The history of 20th Century Henry Von de Velde, Tropon, 1897-98

Graphic design

1900 to 1920

A time of change

As the nineteenth century drew

to a close and the twentieth century
began, designers across the disciplines
of architectural, fashion, graphic, 1900 to 1920
and product design searched for new
forms of expression. Technological
and industrial advances fed
these concerns.

Hector Guimard,
Paris metropolitan,
1902 Art Nouveau
 Koloman Moser, monogram,
The first two decades of the twentieth
Wiener Werkstätte, 1903
century were a time of ferment and
change that radically altered all aspects
of the human condition. The social,
political, cultural, and economic
character of life was caught in
fluid upheaval.

In Europe, monarchy was replaced by

democracy, socialism, and communism.
Technology and scientific advances
transformed commerce and industry.

During this activist period,

experimentation in all the visual and
performing arts was affected by potent Picasso 1906
social and philosophical changes,
industrial and technological
developments, and new attitudes about
aesthetics and modern civilization.

Leonetto Cappiello 1909

Futurism, Dada and De stijl

These three art and design movements

overlapped in time approximately from
between 1916 into the early 1920s.

The Futurist manifesto, written by the

Italian poet Filippo Marinetti in 1909,
profoundly influenced thinking in Europe
and Russia. Futurism praised
technology, violence, danger,
movement and speed. Futurist
typography, known as “free
typography,” demonstrated these ideas
in a highly expressive manner.

The chill of a scream was expressed in

bold type, and quick impressions were
intensified through italics. Letters and
words raced across the page in
dynamic motion.
Futurism began its transformation of
Italian culture on February 20th, 1909,
with the publication of the Futurist
Manifesto, authored by writer Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti.

The Futurists were fascinated by the

problems of representing modern
experience, and wanted their paintings
to evoke all kinds of sensations - and
not merely visual. Futurist art brought to
mind the noise, atmosphere and life of
the city of the future.

Unlike many other modern art

movements, such as Impressionism
and Pointillism, Futurism was not
immediately identified as having a
distinctive style. Instead early futurists
worked in an eclectic manner,
borrowing from various aspects of
Post-Impressionism, including
Symbolism and Divisionism.
It was not until 1911 that a distinctive
Futurist style emerged, and then it was
a product of Cubist influence.

Here we have a Filippo Marinetti,

foldout from ‘Les mots en liberté
futuristes’, 1919. The confusion, violent
noise, and chaos of battle (1st world war
1914-18) explode above the girl reading
her lover's letter from the front.
Marinetti's own experience in the
trenches of war inspired this work.
Dadaism

Among the movements affected by

Futurism were Dadaism in France,
Switzerland and Germany; de Stijl in
Holland; and Constructivism in Russia.

Each of these historical movements

has had a penetrating effect upon
graphic design and typography.

Artists and designers associated with

these movements saw typography in
particular as a powerful means of
conveying information relating to the
realities of industrialized society.
They disdained what typography had
become: a decorative art form far
removed from the realities of the time.
Dada emerged amid the brutality of
WW1 (1914–18)—a conflict that
claimed the lives of eight million military
personnel and an estimated equal
number of civilians. This unprecedented
loss of human life was a result of trench
warfare and technological advances in
weaponry, communications, and
transportation systems.

For Dada artists, the aesthetic of their

work was considered secondary to the
ideas it conveyed. “For us, art is not an
end in itself,” wrote Dada poet Hugo
Ball, “but it is an opportunity for the true
perception and criticism of the times we
live in.” Dadaists both embraced and
critiqued modernity imbuing their works
with references to the technologies,
newspapers, films, and advertisements
that increasingly defined contemporary
life.
They were also experimental,
provocatively re-imagining what art
and art making could be.

Using unorthodox materials and

chance-based procedures, they infused
their work with spontaneity and
irreverence. Wielding scissors and
glue, Dada artists innovated with
collage and photomontage.
De Stijl
Around 1915, Painter Theo Van
Doesburg started meeting the artists
who would eventually become the
founders of the De Stijl journal. He first
met Piet Mondrian at an exhibition in
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Mondrian, who had moved to Paris in
1912 had been visiting the Netherlands
when war broke out.

The name De Stijl is supposedly derived

from Gottfried Semper’s Der Stil in den
technischen und tektonischen Künsten
oder Praktische Ästhetik.
In general, De Stijl proposed ultimate
simplicity and abstraction, both in
architecture and painting, by using only
straight horizontal and vertical lines and
rectangular forms.

Their formal vocabulary was limited to

the primary colours, red yellow and blue
and the three primary values, black,
white and grey.

The works were mainly asymmetrical

and attained aesthetic balance by the
use of opposition. This element of the
movement embodies the second
meaning of stijl: "a post, jamb or
support"; this is best exemplified by the
construction of crossing joints, most
commonly seen in carpentry.
After the first world war ended in 1918
there were two designers in England
and France not part of either Futurism,
Dada or the De Stijl movements.
Edward McKnight Kauffer and A. M.
Cassandre were both applying synthetic
cubism's planes in their poster designs.

McKnight Kauffer was an American

working in England, he was one of the
first designers to understand how the
elemental symbolic forms of Cubist and
Futurist painting could be applied to the
medium of graphic design. Throughout
the first half of the 20th century, his
posters, book jackets, and advertising
achieved an immediacy and vitality.
A Daily herald advertising poster
from 1918.
Cassandre (the pseudonym of
Adolphe-Jean-Marie Mouron) did most
of his work in the 1920s so we will look
at more of his work next week, he also
used figurative geometry and modulated
planes of colour, derived from Cubism,
to revitalize postwar French poster
design.
The architect Otto Wagner typified
the new modernist feeling, with it’s
fascination for functionality and
exploitation of new technology in the
early part of the 20th century
when he said:

“all modern forms must be in

harmony with the new requirements
of our time. Nothing that is not
practical can be beautiful.”
Austrian postal savings bank
constructed between 1904 and
1906 using reinforced concrete
References

CURL, J. (2006). A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Oxford University Press.
LAWSON, S. The 20th-Century art book. London: Phaidon Press. 2001.
ARNESON HARVARD, H.; MANSFIELD, E, (2012). History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, Photography (Seventh ed.). Pearson. p. 189.
Le Figaro, Le Futurisme, 1909/02/20 (Numero 51). Gallica
Bibliotheque nationale de France
THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER. The constructivists and the Russian revolution in art and
achitecture, available from www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/nov/04/russian-avant-
garde- constructivists, accessed 1 September 2015
MOMA.ORG, MOMA LEARNING. Dada, World war 1 and Dada, available from:
http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada [assessed 20 August 2015]
BRITANNICA.COM. graphic design in the 20th Century, available from:
http://www.britannica.com/art/graphic-design/Graphic-design-in-the-20th-century
Images: THE RED LIST. Graphic design, available from
http://theredlist.com/wiki-2-343-917-995-view-chronology-profile-1910s.html#photo