issue: 1 summer 2015
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newRodchenko visual language Alexander
newvisual language
Ladislav
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Rodchenko
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City in flux
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Earth Artifact
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Creating a typface
Modernism and Postmodernism
3 Alexander
Rodchenko
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5 Alexander
Rodchenko
CITY IN FLUX For the first project we were asked to visually represent a city in flux. My final piece was a very forward thinking, experimental post-modernist canvas installment. Drawing inspiration from a variety of artists one particular artist stood out to me, Jesse Draxler. I wanted to capture the darker side of city living, mainly focusing on London and the people contained within its boundaries. Seeing how people lived and reacted emotionally to the city in flux, I gained a sense of unhappiness and gloom. This was represented by the dark tones and colours used in my final piece, even down to the brush strokes of the acrylic paint. I believe this was the best way to catch London in its current state, freezing a city in flux to take it down to it’s bare essentials. For this project I focused on the colours and the textures in my work so that it would have a subconscious effect on the user looking in so that they too could get a sense of the eerie gloom that the people of London project. I wanted to capture the feelings and emotions of the people of a city because after all, if a city has no people, is it in flux?
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EARTH ARTIFACT My Earth Artifact project focused on the visual representation of the earth. For this I picked out several key words and elements that built up the world and it’s inhabitants. I then dwindled this down to 4 main categories and words, Animals, Music, Technology and Religion. I then did extensive research into these four main areas and created vector symbols that represented the elements contained in these four main areas. I came up with the idea of engraving this on earths most readily available resource, wood. Giving an outsider looking in the feel, the touch, the smell of earth with the representation and description of earth etched into it. This was my first time using the laser cutter and over-all im disappointed with the look of the outcome, but I still believe it delivers a strong visual representation of earth, and gives a strong message that this project was meant to portray.
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CREATING A TYPEFACE The typefaces I designed for this project both took a very caligraphy inspired twist. Drawing huge inpiration from both Chinese and Japanese culture, as well as the culture of Samurai warriors. I believe I’ve created two very effective caligraphy fonts both worthy of being part of either the Japnanese or Chinese culture. I wanted to base my ideas upon the fundementals of a sans-serif font and laborate on that. Which I believe I did.
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Modernism & post Modernism Modernism, which gathered pace from about 1850, proposes new forms of art on the grounds that these are more appropriate to the present time. It is therefore characterised by constant innovation and a rejection of conservative values such as the realistic depiction of the world. This has led to experiments with form and to an emphasis on processes and materials. Modern art has also been driven by various social and political agendas. These were often utopian, and modernism was in general associated with ideal visions of human life and society and a belief in progress. The terms modernism and modern art are generally used to describe the succession of art movements that critics and historians have identified since the realism of Gustav Courbet, culminating in abstract art and its developments up to the 1960s. By that time modernism had become a dominant idea of art, and a particularly narrow theory of modernist painting had been formulated by the highly influential American critic Clement Greenberg. A reaction then took place which was quickly identified as postmodernism. Some outstanding characteristics of postmodernism are that it collapses the distinction between high culture and mass or popular culture; that it tends to get rid of the boundary between art and everyday life; and that it refuses to recognise the authority of any single style or definition of what art should be. Resultantly, postmodern art is characterised by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, and a mixing of different artistic styles and media. Postmodernism may be said to begin with pop art and to embrace much of what followed including conceptual art, neo- expressionism, feminist art, and the Young British Artists of the 1990s.