Avant Garde Comparrison.

These two images are both Avant Garde, they both are authentic pieces of art which can be created to mock the greatest artists which have been creating art for many years. The top image is the Mona Lisa which is world known for its perfection and beauty, but Marcel Duchamp has painted on a mustache to mock this image of work and create a new design which can anger some members of the public and humour the rest.

The second image is named 'Derain" from a famous artist known as Matisse. This has a same portrait style shot which is wanted, however the style of the paint brush and strokes which have been used to create this design is much more complex and harder to do then what you expect when you first look at the picture. This then plays with the way that you can use and create Avant Garde work but this still has the same impact as the image which is created above as they were expected to be these perfect outcomes and display the persons beauty in its best light. This forces you to re asses the shock and the conventions which you are expecting to see in work but which is slowly being forced away from our common knowledge of what art is.

Both of these can be compared as the style of Avant Garde wants to challenge the conventions of the modern day art which is so popular amongst the masses To achieve a name for yourself in the modern day artists you have to be Innovative, Original, Very experimental and some also say a Creative Genius, if you have all of this in one combination you will go far in the modern rabble of work.

Defining the Avant-Garde

Objectives.

Understand the Avant-Garde 

Question the way art and design education relies on the concept of the Avant-Garde

Understand the related concept of the art for arts sake 

Question the notion of genius 

Consider the political perspectives relating to Avant-Gardism 

Question the validity of the concept Avant-Garde today 

These images are the definition of what authentic Avant-Garde would be, its a way of mocking the elitist of art and showing what you would expect them to be but how they turn out are completely different. This mocks the way that people think about art at the time and what they are wanting to achieve with there strong beliefs, this also challenges the conventions of modern art. 

This image is called 'Derain' from an artist called Matisse. The colours that have been used and the brush textures show how he wants to see art and how to try and change what he is wanting to create in the future designs. This then plays with the way that you can see Avant-Garde, its there to shock and re asses the conventions of which you are expecting.

To be successful in this current modern age you have to be ...

Innovative [always creating new things]

Experimentation [the process which you need to complete to achieve new stuff] 

Originality [to is bad to be original is good]

Creative Genius [to bring out a hidden creative depth help deep within the student]

Back in the old days artists where created in a style which didn't teach them originality. To become an artist you would have to be selected by a guy who named himself the master, you would then have to copy his work and perfect this, this could be from sculptures to paintings, once you have completed this you would then be allowed to start doing the backgrounds for this work and then you could then go into the world an artist of your own, this was a long process which only taught you how to follow the style which has been set for you already which is why when a new style of art work was created it was very controversial and made a drastic change to the ways in which the public viewed it.

This image was created for a famous poet who killed himself by drinking arsenic because no one would purchase his poems back in the day cause no one understood what he was going through and how he wanted to communicate what was going on. He was a very good poet but with him being to advanced for the time that he lived in no one could follow what he was trying to display on paper therefor he took his old life as he struggled to live without the money needed to buy food. 

This image is called 'Stone Breakers' and is created by Gustsave Courbet, he created this to break out of the usual boundaries which are made and this made it a shocking moment in art culture. In the mid to late 1800s paintings were for the wealthy to show of there wealth and riches however in this he has painted common peasants creating a road. this to some people would show a waste of money and time, however he set a trend which was needed to move the era onwards with its art and design. 

This is created to show a light out of the standard way in which art is created. 'Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket' created in 1875, this is created to stand out from the portrait images which are created in the past. However when this was created the artists believed that what they were doing was communicated well and all made complete sense. however in the eyes of the public it made little sense and created confusion. This was supposed to show Autonomous [independent]  

Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist [1950] .... supposed to show the human emotion splashed onto a canvas however he was also a classified drunk so it could be a little more difficult to agree with him than a sober person

Stalin believed that work such as the one above created by jackson pollock could not be classified as art as it had no purpose in our modern world and that no one understood what the message was which it was trying to deliver. He believed that all the work should be the same as what he wanted his work to look like. The style where the hair was sweeped back and in uniform. However the more expression ate artists said that this was propaganda and not an expression of how they felt so this could not be the modern art to which they create work. There are arguments on both sides but which to take is completely up to the person themselves.

What is Kitsch?

Poor Imitation of Something.

Something of a Lower Standard or Tacky. 

Something which we give a Valued Guess.

German Background.

This design is very Kitsch, the reason for this is because it doesn't stick to the standard rules and lessons to which we have been taught whilst learning graphic design [or any art based project for that matter]. this doesnt make it bad artwork but it just has a very cheep style of looking at things.

How the plate has the print of the constable on it, is a very accurate example of what Kitsch is, the reason for buying the proper image would be to show wealth and have the original on your wall, whereas you can buy a lot cheaper plate with the print but it doesnt have the same market value, There is a place to have major artwork and the galleries should be the only place to which you can see these sort of things, this is the same with the images below, in most lights anything which trades across from different medias can be classified as Kitsch.'Durer Praying Hands' created as a painting then swapped to a door stop, this shouldnt happen.

 One of the main questions that should be answered is how artwork can be created but not by the artist however they still get the credit for it and are making millions in benefits. The main example that comes to my mind after saying this is the Damien Hurst Dots on a page, this work was created from some of his mates who he give some of the money to them for doing each of them, however there was 247 of then made and each of them sold for a solid sum of six figures each, this is a very high amount of money for someone to make which don't even play a part in the work which is being created. There is no originality for doing this sort of work and he doesnt deserve the money which he will be getting payed for such a heavy amount of tasks. 

The Crystal Gobletby Beatrice Warde Excerpt from a Lecture to the British Typographers’ Guild Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain. Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery hearth of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-pages? Again: The glass is colorless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its color and is impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of "doubling" lines, reading three words as one, and so forth. Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The “stunt typographer” learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind. TO BE A SUCCESSFUL DESIGNER YOUR WORK SHOULD BE INVISIBLE. ______________  A GOOD DESIGN IS INVISIBLE / BAD DESIGN IS EVERYWHERE.