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Charlotte Wagstaff A2 Graphics Essay

How does the universal language of music specifically 1950’s music, link to the society of artistic movement in 1950’s?

Music is the universal language of mankind’ (Henry Wadsworth) To some extent I agree with this quote above, I feel in life you come across many sayings, many quotes, but these quotes above are many of which explain exactly how I feel about music. From Shakespeare to the Sex Pistols, music quotes extend from observations by music lovers to commentaries from musicians. Music quotes are an expression of the role music plays in our lives. From the unique songs that identify our culture to the universal compositions that all societies share, music quotes define the connection of music to the world we live in music brings the world together and we can „connect‟ and understand the same thing, regardless. As a contempory Graphic designer, I feel it is a moral obligation of my duties that I look further into the influences and similarities between my theme music, and artistic graphic cultural movements that may have influenced not only graphic design but vinyl covers and how these designs have changed throughout time.

Having discussed the importance of music, from a universal perspective above and my reasons, I decided link a particular social context of 1950‟s music and 1950‟s artistic movement. I decided to do this as my theme for this project originally was music and I felt the artists I found out artists I had looked at such Andy Warhol came from this time period also. Therefore I looked into the stylistic influences of the music I listen to, and came across Doo-Wop Music. Like Graphic Design, Music and Art is always developing and changing, and the music I listen to now, is inspired through many musical genre‟s but currently it is inspired by 1950's music known as Doo-Wop music. Doo-Wop is a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music, which developed in African-American communities in the 1940's and which achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950's and early 1960's.Similiarly to Doo-Wop music the stylistic influences of pop art. Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the late 1950's to late 1960's similar to Doo-Wop music that emerged in Britain and the United States. Pop Art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist‟s use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of Fine Art. Pop Art removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation. The concept of Pop Art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led it. Doo Wop music and pop art are both simplistic, yet effective.

Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them. Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or Kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. I felt that Pop Art and Doo-Wop music had many movement interlinks, as well as being from the same area, and using similar concepts, for some music is seen as art.

The reason I decided to widen my knowledge and look deeper and Interlink movements

Charlotte Wagstaff A2 Graphics Essay

of and movement and art is because this leads to a deeper understanding of my broader theme of Inspirations.

I have linked the pop artistic movement to artists Andy Warhol and Patrick Caulfield. The reason in doing this because I feel these were two artists that contextually had an impact in this artist movement. Patrick Caulfieldâ€&#x;s use of bright blocks of flat colour and thick black outlines became a hallmark of his style and has gone on to influence other artists such as Michael Craig-Martin, Andy Warhol and Julian Opie.

Caulfield was a slow worker with his paintings taking months to finish. In works such as After Lunch he inserted highly detailed photorealist sections into his characteristically stylized images, playing with the viewers definitions of reality and artifice.

He was born in London in 1936, and spent part of his childhood in Bolton Lancashire before moving back to London after WWII. He worked in the design department of Crosse & Blackwell, (where one of his tasks was varnishing the chocolates on display) and spent three years national service with the Royal Air Force.

In 1956 he attended Chelsea School of Art and in 1960 undertook postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art. Here Caulfield was identified, along with the previous year's intake (David Hockney, Ron Kitaj, Allen Jones and Derek Boshier) as one of the 'Pop' artists.

Patrick caulfields works particularl conveys a mood of uneasiness and inferiority of the viewer. The looming pottery appears to be intrusive. The immense numbers suggest that the painting is surreal and unrealistic, despite the realism and definite lines of the jars.

The lack of light is replaced by the brilliant colours to create structure within the painting.

There is a definite lack of volume or space, to make the landscape even more surreal. It conveys agitation and discomfort to the viewer. The content of the painting involves simple crockery, as it towers up the canvas in an imposing manner. The lack of human influence in the painting evokes an eerie feeling of bleakness and isolation, despite the overwhelming sense of abundance.

Andy Warhol worked as a fashion illustrator and commercial artist before turning to the fine art scene. His early work included huge enlargements of comic strip pictures that were used in the display windows of large New York department stores. During the 1960s, at a time when popular culture became a dominant force in both society and the arts, Andy Warhol became the guru of Pop Art. Using the most ordinary objects (Coke bottles, Campbell's soup cans) and the most popular personalities of American culture,

Charlotte Wagstaff A2 Graphics Essay

Warhol gave them heroic scale and turned them into art. What Warhol created was a new kind of still life in a twentieth-century mass-media, popular-culture mode, rather than the illusionary manner of the nineteenth century. Warhol renounced originality, confused the boundaries of mass art and high culture, and continually challenged the conventions of the gallery and museum.

Doo Wop music vinyl covers have been inspired by the artistic movements of pop art and the artists above Andy Warhol and Patrick Caulfield, below I have gave example of two Vinyl covers, and an example of modern day album artwork which I feel also portrays this.

“You see, to pretend something‟s real, I‟d have to fake it. Then people would think I‟m doing it real.” (Andy Warhol)

Andy Warhol was a huge stylistic influence in Pop art and the context and conceptual art which we see in pop art is known to have derived from abstract expressionism. Another artistic movement, the artistic movement Abstract expressionism was an American postWorld War II art movement. During the period leading up to and during World War II modernist artists, writers, and poets, as well as important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and the onslaught of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States, and of those who didn't flee perished. Among the artists and collectors who arrived in New York during the war were, Max Ernst, and Piet Mondrian. A few artists, notably Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard remained in France and survived.

Charlotte Wagstaff A2 Graphics Essay

The post-war period left the capitals of Europe in upheaval with an urgency to economically and physically rebuild and to politically regroup. In Paris, formerly the center of European culture and capital of the art world, the climate for art was a disaster and New York replaced Paris as the new center of the art world. In Europe after the war there was the continuation of Surrealism, Cubism, Dada and the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Art brut,[14] and Lyrical Abstraction or Tachisme(the European equivalent to Abstract expressionism) took hold of the newest generation. In the United States a new generation of American artists began to emerge and to dominate the world stage and they were called Abstract Expressionists.

It is a well-known feature of modern art that the controversial issue of pop art being and Andy Warhol‟s influences, and the link between pop art and abstract expressionism is a innovative creation. This regeneration of art seems so blatant in Warhol‟s case that it is impossible to agree about whether his innovations can be counted as meaningful selfrenewal of art.

The abrupt change from the Abstract-Expressionist painting of the New York school, with its high ideals and awareness of a historic mission, to a pictorial language that seems to exhaust itself in the endless repetition of trivialities and thus to question everything that had been achieved in the logical development of painting by Pollock, Kline, Rothko, Newman etc. seems too nihilistic.

The confrontation between the two diametrically opposed views of what “painting”, “the panel picture”, “the artist” actually is becomes all the more significant because it was the first that came up inside American art and largely independently of European influences - despite the earlier existence of English Pop Art. All at once two views of painting were confronting each other that were both perceived as genuinely American.

Kitsch is a controversial issue which arose in the ninetieth century. When looking at the link between Andy Warhol pop art and Abstract Expressionism, I came against the idea of Kitsch. Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons, while making cheap mass-produced objects that are unoriginal. Kitsch also refers to the types of art that are aesthetically deficient (whether or not being sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative) and that make creative gestures which merely imitate the

Charlotte Wagstaff A2 Graphics Essay

superficial appearances of art through repeated conventions and formulae.

Excessive sentimentality often is associated with the term.

The term kitsch is considered derogatory, denoting works executed to pander to popular demand alone and purely for commercial purposes rather than works created as selfexpression by an artist. The term is generally reserved for unsubstantial and gaudy works that are calculated to have popular appeal and are considered pretentious and shallow rather than genuine artistic efforts The concept of kitsch is applied to artwork that was a response to the 19th century art with aesthetics that convey exaggerated sentimentality and melodrama, hence, kitsch art is closely associated with sentimental art. Pop Art was seen as kitsch in reference too abstract expressionism. As Much of Pop Art attempted to incorporate images from popular culture and kitsch; artists were able to maintain legitimacy by saying they were "quoting" imagery to make conceptual points, usually with the appropriation being ironic.

In Italy, a movement arose called the Nuovi Nuovi ("new new"), which took a different route: instead of quoting kitsch in an ironic stance, it founded itself in a primitivism which embraced the ugliness and garishness, emulating it as a sort of anti-aesthetic an opposing argument to Kitsch.

So as a graphic student I ask myself is this important question „Kitsch is it bad or good in terms of artwork, and do I agree with the use of kitsch‟. I feel to imitate and use stylistic influences, for example taking the parts of abstract expressionism which work and creating new idea‟s in the form of pop art, is a clever interpretation of art. Despite this, many in the art world continue to have an adherence to some sense of the dichotomy between art and kitsch, excluding all sentimental and realistic art from being considered seriously. Some would argue along with me that "Kitsch is the expression of passion at all levels, and not the servant of truth. It keeps relative to religion and truth... Truth, kitsch leaves for modern art. In kitsch skill is the important criteria.... Kitsch serves life and seeks the individual." Odd Nerd rum, "Kitsch — The Difficult Choice", 1998.

Meaning that Kitsch works, because the aspects it „copies‟ work to in context to the new artwork being created.

However critics of Kitsch would argue that kitsch „is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence." — Milan Kundera, 1984‟ Kitsch has come under attack by critics who argue for a re appreciation of Academic art and traditional figurative painting, without the concern for it appearing innovative or new. The art world of the time perceived the immense popularity of kitsch as a threat to culture. the art theorists Theodor Adorno, Hermann Broch, and Clement Greenberg, The

Charlotte Wagstaff A2 Graphics Essay

arguments of all three theorists relied on an implicit definition of kitsch as a type of false consciousness, a Marxistterm meaning a mindset present within the structures of capitalism that is misguided as to its own desires and wants. Kitsch was seen to open the door emphasizing the need for expressive and evocative art work.

No matter what the difficulty is in defining boundaries between kitsch and fine art, since the beginning of postmodernism, the word "kitsch" still remains in common use to label anything seen as being in poor taste.