Quotes and Critical Analysis

 ‘Modernist art is, in most critical usage, reckoned to be the art of what Harold Rosenburg calls ‘the tradition of the new.’ Using the evaluation by Harold Rosenburg, Modernism, as shown in my overview, is presented as something new that people didn’t know as opposed to the old traditions they were used to.

 ‘Revolution seemed for many a necessary step towards the renewal of society; political parties, mass movements and artistic and literary groups entered the public arena.’ The revolution allowed for these changes to happen and for them to be possible.

 ‘Modernism could embrace such antinomies as primitivism and futurism, objectivism and subjectivism, expressionism and rationalism, classicism and romanticism, elitism and populism, progressivism and degeneration, and so on’ This quote supports that futurism, objectivisim, expressionism were all key movements in the birth of modernism.

‘The traditional printing method of letterpress- printing from the raised, inked surface of metal type- was the most common technique for small formats, for books and for most jobbing printing, such as brochures. large wooden type was made for posters, but the size of image was restricted. Lithography, developed in the nineteenth century, allowed lettering and text to be combined in the same printing process.’

 ‘The visual language of public imagery- of posters, advertisements and illustrated magazines- went through a period of radical change. The multidisciplinary engagement of many of the modernist artists and designers carried them into the centre of political and commercial activity; their productions reached the masses’

 ‘In the early twentieth century, avant-garde artists discovered a new role- as designers for the printing industry. They stripped away printers’ ornaments and drawn illustrations; they no longer centered headlines and captions on the page; and they brought in abstract, geometrical forms, photographs, plain typefaces and simple lettering, white space and asymmetrical layouts’

‘During the second half of the century a great deal of priggish and sentimental art was produced, some works by Ford Madox Brown, Hubert von Herkomer and Luke Fildes, for instance, were designed to draw attention to the conditions of life of the working class. The development of a social and economic stucture within which the effect of industrialization was to demean relationships of all kinds’

 ‘The most noticeable difference between graphics between the period of the two world wars and today is the absence of full colour in the former, although colour photography was pioneered in Russia well before the First World War. Few of the works are in more than three colours; many are printed only in black and red.’ This quote supports the closing statement I have made in my overview of modernism, that modernism, was the start of what was to come of the world as we know it now as it started to introduce colour into images. It also supports the images I have chosen to look at as some of them only use the colours red and black.

Charles Harrison states that in many images and posters that were created by artists during the period of modernism the only colours that were used were black, white and red. The posters and art work also began to incorporate both text and image and started to have a more geometric form and were highly decorative. Some artists also started to use working class people as inspiration and include them in their art work i.e using fishermen in posters. This was something that had never been done before as people didn’t see working class people as something to aspire to. However some artists disproved this theory by using various different colours within their posters and artwork, using no geometric forms and not making the posters decorative or in an Art Nouveau style. Richard Hollis backs up this statement by saying that the geometric lines and shapes are typical of early Bauhaus yet are not symmetrical and that the illustrations are photographs not drawings, he also states that although their are similarities between avant garde artists in their techniques and elements within their work they were inconsistent and many continued to paint and that their graphics did not represent ‘a style’. Lutz Becker states that photomontage was one of the main elements that inspired art work during the avant-garde period.

Examples of Modernism Art

The poster was designed by Mart Stam and was created for an international Architecture Exhibition in Rotterdam. The poster uses over laying of text and the use of different colours to attract the attention of the public to certain parts. The text is very structured and aligned to the right.

The poster was designed by Paul Schuitema. The poster incorporates both image and text this supports the idea that images started to be able to be used in posters as well as text now that new technology was available for artists. The poster uses several different images and overlays the text over the images. 

The poster was created with the intention of persuading people to invest in shares and was designed by Alexandr Rodchenko. ‘Shame on you, your name is not yet on the list of shareholders’ is the text that is written on the poster. The images used are very simplistic and a block style font is used which is also plain and simplistic on the first look yet when you look at the poster in more detail some letters are written backwards making them more interesting to look at. 

Nokolai Sidelnikov designed a book cover for Bicycle sport. The book cover contains mainly black and white images that have been layered over the top of blocks of colour.

Cassandre was the most successful French poster artist of the Art Deco period. The image I have chosen to look at shows an image taking up the majority of the poster and is in full colour with minimal writing at the bottom

An overview of Modernism

Modernism was the start of rejecting the old traditions and what was already known in favour of the uncertainty and unknown which resulted in a revolution which included innovative and new ways of thinking and a change in technology. Modernism took place in the middle of the 19th century and leading into the early 20th century most taking place shortly before or after the first world war. Art nouveau, expressionism, futurism and art deco all support the birth of modernism. Modernists had a desire to change the world and believed technology, this combined with social and political beliefs which were mainly left-wing was the way to improve society.

The key movements of modernism which happened in the early twentieth century are cubism, surrealism, futurism and purism.

Graphic design and illustration became an important way of communicating a message, in the late 19th century letterpress started to become obsolete and was no longer the main printing method, lithography had been invented and replaced letterpress meaning that drawings and paintings could now be mass produced making it easier for images to be in posters as well as text to sell things, the main style of these posters was Art Nouveau they were highly decorative and had geometric and asymmetric shapes included in them.

Mussolini and Hitler didn’t agree with with many of the modernistic style yet they were interested in change, innovation and the use of new technology however they were prepared to eliminate anything that questioned this. Expressionism originated in germany by another group of avant garde artists that began to question the tradition of western art and started to represent the world by distorting it dramatically for emotional shock and effect and did this through creating images of a working class life. Expressionist wanted to express meaning rather than reality.

Modernism was the start of allowing the world to be lurched very quickly from a black and white to a colour world however only red and black were the two main colours that were used by most artists. This was not only the case in the sense of art but in the way people thought, were seen and perceived also.