danielafederighi

[danielafederighi]

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[danielafederighi]

_REMIX 1.How did artists and designers of the 80s remix ideas and references from preceding generations? 2. Is it a problem that these ideas weren’t their own?

 Postmodernism went to an opposite way of modernism and wanted to deconstruct thei values. Modernism was generally based on idealism and a utopian vision of human life and society, pretty much the american way of life. Potst modernism challenged those utopian and unreal thoughts that were universal certainties or truths. Post modernism movement did have a proper and strict style to be followed, because they wanted to embrace all kind of things to create a second one. Therefore, artists would even use precious images and text to deconstruc. It was a freedom for for the media and an important thing to mention is that it was one of the first movements that would tear down the idea of high-class art. The first one came with a huge political force, that was influenced with the new technology of global communication, that bring the possibility of a high communication with the world, but still worry about knowing pass a huge baggage of theorical studies. The contemporary culture practice is not that worry about aesthetic and cultural basis, the contemporary practice is more about the feeling and the experiment of life.  The experiments let art and creativity be more fluid, as well as led people’s psyche to gradually change as well. The possibility to understand yourself and the human rational and irrational behaviours opened the horizon in the art’s field. Damien Hirst and Guerilla Girls for example are figures that follow their intists to present to the audience what they thought it was valuable to be heard/known, following their instinct and method of creation.

[danielafederighi]

 _ALTERNATIVE 1. How were the changes in American society in the 50s and 60s reflected in its visual culture? 2. What does American visual culture today communicate about its political and social context?

 With the cold war dividing the world into two blocks ( socialism and capitalism,) art and design followed this separation and clearly differed the American jazz and the abstract expressionism to the Sovietic social realism. In the 50s, the United States was the world’s strongest military power and the economy was booming and consumer goods were available all over.  However, that moment had conflits as well considering that civil rights movements were increasing and opression as well. Today's American visual culture indeed goes back to those problems that remain today, especially about racism and mass shootings happening there. Rap and Hip Hop are important keys of information spreading, and these genres that talk about those problems, just like  It's interesting how this happened parallel to how rap and hip hop have been such a fever in the United States and it’s been reflecting in things like fashion and art. I guess it could be that people there still want to appropriate other cultures because the one they have is a mix came from others so there’s still a gap and they fill it with what’s not theirs, therefore it’s all about individualization for their own purposes and not really  a preoccupation with all the areas that involve other people culture, including afro-american one, otherwise there would be more support concentration in that matter. 

[danielafederighi]

_INTERNATIONAL STYLE

1. What happened to modernism when it cross the Atlantic? 2. Were there problems with this goal approach? 

America’s lack of history and self-building in terms of art made it look up to Europe’s modernism to try to build its own type of movement. They wanted to build their own culture yet they didn’t have any, considering they are a mix of different ones coming from immigrants that ended up being appropriated together and became American Modernism. However, that’s what they did, they collected elements from all the different cultures that were inserted in their territory and called their mix “American Culture. They also appropriated the European Style to crash it without any preoccupation since that history wasn’t theirs.  There was something about the psycho-sexual subject matter, conceptual ideas, and expressive use of bright colors that made Americans wish to experiment more and expose their own style. Also, in the half of the 20th century, fascism and the circumstances of the Second World War made the intellectual  society  and leading designers (Bauhaus was closed) move from Europe to America, planting their working methods, values, philosophies and ideas in the American territory however with the wish to dispense the old and focus on the modern and how this new industrialized world with its rapid way of living made people be swallowed, becoming alienated, without any purpose in life. There was a lack of identity and people wanted to rediscover themselves and art was included on that. Artists and designers then started to explore techniques, forms and materials that could be the new tools to build a new world, mixing art with practical work. The individual's importance was emphasized as well as the focus on the natural and human sciences. Art was like an escape, almost creating a fantasy and parallel world, that is seeing in so many collages, abstract and mixed medias made in that moment. Consequently, this freedom to experiment lots to make art became product, and that was when publicity was born as a new way of thinking since it embraced art and design with the business world, transforming art into a product that needed to be made then consumed. 

[danielafederighi]

 _EUROPEAN MODERNISM. 1. How did Beatrice Warde’s Crystal Goblet influence the development of European graphic design and typography? 2. Do you feel text ins influential  to graphic design and typography today?

Thinking on a successful and meaningful typography, Beatrice Warde wrote “The Crystal Goblet” pointing out that the typography should be as clear as possible, being almost impossible to be noticed on a text. That takes into consideration the function and purpose of a design, seeing the symmetry, precision and mostly the objectivity. It’s a pathway of aesthetic commonly used and appreciated in modern Europe. That was when the grid started being overused to better display text on a page. Linked to that, Beatrice Warde talks about the margin, that shouldn’t have anything in excess, so the reader can slip their fingers on it, just like what should happen with the goblet full of wine. The goblet is not the purpose, it shouldn’t call too much attention. In an interview with Eye Magazine, Beatrice Warde says that the good purpose of a printing is to make sure the reader gets the author’s message without any impediment and that can be clearly seen in the swiss design that strictly follows the grid and stick with simple typefaces.   Nowadays it’s clear to me that people are lazy to read more than 5 lines of text, that’s why the videos are the main tool for marketing, displaying just the main information and key words usually in less than a minute. In the recent times, text can be useful, yet doesn’t seem to be necessary to typography and graphic design, because people are more attentive to the visual look than the piece’s information and message. Accordingly, to that, I think that text could be considerably useful if turned into a shape or image somehow. People see in a work what they see in themselves. So, if you think of a Basquiat’s painting against Mira Schendel’s, which one would be more photographed if displayed on the streets? The audience dictates what’s good or bag art/design according to their tastes which are commonly linked to the hype of the moment. That’s pretty much the dictate “don’t judge the book by its page”. A piece could be colorful, have lots of details and the text containing information could be even confusing, but that work will probably be more appreciated than a simple plain page with only few words.

[danielafederighi]

_AVANT GARDE:

The term come from the french, firstly used in the 19th century and it means “advanced guard” being the first row from an army. In the arts, it’s the denomination given to artists who break patterns and go against the standards by being innovative and pushing-boundaries. I think that there’ll always be a possibility for a new avant-garde considering that we are humans who are constantly evolving by breaking old habits and creating new ones, according to the context we’re living in and the values we consider necessary. However, about the possibility to be truly avan-garde leads me to a different path of thinking. That is because we seem to be living in a moment that people feel the need to be seen and to be different from the others, always considering what the others will think about them. Therefore, I wonder if people would be avant-garde to indeed try to transform and break the patterns or if they’d be doing this for people to notice them (and not the deep purpose). A simple and even generated but useful example of this is the “hipster effect”. That is like a movement of people who are against the mainstream culture and their patterns in possessions who end up becoming equally similar. In my opinion, there’s always space for new avan-garde, especially because we’re living in such a hard time all over the world and there are just so many actions that need to be taken, that the rise of a truly avan-garde movement, principally those to express through art. Another point that comes to my mind is that if there was avan-garde movement in art, what aesthetic it would be, and I personally think it would be something that leads to a more natural, imperfect, with true reality colors, and not just a bunch of pixels. The urge to come closer to natural escape will soon pop out in every corner. That follows the aesthetic and the purpose of my team’s idea for the “luxury goods” project, that could be seen in the picture attached.