Dadaism

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that had began in 1916 during World War 1 in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a reaction against World War 1, nationalism, rationalism, materialism which many thought to have brought war to Europe. Dada was influenced by many ideas and innovations such as Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Expressionism. Dada was quite universal with the arts ranging from performance art, poetry, photography, sculpture, paintings and collages. Dada was a powerful influence on artists in many cities which included Berlin, New York, Paris, Hanover and Cologne.  Dada's characteristics presented an interesting paradox in that they demystified artworks but still remained cryptic in some way to allow the viewer/reader to interpret the work in many ways. Dadaists portrayed people and scenes in order to create form and movement. Dada was intended to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer. Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dadaism. Dada had self-destructed itself when people started to accept the movement.  

Art Story, 2013. [online] Available at: <http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm>

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Art History, 2013. About.com. [online] Available at: <http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm>

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Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert on March 30th, 1853 in Holland ( The Netherlands) and died in 1890. Van Gogh was raised by a religious family with his father being a minister/pastor. Vincent was a highly strung person and lacked self-confidence.  Between 1860 and 1880 Van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage. He remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year Van Gogh traveled to Antwerp and discovered Japanese prints and purchased many of them. In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably met Pissarro, Monet, and Gauguin, and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists.  Van Gogh's paintings contained a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature. In May of 1890 Van Gogh shot himself ''for the good of all''. 

Van Gogh Gallery ,2013. [online] Available at <http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/bio.html>

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Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau (New Art) was a movement that started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is known by various names such as The Glasgow Style or as the Germans had called it Jugendstil. Art Nouveau was an aim at modernising design and to escape the historical styles that had previously been popular. Artists had drew inspiration from nature and geometrical forms. Art Nouveau's characteristics included organic, flowing lines- forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants - as well as geometric forms such as squares and rectangles.  

Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909 

A good example of an Art Nouveau artist would be Alphonse Mucha. The painting above was painted in Chicago in 1909 this picture depicts the American actress Maude Adams in the role of Joan of Arc. The portrait was made specifically for the one-night gala performance of the play at Harvard and was displayed as a poster for the event. Mucha also designed the costumes and sets and supervised the direction. Afterwards, at the actress' request, the painting served as the lobby poster for the Empire Theater in New York.

Helbrunne Timeline of Art History, 2013. Metmuseum. [online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/artn/hd_artn.htm>
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The Art Story, 2013. [Online] Available at:< http://www.theartstory.org/movement-art-nouveau.htm#>
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Helbrunne Timeline of Art History, 2013. Metmuseum. [online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/20.33>
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The creation of photography

The first ''working camera'' was created by Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham) who had lived around the time of 1000 AD invented the first pinhole camera also called the Camera Obscura. It is the effect of a lighted area seperated from a dark area with only a pin hole between them. An inverted (upside down) image of the lighted area will be produced on a flat surface in the dark area. As early as the 1400's it was documented that inserting a lens in the hole would produce a crisper, clearer image. Camera Obscura was often used by used by artists to sketch objects more quickly and ease the difficulties of depth perception. The image was allowed to be projected on a piece of paper inside a dark box and the artist would trace outlines of the projected image. 

                                       

The first photograph was made by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1827 using the Camera Obscura. Niepce had created the first photograph by placing an engraving onto a metal plate coated in bitumen  then exposing it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, but the whiter areas permitted light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When Niepce placed the metal plate in a solvent, gradually an image, until then invisible, appeared. However, Niepce's photograph required eight hours of light exposure to create and after appearing would soon fade away.

Louis Daguerre was the first inventor of a more practical process of Photography. In 1829 he had teamed up with Joseph Nicephore Niepce to improve Niepce's process that he had developed. In 1839 after several years of experimenting and testing Daguerre developed a more convenient and much more effective method of photography and named it after himself ''The Daguerreotype''. Daguerre's process 'fixed' the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sensitive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that would not change if exposed to light.

About.com, 2013, Information on Inventors. [online] Available at: <http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm>

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PS, 2013, Pieces of Science. [online] Available at: <http://fi.edu/pieces/watson/hist.htm>

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The Arts and crafts movement

The Arts and crafts movement began in Britain around 1880 and quickly spread across America and Europe before emerging into the Mingei (Folk Crafts) movement in Japan. The origins of the movement began in Britain because of the disastrous effects of industrial manufacture which had been recognised since 1840 but it wasn't until the 1860's and 1870's that architects, designers and artists began to create new approaches to design and the decorative arts thus leading to the foundation of the Arts and crafts movement. The movement was born out of ideals and it grew out of concern for the effects of industrialisation such as design, traditional skills and lives of ordinary people trying to make a living who had depended on handmade craftsmanship. The arts and crafts movement had established a new set of principles for living and working and it had turned the home into a work of art.  The Movement took its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society which was founded in 1887. The two most influential founding leaders of the Arts and crafts movement were John Ruskin who was a theorist and a critic  and William Morris who was a designer, writer and activist. Ruskin examined the relationship between art, society and labour and Morris put Ruskin's philosophies into practice placing great value on handmade work, the joy of craftsmanship and the natural beauty of the materials used. 

VAM, 2013. Victoria and Albert Museum. [Online] Available at: <http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-arts-and-crafts-movement/>

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Claude Monet

Claude Monet also known as Claude Oscar Monet was born in November on the 14th 1840 and died in December on the 5th 1926. Monet was raised in Normandy, he was the son of Claude-Adolphe and Louise-Justine Aubree Monet. His father owned a grocery store and his mother was a singer. Monet was a founder of the french impressionist movement. On the first of April 1851 entered the the Le Havre secondary school of the arts. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting. In 1862 Monet became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken color and rapid brushstrokes, in what later came to be known as Impressionism.

San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk 1912

This is one of Monet's most famous impressionist paintings. Monet and his wife were invited to stay in Venice when he arrived in Venice he became mesmerized by the sights of Venice. San Giorgio Maggiore is a sanctuary and monastery off of the Italian coast. Monet’s depiction of San Giorgio Maggiore is all about the effects of light, Monet uses small,thin brush strokes, with an emphasis on the accurate depiction of how light changes the qualities of the subject, and movement in the water, using unusual visual angles. Monet emphasized capturing the moment, with sunlight effects, and the overall visual effect, instead of details. Monet disliked the sun setting, because with the sunset, colors began to disappear.

Claude Monet, 2013,  Claude Monet The complete works. [Online] Available at : <http://www.claudemonetgallery.org/biography.html>

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Met Museum, 2013. [Online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm>

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TH, 2013. Total History. [Online] Available at: <http://totallyhistory.com/san-giorgio-maggiore-at-dusk/>

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Vivienne Westwood: Contemporary Designer

Vivienne Isabel Swire was born in Glossopdale, Derbyshire, on the 8th April 1941. Westwood's father came from a family of shoe makers and her mother worked at the local mills as a weaver.  In 1965 Vivienne Westwood had met Malcolm McLaren and had relationship together. In 1971 McLaren and Westwood opened a shop named ''Let it rock'' where they sold creepers, drape coats, mohair jumpers and drainpipe trousers.  Westwood's approach to clothes is that she is very anarchical and perverse about what she does with her clothes but then she likes to also simplify them in a way, she wants her clothes to make the person feel grand and sexy and emphasise the persons body and make the person aware of it. 

                                                              Creepers at the time.

In 1979-1981 Vivienne Westwood started to look at history and designed a collection named The Pirates Collection which was influenced by the romanticism era. She had come about to her designs by first researching  in the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and had found patterns for 18th century mens clothing. These formed the base style of her Pirates collection. The clothes evoked the golden age of piracy, highwaymen, dandies and buccaneers. The collections garments included asymmetric tee-shirts, petti-drawers, pirate shirts and breeches in rich brocades and ikat fabric. 

Vivienne Westwood had used mixed materials in the clothes shown in the photo above such as rayon and cotton ensemble with printed plain weave cotton shirt and sash, muslin stockings, and a hat made of felt trimmed with leather and a braid.  

In 1990-1991 Westwood debuted another one of her collections named Portrait which was another historically inspired collection. The intention for this collection was that her models had just stepped out of a painting. She had used Rococo designs which were derived from 18th century furniture printed in gold ink on to stretch black velvet and she had also designed photographic prints of Boucher's paintings onto shawls and corsets. Vivienne said that she believes in copying things from the past and that she takes something from the past that has a sort of vitality that has never been exploited before and make something very intense because she believes that in the end you create something original because you can overlay your ideas and add things to it. 

For her other pieces of the portrait collection she had found inspiration from the furniture which had been made and designed by Andre Charles Boulle. She created elegant dresses made from black velvet which were over-printed in gold. 

Piece of furniture she was inspired from.

                                                    A couple of pieces from her Portrait Collection.

Personally I love Vivienne Westwood's style, I love how she combines things from past era and modernises them to make these sexy tight garments that emphasise ones body. I also love how she can make such kooky wacky colours and things that usually wouldn't match together work.

08245498D, 2009. Vivienne Westwood 1990 A/W Collection : Portrait. http://08245498d.blogspot.com/ fashion blog, [blog] 23rd March, Available at: <http://08245498d.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post_30.html>  [Accessed 27th April 2013]

National Gallery of Australia, 2005.  Vivienne Westwood
34 years in fashion. [Online] Available at: <http://nga.gov.au/westwood/Wilessay.cfm>
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Victoria and Albert Museum, 2013. Vivienne Westwood designs. [Online] Available at: <http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/vivienne-westwood-designs/>
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