Painters and Posters (1850-1895)
Summary:
In this week’s class, we learned about art posters, the Arts and Crafts movement, and the book-design renaissance. The Arts and Crafts movement (the demand for making things by hand instead of machines) was founded by William Morris and it was the precursor to the Art Nouveau movement. An example of the Arts and Crafts movement would be the Century Guild founded by Arthur H. Mackmurdo and Selwyn Image that tried to get craftspeople recognized on the same level as fine artists. They were a contrast to Charles Robert and his School and Guild of Handicraft who embraced machine production to make his designs affordable to the common folk.
Jules Chéret was the father of poster design as well as the father of women liberation due to his depictions of independent women in his posters. Another notable designer was Louis Rhead where his ads in Century Magazine were influenced by ukiyo-e art: he showed patterns on fabric and used simple lines. The first impressionist painting was Claude Monet’s Impression Sunrise which was also influenced by ukiyo-e art.
Inventions of this age included the linotype machine by Otto Mergenthaler in 1886, the first photo appearing in 1880, and George Eastman’s Kodak camera of 1889. Other inventions were the first postcards in 1869 and then the first postcards with images in 1870. In terms of architecture, the first skyscraper was built by Willian Le Baron Jenney in 1884, Gustave Eiffel gifted the Statue of Liberty to the US, and Gustave Eiffel and Maurice Koechlin completed the Eiffel Tower in 1889.