Blog 2: The Avant-Garde and the Origins of Modernism in Europe

With the amount of information in the reading this week, it was not easy to find  one thing that stood out. From Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Futurist program with typography in Italy, Viktor Deni and Dimitri Moor's political posters in the Soviet Union, and the birth of Dada and Expressionism artist John Heartfield and Jon Tschichold. Something that Mark Burchartz said stood out throughout the reading.

"Typography is communication composed in type.
  Photography is the visual presentation of what can be optically apprehended.
  Typhoto is the visually most exact rendering of communication....." (Hollis, 60)

Book Jacket 1929 [John Heartfielfd]
https://justseeds.org/jbbtc-34-john-heartfield-pt-5/https://justseeds.org/jbbtc-34-john-heartfield-pt-5/
John Heartfield's book jacket explains this quote in its entirety. The montage/collage also shows how avant-garde change the way graphic design was done. The title's type is out of form and position that broke the tropes of graphic design.



''Kandinsky 60th Birthday Exhibition" Poster 1926 [Herbert Bayer]
http://l-whitaker1013-cts.blogspot.com/2010/11/five-examples-of-modernist-graphic.html
Herbert Bayer made this for his teacher Kandisky for his sixtieth birthday that was considered to be his most ambitious work at the time where the rectangular shape is relieved by the skewed angle on the poster. (Hollis, 64). The Bauhaus style and asymmetrical layout is always been one of my favorite style of graphic design. It shows how the avant-garde inspired other designers to get off the norm and find another way to communicate and relay a message through other styles.

Varvara Stepanova, The Results of the First Five-Year Plan, 1932 (State Museum of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow)
Results of the First Five-Year Plan double-page photomontage 1932 [Varvara Stepanova]
https://smarthistory.org/stepanova-the-results-of-the-first-five-year-plan/
Lastly, Varvara Stepnova stood out because she was one of the leaders of the avant-garde movement in Russia. She use photomontage to create political and propaganda posters during Stalin's rule of the Soviet Union. The style of design caught my eye as John Heartfield is one of the designers I like because his poster work with photomontage. The choice of color, photos, and composition are use very well in the poster. Lenin's oversized head and the large five shows he is the main point of the poster. You can clearly tell that Stepanova inspire artist/designer like Heartfield. 




Comments

  1. Gabrielle StephaniJanuary 22, 2020 at 12:13 PM

    I completely agree with your first point. The amount of images and information that was presented in this section made it extremely difficult to narrow down my favorites to 3. I really appreciate the quote that you picked out from the book. I think it does a great job of summarizing the impact that the combination of two mediums can have on each other. I also liked the piece by Bayer because it does a great job of showing the early stages of avant-garde work - I like seeing the stepping stones and comparing it to piece in the present.

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