10 - John Heartfield, Photomontage and Anti-Nazi Propaganda.

In mid 1939, World War Two spread across the globe, centring in Europe. The War had the allies, being mainly Great Britain, France and Poland, with other countries joining later, against the Central Powers, being mainly Germany and Japan. In Germany at the time, Hitler and his party had anti communist views and wanted a 'Master', or 'Aryan' race, meaning an idea and pure white race. Many people in Germany disagreed with these views, but censorship was high at the time meaning Germans only heard what the Nazi Party wanted them to hear, and they many German's did not speak up.

John Heartfield - The Meaning of Geneva -
AIZ - November 1932
Photomontage - Thames & Hudson - 1991

However, some Anti-Nazi Propaganda was created, even for magazines. One example is AIZ or Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitun (The Workers Pictorial Newspaper) and an artist who designed a lot of the illustrations for the magazine, John Heartfield.
One magazine cover, to the left, shows a dove, the symbol of peace, dead and pierced through a bayonet on the end of a rifle. This suggests that the Nazi's have killed the peace and have started war, and that they are in the wrong. The killed dove is in front of the League of Nations, which was an intergovernmental alliance formed at the end of World War One to keep peace among countries. This suggests that peace has ended and the fight is against this organisation. The League of Nations was based in Geneva, Switzerland, which was a neutral country in both the First and Second World War. The flag on top of the building shows the Switzerland Flag, however it has been warped into a Swastika, suggesting that the Nazi's had some control or were trying to take control over Switzerland, even though it was never attacked throughout the war.

John Heartfield -
Adolf the Superman -
Used for an AIZ cover - 1932
Photomontage -
Thames & Hudson - 1991

The image to the right, of Adolf Hitler has a direct attack on him. The use of photo-montage in this is powerful as it suggests Hitler was swallowing money up left, right and centre running up to and during the war, by building things like the Atlantic wall, an long spread line of defence built by Germany along the Western Coast of Europe and Scandinavia, against the mainland continent of the United Kingdom. Examples like this left the public of Germany left in poverty without any food or other supplies.

9 - Art Deco

The Art Deco period involved an influential style of visual arts, which represented many things to different people. The period spanned from the 1920's when economies were booming and luxury was easy, up until the depression of the 1930's.

A.M. Cassandre - Normandie - 1935

Art Deco represented a number of idea's, including wealth, luxury and moving forward. This was shown in the creation of elegant transport, and the advertising posters that accompanied them. One means of transport in particular, included transatlantic cruise ships. These ships were prestigious at the time with everyone who had money wanting to use them. The poster to the right advertising transatlantic travel, designed by A.M. Cassandre, also known as Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, shows a glorious curvy cruise liner. The use of scale in this image through the size of the seagulls emphasises the importance and size of the ship, with it filling the full poster and having the bow centred as if it is jumping out of the page towards the viewer. The break between the sky and water is effective for the text and is gives a nice contrast and draws attention to the information.

A.M. Cassandre - L'Atlantique - 1931

An earlier piece of Cassandre's is the L'Atlantique image to the left. The image uses a similar technique to the one above with scale, however this image uses a littler boat to show the size and importance of the cruise ship. The straight lines create a flow of attention down the page into what is a reflection of the boat in the water, with information printed on top.

Chicago's World Fair - Weimer Pursell - 1933

This final image, created by Weimer Pursell, again shows how scale and size is used to suggest luxury and prestige. The focal point could be argued to be either the header, or the path way up to the fair entrance, with the giant pillars creating a flow of attention up to the header. The colours used are very bright and elegant like the use of golds and reds, suggesting class. 

A.M. Cassandre images taken from Art Deco - Norbert Wolf - Preston Publishing - 2013

Chicago World's Fair Poster Image taken from Art Deco - Judith Miller - Dorling Kindersley LTD - 2007 

8 - 1920s In Europe & Russia - Surrealism & Sexuality

The Dada movement was an anti art movement starting in around 1916 and fading out around 1923, developing into the Surrealism movement.Surrealism started to take off mainly in France, but spread around the world throughout the 1920's affecting art, film and literature in many countries.

Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism, Phaidon, 2004.

Surrealism involves finding the extraordinary within an ordinary world. It also looked at the unconscious drives such as hunger, anger, and sexuality.

These drives meant that many artists used the human anatomy in their artwork Brassai, Man Ray and Salvador Dali. The image left, False Sky, Brassai, 1934, includes two photo's of a woman's torso, on top of a photograph of a horizon with the sea and sky meeting. The image is very symmetrical and the two torsos give a nice contrast onto the sky and see with the curves of the body. The portion of sky and sea left from the torso's also looks like a skyline or mountain, with the shadows on the torso giving a nice effect that may look like clouds and a nights sky.

The idea of sexuality in art in this time period spanned from the subtle body form like 'False Sky' to more explicit and erotic images like some of Man Rays work.

Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism, Phaidon, 2004.

Man Ray's Return to Reason, right, shows the nude female body covered in strips of light coming from a window, covered by a net curtain. The effect gives off a striped shadows, shows the curves of the female body. Mary Ann Caws describes the the image as

'both natural, like an animal - tiger-striped - and cultural, since the reflection reveals a constructed object. The woman is made animal by the imposition of the photographers design.'

 (Mary Ann Caws,  The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter, 1997)

This shows that the human body can be made into something else because of the culture at the time, disguising the body into that culture.

Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism, Phaidon, 2004.

Man Ray uses shadows and lighting to his advantage in a lot of his pieces, like the one to the left. The sexuality of this image is very multi-gender, with the torso being androgynous, showing hair on the armpits and muscles as a masculine side, along with breasts showing a feminine side. Mary Ann Caws says that this image
          'takes on the appearance of a bull's head'
(Mary Ann Caws, Surrealism, Phaidon, 2004)
This appearance can related to the Surrealism movement as it shows the change from automatism and cubism to more curved, irrational ideas.

7 - 1900-1920 - The Birth Of Hollywood

D.W. Griffith, The Birth Of A Nation (1915)
Image taken from History of Film - David Parkinson
ISBN - 0-500-20277-X

D.W. Griffith, Intolerance (1916)
Image taken from History of Film - David Parkinson
ISBN - 0-500-20277-X

The foundations of Hollywood began around the 1870's, with D.W. Griffith, a producer of a number of successful motion pictures including The Birth Of A Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). Griffith founded the modern technique of the art of motion picture, using a number of innovations introduced by him. These innovations are now used by most professional producers and include a number of different camera angles and expressions. Griffith directed and supervised over 450 films between 1908 and 1913, and set the basic elements of film making that would be used in cinema for over half a Century. However this success only led to failure, as Griffiths films started to become repetitive, old fashioned and conventional. His final film, The Struggle (1931) was such a failure that led him to be exiled from Hollywood for some seventeen years. During Griffiths film making period, a number of other film makers were looking to cash in on American Cinema, even though it had been considered a novelty. These people included Samuel Goldfish, later Goldwyn, and William Fox, who would both lead on to had successful film studios.

With many different studios competing to create great films for the cinema, places to show these motion pictures were on the rise, with the first store front theatre opening in 1905, and around 10,000 other theatres opening by 1910 across the U.S. This boom in film creation along with an easy way to view them, created an audience of around 80 million a week.
This audience caused even more competition amongst film makers, and because of this, George Kleine, a distributor, and several film companies including Vitagraph and Pathé, formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), who created a number of patents that narrowed the profits of film to the small group, with the members of the group agreeing not to sell and lease these patents with any independent companies.

6 - The Late 19th Century - Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau directly developed from the Arts and Crafts movement that ended around 1910. It was known as one of the first commercial art movements, making beauty and industrial products look better, and it was one of the first styles to spread internationally, across Europe and to America.

Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi
Bridge and Atake - Hiroshige 1857
tabathayeatts.blogspot.co.uk

Bridge in the Rain - Van Gogh - 1887
www.uuhuaku.com

This piece of art from Japan was one of many along with artefacts that were imported into many European countries in large quantities because of the fascination Europe had with anything Japanese. These items influenced many artists to create this style of work.

Many Western artists and designers created almost direct copies of this style of work including Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, as shown to the right in his painting 'Bridge in the Rain' which is incredibly similar to Hiroshige's 'Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi'. Van Gogh's was printed 30 years later.

Van Gogh was an impressionist, which was shown in his work through his swirling forms. This movement was also an inspiration to the start of Art Nouveau, and is shown as paintings and graphics simplified throughout the interchange of the two movements.

'Le Café-concert des Ambassadeurs' -
Edgar Degas - 1877
www.wikipaintings.org

Impressionism was somewhat detailed with its brush strokes, as shown in Edgar Degas's 'Le Café-concert des Ambassadeurs' - 1877, however this image still shows simplified figures and silhouettes compared to older impressionist paintings.

Poster for illustrated magazine
Pall Mall Budget - Maurice Greiffenhagen -
1896
www.prints.encore-editions.com

From here, the Art Nouveau movement because more and more simplified, and in turn, more abstract, like the image to the right, using only 3-4 colours and blending with woman's dress into the page, with her hands and scarf being part of the background colour.