GR M10 Module 4: Should Design be Realistic?

Representational Art (Realism)Realistic art depicts or represents the visual world as closely as possible. Since the Renaissance in Europe until the beginning of the modern era, art has been valued for qualities that create an illusion of reality, such as light and shadow, proportion, and perspective. Many artists during this period were trained according to these ideals. Most people admire the work of a highly skilled artist in the traditional sense: one who faithfully reproduces realistic scenes. This ability was a major source of artistic success in the past, particularly before the invention of photography. We call a paint-ing “representational” if it portrays specific, recognizable physical objects. In some cases, the representational paintings look true to life, almost like a photograph.

Example 1: The Girl with a Pearl Earring by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer; circa 1665–1675 . When you look at this painting, it is easy to recognize what you are looking at. There is the young girl looking over her shoulder. She is wearing a blue and yellow colored turban atop her head, and a pearl earring. It is easy to iden-tify all the objects in the painting. (http://girl-with-a-pearl-earring.20m.com/)

Not all representational paintings are so realistic(less abstract)Example 2: Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906)- Still Life with Apples; created some beautiful paintings of fruit. Take a look at this one, “Still Life with Apples”, which Cézanne painted from 1879-1880. Obviously, this painting is more abstract than the previous one. Still, what you are looking at is representational. The objects in the Cézanne painting may not be as realistic as the ones in the Vermeer’s paint-ing— there is no way you would mistake the Cézanne painting for a photograph — but it is easy to recognize that you are looking at various types of fruit in a bowl.

Abstract paintings are different. They have designs, shapes or colors that do not look like specific physical objects. As such, abstract paintings are a lot harder to under-stand than representational paintings. Indeed, when you look at an abstract painting, you often have no idea what it is you are actually seeing.

Abstract paintings (more abstract)In general, there are two types of abstract paintings. The first type of abstract paint-ing portrays objects that have been “abstracted” (taken) from nature. Although what you see may not look realistic, it is close enough that you can, at least, get an idea of what you are looking at.

Example 3: Claude Monet - Impression, Sunrise (Impression: soleil levant); 1872. depicting a Le Havre landscape. The idea of abstraction, in which artists alter the vi-

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sual qualities of a subject, was a major development in modern art. There are many degrees of abstraction in art. Some artists made small changes in the look of their subject matter by simplifying or exaggerating colors or shapes. In these works, the subject can often still be recognized.

Example 4: Pablo Picasso - Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; 1907. Les Demoiselles represents a major turning point away from representational and towards abstraction. “When Picasso breaks the neck of the seated figure on the right, he is breaking the tradition that had governed art since the Renaissance; we see her head-on and from the rear simultaneously! And when he paints her face with the schematized, highly abstracted and flattened features of an African mask, he is subverting the very foundation of the Western aesthetic. Most subsequent modern “isms”, from German Expressionism to Italian Futurism, will be movements that splinter off from Cubism and, thus, are traceable back to this seminal painting. Com-ing to terms with early Modernism means quite simply confronting the Demoiselles.” (http://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/438mid/ah438mid-Info.00035.html)

Nonrepresentational (Total Abstraction, Nonobjective)A second type of abstract painting, sometimes referred to as “pure” abstract art, is even more obtuse. Such paintings do not reflect any form of conventional reality: all you see are shapes, colors, lines, patterns, and so on. Nothing in this painting is recognizable. When we look at such art, it is natural to wonder what could the artist possibly have in mind?

Example 5: Piet Mondrian - Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red; 1921Mondrian had broken new ground by segmenting the visual experience of the world into fragmented compositions of small, flat, overlapping planes.“I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things…I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian)

Example 6: Wassily Kandinsky - Improvisation #26; 1912In 1912, when he painted this canvas, Kandinsky published his book, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” From 1910-12 he struggled to make a complete break with the objective world, realizing in the end that “the object harms my painting.” Kandinsky wanted only to be guided by creative intuition. In a scientific age, intuition is often looked on as fuzzy thinking; Kandinsky’s book served as both a defense and promo-tion of abstract art, and an important theoretical text for making an argument that the intuitive is a valid position of knowledge in its own right. (http://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/438final/ah438fin-Info.00032.html)

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“Isn’t the abstract real - if only we can contemplate it?”Until the end of the 19th century, virtually all painting was representational. Artists painted pictures that were straightforward, and people looked at those paintings for one reason: to see the particular images that were depicted. The early 1900s, new inventions such as electric lights, telephone, automobile, elevator, skyscraper asserted society’s dominance over nature and trumpeted the seemingly invincible technologi-cal progress of the human race. At the same time, the latest breakthroughs in physics pointed to the play of invisible forces and matter’s transformation into energy.

This is why artists started creating images that do not realistically represent any object. This type of abstract art may be called nonrepresentational or nonobjective art. It may be composed of basic geometric shapes and forms or a complex arrangement of colors, shapes, textures, and lines. Renouncing the depiction of the physical world in their paintings offered a liberating alternative: an art that was “pure”, that could exem-plify energy, order and clarity through a balanced composition of internal components. “Aesthetic contemplation affords humanity a means of uniting with the universal in an abstract, that it to say conscious way,” Mondrian wrote. “Isn’t the abstract real - if only we can contemplate it?”

Abstract to Representational (Constructivism to Social Real-ism)An avant garde art movement rose in Russia before the 1917 revolution. In an attempt to redefine the role of the artist and contribute to the “construction” of a new state, a group of artists rejected the “art for art’s sake” concept and directed their ener-gies to socially useful activities like industrial, graphic design, photography and film. The movement’s nonrepresentational visual vocabulary relied upon brightly colored shapes, collage, photomontage, bold typography. The Communist Party would gradu-ally come to favour representational art, and Constructivism was banned in 1921. However it wasn’t until around 1934 that the counter-doctrine of Socialist Realism was

instituted in Constructivism’s place.

Example 7: El Lissitzky ‘Neuer [New man]’ 1923Lissitzky’s designs for a mechanical staging of the futurist opera Victory over the sun. The story seems almost prescient: a man of the future challenges nature, captures the sun and subdues it as a rival source of power. The ‘new man’ is brave, arrogant, optimistic, in love with arms, technology and progress – an ancestor of Yuri Gagarin and the engineers of Chernobyl. Lissitzky depicts him as a striding figure, his body a red square, his head and limbs at once mechanical and almost transparent.

Example 8: Brothers Stenberg “The Man with the movie camera” poster;1929Their poster for The Man with the Movie Camera (1929) suggests the vertigo of revo-lutionary life by dispersing fragments of a female figure across a field of spiraling text and infinitely receding skyscrapers.

Example 9: Viktor Koretsky “The soldier, save me from slavery!” poster; 1942Soviet propaganda during the Second World War was launched mainly after the Ger-man invasion of the USSR. Important organs of the press were the newspapers “The Red Star” (“Krasnaya Zvezda”) and “The Truth” (“Pravda”). It forms a specific chapter

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in the history of Soviet propaganda (agitprop).Legacy of Constructivism: A number of Constructivists would teach or lecture at the Bauhaus. In the 1980s graphic designer Neville Brody used styles based on Construc-

tivist posters that sparked a revival of popular interest.

The BauhausThe Bauhaus was a German design school that attempted to create a new unity be-tween art and industry by rejecting any division between decorative and constructional techniques. Herbert Bayer’s workshop made striking typographic design innovations along constructivist and functional lines. The influences of the Bauhaus transcended its fourteen year life. It created a modern design movement spanning architecture, product design and visual communications.

Example 10: Herbert Bayer “Divisumma Olivetti”; 1953This poster announces Olivetti calculators. This abstract configuration suggests the function, or the purpose of the product being advertised. Design elements include elementary forms and the use of grayscale with bright accents.

Swiss StyleThe International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush left, ragged right text. The style is also as-sociated with a preference for photography in place of illustrations or drawings. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in text, and it is for this that the style is named.

Example 11: Top left: Josef Müller-Brockmann, Musica Viva, 1957; top right: Armin Hofmann, Spitzen; bottom left: Armin Hofmann, Kunsterziehung in USA; bottom right: Josef Müller-Brockmann, Musica Viva, 1958

Pioneers of Digital Graphic DesignIn the eighties, a small group of designers embraced digital technology as an innova-tive tool capable of expanding the scope of design possibilities and the very nature of the design process. Emigre is a graphic design magazine art-directed by Rudy Vander-Lans using fonts designed by Zuzana Licko, published between 1984 and 2005 in San Francisco. Emigre was one of the first publications to use Macintosh computers and had a large influence on graphic designers moving into desktop publishing. Its variety of layouts, use of guest designers, and opinionated articles also had an effect on other design publications. (http://www.emigre.com/EMagView.php)

Example 12: Emigre 26 - All Fired Up; 1993Celebrating its 10th year of publication, with issue 26 Emigre continues to highlight the experimental spirit that lurks within the field of graphic design.

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Moet & Chandon Champagne AdsExample 13: RepresentationalExample 14: Less AbstractExample 15: More AbstractExample 16: More Abstract

Luis Vuitton AdsExample 17: RepresentationalExample 18: More AbstractExample 19: Less AbstractExample 20: Abstract

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EXERCISE: Should Design be Realistic?In this exercise, you will explore your own ideas about the realism and abstraction in graphic design. View the following eight images in the:http://redsparrow.org/gr10/week4/in_mainframeT4.phpgallery.1. Martin Ogolter Design - Book design for Boyhood by J.M. Coetzee,, 1996 2. Foote, Cone & Belding - Diet Coke, “Light it up!” campaign, 20043. Milton Glaser, Inc. - “Art Is...” School of Visual Arts Poster, 1996 4. Takenobu Igarashi - Architectural Alphabets (MHGD 452), 19835. John Maeda - Absolute Maeda, 20056. Pentagram - “Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk” Souvenir Brochure, 19967. Kurt Schwitters - Page from The Scarecrow (MHGD 258), 19228. Tide campaign, 1951In this exercise we will label each example using one of the following categories: A. ABSTRACTB. MORE ABSTRACTC. LESS ABSTRACTD. REPRESENTATIONALFor each of these works, write a brief explanation of your choice. Look for visual clues to help you add specific details to your explanation.

For the second part of the exercise, please answer the following questions: (Give specific reasons for your answers)

1. Did we all agree on what category works should be placed? If not, why do you think we disagree?2. “ All works of design are by their very nature abstract.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why or why not?3. “Isn’t the abstract real - if only we can contemplate it?” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why or why not?4. Do you think it takes more or less design skill and creative ability to create abstract art? Why or why not?5. Read other students’ responses and comment at least two of them. Keep the discussion going!REMINDER: you get grade points for participation. Participation includes communica-tion with your classmates: reading and commenting their posts.