#construtivism

[adrianastrix]

Another thing I'll add here is something that I was coincidentally discussing with a friend yesterday: this kind of issue can only be solved if our science education (and I'm talking BOTH Natural Sciences and Humanities) doesn't rely on teachers being simply a source of "correct" information.

I put "correct" in quotes because guys. GUYS. I was in a comitee for quality control of kids science textbooks (ages 11-14), and Jesus Christ. It was a book written in the Year of Our Lord 2022 and it had a SLUR as an "alternative name" to Down Syndrome. Not to mention information that was BLATANT WRONG when you as much as googled the legal definition of a certain thing, and much much more. We obviously bombed it, but there's the kicker: the only thing our ban ensured is that this textbook collection is out of question for Brazilian public schools. Private schools can use it, if they want to.

Which means that even schools can and, as much as we try, will spread misinformation, even if it's in a small scale. The teacher in the Twitter thread very astutely identified it as a crisis of authority. If education is just a matter of relaying "correct facts", it all comes down to a matter of authority. And the poor teacher feels hopeless because she can't even say, in good faith, that her word is inherently better than ChatGPT or Wikipedia or TikTok because, guess what, she could be wrong. There's no such thing as infallible authority.

There's only one solution, one that Education Scientists (which ARE a thing, I'm one of them!) have been saying since, I dunno, THE 18TH CENTURY: giving kids an education centered in DOING science, not memorizing its products. The teacher started amazingly by asking the kid to "look it up" in front of her. But what she COULD have done, if prepared for this kind of challenge (I obviously don't fault her for freezing when confronted by something for the first time) was to ask for the notebook or cellphone and show the student what she meant by "look it up" and how the results vary. And tell him that NO single source should be trusted, either her or ChatGPT, and when sources disagree, what should be the tiebreaker?

In other words, the only antidote is showing the kids HOW science is done, HOW you arrive at conclusions, and HOW documental research is done. Science isn't something that Very Smart Geniuses do in their ivory towers to create The Truth. It's science, not a sacred religious ministery. Science is mundane, messy, controversial, and everyone* can do it with a bit of training, just like everyone* can cook or sing or draw with the proper training. [*"everyone", of course, being a rethorical generalization; obviously there are circunstances in which people might NOT be able to do it, or might need especialized assistance that others don't need, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.]

The main reason why our education is stuck in memorization and trying to out-authority the internet has a name: Standard Testing.

It's LEAGUES easier to test for how many facts someone can spew exclusively from memory (you just need a multiple choice test that can be graded by a machine) than it is to test students for their ability of create, research and communicate knowledge (the current optimal way to do it is the whole process of writing a monography/dissertation/thesis).

The whole EVALUATION system holds us down WAY more than the teaching methods themselves, because when you are teaching scientific abilities, you WON'T be sparing time to ensure that all your students are commiting definitions and formulas to mind. At the VERY least, tests should allow students to search for the info they need: this alone already demonstrate that student's ability to research, compare and choose correct information.

The idea that you can compare kids by a test that quantifies the amount of information they have on their heads, and that once they perform well on a test, that info is certified as correct and true is RIDICULOUS. Information on the brain degrades with time, unless you need it constantly. And people who grade tests are human, humans can be wrong. The accepted answer in a test can be wrong.

But we have to maintain the illusion that we can OBJECTIVELY rank students, schools, school systems and nations on how much knowledge they have. Otherwise, how investors will be reassured that they are "top quality"? How private education businesses can boast that they are "the best", thus justifying their price tag? How international banks will "ensure" that the amount of money countries are investing in education are being "correctly spent" (instead of being used to repay them)?

Soooo... ChatGPT is only the tip of the iceberg. There ARE ways for us to solve that problem, there HAS been ways for it since the 18th FREAKING century. But as long as they don't make the money people happy, as long as we expect school knowledge to take the form of a standard list of memorized correct info, we will still be ineffectively fighting the robots.

[yoshihiro-nishimura]

I have created many plate by playing with colors. It like bit constructivism. Not only fun but also experiment. #colorfulplate #construtivism #ceramicart #funplate #exprimentart #陶芸 #これは普段使い #色遊び #皿 #構成主義 #実験 https://www.instagram.com/p/CoZbXNNrIgG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bandiera--rossa]

“Books! In every branch of knowledge”

Aleksandr Rodchenko - 1924

[fashionsummedup]

Mehemed Fehmy Agha was descendant of Turks and was born in present-day Ukraine in 1896.

He had a key role in difning the job of the art director in magazines of early 20th century.

Dr. Agha

He graduated in arts and later in economics when he lived in Kiev. After moving to Paris he graduated in Oriental Languages ​​in 1923. He was fluent in Russian, Turkish, German, French, Greek and English and had proficiency in photography, typography and studies in general arts.

Since a young age he was already an extremely erudite person.

In 1928, he had already worked at Vogue Paris’s office, as head of the studio, and was working at the Berlin office, as a designer, when he was interviewed by Condé Nast, the owner of the magazine, for the job of art editor for American Vogue.

After a long search Condé Nast had finally been impressed by the work and personality of one of his interviewees; and in 1929 Agha took over.

He immediately got the respect of his new colleagues who treated him as Dr. Agha, as he became known.

In a short time he also became responsible for the magazines Vanity Fair and House & Garden.

After starting to work at American Vogue most of his decisions were important and had a great impact on the publishing and artistic world.

In order to modernize the magazine, some of them were:

The change of fonts used in italics for fonts without effects and without serif, such as ‘futura’.

The greater involvement of images with texts, the removal of design’s excesses such as photo frames, columns that separated texts and sidebars.

Introduced the use of full-bleed images, without any borders; the use of double-page spreads; the use of photo montages and colored photos and the work of photographers such as Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Hoyningen-Huene, Horst, Carl Van Vechten, and Charles Sheeler, as well as comissions from Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Matisse.

Vanity Fair, double-page spread.

He cleaned up the magazine and changed the old-fashioned way in which editions were presented, pulling them towards arts closer to what was current in Europe, such as art deco and constructivism.

Vogue’s Cover, August 1940.

Vogue’s Cover, July 1932.

Vogue’s Cover, 1932.

Dr. Agha worked for Condé Nast until his death in 1942(Officially resigning in 1943), when he started to  work  as an active graphic and directorial consultant to various companies and corporations.

In 1950, with the death of his wife, which affected him a greatly, he began to slowly distance himself from work and to go deeper into solitary studies of the classical arts.

While still active in the publishing business, he was honored several times (as well as later), one of which was the publication of an edition of the American newspaper P.M. all dedicated to him.

Vanity Fair’s Cover, Dezember 1934.

Vanity Fair’s Cover, March 1935.

Vanity Fair’s Cover, August 1934.

In 1935 he was elected president of the Art Directors Club (ADC) and during the consecutive years of 1953 and 1954 he was elected president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).

Dr. Agha was known for his extreme good taste, and colleagues asked him for help whenever it was possible. Very critical, he liked to inspire the best in others and tried to make the people he worked with always reach the closest point to perfection.

He was an artist who inspired and still inspires several professionals from the publishing world as well as the art world.

Dr. Agha died in 1978.

Bibliography: Allan, Georgina O’Hara; Enciclopédia da Moda: De 1840 À Década de 90: Companhia das Letras, 2010.

https://amodaresumida.wordpress.com/2016/10/05/agha-mehemed-fehmy/  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehemed_Fehmy_Agha

https://library.rit.edu/gda/designers/dr-mehemed-fehmy-agha

http://adcglobal.org/hall-of-fame/m-f-agha/

https://www-staging.rit.edu/carycollection/node/313527

https://go.distance.ncsu.edu/gd203/?p=28081

https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Mehemed-Fehmy-Agha/1AE25B233D2CF1BB/Biography

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/sep/09/magazine-cover-design-in-pictures

http://www.drleslie.com/Contributors/agha.shtml

Agha, Mehemed Fehmy Mehemed Fehmy Agha was descendant of Turks and was born in present-day Ukraine in 1896. He had a key role in difning the job of the art director in magazines of early 20th century.

[jvl69]

From the #bauhaus creation here is a classic by Marcel Breuer #marcelbreuer : Wood-slat chair, 2nd version, 1923. Stained maple with horse-hair fabric. #modernism #chair #furniture #Weimaryears #construtivism #minimalist #BauhausArchives #germany #berlin #interiordesign #ad #architecturaldigest #metropolis #dwell @dasmodelsmen @myhouseidea @design.only @interiordesigntv @designandlive @design_interior_homes @_archidesignhome_ @interiordesignmag @interiorhints @interiorstyleguru

[uhmanobr]

Digital Richard Paul Lohse, 1952

[qbism]

#QBISM #quentinnghiem #fw17 #fireman #remake #sweatshirt #hoody #bombero #patchwork #sapeurpompier #recycled #madeinfrance #paris #picoftheday #marine #navy #mensfashion #construtivism #streetstyle #fashionblog #graphic #geometry #circle #detail #concept #pictureoftheday #instamood #hoody (à Paris, France)

[up2123753]

Art Deco

Eastern Columbia Building, Los Angeles

The arcitectural style Art Deco was also known as ‘Style Moderne’.

Art Deco originated in France in 1919 – it achieved admiration internationaly which allowed it to spread to more countries. Acccording to NYPL Art Deco was “initially known as ‘le style moderne’ or ‘jazz moderne” and it didn’t receive its current name until 1968. A few years after the Art Deco style started the designs started to reflect the “rapid artistic and technological innovations of the period between the two wars”(NYPL).

This style started in a time of experimentation within design. As said by NYPL their were current art movements within this experimentation era such as: “Bauhaus, Construtivism, Cubism, De stijl, Futurism, Orphism and Surrealism”. Each of these experimental designs and movements inspired the style of Art Deco and pushed the architects to incorportae, “chic elegance, eclectic historical and national imagery”(NYPL) into their designs. According to RIBA, the Art Deco style “became a favourite for building types associated with the modern age”, e.g. garages, airports, cinemas, swimming pools/leisure centers, offices, department shops and factories, etc. So it really did cover all bases of art, design and architecture.

(creativemarket)Characteristics:

Bold geometric shapes

Loud and vibrant colours

Clean, sleek lines

Zigzags

The Art Deco style didn’t only cover architecture, it seems as though it covered the majority of art and design aspects – furniture, textiles, ceramics, sculptures, etc. The style was so popular that art and design changed internationally. It was such a drastic change as it broke all traditions – yes there had been some complex and simpler styles before (some of which had included lots of colour), but the desire of bold shapes and colours seemed to be mesmirizing to the world.

As said by Britannica, the original intention of the Art Deco style was to “create a sleek and anti-traditional elegance to symbolize wealth and sophistication.” The intention to symbolize wealth and sophistication was mirrored through the significant use of colour, this is because at the time people who could afford the boldest and most colourful décor, art and clothes were usually the wealthiest.

References:

“Art Deco.” Www.architecture.com, www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/art-deco.

“Art Deco: A Research Guide.” The New York Public Library, 2009, www.nypl.org/node/171023.

Fox, Martin. “Eastern Columbia Building, Los Angeles,” Quora, 2020, www.quora.com/What-are-the-finest-examples-of-Art-Deco-in-architecture.

Ghisleni, Camilla. “What Is Art Deco Architecture?” ArchDaily, 18 Nov. 2021, www.archdaily.com/972018/what-is-art-deco-architecture.

Tate. “Art Deco – Art Term | Tate.” Tate, 2017, www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/art-deco.

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Art Deco | Definition, Characteristics, History, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Oct. 2018, www.britannica.com/art/Art-Deco.

[jprassuncao]

Language of Visions

By Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller in Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design (1999).

“Design history” should be understood not as catalogue of styles or a canon of formal rules, but as a complex enterprise that engages political, economic, and intellectual culture. The renewed interest in history has provoked an emerging interest in theory, a concern for identifying general principles that inform the practice of design. The body of theory established within the modernist pedagogical tradition in intrinsically hostile to an historical approach to graphic design. In our profession, as in architecture and the fine arts, the move toward greater historical awareness is linked to a revision of modernism.

The institution of graphic design emerged out of the modern art movement in the early twentieth century and was consolidated into a profession over then last fifty years. Its theoretical base comes out of avant-garde movements and organisations such as Construtivism, de Stijl, and the Bauhaus. Elements of these critical, reform-minded practices were codified by art schools after World War II. Many design textbooks, produced across the history of the profession, reproduce a core of theoretical principles based on abstract painting and gestalt psychology. Gyorgy Kepes’s Language of Vision (1944), Rudolph Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception (1954), and Donis Dondis’s A Primer of Visual Literacy (1973) contain recurring themes in modern design theory.

Pervading these works is a focus on perception at the expense of interpretation. “Perception” refers to the subjective experience of the individual as framed by the body and brain. Aesthetic theories based on perception favor sensation over intellect, seeing over reading, universality over culture difference, physical immediacy over social mediation. Modern design pedagogy, an approach to form-making validated by theories of perception, suggest a universal faculty of vision common to all humans of all times, capable of overriding cultural and historical barriers. A study of design oriented around interpretation, on the other hand, would suggest that the reception of a particular image shifts from one time or place to the next, drawing meaning from conventions of format, style, and symbolic, and from its association with otee images and with words. While modern design theory focuses on perception, an historically and culturally self-conscious approach would center on interpretation.

Kepes, Dondis, and Arnheim each employed “gestalt psycology”, a theory developed by German scientists during the 1920s. Fo all three of there writers, as for numerous others working in this tradition, design is, at bottom, an abstract, formal activity; text is secondary, added only after the mastery of form. A theory of design that isolates visual perception from linguistic interpretation encourages indifference to cultural meaning. Although the study of abstract composition is unobjectionable in itself, designs linguistic and social aspects are trivialized or ignored when abstraction is made the primary focus of design thinking.

In Art and Visual Perception, Arnheim defined his term “visual concept” as a mental image of an object that is built out of purely visual experiences of it from many angles. In a humorous tone, he explained that this picture of a Mexican is not a valid representation, because it does not refer to the true “visual concept” of a Mexican. In other words, ir requires textual information – a caption – in order to be understood.1 But what indeed would qualify as the “visual concept” of a Mexican? The sombrero is already a cultural sign, a tourist’s cliche. The “visual concept” of a Mexican would consist of more stereotypes, gathered not only from one’s experience of real Mexicans, but from movies, television, and books; a big moustache, a bright poncho, leather boots.

Arnheim’s example was intended to be funny. He aimed to extend the praise of his joke, however, to experience at large, suggesting that one’s understanding of the world is assembled out of purely “visual” perceptions, with language playing the role of a subservient filing system for sense data. In the practice of daily life, however, perception is filtered by culture. A concept of an object is both visual (spatial, sensual pictorial) and linguistic (conventional, determined by social agreement). The concept of a thing is built up from conventional views and attributes, leaned from education, art and the mass media.

Arnheim explained that although these two triangles are geometrically identical, they are perceived as different shapes due to the shift orientation; one is stable, the other is unstable. The change is owed to the psychology and physiology of the brain. Triangle B is “unstable” however, only if it is removed from any situation of use and judge as purely abstract form, as in the contextual vacuum of psychological test or a basic design class, where one is asked to look at the shape “for itself”. If the triangle appeared in a geometry book, its rotation would be described mathematically. If the triangle were used as an arrow, its pointing function would make its “instability” irrelevant.

Basic design courses routinely turn culturally ,meaningful images into abstract shapes. Type, photographs, and simplified object drawings are cropped, angled, coloured, and textured into pleasing arrangements. Abstraction is the first lesson for many design students. It remains a primary assumption behind later work, a staple design “idea”. A design theory oriented tower cultural interpretation rather that universal perception would consciously address the conventional, historically changing aspect to words and images in design problems.

The term visual language is a common metaphor in modern design textbooks: a “vocabulary” of design elements (dots, lines, shapes, textures colors) is organized by a “grammar” of contrasts (instability/balance, asymmetry/symmetry, soft/hard, heavy/light). This theory was elaborated in Johannes Itten’s Basic Course at the Bauhaus, initiated in Weimar in 1919. A similar program was continued by Kandinsky and Moholy-Nagy at Dessau. Books like Language of Vision by George Kepes, a teacher at the New Bauhaus in Chicago in the 1940s, further developed the theory of design as a “language” founded in abstraction.2 Kepes wrote, “Just as the letters of the alphabet can be put together in innumerable ways to form words to convey meaning, so the optical measures and qualities can be brought together… and each particular relationship generates a different sensation of space”. Kepes’s visual language has a purely sensual meaning.

In her Primer of Visual Literacy, Donis Dondis explained that each of the abstract compositions at left has a universal “meaning” that appeals directly to human perception.3 Yet the brain of medieval villager would interpret these pictures differently from the brain of a contemporary New Yorker, who might see lower Manhanttan in the design for “stability”. Dondis replaced concrete culturally relative meaning with a vague, universalising mood.

Perhaps Dondis’s ideal of “visual literacy”, the capacity to perceive and produce abstract compositions, depends on a prior foundation in verbal literacy. In a study by the anthropologist A. R. Luria, inhabitants of a remote Russian village were asked to identify drawings of abstract shapes. Some of these villagers knew how to read or write while others did not. Those who were literate interpreted the images as abstract geometric shapes, and they identified them by name: circle, square triangle. The non literate villagers, on the other hand, associated the drawings with objects from their everyday environments: a circle might be a plate, bucket, watch, or moon; a square could be a mirror, door, or house. Luria’s research suggest that the ability to see visual forms as “abstract”, i.e. disengaged from a contest of social use and figurative communications, is a sophisticated skill rather than a universal faculty of perception. It requires the rational, analytical thought processes which characterise literate cultures.4

The term “visual language” is a metaphor. It compares the structure of the picture plane to the grammar or syntax of language. The effect of his comparison is to segregate “vision” from “language”. The two terms are set up as analogous but irreconcilable opposites, parallel realms that will never converge, Theories of visual language and the educational practices based on the close off the study of social and linguistic meaning by isolating visual expression from other modes of communication.

In the interest if interpretation over perception, “language” can be understood inclusively rather that exclusively. Words, images, objects, and costumes, informer as they enter into the process of communication, do not occupy separate classes but participate in the culturally determined meaning that characterizes verbal language. One of the most influential theorists of this model is Roland Barthes, whose writings in the 1950s and 60s have had a continuing impact on literature, architecture, and film. In graphic design, Herb Lubalin is famous for using words as pictures and pictures as words, and for juxtaposing images and texts to produce new content. He saw no strict barrier between visual and verbal communication.

If Lubalin and other protagonists of the “big idea” approach to design worked intuitively, why, then, does theory matter? Many educators and designers avoid explicit principles in favor of intuitive, pragmatic “common sense”.5 But this anti theoretical approach is still theoretical. Any position is conditioned by intellectual structures, however vaguely they are defined. By refusing to analyse its own prejudice, pragmatism reinforces the main bias of modernist theory: it suppresses the conscious analysis of designs place in history and culture. Common sense pedagogy limits discussion to the immediate formal and practical success of a pedagogy limits discussion to the immediate formal and practical success on a project, making the broader social context of design seem irrelevant and secondary.

Theory can function both constructively, as a tool for generating design ideas, and analytically, as an evaluation method. Hanno Ehses, director of the visual communication programs at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, has formed an educational method based on classical rhetoric, the vocabulary used by the ancient Greeks to produce persuasive language. Ehses has applied terms that normally describe writing, like “pun” or “metaphor”, to graphic design, giving students a way to recognise and then produce visual/verbal “arguments” and figures of speech. Victor Burgin and other artists have used semiotics and psychoanalysis to study images from painting, film, and advertising. By employing theory to connect rather than disengage visual and verbal expression, we can intensify and direct the cultural meaning of our work.

1 Rudolph Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception. A psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954). 2 Gyorgy Kepes, Language of Vision (Chicago Paul Yheobold, 1044). 3 Donis Dondis, A Primer of Visual Literacy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973). 4 RLuria’s study is discussed in Walter Png, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World (New York and London: Metheun, 1982). 5 Paula Scher, “Back to Show and Tell”, AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, 4, I (1986).

[orumdesign]

ORUM | coleção 20 |19 | vestido boca Em breve uma nova coleção 🖤 #slowfashion #slowliving #sustainable #minimal #modasustentavel #modabrasileira #makers #surfacedesign #textiledesign #textiles #pattern #figurativeart #figurativepatterns #modernism #construtivismo #construtivism #vestido #dress #robe #wellness #zen (em São Paulo, Brazil) https://www.instagram.com/p/BoofA-0H3ND/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=5pchqbwodht3

[cyan-magenta]

🔴H for ... #helveticaofcourse #construtivism savacentar #fest #internationalfilmfestival #beograd #srb (at Sava Centar)

[bandiera--rossa]

Varvara Stepanova

Be ready! 1932

[pedrosemester03]

Sophie Taeuber-Arp - Construtivism and Dada artist

in order:

Projet pour l'Aubette - 1927

__

Relief rectangulaire - ?

__

Moving Circles - 1933

__

Vertical and horizontal composition - 1928

https://www.wikiart.org/en/sophie-taeuber-arp

[oznerdusak]

Some new project.

#sketch #sketches #poster #draw #drawing #drawings #character #characterdesign #artistoninstagram #hands #hand #picoftheday #sketch_daily #sketchy #anatomy #male #shadow #illustration #illustrationart #illustrator #pose #digitalart #digital #digitalpainting #graphicdesign #design #construtivism #pubblicity

[qbism]

#QBISM #quentinnghiem #fw17 #fireman #remake #sweatshirt #hoody #bombero #patchwork #sapeurpompier #recycled #madeinfrance #paris #picoftheday #terracotta #red #rouge #construtivism #velvet#mensfashion #tokyofashion #hongkongfashion #fashionblog #graphic #geometry #instamood (à Rue Lamarck)

[pelomundodascidades]

Baklazanas Studio, Moscow Construtivist map, Moscow, Russia, 2016

http://baklazanas.com/thenewmoscow

http://designcollector.net/likes/the-constructivism-moscow-map