Chapter 13: The Influence of Modern Art

Chapter 13 covers several modern movements, including cubism, futurism, Dadaism, surrealism and expressionism.  Pablo Picasso was the first, and most influential man of cubism.  This new style of art demonstrates the new approach to handling space and and expressing human emotions.  All of the figures are generally abstracted into various geometric planes, including squares, rectangles and triangles.  This abstracted the image greatly, but after viewing the image, the image becomes recognizable.  The real subject of cubism is the use of shapes, colors, lines and textures versus the realistic subjects of previous art periods.  

Futurism followed cubism, and was first launched when the Italian poet Marinetti published his newspaper.  His newspaper consisted of images that were designed by simply using typography.  He called for a typographic revolution and wanted to place text in unexpected locations, and not in a straight horizontal line.  Another way to describe futurism is through noise and speed.  Marinetti wanted to step outside the boundaries created by Gutenbergs's printing press and express a dynamic, nonlinear composition.  Simply put, he created a mood based off the position of the text.  This was a great transition for graphic designers.

Dadaism was influenced by the 'carnage' of WWI.  These artists were designing as protests against the war and were concerned with shock, protest and nonsense.  They intended to mock a society gone wrong through their art, to inspire rebellion.  A famous artist during this time was French painter Marcel Duchamp, who created simple objects as an art form.  A good example is a urinal.  He is also known for his recreation of a manlier Mona Lisa in response to the public losing the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance.  

Next up is surrealism, where artists wanted to depict everything realistically, but in a dream-like fashion.  This was inspired by the scientific work of Freud, and people began to fantasize about  dreams, possessing faith in man and spirit.  It is more of a way of thinking versus a style of design.

This in turn led to Expressionism, where personal responses and emotions were depicted.  Color, drawing and proportions were often exaggerated or distorted, line and color were often pronounced.  Much of the work is based off of the poor because the social crisis that was occurring before WWI.  People felt sorry for the poor and wanted to depict their troubles in their art.

I was surprised to hear that Picasso used various elements from ancient Iberian and African tribal art.  I never would have expected that since I have seen a few popular pieces of his work.  I was also intrigued by Berlin artist John Heartfield and his revolts against the Nazi's.  It's quite brave of him to create and distribute propaganda against them, even when he knew he was being hunted.  Crazy man, but for all the right reasons. 

Where was futuristic artist Fortunado Depero from?  I could probably guess based of his name, but I want to know for sure.  I'm just curious because he is created with bringing futurism to America,... but I don't know where is from!