Visual Culture 10 - 1940's and 50's (second world war and cold war)

John Heartfield, photomontage and anti-Nazi propaganda

http://www.kuriositas.com/2011/06/extraordinary-anti-nazi-photomontages.html

During the 1930's the Nazi's were starting to obtain more and more ground in Europe despite this a lot of people were choosing to ignore the threat of war Germany posed, rather actually choosing to take a laid back approach. 

One person who decided not to ignore and pretend it wasn't happening was John Heartfield. He decided to through the pieces of art he produced were photomontages decades before photoshop was invented. 

The image to the left shows John Heartfield (at the top of the image) doing Adolf Hitlers hair. 

Blood and Iron

John Heartfields interpretation of 'Blood and Iron' portrayed through photomontage the image depicts bloody axes that formed the shape or the swastika.

It was stated during this time that the German people would in the end be reformed through a combination of blood and iron.

In the year 1939 John created this piece of artwork shown above.

This photomontage is a perfect representation of 'blood and iron' in reality.

Piece and Fascism

The dove is a symbol of peace and has been shown in art as this symbol of peace dating back to as early as the 1400 and possibly earlier. The dove in the 'peace and fascism' photomontage shown to the left, is impaled on a knife that is attached to the end of a rifle, which was meant to represent the rise of fascism in Europe in the year 1930. In the background behind the dove is the league of nations building and on top of that building you can see a flag flying. The flag depicts the Nazi Swastika.

Other examples of John Heartfield's work is shown below:

In todays day and age John Heartfield is considered to be the master of political photomontage and for good reason not only were his pieces of work amusing but they were insightful and informative even if other people were not ready to take seriously his claims. But as well as being all of the above they were still good pieces of art. 

The aftermath

After the war Adolf Hitler was finally defeated bringing and end to Nazism, John returned to Germany after previously having left and lived out is days in East Germany. His life's work was commemorated on a postage stamp to be enjoyed by millions. 

Visual Cultures 9 - 1930's USA

The Hollywood studio system

http://www.hollywoodmoviememories.com/articles/hollywood-history/hollywood-studio-system-golden.php

The Hollywood studio system was said to be created in the 'golden ages' by the collaboration of 5 different major studios, later to be known as the 'great 5'.

The Hollywood studio system is credited with creating the majority of the most iconic stars of the said, golden age. 

At the beginning of the studio film production there was a special scheme or system put in place that helped the development of very talented actors and actresses. This system was called the 'star system' it included  investing large amounts of money in the recruitment and training of fresh new talented stars and ending with a contract from the studio.

Breaking the sound barrier

Breaking the sound barrier was something that dramatically changed movies as the world knew it.

The use of sound in films brought the silent movie craze to a complete end in a matter or years. 

'Talkies', as the films were formally known, increased the number of people who would attend film screening, not by the hundreds but by the millions.

Due to the fact that talkies were not that good technically meant that the quality of the visual aspect suffered, but this wasn't such an issue as the majority of people became fascinated with the dialogue and lyrics that were so new to them.

The first talking film
http://www.humorinhistory.com/Pages/talkies.html

The first successful talking film was entitled 'The jazz singer' and was released in October in the year 1927. 

The actor who starred in this production was Al Jolson who was a very popular singer of the time.

During the production he could be seen wearing black face paint. This is known as 'Blackface'

Blackface

http://thegrio.com/2013/10/30/a-brief-history-of-blackface-just-in-time-for-halloween/

Al Jolson from the film 'The Jazz Singer' in blackface make up.

Blackface make up was used on white people to imitate the face of a black person. In history this actually emerged in the mid 19th century and was used to put down the fear and morbid fascination with the black culture.

Black actors were not hired at the beginning of the 20th century therefore the blackface method grew very important for desensitising people.

Visual Cultures 8 - 1920's in Europe and Russia

Propaganda in graphic design and illustrations during the 1920's Soviet Russia

Propaganda

http://guity-novin.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/chapter-29-propaganda-posters.html

Propaganda is something governments use to manipulate and control the general public. The information used may or may not be true information. Propaganda is used to provoke the general public to do exactly what the government wants, without them necessarily knowing they are under the power of propaganda. 

The revolution

http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/propaganda-design-aesthetics-soviet-retro-posters-118.aspx

The revolution brought a new wave of various forms of art into the mix. Examples would be westernised culture, dada futurism, constructivism, surrealism. This lead to (especially in the early years) the propaganda posters that soviet russia produced being largely influenced by those movements.

Despite this the soviets poster did resinate its own style whilst still being influenced by other means. 

"A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism 1920"

This poster entitled "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism, 1920" is a prime example of propaganda in Soviet Russia's posters.

Lenin was known as a great debater, who had a fire in his belly. This is well brought across within this poster by his stance, and him pointing. 

There is two main propaganda elements shown in this poster. 

One being the red banner, red represented the revolution in Soviet Russia. The second being the smoke stack which represented the industrial work that was said to help the country move forward to the future.

"Beat the whites with the red wedge 1920"

The picture entitled 'Beat the whites with the red wedge' is another prime example of propaganda poster.

Just like the previous poster this poster also contains a lot of red which again represented the revolution.

When you look at this poster it isn't hard to notice the massive influence of non soviet art movements. This poster is massively influenced by the new avant garde movement. This form of movement actually influenced a lot of other Soviet posters.

Propaganda although can sometimes be used in a bad way, was included in some very iconic pieces of art in the form of posters not only in the Soviet Russia but in other countries like America and Britain. 

Visual Cultures 7 - 1900- 1920

Art of the first world war and it's aftermath

http://weimarart.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/art-of-first-world-war.html

As well as photographing the events that happened during the first world war, many artists would create pieces of artwork depicting things that happened.

an example would be a painting by Max Oppenheimer. Who painted an image of an almost naked man holding a wound on his chest. He entitled the image 'the bleeding man'.

'The Bleeding man'

Although you see these paintings and you know that they are showing the death and suffering of men, there is something appealing and beautiful about the actual pieces of artwork. This is because a large majority of the paintings have very vivid color and this is considered to be a beautiful thing as bright colors are associated with happy things. 

Max Beckmann

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/max-beckmann

Beckmann's name was one that kept popping up whilst i was researching war art. 

He is concidered to be a widley known as one of Germany's best 20th century artists. Beckmann was a figure painter by trait and during the war he took advantage of the world around him and painted his experiences throughout the war, political turmoil during the 1920's and 30's, the rise of nazism, exile in Amsterdam and his emigration to the USA.

Beckmann was in the action during the war serving as a medical orderly. This did have a profound psychological effect not only on his brain but his artwork also. 

'The Grenade'

Propaganda posters

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Were-Propaganda-Posters-Used-In-World-War-1

Propaganda was used a long time before world war one happened. But using propaganda on posters only came around as world war one did. 

Almost immediately from the start of the war the government started to produce posters to get the public to join the army to help the fight. The image to the left shows a British recruitment poster and below that there is an American recruitment poster similar to the British one.

The American recruitment poster above is one of the most iconic images from world war one. 

The poster would include short punchy lines that would make you feel like the poster was directly speaking to YOU, as though America or Britain needed YOU to help win the fight.
They would say things like 'Uncle Sam needs YOU', Join YOUR country's army' and 'God save the King'.

Aswell as the text the posters would also include drawings. The drawings were designed to convey pro-war messages and to seem to be looking at you, and also pointing right at you as you have seen from the two posters show above.

Visual cultures 6 - The late 19th century.

The birth of cinema

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist1.html

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist.html

Whilst researching this topic you can instantly see that a lot of references will state and credit Thomas Edison for inventing the first motion picture camera in 1891, better known as the Kinetograph, Edison also invented the kinetoscope which is a peep hole motion picture viewer. 

The motion pictures grew in popularity fast and within the space of 10 years, single viewer Kinetoscopes were created. This meant that the target audience grew massively.

To the right i have inserted a picture of what a Kinetoscope looks like. 

Origins of motion picture 

The concept of moving images as entertainment despite what people may think was not a new matter when the late 19th century came around. Before the invention of the Kinetoscope, people would use magic lantern as a means of entertainment. The magic lanterns proved to be very popular.

The magic lantern would use glass slides with images which then would project onto a surface, a more primitive form of todays projectors. 

But this was not the only form of entertainment that was around before Thomas Edison invented the Kinetoscope. 

This is what a magic lantern looks like. 

Edison's first motion picture studio

Edison's first motion picture studio was entitled 'the black Maria'. This was a specially built motion picture production studio. It was entitled the black maria because of it having a striking resemblance to a police patrol wagon of that time. 

This studio had to be built in order to support the influx of new film subjects (new film subjects were vital to keep the public interested in the motion picture). 

The studios roof could be opened to allow sunlight in to illuminate the room. The building itself would move, it was mounted on a pivot this was so the studio could constantly be lit up by sunlight

The black maria (to the left)

The first motion picture recorded

The earliest recorded motion picture was entitled 'Fred Ott's sneeze' (Edison Kinetoscopic record of a sneeze, January 7th 1894).

The sneeze is from Fre ott who was an employee of Edison, it is said that fred sneezing commercially for the camera.

Visual Cultures 5 - The Nineteenth Century

The Nineteenth Century

http://photographyincontext.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/documentary-and-storytelling-summary.html

The word documentary basically means story telling saying something as it is. 

The increasing popularity in documentary photography was due to the mass amount of press after WW2. 

Photographers then became a key way in everyday life of illustrating a story through this media format, educating in a creative manor as well as recording and documenting were the main goals of documentary photography. 

'Humanity in war'

http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/photo-gallery/humanity-in-war-photos-230609.htm

'The american civil war 1861- 1865'

The photo depicted here is only one of many that are shown in the book 'Humanity In War'. All of the images are meant to illustrate the history of all armed conflict from the mid 19th century to present day.

The moment the world really started documenting what really happened on the front line, in all these wars and conflicts was the moment the public (that were not necessarily there to whiteness it first hand) could really truly see the horror of what really goes on.

Civil war photographer

by Mathew Bardy

Mathew was one of the most famous 19th century civil war photographers. Despite this is it believed that a large number of the photographs he is famous for were not actually taken by him, but were actually taken by employees of his. 

Mathew took photos of scenes at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania following an epic battle in early July 1863.

Although Mathew is considered as one of the greats of his time (mainly for war, documentary photography). He was not actually specialized in that field of photography he was actually a portrait photographer, taking many portrait or people and also himself. 

The pictures Mathew created of the war truly capture the suffering and the rawness of what war was really about.

Without these we might not have such an accurate idea of what war was like in the 19th century.

Visual Cultures 4- 17th and 18th Centuries

 17th and 18th Centuries

Vermeer

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/johannes-vermeer

Vermeer is now known to most as one of the 'great Dutch masters' which may be surreal to many as only 35 paintings by him are actually known. 

Influences

The earliest work by Vermeer from the 1650's included a vast amount of religious and mythological subjects.

The sheer fact he has only got few paintings to show for his life times work may suggest that he would work on each one for an extended period of time.

Style

He had a distinct life like/ realistic style to his paintings portraying light as you would see it in real life and also by focusing great detail and care with object placement and architectural space.

Bellow is two examples of Vermeer's work:

The Girl With the Pearl Earring

'The girl with the pear earring' is one of the most famous paintings by Vermeer. This is a painting i certainly grew up knowing about. I vividly remember seeing this in a year 4 art class during my primary school days. 

http://www.artble.com/artists/johannes_vermeer/paintings/girl_with_a_pearl_earring

The painting (shown above) was originally called 'the girl with the Turban'. The name got changed half way through the twentieth century. This is said to be Vermeer's 'masterpiece' but it is often referred to as 'the Mona Lisa of the north' or 'the Dutch Mona Lisa'.

The girl in the painting is said to be Vermeer's eldest daughter believed to be round the age of twelve of thirteen at the time this painting was painted. 

Her facial features are said to appear in several of his paintings but because he used multiple techniques on the subject of his paintings, it does make it harder to compare all the females faces due to the women being portrayed in various different lighting and poses. 

When you look in depth at lots of examples of Vermeer's work you will notice a pattern. This pattern leads you to figuring out his main subjects. The main subject matter for his work is almost always women. Some would say it was obvious that he took a keen interest in women's various roles at the time. 

He would depict within within his paintings women maintaining the idealist way of life by keeping certain order within the household and raising children, all within christian values. 

Therefore arguing that women played a vital role in safe guarding tradition and moral values throughout generations.

 Rembrandt

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/-rembrandt-van-rijn

Rembrandt again was one of the most influential European/Dutch painters of his time (1604- 1669).

His main style of work was painting people mainly in a portrait style and in his time painted more paintings than Vermeer.

Many of which were paintings of his friends and also scenes from everyday life. 

Wealth

He found great wealth early on with his paintings. These paintings showed stories from history, religion, poetry converted into intense drama.

An example is shown below:

I have inserted a link that within it holds a whole number of Rembrandt's work:

http://www.rembrandtallhispaintings.com/

In comparison to Vermeer you can tell instantly the similarities, in the way they painted people and in there surroundings within the painting. They both captured realistic light well and also paint people in a realistic manor. One difference i feel is predominant is that Rembrandt's paintings depict a lot of wealth and actually appear to be painting specifically to show that. 

I also notice that Vermeer's paintings hold a lot more color then Rembrandt's did.