During the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, artists began to search for a break from traditional styles of artwork, beginning the long journey through 8 different movements that occurred at this time:
Vienna Secessionists 1897-1905
The Vienna Succession was against the historic and conservative style and were looking to acquaint Austrian art with modern art movements of the time. There was no unifying style of all the artist in this group, as there were painters, sculptors, and architects, although they all pushed for a modern style that included trends that leaned away from old fashioned style; such and Expressionism, Post-Impressionism, and movements like Art Nouveau.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers):
Founded by Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich(build this movements headquarters, Haus der Wiener Sezession), Max Kurzweil, Wilhelm Bernatzik and others.
The London Underground
The London Underground is the first underground electric railway system, starting in 1890, and it put London transport ahead of many others. The Underground was the leader of graphic design in terms of advertisement placement, also calling apron artists to create promotional posters to encourage the railways use. This allowed for many new art styles to emerge in London. The designers of the Underground style used a bold but simple sans serif typeface and was without a doubt 20th century while still having historical influences. The Underground logo itself is so distinctive that it is a logo on London itself. It needed to stand out from all the distractions and clutter on a street, and by using Johnston’s Railway typeface on a blue line encircles by red, it has done the job to this day. It used many of the modern art forms in advertisements to create its own identity, and utilizing simple horizontal, vertical and colour coded lines, Harry Beck created the distinctive Tube Map in 1933 and is so successful that it has survived the trial of 80 years of revisions.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers):
- Frank Pick although having no training in the arts, chose the font and logo for the London Underground branding. One of his reasonabilities was publicity, leading to him changing the advertising at stations and platforms. By the end of his career, he had overseen the changes of signage, architecture, product design, and train and bus design. He had in the Underground ensured that it would remain ahead of the public transport game, and became a model for others.
- Edward Johnson designed the typeface for the Underground
- Harry Beck was a draughtsman for the Underground and created the iconic Underground map so travelers could find their way easier.
Cubism
Cubism paved the way for representational art by unifying depicted scene and the canvas from 1907 until 1922. Abandoning perspective and realistic modeling and art, Cubists explored using open form by blending the background and foreground of an artwork and showing an object from different angles. They also experimented with non-artistic materials and newspaper. By experimenting with abstract forms and simplifying objects, Cubism was able to influence many large artists and also movements to come.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers):
Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque’s work with multiple different paintings and sculptures show how cubism influenced his work by showing flat pictures that are broken up geometrically, overlapping, showing multiple perspectives, and also reducing colour. They gave just as much attention to the bodies and objects in the background as in for foreground, often overlapping on the same plane, seeming as though they are equally important in the artwork.
Futurism:
Like other Modern/20th century movements, Futurism was trying to break away from traditional work. What made it stand out from other styles was that it was dedicated to celebrating technology and modernity, showing how powerful the machine was and the change that was taking place in society. Futurism was also one of the most politically involved art movements of this time period, 1909-1930. Futurists stood out from other movements because if their relationship with politics and their beliefs, they called for the destruction of museums, libraries, and feminism. They wanted to throw away the past and embrace the future and promoted their ideas with leaflets, art, and poetry to persuade people around the globe to agree with their ideas. What first started in Milan to break away from their glorification of the past, grew through Europe. The futurist movement heavily supported and agreed with the idea of the Fascist political movement, and many of the Futurist ideas were used in as a model for the fascists and Mussolini’s speeches. Inspired by Post-Impressionism, most of the Futurism artists worked with traditional media. They were obsessed with the machine and were committed to ‘universal dynamism’ which meant that all objects were a part of each other and their environment. Futurists liked the idea of combining human with the machine, and were influenced by the idea of being “dynamic” and also Cubism. The artwork had a collage like look, bringing together different pieces of life and machine.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers):
- Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote the “Futurist Manifesto” in 1909 which established the Futurist movement and launched it with an aggressive tone.
- Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, and Carlo Carra just a few of the painters/artists who contributed to this movement.
Dada
Dada, which started in 1916 until 1923, might seem like a random and silly movement, but it helped to shape the art culture of the later 20th century and what we know and see today. In the middle of World War One in Zurich, Switzerland, Artists were becoming inspired and looking for a way to cope with the reality around them. They were looking to provoke thoughts, become skeptical, and dismiss the things that were happening at the time. It wasn’t just the Swiss that were looking for this change because it later spread and became global. Dadaists were wanting a new model for art. They were the firsts to establish their work as “anti-art”, it wasn’t just about the art they were against, but against the life structure and culture the art was being born from and Dadaists were living in. They were the first to determine that an artist’s behavior is what matters and not the art itself, and were the first to criticize artworks through art. Be deconstructing different mediums, Dada was able to challenge everything artists thought they knew.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers):
- Marcel Duchamp challenged the idea of what was considered art. Using “ready-made pieces” such as a urinal and placing it in an art context, it forced people to rethink whether or not it was in fact artistic. He also did things like painting a mustache on Mona Lisa, which again challenged artists values, and also offended.
- Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck, Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp started a café called Cabaret Votaire which started Dada
Constructivism
1914-1935
Constructivism was one of the last modern art periods to happen in Russia in the 20th century, spanning from 1914 to 1935. This movement served to help social change in Russia. It pushed people towards helping produce a new Utopian society, reinventing the world, and rebuilding from zero. Although it ended swiftly in the mid 1920’s because of the dislike toward revolutionary art from the Bolshevik regime, it went on to inspire German artists until the ’50s. The constructivists borrowed the ideas from cubism and also futurism, but had thought that art should be used for social things rather than just for the sake of art. It celebrated the machine and the modern man. Using materials like wood glad and metal, Constructivism was seen as industrial design. The style was very dynamic and used sans serif fonts, a powerful contrast of black and red colours and was not very attractive.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers):
- Vladimir Tatlin, the founder of constructivism, was highly inspired by Pablo Picasso, and for over a decade he created art that expressed this inspiration with an emphasis on materials, volume, the revolution, and construction.
- El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko were influential in graphic design, propaganda posters, and typography and used bold lettering, stark planes or colour, and diagonal elements.
- Many artists were Bauhaus lecturers, and the Constructivist style influenced the De Stijl style.
De Stijl
De Stijl started in 1917 Netherlands by artists who believed in the purity of form and nature that was obscured by figuration and ended in 1931. Due to the fallout of World war one, people were looking for something more in life, and in this case, it was finding simplicity. De Stijl artists wanted to understand the simplified relationships of nature. The De Stijl movement had a significant impact on typography, design, and architecture which was led by painting. It was important for the development of international style and a key point of De Stijl which is universal language that is implemented in modern day. The founders of this movement hoped that the language and relationship that their artworks expressed would be above disagreeing cultures and would bring people together with the primary colours and lines and shapes. De Stijl artists used basic visual elements like geometric forms, horizontal and vertical lines, and a palette only primary colours plus black and white. Although it was very simple, De Stijl wasn’t just about the shapes and black lines, but about the relationship between these shapes and lines, and their colours, and what kind of emotion their contrast creates.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers)-
- Gerrit Rietveld design the Schroder House that was undeniably De Stijl, J.J.P Oud, Jan Wils, and Robert van ‘t Hoff that helped develop modern architecture
- Piet Mondrian influential De Stijl painter and one of its founders. He tried to express was the balance and relationship of forces in nature by using horizontal and vertical lines that represented opposites.
- Theo Van Doesburg founded the magazine De Stijl with a few others in 1917 and promoted the movement all across Europe. He designed many paintings, type, buildings, furniture, stained glass, and household items the represented De Stijl. He had different ideas about abstraction and De Stijl from Mondrian, called Elementarism, which included subtle shifts in tones and tilted geometric shapes, with colours straight and disconnected lines.
- Garrit Rietvel, the Red and Blue chair, Bart Van Der Leck one of the founding fathers of the movement.
Bauhaus
The Bauhaus brought back art theory in a time when art seemed very far from everyday life, originally built in Weimar is 1919, the founders of the Bauhaus wanted to unify all arts, creating a place where all mediums and ideas could learn and talk to one another. Created from two schools that were destroyed in World War I made into one, the Bauhaus represented what the founders and their ideas stood for. It was the first German school to introduce modern art instead of ornament and old ways. It was able to use international style, abstraction, and simplified form all because of its relationship with the growing Modern style. The teachings at this school brought its students back down to the basics. Allowed functionality in simplified forms to allow for new designs. It was meant to create individual creativity with craft and workmanship that had been lost with mass production, even though they thought of mass production as a necessity. The school believed in the harmony of form and function, and had an industrial hope that creativity and manufacturing could work as one, and also brought back the importance of the old arts. The Bauhaus was exposed to political pressure in 1925, which meant it had to close until it was remade in Dessau in 1925. This remake was short lived, as it was closed again shortly after, and also could not stay alive in the third remake in Berlin, all because of a growing right wing Nazi Germany that thought of the Bauhaus and what it stood for as “un-German” and could not allow Modern art. Because of this attitude, the Bauhaus artists were forced to move to America to continue there.
Notable Contributors(Designers, typographers, change makers):
- Walter Gropius founder of the Bauhaus, built and designed both the school in Weimar and Dessau, which are seen as landmarks for modern and functional architecture.
- Hannes Mayer, second director of the Bauhaus in Weimar 1928.
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe moved the school to Berlin in 1932 but couldn’t keep it alive due to poor resources and the Nazi power growing and it closed in 1933
- Some notable students/participants from the Bauhaus are Marcel Breuer, Herbert Beyer, and Marianne Brandt, among others.
My Experience:
- A massive part of the 20th-century design in this section is the London Underground, which I was riding and navigating it multiple times a day throughout my 4 days stay there. Without a doubt it is one of the largest staples of London itself and is always recognizable, it wouldn’t be the same successful and functioning city without it. Besides using it and seeing the advertisements everywhere, I got to see its maps and history at the Design Museum in Downtown London as well.
- The Design Museum also held a downstairs exhibition about the Russian Constructivism and Futurism, and how these movements came to be, what sorts of ideas and things emerged from these times, and how it affected the people. How Lenin and Stalin used the architecture and design and this time to influence politics and create a new city. It showcased inspiring quotes that gave you a sense of the attitudes of the leaders and the people of their Era, and how it worked out for them as well.
- In Amsterdam, the celebration of 100 years of De Stijl was everywhere. Street windows, massive large red and blue chair replicas, and more were decorated to commemorate the movement that happened in Holland. We were also fortunate enough to visit Den Haag, which holds the fantastic Gemmentemuseum where we took a tour that showcases an incredible amount of paintings, models, and furniture from this period of De Stijl, and learned what it was all about.
- Nearing the end of the trip our last two stops were Dessau and Weimar where we were super lucky to spend a night in the original Bauhaus building and took tours at both schools. It was amazing to be immersed for one night and get to actually sleep where a few lucky Bauhaus students got to sleep and live. Both tours gave us an inside look of the amazingly thought out architecture of the Bauhaus buildings and the history behind them.
Graphic Design History 