Month: November 2020

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944 Sweden)

Swedish Abstract Painter

• 

• 

• 

Hilma af Klint was an overlooked artist of her day and much of her work wasn’t seen until after her death in 1944. Her work predates the first “official” abstract art by Vasily Kandinsky in 1911 by 5 years and also the works of Franz Marc and Piet Mondrian. She was painting non-objectively before these pioneers of abstract art were doing so. Her works were strikingly original. Being overlooked isn’t surprising considering she was a woman, didn’t have any connections to the art world, and her work was just considered too radical for the time. Also, despite not being aware of what was happening in the art world of her contemporaries, it’s bizarre that all their works hold such similarities.

She was enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1882 to 1887, which was considered rather early for a woman, because Sweden was a country that actually allowed women to study art from a much earlier time than the rest of Europe. She studied portrait and landscape drawing and painting during her time there.

Af Klint was also a part of the first religious organization in Europe called Theosophy that did not discriminate against women. She was 17 when she started exploring spiritualism. Over the years, her work as a medium resulted in many of her paintings telling the story of the world. The messages she received from the spirits were the foundation of her art. These ideas may have constituted her as a witch at the time but the ideas and methodswere not too dissimilar to those of the Surrealists. She represented these ideas in geometric shapes, symbolism in letters and numbers, and in the use of bright bold colours.

• 

• 

Between 1906 and 1915, she created 193 paintings called The Paintings for the Temple which explored a dualistic perception of creation, evolution, and the universe. She requested that her art to not be shown until 2o years after her death and, incredibly, her wish was respected. Her full series was installed at the Guggenheim in New York from 2018-2019.

I was lucky enough to catch that exhibition while I was in New York, and it was so fascinating to experience her art in the way she meant for it to be seen—all together. Walking upwards towards her final paintings of full ascendence was pretty spectacular. I think it’s great that Hilma af Klint is getting some recognition and finding her way into the canon of the art history because her work fits so neatly into the timeline of the story. Maybe I also had an affinity to her work despite having never heard about her before stumbling upon her work at the Guggenheim because I had just returned from studying abroad in Sweden for my final year of university and the coincidence of it all was just too unbelievable.

• 

• 

References

https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/hilma-af-klint

https://www.bookforum.com/print/2504/the-otherworldly-abstraction-of-hilma-af-klint-20434

https://www.hilmaafklint.se/om-hilma-af-klint/

https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-27-spring-2013/first-abstract-artist-and-its-not-kandinsky

Robert Delaunay (1885-1941 France)

Leader of Orphic Cubism Movement (Orphism)

Robert Delauney was a French Cubist artist best known for his repertoire of colourful geometric paintings. His paintings evoke a sense of movement with its use of contrasting colours, lines, and shapes. He was a leader, alongside his wife Sonia, of the Orphic Cubism art movement which was originally named as such by a critic in reference to the mythical Greek musician and poet Orpheus—to emphasize the lyricism and musicality in Delaunay’s works. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1904 in his late teens and it solidified his position amongst the avant-garde artists in France early on. We was also invited to exhibit at first Der Blaue Reiter exhibition in 1911 by Wassily Kadinsky.

• 

• 

At the outbreak of WWI, he and his wife fled to Spain and later Portugal, where the warm, clear light of northern Portugal would be a source of colour inspiration for them both (as seen in his Portuguese Woman painting). In contrast to the two paintings above created in Paris, there is a clear shift in colour to a much brighter palette. It’s fascinating to see how a change in scenery can impact an artist’s work and continue on to influence their work as they adopt it as a part of their new style. The Eiffel Tower shown below was painted n Paris post-Portugal and yet it retains the luminosity of the palette he used from those days.

Delaunay’s notable series include his Windows, Eiffel Towers, Circular Forms, and Rhythms. His work trended towards becoming more and more abstract post war. I enjoy his use of contrasting colours and at first glance of his disc paintings and at first glance, it reminded me of a bolder version of some of Hilma af Klint’s work.

References

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.52397.html/

https://www.sothebys.com/en/artists/robert-delaunay

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/robert-delaunay

Rationale

While I loved the Art Nouveau style and wanted to create something related, the German Plaktstil/Sachplakat style also stood out to me as it was a completely 180° from the highly decorative aspect of Art Nouveau. I like the simplicity and the graphic quality of the posters so my artifact is half a replica of a Ludwig Hohlwein poster advertising fancy riding lessons. While I kept the illustration the same, I changed up the copy below to the paragraph explaining the significance of the Sachplakat style in the history of visual communication. I chose to follow the original lettering style of the copy for the description to keep within the authenticity of the original.

I placed the poster on a backdrop of newsprint to show a contrast between the boldness of the Sachplakat style to plain text type. This goes to show just how effective this style could be in a sea of text and how the viewer does not need to try very hard to understand what is being advertised as its clearly stated in the imagery and text.

---

Grade

7.5/10

I definitely planned well in advance but left the execution for a bit later. Though I wrote the paragraph several times before and revised a couple of times as I went along, I still had trouble getting it perfectly down on the paper and despite the pre-planning, mistakes were made as I went to the inking stage. This just makes me appreciate the magic of working digitally even more.

I could have worked out the dimensions of the poster to be a bit bigger to fill up the eventual space allotted, but I actually quite like the layout of the final result. I know I could’ve experimented a bit more with layout before I landed on this.

I also really enjoyed painting the illustration part at the top of the poster as its in a style completely different from my own. It was a great exercise in simplifying shapes and colours for the sake of clarity and I think I did alright in replicating that part!

Dreams & Designers
(1895 – 1905)

Peter Behrens was a key figure in the later part of the Jugendstil movement (the German counterpart to the Art Nouveau movement). Its elements showed up in all of his work as an artist, type/graphic/furniture designer, and architect. Behrens’ work would bridge movement into modernism in the early 20th century.

---

Typography

A Quintessential German Typeface

Peter Behrens’s typeface Behrens Schrift was released in mid-1901 by the Rudhard’sche Foundry of Offenbach. It was Behrens’ attempt at a simplified gothic style with a broad-pen calligraphic look in a very German way. He was going for the hand-lettered feel of which he associated with integrity and formality of letterforms. He was also inspired by the handiwork of the medieval scribes. It was ideas like this that tied him to the philosophies of William Morris’ Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain from the the 1860s on. Though it is simple, this typeface still holds some Jugendstil characteristics, such as the elemental decorations like the whiplash curve at the tops of the I and J.

• 

• 

This typeface became very popular for the foundry. It was most popular in advertising and fine printing. A variation of it was even used for the German exhibitions at the 1904 World Expo in St. Louis and for the 1910 World Expo in Brussels. At the bottom of the second page, you can even see that Peter Behrens was in charge of the printing and supervision of the German catalogue.

• 

• 

---

Architecture

Peter Behrens was a multi-talented man, much like William Morris, the father of the Arts and Crafts movement in England in latter half of the 19th century. When he was invited to participate in the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony in 1890, he got to design his own house, now called the Behrens House, and all the interior furnishings—down to the dishes. In his endeavours into architecture, he was interested in creating functional forms and improving and modernizing the designs of factory-produced everyday objects. His “model family house” was the most elaborate of all those in the colony. You can see from the photos that he was still highly decorative, even adding linear geometric designs to the ceilings and in other pieces in the house. He was a huge proponent of getting these designs into production by local factories and he was backed by the governments to make this happen. At the time, artist-designed products were not typically sent off for general production runs, but he found some success for his items which help solidify his reputation as the first industrial designer.

• 

• 

• 

Behrens and his group the Deutscher Werkbund (modelled after William Morris’ design group) would go on to train the future head of Bauhaus, Walter Groupius, and another pioneer of modern architecture, Le Corbusier. The work of Behrens and his group was at the forefront of the transition from the Jugendstil movement into modernism in Germany.

References

Type Images: https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/14729/behrens-schrift https://archive.org/details/internationalexp00germrich/page/n9/mode/2up

Architecture Images: http://architectuul.com/architecture/behrens-house

Burke, Chris. “Peter Behrens and the German Letter: Type Design and Architectural Lettering.” Journal of Design History, vol. 5, no. 1, 1992, pp. 19–37. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1315850. Accessed 2 Nov. 2020.

Rudoe, Judy. “Aspects of Design Reform in the German Ceramic Industry Around 1900, As Illustrated By The British Museum Collection.” The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 – the Present, no. 14, 1990, pp. 24–34. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41809173. Accessed 2 Nov. 2020.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Rationale

I chose to do a zine on Clarendon because I came across the fact that it was the first registered typeface in Britain in 1845 while we were learning about copyright in other classes which I found quite interesting.

I chose a limited colour palette with just white, black, and red because it would keep the small format of the zine cohesive and simple. I added small illustrations and illustrative details to each page to bring life to the facts.

I also chose to use a variety of materials (gouache, ink, pencil crayons, tracing paper) to bring some textural elements to an otherwise white letter-sized sheet of paper. Also, because I worked in a limited palette, I was afforded the opportunity to incorporate a range of materials and still have it look like it all fits together.

I took advantage of a 2-page spread to share some of Clarendon’s typographic characteristics which allowed me to demonstrate in a clear way how it’s constructed without just listing out a bunch of facts. It aims to educate readers in a ‘show, don’t just tell’ way.

---

Grade

8/10

I could have made the copy more interesting. Even though I planned and adjusted the wording several times, I never landed on anything too quippy, which I personally find the most engaging.

I almost never work with red, but I think it turned out quite striking! I had a great time working with gouache, pencil crayons, ink pens, and most of all, tracing paper for this zine. The tracing paper added a nice softness in texture to the otherwise bright white paper underneath. It started out as an experiment, but it ended up being a big element of the project in the end!

I’m quite happy with the end-result and this may be my favourite zine out of the four I’ve made in the last year. This is definitely getting mailed off to my old roommate in Toronto who got me into zines!