Am I Secessonist OR Loos???

  Hi...meet ya again... my 3rd assignment! This time i need to choose which movement are suitable with my carrier background! Which one was influenced me...before i make a decision, lets get a research about this two of movement SECESSIONIST and LOOS!

Vienna Secession

(was founded on 3 April 1897 by artists Gustav Klimt)

  

GUSTAV KLIMT (1862- 1918)

Potrait of Gustav Klimt

   In shortly about Gustav, he is Austrian painter and draughtsman, best known for his decorative sensual portraits of women. The leading exponent of Art Nouveau, founder and president of the Vienna Secession.

   

   Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group's periodical Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). He remained with the Secession until 1908. 

   The group's goals were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the best foreign artists' works to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase members' work. The group declared no manifesto and did not set out to encourage any particular style Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. 

The Frieze is a major highlight of Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900

His Nuda Verita (1899) defined his bid to further shake up the establishment.

  He also known as Klimt's 'Golden Phase' was marked by positive critical reaction and success. Many of his oil paintings from this period used gold leaf, the prominent use of gold can first be traced back to Pallas Athene (1898), although the works most popularly associated with this period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907–1908). Instead of painting,Vienna Secession also have promoted their design aesthetic with exhibition posters and its own journal, as Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). 

Ver Sacrum: Cover of the first edition. Design by A. Roller, 1898.

  The journal housed reproductions, poetry illustrations, graphic art, decorative borders, object design, and cutting-edge conceptions for layout. The artistic layout lay in the hands of artists of the Vienna Secession and frequently presented original printed graphics (especially by G. Klimt, K. Moser, J. Hoffmann and A. Roller), numerous numbers were in the form of monographs and thus familiarised a broad readership with the works of individual artists who were playing an important role in the development of modern art. After 1900, Ver Sacrum was only published as an internal information journal for members of the Vienna Secession.

   Art historians note an eclectic range of influences contributing to Klimt's distinct style, including Egyptian, Minoan, Classical Greek, and Byzantine inspirations. Klimt was also inspired by the engravings of Albrecht Dürer, late medieval European painting. His mature works are characterized by a rejection of earlier naturalistic styles, and make use of symbols or symbolic elements to convey psychological ideas and emphasize the "freedom" of art from traditional culture.


Adolf Loos
(1870-1933) 

Portrait of Adolf Loos

  
   He was an architect who became the most important pioneers of the modern movement and famous for his ideas than for his buildings. Adolf Loos believed that reason should determine the way we build, and he opposed the decorative Art Nouveau movement. In Ornament & Crime and other essays, Loos described the suppression of decoration as necessary for regulating passion. 

   The visual distinction is not between complicated and simple, but between "organic" and superfluous decoration. Loos was also interested in the decorative art, collecting sterling silver and high quality leather goods, which he note for their plant yet luxurious appeal.
   
   Loos attacked contemporary design as well as the imitative styling of the nineteenth century. He looked on contemporary decoration as mass-produced, mass-consumed trash. Loos acted as a model and a seer for architects of the 1920s. His fight for freedom from the decorative styles of the nineteenth century led a campaign for future architects. Loos stylistic features home design mostly was straight lines, clear planar walls & windows, clean curves, raumplan (plan of volume) system of contiguous, merging spaces, each room on the different level, with floors and ceilings set at different hight.

Simple, plain, modern garden facade, Vienna, Austria by Adolf Loos -1910

   Too much explanation from this two ideologies and eras between Secession & Loos...and i personally agreed with the design and the philosophy of Secession, because the design are almost constructivist in inspiration.! Great!!!

see ya in next assignment *____*

"Joy Of Work"

Art Nouveau! my second assignment that need me to relate this into modern thinking..hurmm..

Lets checked it out!

Art Nouveau 

(1880-1914)

   Art Nouveau mean a style of fine and applied art current in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, characterized chiefly by curvilinear motifs often derived from natural forms. 

This movement walked under the flag of an art that would break all connections to classical times, and bring down the barriers between the fine arts and applied arts. 

  

   Seemingly a response to the clutter of the Victorian era and the Industrial Revolution, which introduced mass production of standard everyday objects, Art Nouveau embraced a high standard of craftsmanship to decor. Like the Arts and Crafts movement, it not only showed in applied art, but heavily in architecture, sculpture and many forms of functional decor. A very uniform art style; a strong belief was that all arts should work in harmony to create a "total work of art", or Gesamtkunstwerk:, where all things conformed to the principles of Art Nouveau. 

Stairway at Hôtel Tassel, by Victor Horta

Tiffany Lamp by Louis Comfort Tiffany

   An artist should work on everything from architecture to furniture design so that art would become a part of everyday life. By making beauty and harmony a part of everyday life, artists make people's lives better. This approach has been represented in painting, architecture, furniture, glassware, graphic design, jewelry, pottery, metalwork, and textiles and sculpture. Advertising posters were welcomed into art, and fence has been proclaimed a suitable exhibition place for this new art. This was a sharp contrast to the traditional separation of art into the distinct categories of fine art (painting and sculpture) and applied arts (ceramics, furniture, and other practical objects).    

    

   The primary thematic visual elements of Art Nouveau are flowers, roots and buds, as well as spider webs, peacock feathers and locusts, featured on everything from wallpaper to fabrics and furniture. Serpentine curving lines and complex patterns, taken from nature, were to be seen on painted and carved surfaces. Art Nouveau artifacts are beautiful objects of art, but not necessarily very functional.

Conclusion from this, today...Art Nouveau is seen primarily as the bridge from stuffy classicism to modernism. But it is much more than a link between two design eras. Especially in it’s emphasis on the potential beauty of even the most mundane object, Art Nouveau elevates the work of the decorative artist, celebrating the art in the artisan. 

The design is still can be used untill today for me as a designer! Awesome!

Topic discussion: What part of the late 18th century would greatly effect modern design?

In the previous post I started writing about 'I Think Therefore I Am' by Rene Decartes. 
Which Descartes was trying to come up with an essentialist account of the world - that is, if we don't assume anything at all about our experiences, what can we say we know for sure. What he came up with was "cogito, ergo sum." 

Today I am moving on to another topic about the greatly effect modern design in 18th century! I still remember when we make a discussion on class about this topic which is some student says...when they start on demanding for different class of people and lifestyle, class separation, because of migration and much more.

 Symbolic Representation of the

18th-Century Class System (c. 1795)

I would choosing Baroque Style as another important style in 18th Century. For your information Baroque is an artistic style that was present mainly in Europe from the late 16th century until the early 18th century. The Baroque is considered to be the dominant style of art in Europe between the Mannerist and Rococo eras and it is characterized by overt emotion, dynamic movement and self-confident rhetoric.

 Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, David

This sculpture is completely Baroque. 

The tension in David as he hurls the stone is absolutely real.

The baroque style appeared in Rome, Italy around the year 1600, as a demand of the church for new art. The representatives of arts were demanded by the Roman Catholic Church in 1545 – 1563 to create paintings and sculptures that even the illiterate can comprehend. This decision of the church actually offered inspiration for Baroque artists, which appeared, however, a generation later.

 The most important characteristics of the Barouque style is  evolved from the classic forms of the Renaissance, but it differs by new details and trends: colossal buildings as proportions with dramatic appearance, pompous facades with gables modified in various means, double towers, tall and unshapely domes, annex buildings with beautiful ornaments, windows with irregular forms.

 Baroque Angels, St. Nicholas Church, Prague

 The main domains where the Baroque style emerged. The Baroque Style is clearly represented in domains like architecture, painting, sculpture, theater, music, literature, furnishing, dance and philosophy.

According to Francis D.K. Ching in A Visual Dictionary of Architecture (p. 133), Baroque Architecture is 

“A style of architecture originating in Italy in the early 17th century and variously prevalent in Europe and the New World for a century and a half, characterized by free and sculptural use of the classical orders and ornament, dynamic opposition and interpenetration of spaces, and the dramatic combined effects of architecture, sculpture, painting, and the decorative arts”.

The Versailles Palace in France.

If you can answer this...Is modern design still influenced by the Baroque style? 

I will answer...Baroque art and architecture – extravagant in concept, exuberant in spirit, elaborate in detail – flourished in the 17ths’ century Europe and through the ages has continued to stir us with its vitality and dynamism, its mood of barely suppressed passion. In the architecture of St. Peters in Rome, St. Paul’s in London and Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, in the works of Michelangelo, Bernini and Rubens, the Baroque spirit still lives today to inspire us!....do u agreed with me =) see ya in another topics..peace!

"Cogito ergo sum"

'I think therefore I am'

                                                                     -Rene Descartes

ermm find out the meaning!..and this is my 1st assignment for class Design History, that i have to discuss in this blog sharing the opinion with u all. Before that i would like to say 10q to my lecturer Pn Suzy for make this good ideas 'by creating ur own blog to make an assignment'!..very challenging for me for the 1st time using this T___T huhu..but i 'll try my best to fulfill this assignment and hopping that it was work n successful hehehe...


In 18th century, what was i understand in The Age of Enlightenment, it was a series of philosophical, scientific and otherwise intellectual developments that took place mostly in the 18th century – the birthplace of intellectual modernity. So for me 'cogito ergo sum'  only serves to prove the existence of that which is thinking and nothing else, in what case he is right, for if not there could be no object to be deceived. Im not sure if i right or not but how he words it is unfortunate. It is the consciousness of consciousness that enables us to be aware of our existence in such a manner that Descartes set to prove to exist, rather than just the consciousness.

One of article that we can share;

Dorinda Outram provides a good example of a standard, intellectual definition of the Enlightenment:

Enlightenment was a desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality rather than by faith, superstition, or revelation; a belief in the power of human reason to change society and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority; all backed up by a world view increasingly validated by science rather than by religion or tradition.

There were lots info that we can share together, see in next issues...;)