Open Thread Part 3 Design and Art the 40's graphic and pop art.
I really wanted to skip over the 40's through 50's as the whole graphic design word was all about the world war followed by the cold war. Not much street art or peoples art available. Most of the graphic art and popular art is war propaganda from all sides and nations.
I found some great posters but could not trace down in many cases who designed, illustrated or created them. I found this research to be chilling as most of the poster graphic art was straight out of Brazil the movie. As a child of the fifties I missed WW11 but got the ensuing geared up cold war propaganda that shifted to the Russians who were coming. Really depressing but hey .... Art history is nothing but pictorial human history so it tends to mirror whose got the money and the power. One way or another most visual artists, fine, commercial and populist manage to express their take on what's going down.
Uncle Sam that scary dude, he still wants you..
Here's some posters that I choose for aesthetic value. Keep in mind my aesthetics may differ from yours. also they are all full bore war propoganda and have no other purpose.
1939-45 R. Filipowski. The Torch (Canadian)
I liked the Canadian and British war propaganda posters better then the American variety. The USA posters seemed racist and really over the top.
1942 J. Howard Miller. We can do it! (USA)
Max Gorden- Help Briton defend- (USA)
And now for some fine art from George Grosz an early practitioner of Ab Ex.
As everything in this OT about design and art in the 40's seems to be about war here's a song to fit the content. Hope I haven't bummed everyone out.
Comments
Good morning, shaharazade
and everybody. Beautiful day here so far. Probably rainy later.
Thank you for the Open Thread, shaharazade, and Dylan. His birthday was Tuesday.
Thanks Shaharazade
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -
omg, that's horrible.
Thanks, Tim!
The "Someone Talked" poster
reminds me of "Loose lips sink ships."
A more dire straits
c99 swimmer. Probably pointing back at GOS.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
It reminded me
of the late 40's early 50's lurid pulp paperback covers and the Noir films that followed the war. I started this series with a vague concept of showing the people's art or street art starting with the Russian constructionist's. Google images are limited as the machine is a moron. It's like Pandora or chicken spill in that it just flings out images based on god knows what algorithm and you have to sort through whatever it decides fits your search.
I knew the 40's and were not my strong suit as far as graphics and design goes. Then I got into the war propaganda and was amazed at volume of war propaganda posters globally. Here's Shu-Ogawara a Japanese artist I liked who was a war propagandist. He was a surrealist painter before the war. Here's three of his paintings.
from 1940
1945
Shu-Ogawara- Open Eyes. This painting is post war.
grosz
was the primary influence on Ralph Steadman. Here is a Steadman horrific true-life vision of cops in mufti:
Grosz was in Germany fined for insulting the army and prosecuted for blasphemy; in the Soviet Union he was briefly arrested as a spy. Formerly a Communist, the Soviet Union left him unimpressed, so he disassociated himself from the party. He left Germany in early 1933 before the Nazis could string him up. He later returned, and died in Berlin, in 1959, after bibulously falling down some stairs.
Steadman, as a result, he is very careful, around stairs.
during the
German occupation of Belgium, Magritte supported himself churning out fakes of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Cezanne. Magritte had joined the Communist Party, for the third time, in the 1940s, but all his proposed poster designs were rejected by party leadership.
In 1944 he produced The Uncertainty Principle.
during WWII
the anarchist pacifist Kenneth Patchen wrote Sleepers Awake, for which he provided his own art.
They didn't. Awake.
i recently
ran across some information about a disturbing early 1940s poster, that I have not been able to track down. Which is probably for the best. Seems that Marcel Dalio, the French actor who appeared in Renoir's La Grande Illusion and The Rules Of The Game, and later played the croupier in Casablanca, had his image slapped upon posters that were smeared all across occupied France by the Germans, as an example of what a "typical Jew" looked like. So the insane people, they would then Beware, and Report.
Dalio made it out, barely, on a forged visa. Every member of his family was exterminated in the camps.
Goos morning, Shaz & 99%'ers!
Two years ago, Florida State University had an exhibit of WWII art and memorabilia. When we went, I was amazed at the overt propaganda in the posters and art. Even my husband who does not get into political stuff very much commented on it. I did enjoy the display of the Bill Mauldin cartoons, some of which were signed originals.
This year, the gallery at FSU hosted a wonderful exhibit of Cuban art. Cuban was a hot bed of fine art, particularly painting, in the late 1800's and after the turn of the century. The exhibit was spectacular.
This weekend in Brevard NC is the White Squirrel Festival, which runs beginning Friday evening and through Sunday evening. The White Squirrel Festival has become one of the premier music events in this part of the country with all music fee of charge to the public. You just bring your own lawn chair and come and go as you please. There is a lot of other things happening besides the music. Friday night is the monthly gallery walk which we rarely miss. We have friends who regularly come down from Asheville for the gallery walks because they think atmosphere of ours is more fun than that in Asheville. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons is my favorite event of the White Squirrel Festival which is the Squirrel Box Derby. Racers from all ages come to compete on Jailhouse Hill which runs next to the county courthouse. The most fun category is actually the adult category as various teams try to out do each other with their soapbox racers. The bands are protected by a covered outdoor stage, but everything else is unprotected so we hope there is no rain, especially for the Squirrel Box Derby.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
1938
Japanese postcard celebrating the glorious alliance.
Stalin with a baby.
I like propaganda posters,
especially Soviet ones. I look at a site called English Russia every now and then, here are some of theirs: Awesome Soviet posters , Wartime posters addressing Soviet women and a set of cool posters from Intourist , Seeing Soviet Russia
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Interestingly enough, the "I Want You" poster...
Is actually from WWI. Was brought back because it was extremely successful.
If you want to see some very interesting art from the period that falls under "Pop Art", take a look at Army Air Corp planes Nose Art. A lot of young enlisted artists made money on the side painting nose art for officers planes. (Course it was also BANNED in the US, because it often depicted nude women...)
IMHO, I never really cared for the artificial distinction between "Pop" art and "High" art. Much of what I enjoy is classified as "Commercial" art, but is incredibly beautiful and more emotionally evocative than abstract crap, IMHO.
http://www.rmichelson.com/illustration/tony-diterlizzi/fine-art-prints/s...
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I don't recall the forties at all and was only 13 as
the fifties ended. I didn't have much conscious art sensibility, but what I do remember as exemplars of graphic design that caught my attention and imagination were album covers, in particular Jazz album covers.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Mexican muralists, Orozco Siquieros & Rivera made political art
in the 30s. So did Picasso, and Nogchi did it in sculpture.
Rivera (1931 The Upsrising) http://assets2.bigthink.com/system/idea_thumbnails/41143/primary/MoMA_Ri...
Orozco (early 30s The Epic of American Civilization) http://clas.berkeley.edu/research/art-epic-american-civilization
Siqueros (1936 Cosmos and Disaster) http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/siqueiros-cosmos-and-disaster-l02487
Picasso (1937 Guernica ) http://davidmhart.com/wordpress/archives/378
Noguchi (1934 Death) http://www.noguchi.org/museum/collection/death-lynched-figure
In the late 30s the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities claimed that the Federal Arts Project was, "a hotbed of communists". A not too subtle message to find another less controversial subject for your self-expression. http://www.artbusiness.com/art-artist-activism-protest-history-demonstra...
Most periods in art can be understood as a reaction to the art that came before it, and can be seen as a reflection (a barometer) of the times in which it was produced. So in the 40's American artists who were influenced by leftist politics moved toward abstraction to express themselves and splashed and dripped and brought the medium itself as well as the artist ('the hand of the artist') into the conversation about 'what is art'. Abstract, revolutionary in its conception and production where artists like Kline, Motherwell, De Koonig (with a nod to the german expressionists) and especially Pollack, began working in a style that is considered the first authentic American art; huge in scale and expressing a sense of personal freedom, and moving the eyes of the art world from Europe to New York.
just a quick note
to say that I am really enjoying this series. Thanks for putting it together.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire
interesting that the war propaganda is fear-oriented like now
combining the best of both worlds today's propagandists use the fear from WWII and the lovely Nazi terms like "Homeland" (only slightly different than "the Fatherland"). I mean, who ever used the term "Homeland" before Bush and his cronies unburied it?
I sometimes think that evil exists and goes from one person or group into another. That is, the Nazis get beaten and that evil jumps out of them into others. And then 56 years later, when looking around for a phrase, that evil forgets that it's not supposed to be Nazis anymore and accidentally blurts out "Homeland!"
I like this series, shaharazade, just am too
down to be able to handle it right now.
Take care.
A question: Can you be an anarchist and a pacifist at the same time?
I think you can mimi
I seem to becoming more and more an anarchist and I'm definitely a pacifist. actually I can't seem to self identity with any of the political ism's and ist's. I've never been big on 'theory' and yet I get told I'm an ideological purist'. What does that mean?
Perhaps most people of good spirit are a mix of all these academic abstract categories and artificial breakdowns and theories of thought. I know I'm a socialist in my own definition of that ism. I just balk at being pigeon holed into some official category that's defined by the professional ideologues.
I'm trying to find visual art in this series that is outside the official schools of art theory and is not state sanctioned . I'm working towards an end and learning a lot about how the artist's are harnessed by the powers as propagandist's and are be and the 1% throughout history who collect art.
Church, state and corporations seem to trade in art for investment, glorification of their class and profit. Sorry to go on about this but i'm kind of trying to remove the manipulative uses of art. Then again I'm not an art for art's sake believer either. Thanks for asking. i bet this is more of a ramble then you wanted as an answer.