Rodchenko avantgarde graphic design photo montage

These works at the time were most probably considered to be avantgarde due to there context and originality. However today we would more likely see them as a form of propaganda, work with a socio political forefront and purpose.

Avantgarde project by Maxime Quolin

A set of four printed artworks using the same tone, effect, and elements. This design project was created by graphic designer Maxime Quolin from Belgium as a milestone project to showcase his step forward as a graphic designer and artist.


http://photoshoptutorials.ws/creative-inspirations/graphic-design/design-showcase-avantgarde.html

Useful websites.

http://www.citrinitas.com/history_of_viscom/avantgarde.html covers pretty much everything from rocks and cave paintings through avant garde and modernism to the computer.

CTS Seminar 6 - Avant Garde and Kitsch

• comes from the French, means advancing guard (military term) otherwise means being at the cutting edge - up to the minute
• it's a tsudo-intellectual phrase to say something is avant-garde
• art & design concept but also a modernist concept (progressive and linear)
• you can be a member of the group avant-garde
• aesthetic & collective
• can be reductive if used improperly
• concept has been neutralised - but did mean something at a different time
• Marcel Duchamp (slide 6) questioning who gives meaning to art and pointing out that the surroundings can often force something to be seen/considered art. They have an effect or influence on the audience
• challenging conceptions of what we consider to be art
• partly aggression to the conservative society
• 'Fauves' Wild Beasts (slide 7) gesture against conventions (slide 8) comfortable fantasy, utterly conventional and accepted art, upholding the conventions
• radical redefining of what technique is
• Leeds College of Art & Design - asking everyone to challenge conventions if everyone is challenging conventions then challenging conventions will ultimately become conventional (paradox)
• originality - are you always original? (no) (everything good is borrowed, everything bad is stolen)
• it's bad to copy but good to be original
• if you were completely original you would alienate yourself from everything and everyone as you would have a place or purpose, and in turn you would be both socially and self rejected
• Leeds College of Art & Design - Art as a signifier connotes design, fashion and textiles but it doesn't really, not to everyone
• Art is about innovation and creativity
• old art had a different way of working - an apprentice system, you would paint, draw and sculpt from your masters work until you were good enough to do it yourself - most definitely not original
• painting by Henry Wallace - THE CHATTERTON COMPLEX - romanticism - the power of the individual
• a tortured genius ahead of his time
• the idea of the artist being better or special still lives today
• 18th century romantic idea
• examples - Kurt Cobain, Rothko and Jackson Pollock
• (stone cutters) realism - to do with the subject - art was funded by the rich wanting to see their world and ideas but repeated and reflected in the work, glorifying what they already know - this work is saying to other people you are worthy of being art or the subject of art.
• political issues
• ART FOR ARTS SAKE
• Whistler - work on the look of art and not focus on the political view of it - otherwise it becomes closer to propaganda
• autonomy acts like a beacon saying look at these pure things (2 different stand points on avant-gardism)
• Whistlers Nocturne in black and gold:The falling rocket (1875)
• 20 guineas for throwing a pot of yellow paint at the public
• (Clive Bell) as work becomes less understandable critics begin to explain it to us and we no longer engage with the work but with the critic - one reason why art has more value than graphic design
• value given by taste makers
• artists spend their whole lives trying to express themselves and be special and creative thinking themselves ahead of their time, they eventually in some way or another kill themselves, art is just a form of slow suicide.
• one from of art that successfully communicates in turn has to be conventional, we have to follow conventions to get the message across.
• THE CRYSTAL GOBLET
• good design is invisible - aim for invisibility and transparency
• 'serif and kerns' only the designer learns and cares about these little details in the work anyone else will just see words of a page.
• Sagmeister - avant-garde designer - the idea that people can read or understand the work is secondary - design for designs sake
• traffic and roads signs are good examples of invisible design. they communicate universally
• WHAT IS KITSCH?
• google definition - tasteless, inferior copies of art
• soviet socialist realism was kitsch
• kitsch - inferior form of art, art that is not doing as well
• to call something kitsch you have to set a taste but who sets it?
• kitsch is to value tastes
• vernacular typography (vernacular = in the common language)
• judgement of kitsch insists on you reacting to work in a n elitist way
• Constable Haywain - if you put his work in you home it's kitsch? - implicating fine art in meant to be in a 'temple' a worthy place for it so it can be considered fine
• people like different thing s but people seem to like contemporary art because they are told it's good.
• Jeff Coons - richest living artist - seriously shit statue of Michael Jackson - putting kitsch into a place where it doesn't belong
• Thomas KinKade painter of light, light can be popular, kitsch merchant
• if we can make money of paintings like his then why are we told/taught to be avant-garde?
• Damien Hirst's shark- never touched the work before it was sold
• spots on the canvas people buy them for the status they bring with them - art becomes a commodity he doesn't paint them himself any more - he set out to create the worlds most expensive piece of art
• there are myths as to why art is so valuable in our world

1. why does our work have to be 'original'?
2. is it possible to be 'avant-garde' and/or original?
3. if I make my work socially committed so that people can understand it, can it still be avant-garde/innovative?