The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 19th to the 19th Century, was a period where rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban altogether. Before the Industrial Revolution, which had began in Britian in the late 1700s, manufacturing was often done in people's homes, using hand tools or basic machinery.
Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special purposed machinery, factories and mass production. The development of the steam engine played a central role in the Industrial Revolution, which saw improved methods of transportation and communication.
James Watts' improvements to the steam engine, and its application to manufacturing in the late 18th century, resulted in a huge societal shift. Traditionally, manual workers learned their trade through apprenticeship under a master craftsman.
However, the new steam engine driven machines replaced the craftsman system with cheaper and faster production. The critical work and attention to detail of craftsman was sacrificed for speed. Now, the worker served the machine by supplying it with raw materials and allowing it to produce a final product.
However, the Industrial Revolution was not always a plus for society. Due to new machinery, artists in graphic fields such as punch-cutters, type casters, type setters and printers were all losing their jobs as a result of new machinery of type casting and printing.
Paper makers began to produce paper from wood pulp. This was creating an acidic paper prone to yellowing and foxing Book binding was mechanized and cheapened.
The loss of the professional book craftsmen had a big effect on print and type design.
"The faster pace and mass-communication needs of an increasingly urban and industrialized society produced a rapid expansion of jobbing printers, advertising, and posters. Larger scale, greater visual impact, and new tactile and expressive characters were demanded, and the book typography that had slowly evolved from handwriting did not fulfill these needs. It was no longer enough for the twenty-six letters of the alphabet to function only as phonetic symbols. The industrial age transformed these signs into abstract visual forms projecting powerful concrete shapes of strong contrast and large size." (Megg's History of Graphic Design).
Born to wealth, John Ruskin(1819-1900) was an architect, author, poet and art critic. He aimed to re-unite the Designer and craftsman, the spiritual and the everyday. John Ruskin stated that the Industrial Revolution was the main purpose of the unhappiness of the poor. He looked backward to a simpler society. He romanticized "The organic relationship ...between the worker and his guild, the worker and his community, between the worker and his natural environment, and between the worker and his God".
Ruskin's writings influenced many important social advocates like Mahatma Gandhi. One of his essays, 'Unto This Last' criticized the destructive effects of industrialization on the natural world, a foreshadowing of today's Green Movement.
Ruskin praised hand made ornaments. To him they possessed the real beauty of craftsmanship.
Although the brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites only lasted a few years, their work and objectives inspired and influenced a second wave of English painters and artisans, these including Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, who both came down to London from Oxford University to begin their careers in 1856.
They met Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whom they greatly admired, and even moved into his old rooms.
Morris and Rosetti decided to design a suite of furniture based on medieval models. These furnishings were an early foray into decorative arts. Within a few years, Morris founded 'Morris, Marshall, Faulkner', a company devoted to producing artist-designed, hand-crafted household objects.
Morris deeply believed that beautiful objects would improve individual lives adversely affected by the harsh industrial world.So here, we realize Morris' thoughts about the Industrial Revolution. He also was against all the hard working arts-men losing their jobs to machinery and the loss of beautifully hand made art.
Morris was inspired by medieval art, natural motifs and colours, figuration and high pattern. He can be considered as the pioneer of modern graphics. Ex): Peacock and the Dragon - 1876.
Ruskin together with William Morris founded the Arts and Crafts Movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment