Philip Warren

Art 85

Project 5

Graphic Design is a mind blowing topic it requires time, steady hands, patience and plenty of creativity. “The evolution of twentieth- century graphic design closely relates to modern painting, poetry, and architecture. It might almost be said that a fusion of cubist painting and futurist poetry spawned twentieth century graphic design” (Meggs 231). Graphic Design is a field which can branch off in too many different areas. There is layout design, Package Design, Print, 3D Animation and Web Design. People don’t realize the importance for design, because it is used so much in our daily life, for example a plain simple logo could have taken days to come up with a concept. Then you have more advanced things such as the front cover for a magazine. More advanced works go in to web design and 3-D animation. A movie to me that stood out graphically was Shrek. Just imagine how many painless hours it took into sculpting the perfect character on a program, on top of that rendering all of the landscapes, to give it a semi realistic look. “During the last quarter of the twentieth century, electronic and computer technology advanced at a staggering pace, transforming many areas of human activity” (meggs 455). This is definitely  is true because without the invention of the computer or without someone being creative and wanting to design on the computer interface a lot of things would not be around today digitally speaking.

“The digital revolution came to the desktop of individual graphic designers as a result of affordable yet powerful hardware and software initiated primarily by three companies during the 1980’s: Apple Computer developed the Macintosh computer, Adobe Systems inverted the PostScript programming language underlying page layout software and electronically generated typography; and Aldus published Pagemaker, and early software application using PostScript to design pages on the computer screen” (Meggs 455). These companies have worked throughout the years to develop their name today. Macintosh and Adobe are big today in the digital world. As many of you should know Macintosh nicknamed Mac, are virtually on the cutting edge of technology today. Many graphic artists use the Mac interface. In addition the other big company name Adobe is the creator of PhotoShop and InDesign which are two of many computer graphic programs which artists use.  Historically speaking in order to make the computer more maneuverable was the mouse. Originally it was called the X-Y position indicator for a Display System, which was invented by Douglas C Engelbart. The mouse made computers accessible through intuitive processes rather than tedious mathematical coding and empowered thousands of people from accountants and writers to artists and designers to use computers.

A piece that I have decided to talk about was by Katherine McCoy, called Cranbrook recruiting poster. This piece was done in 1989 which was a compilation of photos of students projects, which were then layered with a listing of polemic oppositions and a communications theory.

I thought this was an interesting piece, because I liked how it used the idea of typography, photography and a great sense of layout. Another piece that I thought was interesting was done by Pat Gorman of Manhattan Design, which is the MTV press kit cover. This particular one was mostly visual and it spoke for itself. It used a lot of vibrant colors which moved each MTV was different. Since there was no repetition you would assume that MTV would be a musically diverse station. With these pieces Humes and Kant might suggest that these items are not art, there is no beauty and no meaning behind these two pieces. It is something that is not natural it is just digitally done which they might say didn’t take much thought. I personally think you need to be in the era of when the particular design period happened. I truly think that digital art is important, because for example when you want to give something a fantastic effect you will most likely be doing something digital. Another example are movie posters they are not hand drawn or painted they are laid out and printed.

Lastly, the digital age will only get better with time because look how far we have came from the first Macintosh computers to the iMac’s etc computers are gona be able to read more pixels to give you a better picture and also smoother interfaces to be able to design things more smoothly.

Bibliography

Meggs, Philip B. A history of Graphic Design. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc, 1998. Print.

]]> http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/assignment-5/feed/ 0 philip1987 http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/assignment-4/ http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/assignment-4/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:37:51 +0000 philip1987 http://philip1987.wordpress.com/?p=21 ]]>

Philip Warren

Art 85

Project 4

The slaughter between the first two wars, fought with the destructive weapons and technology, shook the traditions and institutions of the Western civilization to their foundations. Amidst this turbulence, it is not surprising that visual art and design experienced series if creative revolutions that questioned its values, approaches to organizing space, and role in society. The traditional objective was shattered. Elemental ideas about color and form, social protest and the expression of Freudian theories and deeply personal emotional states occupied many artists” (Meggs 231).  With all the problems occurring basically, it made people  want to express themselves in an artistic form. Some wanted to show ways that were expressed in mass form or some in minimal form. During the years different movements occurred. Modernist style to Post modern style, it is crazy to think how quick a change in art can happen.  From Pop Art, to post minimalism then jumping to conceptual art and installation art all in a less than a century time frame. Art is just an evolution of so many things it is a combination of mediums. Some used the environment or themselves as their piece some used installations. Also like many others used paint or ink on paper.

Here are some ways to distinguish high art and low art. “1.Complexity of formal properties. 2. Complexity of the responses to the works, which sometimes have no name. 3. The fact that a full and fuller understanding of the work (either the form or the content) allows for an ever fuller enjoyment of the work. One has to gradually grow into the work. It does not reveal everything it has in one exposure.4. The fact that a full understanding of the work can enhance an understanding of other aspects of life as well. 5. The fact that great works of high art are cross-cultural. They can be enjoyed by people of other cultures who have no other experience of the culture that generated the great work. Each great work of art is potentially a work of world art, not subject to the conditions of its composition. 6. If, according to 5, the work does not fade with distance, it is also true that it does not fade with time. 7. Works of high art are deeply related to morality. 8. High art has a history, in which styles, techniques, genres and the entire orientation of the work of art is changed. Properly speaking, low art has no history. 9. Works of high art are individual. They bespeak a personality behind the work. Low art is best when it is anonymous.” (http://faculty.frostburg.edu).

While distinguishing between high art and low art, I decided to look at pieces from Modernism and Post Modernism. A work of art that I chose from modernist period was “Whaam, by Roy Lichtenstein. This was from the Pop Art era. It showed a replication of two fighter planes during war and one plane was shot and then blowing up, but to show the sound it made Lichtenstein used the words Whaam. I would classify Whaam as being high art, because Whaam is conveying some sort of message behind it its speaking to you without actually talking. It doesn’t fade in distance or time. “The term “Pop Art” was used by Lawrence Alloway to describe paintings that celebrated consumerism of the post World War II era. This movement rejected Abstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior, in favor of art which depicted, and often celebrated material consumer culture, advertising, and iconography of the mass production age. The early works of David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton, John McHale, and Eduardo Paolozzi were considered seminal examples in the movement. While later American examples include the bulk of the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and his use of Benday dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction” (Wikipedia.org).

Taking a look into postmodernism era I had a hard time trying to decipher between high and low art I chose a piece that I feel was low art. John Fekner © 1979-1990 Wheels Over Indian Trails It was on top of a wall, which said Wheels Over Indian Trails. This was low art to me, because I didn’t feel that it was conveying a message to me and I felt that it didn’t have a particular style which made it high art. “An important series of movements in art which have consistently been described as postmodern involved installation art and creation of artifacts that are conceptual in nature. One example being the signs of Jenny Holzer which use the devices of art to convey specific messages, such as “Protect Me From What I Want”. Installation Art has been important in determining the spaces selected for museums of contemporary art in order to be able to hold the large works which are composed of vast collages of manufactured and found objects. These installations and collages are often electrified, with moving parts and lights” (Wikipedia.org).

Lastly I feel that high and low art have their differences, but they can all convey their own meaning depending on how you look at it. Because what can be low art to somebody could be high art to someone else.

Bibliography

Meggs, Philip B. A history of Graphic Design. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc, 1998. Print.

http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/HighArt.htm

Philip Warren

Art 85

Project 3

Capturing a real life image was this ever possible?  “Making pictorial images, and preparing printing plates to reproduce them remained hard work processes until the arrival of photography.  A series of inventions through the course of the nineteenth century swept the production and reproduction of images forward into the machine age” (Meggs  10) . This dream became possible by a man named Joseph Niepce. He was a Frenchman who produced a photographic image and he began his research by seeking some sort of automatic way to transfer drawing onto printing plates. He tried many different combinations to use more light sensitive material. It was finally on January 7 1839, he presented his perfected camera to the French Academy of Sciences. He shocked everybody due to the wonderful accuracy of the images.

The way the final perfected piece worked, was that a “highly polished silver plated copper sheet was sensitized by placing it silver side down over a container of iodine crystals. After the rising iodine vapor combined with the silver to produce sensitive silver iodide the plate was placed in the camera and exposed to light coming through the lens to produce a latent image” (meggs 11). The way the visible image was created was by placing the exposed plate over a dish of heated mercury. It was then the mercury vapors formed an alloy with the exposed areas of silver. Next the unexposed silver iodide was removed and the image was fixed with a salt bath. The bare metal appeared black in the areas where no light had hit. Throughout the years like all technological devices, they become improved and more advanced. An early effort to introduce design into photography started in May of 1843. A Scottish painter David Octavius Hill wanted to immortalize the 474 ministers who withdrew their congregations from the Presbyterian Church. He needed the individual portraits as references for this giant group portrait , so he joined with a photographer named Robert Adamson, who had been making calotypes for about a year. The resulting calotypes were lauded as superior to Rembrandt’s paintings. Secondly since many people were impressed with intricate landscape paintings, this duo created landscape photographs. They captured the same essence as a painting did.

A famous photographer that was truly amazing was Ansel Adams. He was famous for his black and white photographs and he was an environmentalist. Walter Benjamin’s idea about even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element its presence in time and space. “The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated” (www.aber.ac.uk). Benjamin feels that the work of art will be depreciated. I do think that Ansel Adams photos did distort nature, because of the fact that they were in black and white and when it comes to nature you want to see every crisp color to get the full affect. In the long run his photos were still beautiful. To me I think that the invention of the photograph helps to capture an element with time and space for example, if someone wanted to save the image of a squirrel climbing a tree, you would have to be a completely fast drawer or painter but the camera can take that image in an instant. In addition maybe older cameras distort the image of the landscape, but many cameras are high definition and create beautiful portraits of a landscape. It may not capture its natural beautiful but in my opinion it is cutting it close.

Lastly, in this day in age, photography is on a new level, with cameras being able to snap a shot of a race car just before it crosses the finish line. Photography has been an extremely important creation. I feel this way because now instead of you having to paint everything you see, you can now capture that moment in time with film.  Yes painting a picture and taking a photo are similar, but in the long run the photo will give you the real life image instead of being altered during the painting process. A benefit of photography is that it saved a lot of time and it helped capture images that would only last for a few seconds.

Bibliography

Meggs, Philip B. A history of Graphic Design. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc, 1998. Print.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC10220/benjamin.html

]]> http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/assignment-3/feed/ 0 philip1987 http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/assignment-2/ http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/assignment-2/#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:16:08 +0000 philip1987 http://philip1987.wordpress.com/?p=11 ]]>

Philip Warren

Art 85

Project 2

Many people wonder how images and words were put on to paper and yet many people wanted to expand the idea of putting text and images on to paper and putting them on to the World Wide Wed. With this topic we get into the issue of, the printing press versus the Internet. It all started back in Asia around 6^th century. Woodcut formally known as xylography is a relief printing in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges. The areas to show ‘white’ are cut away with a knife or chisel, leaving the characters or image to show in ‘black’ at the original surface level. The block is cut along the grain of the wood. Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Woodcut first appeared in ancient China, where it is called Banhua. Banhua is the Chinese term for “any printed art objects, and especially for those made by woodblock printing, the term used for woodcuts from Asia” (www.absoluteastronomy.com).

In China printed images mostly remained tied as illustrations to accompanying text until the modern period. The earliest woodblock printed book, the Diamond Sutra. “This was known as the Buddhist text known around the world as the Diamond Sutra is a short Mahayana sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom genre, which teaches the practice of the avoidance of abiding in extremes of mental attachment it contained a large image as frontispiece, and many Buddhist texts contain some images. Later some notable Chinese artists designed woodcuts for books, but the individual print did not develop in China as an art form in the way it did in Europe and Japan” (www.absoluteastronomy.com).

The first known European block printings in a way to communicate were devotional prints of saints. “These designs evolved into block books, which were woodcut picture books with a religious subject matter and brief text. Each page was cut from a bloc of wood and printed as a complete word and picture unit” (A Graphic Renaissance). Since books were so expensive because of the amount of time it took to create them, one man figured out a way to make books in a very affective way. In 1440, German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press process helped shape the idea of mass-producing words. For example instead of having to hand write or making one mold for an entire piece, you now could take individual letters and move them around which was a fantastic idea because now more books could be created. The inventor’s method of printing from movable type, including the use of metal molds and alloys, a special press, and oil-based inks, allowed for the first time the mass production of printed books.

Moving into modern times, around the late 1960’s the Internet became a new issue. “In late 1966 Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and quickly put together his plan for the “ARPANET”, publishing it in 1967. In August 1968, after Roberts and the DARPA funded community had refined the overall structure and specifications for the ARPANET, an RFQ was released by DARPA for the development of one of the key components, the packet switches called Interface Message Processors. All this came together in September 1969 when BBN installed the first IMP at UCLA and the first host computer was connected. Thus, by the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into the initial ARPANET, and the budding Internet was off the ground. Even at this early stage, it should be noted that the networking research incorporated both work on the underlying network and work on how to utilize the network” (www.isoc.org). This is something that I can’t even explain, because something as simple as reading a book and viewing images can all be done online. It is just amazing how creative the human mind can become. The Internet is a gateway, which to this day is constantly expanding. The Internet is a way that canceled out the printing press and all other methods of creating type and made everything electronic. Instead of having to write a book with constantly changing around the letters, all you have to do now is punch in the keys on a keyboard and type what you needed to type. If you were to make a mistake, simply push the delete button and make new changes. Even with images you can now transfer a high resolution and mass-produce it at the speed of light.

After what I have read I feel that the Printing Press has had a greater affect than the Internet. Where there’s cause there’s an effect, yes the Internet is important and has made a way of communication much easier. We are currently in a digital age and I believe that computers are our future and technology is blasting into the minds of everyone. People still need to remember that even though things are done virtually you have to remember the roots of how it started. Yet in the long run, without the creation of the Printing Press, who knows if someone would have been smart enough to create the Internet? Going back to again to ancient times when the only way to communicate was on cave walls, the Printing Press was the stepping stone which revolutionized the way we can communicate.

Bibliography

Meggs, Philip B. A history of Graphic Design. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc, 1998. Print.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Woodcut

Philip Warren

Art 85

Assignment 1

Art or Design is it something that is planned or created for the eyes to entertain others. Design is the process “to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan” (www.merriam-webster.com). Art is the “Human effort to imitate, supplements, alters, or counteracts the work of nature” (www.answers.com). It all started from ancient times going back to ancient cave paintings found in Africa dating from 35,000 BC to 4,000BC. These cave paintings showed very interesting images. Many of them had specific animals and also important figures such as the sun and the moon. Showing these early signs of drawings on the cave walls, many people would think that it was just art and they ancient people painted things that they saw and liked. Actually I believe that this is design. Many of the paintings on the walls were called Pictographs. This is design because they these were not just paintings for entertainment they told a story. Since there was no written way of communication, the only other way would be to create a story using pictures and you depict that is happening. For example a story would have a heard of cow being chased by a villager. This could be a legend of a man who took down 10 cows by himself. Art is in the eye of the beholder.  Art can be misunderstood and interpreted in many ways. What is art to somebody might be design to someone else.

Most significant Enlightenment thinkers for this art movement were David Hume Immanuel Kant. Both are motivated by the question of whether our highly subjective and even irrational responses to artworks and other beautiful objects can have any sort of objectivity. Hume and Kant agree on a number of ideas concerning art. Both oppose moral didacticism or the use of art to promote sectarian moral and religious doctrines. Both emphasize that fine art displays genius. Neither believes that the value of an artwork can be inferred from general principles or from intellectual knowledge of what beauty is. “Hume’s other writings on art and taste indicates that the relevant pleasures are not immediate responses to objects so much as “impressions of reflection” (www.mnstate.edu). In many cases, the pleasure arises from reflection on an object’s likely utility which requires imaginative association between cause and effect, which then leading the experienced observer to a sympathetic pleasure with those who might benefit from an architectural design, a muscular body or a purebred stallion. The essay on taste suggests that reflection on utility plays a limited role in the appreciation of fine art.

Immanuel Kant’s theory of “beauty is not identical with his whole philosophy of art. Much of his discussion of beauty focuses on an example of natural beauty (“this rose is beautiful”). The universality and necessity of pure judgments of taste holds for natural beauty as well as art. What is distinctive about art is that is accompanied by some specific purpose. With fine art, that purpose is the communication of ideas” (www.mnstate.edu).  I agree with this idea because when most people paint something or create something, it has to do with their mood. For example the painting Scream by Monet, this painting could show that he felt confused on the inside and that he could not take it anymore. This purpose introduces a social dimension that is absent from entertainment. Kant holds that we can hardly avoid recognizing when something is art, and that it therefore demands evaluation as a thing of a certain kind (as a poem rather than a statue). Reducing art to a mere display of beautiful form would suggest that a work’s content is a superfluous addition. I think that anything that an artist creates is art in their mind and should not be judged that it is not like a statue is very beautiful and intricate and to me it is considered art. “For Kant this is only a “would-be work of fine art,”. His ideal is a work in which the form is uniquely suited to the ideas presented, so the play of form is also a “play with ideas” (www.mnstate.edu).

In his essay part of it disputes that when there is no link between purposive form and the expression of aesthetic ideas, the resulting art is a diversion or entertainment, “a beautiful play of sensation” without the broader dimension of culture. Kant values art as a stimulus for its “indirect” intellectual interest. Kant explains that fine art is distinguished from both craft and agreeable art for its ability to further the culture of our mental powers. “The viewer, as autonomous judge exercising taste, is connected to a larger community in two ways. First, taste demands awareness of the sensus communis” (www.mnstate.edu). Second, to understand that one is dealing with art is to confront one of several modes of communication. Art expresses aesthetic ideas through language, visual arrangement, and variation of sensations. With this done then when you want to judge art it then becomes a possible. “Ranked according to the degree of culture they provide, poetry “holds the highest rank” and music holds the lowest. But ranked according to universality of appeal, purely instrumental music’s lack of determinate concepts gives it highest rank” (www.mnstate.edu).

Lastly, art has exploded all over the world for years to come art and design will constantly evolve, for example styles of homes are changing with is a design aspect of art and even different art mediums pop art, painting, pencil and graphic design.

Bibliography page

Meggs, Philip B. A history of Graphic Design. 3rd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc, 1998. Print.

http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil%20of%20art/hume_and_kant.htm

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/design

http://www.answers.com/topic/art

]]> http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/assignment-one/feed/ 0 philip1987 http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/hello-world/ http://philip1987.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/hello-world/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:03:30 +0000 philip1987 ]]> Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!