r34// mixing messages new waves violating old rules . deconstruction fbaul. dc 4matilde pinto 4789

modernism international stYlenew wave

push pin studio

formed by milton glaser and seymour chwast

armin hofman

begins teaching at Yale

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

Saul Bass, Man with the Golden Arms, film poster and graphics

Andy Warhol`s Campbell`s Soup

Henry Wolf at Harper`s Bazzar

The American “Beatnik” generation emerges

Herbert Lubain designs Eros

The New Realists are exhibited, acknowledging the arrival of Pop Art and artists

Kubrick`s film, 2001:A Space Odyssey

Andy Warhol`s film, Chelsea Girls

Lubain`s Avant Garde magazine

Inge Druckrey begins her teaching career

Edouar Hoffman and Max Miedinger design Helvetica typeface

Robert Venturi writes Complexity and Contradition in Architecture

Milton Glaser`s world famous Bob

dan friedman and the new wave typography in the usa

Michael Vanderbyl, Califórnia Public Rádio poster

The film, A Clockwork Orange

300.000 people at-tend a rock concert known as Woodstock

George Lucas`s film, Star Wars

Robert Venturi`s Learning from Las Vegas, designed by Muriel Cooper

Armin Hofmann, was an instructor during the Yale Summer Programme in Graphic Design Brissago

Martin Scorsese`s film, Taxi Driver

Coppola`s film, The Godfather

Emile Ruder, TypographyA Manual of Design

Armin Hofmann, Graphic Design Manual

Weingart became an instructor at the Yale University Summer Graphic Design Pro-gram in Brissago

Milton Glaser designs cover I LOVE NY symbol

Spielberg`s film, Jaws

Charles Jenck`s publishes his articles on architectural

Katherine and Michael McCoy come to Cranbrook Postmodernism

Weingart joins the Basle School of Design faculty

“Learn Covers” by Wolfgang Wein-gart in Typographis-che Monatsbatter

Sidney Lumet`s film, Dog Day Afternoon

post--modernism

desconstruction

The Apple Macintosh computer is designed

David Lynch`s film, The Elephant Man

Neville Brody is Art Director of The Face

Michael Graves exibition poster by William Long-hauser

Memphis founded in Milan

MOMA exibition, Deconstructivism Ar-chitecture is curated by Philip Johnson

Katherine McCoy,Deconstructed Typography

The AIGA publishes a defenition of graphic design: “The aaes-thetic ordering of type and image in order to interest, inform, persuade or sell.”

Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Lick lauch Emigre magazine

Typography Now: The Next Waveis published by Rick Poynor, Edward Booth-Clibborn and Why Not Assoiciates

Lúcida is designed for laserprinters

Francis Ford Coppola`s film, Apocalypse Now

Remote Control by Barbara Kruger

Stephen Heller writes Cult of Ugly in Eye magazine

Rolling Stone,Perception/Reality campaign by Fallon McElligott and Rice/Minneapolis

Muriel Cooper at the Visual Language Workshop, MIT

April Greiman,Does It Make Sense, poster for Design Quarterly

Tibor Kalman designs a music vídeo for the Talking Heads

Robert Zemeckis`s film, Forrest Gump

Peter Saville joins Pentagram, London

Quentin Tarantinos film, Pulp Fiction

Rick Poynor, editor of the new Eye magazine

Brody and Rossum produce Fuse magazine

Peter Saville As-sociates founded in London

MTV plays the first music vídeo

Émigré magazine (and other maga-zines) publishes First Things Mani-festo 2000

Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

The exibition Graphic Design in América: A Visual Language History is organized by the Walker Art Center

Steven Brower redesigns Print magazine

David Carson, Beach Culture magazine

David Carson designs Ray Gun magazine

modernism

postmodernism influenced bY pop art

1950`s //

The human-machine interaction that is so important in Rauschenberg’s art as a whole is

crucial here. The symbiosis of of the human and the technological.

Linda Hults, The Print in the Western World, University of Wisconsin Press, 1996

For Jameson, pastiche is the presentation of tunes or stories in the style of another

author or composer.

For Jameson, parody is the humorous or satirical imitation of an author or composer`s

style: pastiche lacks that satirical (political) impulse and is for him more characteristic of

postmodernism.

Jameson, Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, Duke University Press, 1991.

The modern quest for the new was informed by a belief in the artist as a unique, ex-

pressive self. Modern art was one with modern philosophy in its belief in a trancenden-

tal self outside of space and time. Contrariwise, postmodern artists, articulating the

same anti-humanist themes of poststructuralist and postmodern theory, abandoned

the belief in a self, author, and Creative genius. The artist is no longer the originary

and unique self who produces the new in a authentic vision but, rather, a bricoleur who

just rearranges the debris of the cultural past.

Rather than expanding on the themes of selfhood, authenticity, originality, and libera-

tion, postmodern artists parody them. Rather than inventing new materials, postmod-

ernists quote what`s alredy around and combine fragments in a pastiche — as Robert

Rauschenberg pastes texts from newspapers and images from classical paintings onto

His canvases, or as rap artists “sample” riffs from past songs. The postmodern turn

is well exemplified in the work of Andy Warhol, who boasted he could produce as many

Works of art in a day through mechanical reproduction as Picasso could in a lifetime.

Robert Smithson, A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art, Art International, March, 1968

modernism

push pin studio

formed by milton glaser and seymour chwast

1954 //

I’m interested in work that doesn’t necessarily look as if it was ‘designed’ but sort of just

looks as if it happened. I always liked the idea, that people have to work to understand

what you’re showing them.

Milton Glaser, http://www.graphic-design.com/design/milton-glaser-inform-and-delight?page=0,2, s/d

I wanted to do work that is public, I wanted to do work that people saw... that was on the

street. It didn’t matter if I was called an artist or a designer, illustrator or what ever else,

the core value was always the act of making things, and the transformation of an idea that

you hold in your mind that becomes real or material. That, to me, is still the glory of any

creative activity.

Milton Glaser, http://www.graphic-design.com/design/milton-glaser-inform-and-delight?page=0,2, s/d

The Push Pin Studio: An Alternative to Modern

What’s fascinating about the Graphic is its seamless melding of illustration and publica-

tion design -- that, and its creative use of retro styles and period ornament at a time

with the austere Swiss Style ruled. Steven Heller, in his lead-off article (“The Push Pin

Effect”), refers to their “reinvention of discarded mannerisms”: using everything from

Victorian clichés to Art Deco flourishes to achieve striking contrast and surprising effect.

This is the same spirit that infused some of the most creative design work that came out

of the UK around the Festival of Britain in 1951: in the face of a standardized postwar

modernism, putting old-fashioned visual elements to use in novel ways. Heller quotes

Chwast as saying, in recollection: “Quaintness was popular in those days.”

Although they were not alone in what they did, the Push Pin designers were hugely

influential. The spirit of contrast that informs so much of the best design of the 1950s

found itself elaborated in flowing ink lines and techniques like woodcut, collage, and

painting on wood; Push Pin pioneered this. Since they were primarily illustrators, Push

Pin particularly wanted to offer an alternative to the dominance of photography in

modern graphic design. “Their mission was not solely an attack on modernism,” says

Heller, but it did clearly offer a different way forward.

And novelty is always popular. In the late ‘50s, other designers would use thePush Pin

Graphic as inspiration, and new ideas or styles that appeared in one issue might show

up all around the New York design world a month later. By the mid-’60s, when the

principals’ modes had hardened into brilliant but recognizable styles, Milton Glaser and

Seymour Chwast practically defined a certain end of the visual aesthetic of the time.

John D. Berry, http://www.creativepro.com/article/dot-font-fun-with-the-push-pin-legacy, 2005

modernism

1956 //

armin hofmann

begins teaching at Yale

Armin Hofmann, Kunsthalle Basel/Lipchitz, Linocut printed Two colors Basel School

of Design and Its Philosophy — The Armin Hofmann Years, 1958

The influence of money, which one must earn through one’s work, endangers this criti-

cal relationship between the work and its ideal manifestation. If financial gain ultimately

becomes more important than the product to be created, one will no longer be able to

speak of work that fulfills a higher meaning. When industrial working methods divide

aspects of design that belong together, fundamental principles of design may be

compromised. In any case, to call attention to the tragic breach that has occurred in

mankind’s relationship to modern working methods is a matter of extreme importance

for, me. In my own work, I feel compelled to set an example: to cultivate a corner of

unity and to struggle against dismemberment and fragmentation in the field of design.

Armin Hofmann, From the catalog: The Basel School of Design and its philosophy, The Armin Hofmann years 1946-1986, New York City, 1986

modernism

inge druckreY

begins her teaching career

1966 //

learn covers

by wolfgang weingart in

typographische monatsbatter

1972 //

international stYlenew wave

I found myself in a graphic landscape when designing the letterhead of Inge Druckrey.

Instead of evenly spacing the letters and equalizing the lines of type as a typesetter

would strive to do. I stretched the words to all lengths until almost unreadable. At

a certain point, I did not perceive the information as accumulated separate word

units, but read the whole of the message at a glance. This is why I call it a landscape:

the type took on a spatial quality. Until the middle of the seventies stretched-out

letter spacing and the stepped text blocks weres strong components of my design

playground. I continued to discover more variations on these themes and, in, 1972

and 1973, applied the research to the design of a cover series for the professional

journal, Typographische Monatsblatter. When I sensed distorting existing typeface and

forming new ones by bending metal lines. In the darkroom, through photomechanical

process, I made words and lines of type completely illegible. Because we did not

have the technical means in the Basel type shop to set longer text as the time, I used

an electric typewriter to realize two cover designs for the American journal, Visible

Language, I typed the text on ordinary piece of paper and made a negative film of it

in the darkroom. With the enlarger intentionally out-of-focus, I exposed the film image

onto photographic paper: the result was a self-made bold version of typewriter type.

Depending on the exposure time I could make a semi-bold, an extra...

Wolfgang Weingart’s Typographic Landscape by Keith Tam, http://keithtam.net/writings.html, 2001

wolfgang weingart and

new wave typography

1971 //

international stYlenew wave

According to Weingart,

“I took ‘Swiss Typography’ as my starting point,

but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style

upon my students. I never intended to create

A

“style”.

It just happened that the students picked up —

and misinterpreted—

a so called

‘Weingart style’

and spread it around.”

April Greiman

What`s the use of being legible, when n

othing inspires you to take notice of it?

Wolfgang Weingart’s Typographic Landscape by Keith Tam, http://keithtam.net/writings.html, 2001

Wolfgang Weingart is a German graphic designer credited as the progenitor of New

Wave typography. According to Weingart, “I took ‘Swiss Typography’ as my starting

point, but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style upon my students. I never

intended to create a “style”. It just happened that the students picked up — and

misinterpreted — a so called ‘Weingart style’ and spread it around.”

“His typographic experiments were strongly grounded, and were based on an intimate

understanding of the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic functions of typography. Where-

astraditional Swiss typography mainly focused on the syntactic function, Weingart was

interested in how far the graphic qualities of typography can be pushed and still retain its

meaning. This is when the semantic function of typography comes in: Weingart believes

that certain graphic modifications of type can in fact intensify meaning. “What’s the use of

being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?” Excerpt from Keith Tam

It wasn’t until the early eighties, when his American students like April Greiman and

Dan Friedman (above 1971 poster) brought back to the US a wealth of typographic

arsenals from Basel and co-opted it into the mainstream of graphic design. From April

Greiman’s ´hybrid imagery” to David Carson’s deconstructive page layouts, anarchy

reigned supreme in the nineties. Those were the days for graphic design superstars,

whose style many a graphic designer adored and imitated. While no one can give a de-

finitive answer as to whether these American graphic designers took what Weingart did

and brought it to new heights, they certainly managed to make it a huge commercial

success. “They were doing it as a style and it was never my idea to create fashion,”

denotes Weingart. The teaching at Basel for Weingart is not about trends but a ‘stabil-

ity’ that they try to move away from, but never totally.

Wolfgang Weingart’s Typographic Landscape by Keith Tam, http://keithtam.net/writings.html, 2001

international stYlenew wave

dan friedman and the

new wave typography in the usa

1971 //

Primarily a corporate Identity designer Friedman’s philosophy reflected a rejection of

“absolutism of swiss design” for a new “readability” governed by aesthetics founded

by DADA and Constructivism.

Radical modernism is my reaffirmation of the idealistic roots of our modernity, adjusted

to include more of our diverse cultures.

Friedman’s philosophy quoted from Eye shortly before his death in 1995. In the 1960s

I saw graphic design as a noble endeavor, integral to larger planning, architectural and

social issues. What I realized in the 1970s, when I was doing major corporate identity

projects, is that design had become a preoccupation with what things look like rather

than with what they mean. What designers were doing was creating visual identities

for other people - not unlike the work of fashion stylists, political image consultants

or plastic surgeons. We had become experts who suggest how other people can

project a visual impression that reflects who they think they are. And we have deceived

ourselves into thinking that the modernization service we supply has the same integrity

as service to the public good. Modernism forfeited its claim to a moral authority when

designers sold it away as corporate style.

Dan Friedman by Peter Rea, New Wave/Radical Modernism, EYE magazine, http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=45&fid=54, 1994

international stYlenew wave

robert venturi`s

learning from las vegas

designed by muriel cooper

1972 //

“Naked Children have never payed in our fountains”, Robert Venturi in his 1972 book

Learning From Las Vegas, explaining the difference between american and euroupean

artistic and architectural expression.

Spread from Learning from Las Vegas, 1972

Postmodernist manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas, gloried in the falseness of the com-

mercial facades of the Las Vegas strip and promoted the false surface as a model for a

new movement in architecture. No longer did the outside have to be functionally related

to the inside. Rather, superficial decoration was allowed, and the resulting contradiction

or discontinuity between inside and out was itself a strong critique of the clean, rational

exterior of modernist architecture. This love of parodying the falseness of surface

appearances in art and architecture had its counterpart in the structuralist movement

in French linguistics. Strongly colored by Marxist determinism, structuralism exercised a

major influence in American universities during the 1970s, accompanying the demorali-

zation of America and the expansion of Soviet power. Unlike modernism, structuralism

held that surface appearances were false and that rationality was itself a surface

phenomenon under which lurked a subrational self-unknown to us. The structuralism

attempt to demonstrate that rationality, the conscious self, and conscious speech were

false fronts for irrational ity was represented in postmodernist graphic design as well.

Victor Margolin, Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism, The University of Chicago press, Chicago and London, 1989

katherine mccoY,

deconstructed typography

1978 //

The modernist concepts of originality —as process and originality — as product

have been swept aside. Postmodernists deny the existence of singular founding refer-

ences or points-of-departure; instead the speak of signifiers and deconstructed mean-

ings which produce an infnite array of interrelated and circular interpretations. They

are no original ideas in art; images can always be decontructed to reveal antecedent

construct and concepts.

Roger Clark, Art education: Issues in postmodernist pedagogy, Reston, Virginia: National, Art education Association – NAEA, 1996.

You can do a good and without good typography, but you can’t do a great ad without

good typography.

Herb Lubalin, Baseline #4, 1981.

The cranbrook theoristist`s aim, derived from french philosophy and literary theory, is

to deconstruct, or break apart and expose, the manipulative visual language and differ-

ent levels of meaning embodied in design.

Poynor, Type and Deconstruction in the Digital Era, Typography Now: The New Wave, Cincinnati, Oh: North Light, 1992

A theory-heavy, mid-1990s look at the concept of Deconstruction, looking at its origins

in French post-structuralist discourse and then current use in the design world.

The Cranbrook Academy of Art (Michigan), under the direction of Professors Michael and

Katherine McCoy, became a center of Post-Modernist discussion from the mid 1970s.

What emerged became know as the ‘Cranbrook Discourse’ widely publicized intersection

of post-structuralism and graphic design.

Designers at Cranbrook had first confronted literary criticism when they designed a

special issue of Visible Language on contemporary French literary aesthetics,

published in the summer of 1978. Daniel Libeskind, head of the Cranbrook architecture

program, provided the graphic designers with a seminar in literary theory, which

prepared them to develop their strategy: to systematically disintegrate the the series

of essays by expanding the spaces between lines and words and pushing the footnotes

into the space normally reserved for the main text. French Currents of the Letter, which

outraged designers committed to the established ideologies of problem-solving and

direct communication, remains a controversial landmark in experimental graphic design.

Ellen Lupton, Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, Phaidon Press, London, 1999

post--modernism

the apple macintosh computer is designed

1984 //

What I really want on the Macintosh is a virtual reality interface — armholes in either

side of the box so you can reach in and move logos around; a real paintbrush so that

you can feel the texture of the surface underneath.

Diane Burns, Neville Brody: Designers on Mac, Tokyo: Graphic-sha Publishing Co., 1992

The materialy of the signifier, whether it be word or image, is linked to its capacity to

either evoke or designate sensation as it tranformed into perception, and that it in no

case has a guaranteed truth value, only the ralative accuracy within the experience of

an individual subject.

Johanna Drucker, The Visible World: Experimental Typography and Modern Art 1909-1923, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994

I want to take the role of typography away from a purely subservient, practical role

towards one that is potentially more expressive and visually dynamic. There are no

special characters and presently no lowercase is planned. The font is designed to

have no letter spacing, and ideally is should be set with no line space. I decided not

to include a complete set of punctuation marks and accents, encouraging people to

create their own if needed.

Neville Brody, www.type.cp.uk/snet/fuse/statesamp.html, 1996

Today, typefaces and their configurations contain meaning that is distinct from the

words they create. Certainly, calligraphy, decorative type, and italic or bold letterforms

have long served to Express tone or heighten the impacto f words. But the prolifera-

tion of computer technology into most áreas of social experience, and especially in the

field of communication design, has a fundamental shift in the way we decipher informa-

tion. We are consumers of a complex lexion of type and image — a viewing audience

more accustomed to looking into space.

But computers alone do not have an effect on the way we read. All Technologies incor-

porate a set of practices which in turn, presuppose a cultural disposition. Within the field

of graphic design, there has been a shift from modern forms to computer-generated,

deconstructionist ones. Underlying this trend toward digitization is changing conception

of the way we envision the world which generates new kind of cultural meaning.

Modernism as a school of thought is supported by a modelo of vision that presuppos-

es a linear path between a viewer`s eye and an object of perception. In this concep-

tion, there is no “space” between the eye anda n image because the acto f seeing is

not understood to incorporate human experience. Rather, the gazine “eye of distance

and infinite vision” is disembodied from the self and shielded from the outside.

When the Macintosh computer was introduced to the field in the 1980`s, designers

began to layer and dissolve type and imaginery — a practice that shattered the

conception of a detached, objective reader. Designers began to endorse the short of

communication that would “promote multiple rather than fixed readings” and “provoke

the read into becoming an active participant in the construction of the message”.

When typography is treated as imagery — that is, when i tis pushed to the limits of

legibility — the result is an enhanced visual involvement on the part of the viewer. As

designers tranform the mechanics of representation, more demands are made on the

viewer to interpret messages. Designers now expect that something like “projection”

will occur while reading. For example, in The End of Print, David Carson`s art direction

of magazines such as Ray Gun and Beach Culture is defended on the basis that their

audience does not need visual direction. Whereas most magazines “want their readers

to know what to expect, to know where to look and how to read through a page”, these

publications establish “a diferent relationship with the reader”.

post--modernism

Romanyshyn, Technology as Symptom and Dream, New York: Routledge Press, 1989

Poynor, Type and Decon-struction in the Digital Era, Typography Now: The New Wave, Cincinnati, Oh: North Light, 1992

Lewis Blackwell and David Carson, eds., The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995

david carson,

beach culture magazine and ray gun

1990 // 1992 //

Dear David

I am sory about the end of print

It was nice while it lasted

I always liked the smell of mimeo copies

And you could always tear out the pages after you read them

I`ll miss the subjectivity the imprecision

But i am ready i think

Could you blow this up really big and print it in the wrong color

And tell everybody to go back the school and to remember that

Form ain`t worth a shit anyway and that content ideas you big

Bunch of jerks rules make that part red or something ok?

Moira Cullen interviews Tibor Kalman, Eye #20, http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=30&fid=167, 1995

If someone interprets my work in a way that is totally new to me, I say fine. That way your

work has a life of its own. You create a situation for people to do with it what they will, and

you don`t create an enclosed or encapsulated moment.

Jeffery Keedy, Emigre #15, 1990

post--modernism

The less legible a typface becomes, either on its own or in juxtaposition with other

graphic elements, the more it takes on an inherent image. When this occurs, words are

no longer simply read, but understood within the context of an entire visual construc-

tion. This is the visual laguage of deconstruction.

Deconstruction, as we learned from Jacques Derrida in Grammatology, is the tech-

nique of breaking down a “whole” on order to reflect critically on its parts. When

using this method, the designer affirms that different interpretations will be discov-

ered within the fabric that holds a message together. Unlike the linearity of modern-

ism which implies a separation between the viewer and the viewed, and a “withdrawal

of the self from the world,” typographic deconstruction compels a viewer to take

part in the interpretation of a message. This strategy of visual disorganization was

embraced and legitimized by design schools such as the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Swanson, Gunnar Graphic Design and Reading: Explorations of an uneasy relation-

ship,

Allworth Press, Allworth Communications, New York, 2000.

Romanyshyn, Technology as Symptom and Dream, New York: Routledge Press, 1989)

april greiman,

does it make sense,

poster for design Quarterly

1986 //

TAXI >>“The Mac’s just another pencil!” – In your opinion, what is the Mac of today,

or has it remained as relevant and as cutting-edge today as it did in the 1980s?

April Greiman>>At that time, it was when the Mac was being compared to other

‘traditional’ tools, disciplines of graphic design. The Mac is both another pencil, but

as history would prove this out, a ‘meta-tool’ and an integrative process.

TAXI Design Network interviews with April Greiman, Women in Design II by Ninart Lui, http://www.designtaxi.com/article.php?article_id=100192, s/d

Cut-and-paste. Cut-and-paste. What a joy. It saved from wheelchair-bound Matisse

from madness. It freed, for him, colors from shapes, shapes from images, images

from ideas. By cutting and pasting, bodies are freed from the stranglehold of con-

text, designation, meaning. Greiman shares his joy, and takes it a step further. Her

Mac is her scissors. This turns out to be much more than an articulate pair of knives.

The capacity to zoom in and out, to isolate and frame and reframe and transpose

and turn translucent is a technical advance that Matisse would surely have envied.

April Greiman, Something from Nothing, Rotovision, London, Paris, Berlin, 2001

Two things.

First, precisely what Socrates took it for. A thing subject to uncertainty from outside,

mischief from within. Bodies confounded the objectivity of science, the equanimity of

the law, the integrity of structures. Vulnerable to seduction, they trespass boundaries

— others, and their own — and like ghosts, may even embody other bodies. If the

mind is something dialectically spirited toward a pre-designated end, the body is

something that is spirited by feeling and risk, by intuition toward, the unknown, toward

the constitution of what Husserl called, “vague essences”. All things have a body; even

words, symbols and signs, those stand-ins, utilities through which The Real is usually

mediated. Where the mind has one unequivocal point of arrival, the truth, the body has

provisionally many. And, teleological path outside the world of accident and chance,

bodies of the type I`m speaking are engaged in accidental and chance encounters.

We can see early signs of this in Marinetti`s dizzying use of graphic language, the way

words mingle with images in countless Dadaist works. When the body is set loose in

the field anything can happen. For sure, the mind keeps the body in check, by assign-

ing it roles, functions. But what happens when these bodies are freed of their roles or

assignments? Have no intrinsic utility? Things which exist for the sake of...?

The second sense of the body: I tis built-up, a construction, what Deleuze and Guattari

call an “assemblage.” It has the capacity to extend beyond itself, code with other

bodies, it possesses what Nietzsche calls “plasticity.” And because of this “plasticity”,

bodies can change scale, compromise structures, aggress, marry other bodies. In

the poster Does It Make Sense, the earth floats over a lunar horizont that is a kind

of prosthetic for the cropped shin-bone of her leg. On the other shin we find a cirrus

cloud, and at the intersection of her pubis? — a dinosaur, and Stonehenge. A spiral

galaxy romantically reaches into her hair and weaves into her.

A field, unlike a surface, is something occupied by bodies, of which the human body,

including ones`s own body, is only a single instance, just a participant.

The world is a field occupied by bodies, and every poster, as a field, is a world.

April Greiman, Something from Nothing, Rotovision, London, Paris, Berlin, 2001

post--modernism

moma exibition,

deconstructivism architecture

is curated by philip Johnson

1988 //

In art as well as architecture... there are many and contradictory trends in our

quick-change generation. In architecture, strict-classicism, and all shorts of shades in

between, are equally valid. No generally persuasive “-ism” has appeared. It may be

none will arise unless there is a worldwide, new religion or set of beliefs out which an

aesthetic could be formed. Meanwhile pluralism reigns, perhaps a soil in which poetic,

original artists... can develop. (...) The confluence (of these seven architects) may

indeed be temporary; but its reality, its vitality, its originality can hardly be denied.

Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, Deconstructivist Architecture, Exhibition catalogue: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988

A reader comprehend and account for complex differences in signification. Each layer,

through the use of language and image, is an intentional performer in deliberately

playful game wherein the viewer can discover and experience the hidden complexities

of language.

Byrne and Witte, A Brave New World: Understanding Deconstruction, in Looking Closer: Critical writings on graphic design. New York: Allworth Press, 1994

Deconstructivism catapulted into the mainstream design press with MoMA’s 1988

exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture, curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley. The

curators used the term ‘deconstructivism’ to link certain contemporary architectural

practices to Russian Constructivism, whose early years were marked by an imperfect

vision of form and technology. The MoMA exhibition located a similarly skewed inter-

pretation of modernism in the work of Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman,

and others. Wigley wrote in his catalogue essay: ‘A deconstructive architect is…not

one who dismantles buildings, but one who locates the inherent dilemmas within build-

ings. The deconstructive architect puts the pure forms of the architectural tradition

on the couch and identifies the symptoms of a repressed impurity. The impurity is

drawn to the surface by a combination of gentle coaxing and violent torture: the form

is interrogated’. In Wigley’s view, deconstruction in architecture asks questions about

modernism by re-examining its own language, materials, and processes.

By framing their exhibition around a new ‘ism’, Wigley and Johnson helped to canonize

the elements of a period style, marked by twisted geometries, centerless plans, and

shards of glass and metal. This cluster of stylistic features quickly emigrated from

architecture to graphic design, just as the icons and colors of neo-classical post-

modernism had traveled there shortly before. While a more critical approach to de-

construction had been routed to graphic designers through the fields of photography

and the fine arts, architecture provided a ready-to-use formal vocabulary that could be

broadly adopted. ‘Deconstruction’, ‘deconstructivism’, and just plain ‘decon’ became

design-world clichés, where they named existing tendencies and catalyzed new ones in

the fields of furniture and fashion as well as graphic design.

In 1990 Philip Meggs published a how-to guide for would-be deconstructivists in the

magazine Step-by-Step Graphics. His essay, which includes a journalistic account of

how the term ‘deconstruction’ entered the field of graphic design, focuses on style and

works back to theory. Following the logic of the MoMA project, his story begins with

Constructivism and ends with its ‘deconstruction’ in contemporary design; unlike Wigley,

however, Meggs’s story depicts early modernism as a purely rational enterprise.

Ellen Lupton, and J. Abbott Miller, Deconstruction and Graphic Design: History Meets Theory, Visible Language, 1994

post--modernism