book design, was evidenced not just in the direct stylistic imitation of the Kelmscott borders, initials, and typestyles; Morris’s concept of the well-made book, his beautiful typeface designs based on earlier models, and his sense of design unity, with the smallest detail relating to the total concept, inspired a whole new generation of book designers.'

'The long-range effect of Morris was a significant upgrading of book design and typography throughout the world. In Germany, this influence inspired a renaissance of arts-andcrafts activities, wonderful new typefaces, and a significant improvement in book design.'   

 'In the United States, the American Type Founders Company (ATF) established an extensive typographic research library and played an important role in reviving past designs. Its head of typeface development, Morris F. Benton (1872– 1948), designed important revivals of Bodoni and Garamond.'

All three last paragraphs quoted from Megg's History of Graphic Design