Modern At Movement

Expressionism

This art movement is by far my favourite. Not only because of its techniques, but also because I feel that I can relate to this art movement. I see myself as an Expressive artist. The work that I create is subjective to how I view the world. Out of the two categories of expressionism, I feel that I fall under the Blue Rider category. I’d rather create abstract work and let my spirit lead me in the process, than to create representational work. Whether typographic work, literature, 2dimensional or 3dimensional work it is always directly dependent on how I feel. Expressionism is a term that embraces an early 20th century style of art, music and literature that is charged with an emotional and spiritual vision of the world.

ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER (1880-1938)
'Davos under Snow', 1923 (oil on canvas)

The Roots of Expressionism

Expressionism is associated with Northern Europe, Germany in particular. The Expressionist spirit has always existed in the German psyche. At the end of the 19th century, this Expressionist spirit resurfaced in the paintings of two awkward and isolated personalities one was the Dutchman, Vincent Van Gogh and the other a Norwegian, Edvard Munch. While the Impressionists were admiring the colour and beauty of the natural landscape, Van Gogh and Munch took a radically different perspective. They chose to look inwards to discover a form of self-expression that offered them an individual voice in a world that they perceived as both insecure and hostile. It was this more subjective search for a personal emotional truth that drove them on and ultimately paved the way for the Expressionist art forms of the 20th century that explored the inner landscape of the soul.

VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
'Sunflowers', 1888 (oil on canvas)

Paintings like Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ (1888) opened our eyes to the intensity of expressive color. He used color to express his feelings about a subject, rather than to simply describe it. In a letter to his brother Theo he explained, ‘Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily to express myself forcibly.’ His heightened vision helped to liberated color as an emotional instrument in the repertoire of 20th century art and the vitality of his brushwork became a key influence in the development of both the Fauves' and the Expressionists’ painting technique.

EDVARD MUNCH (1863-1944)
'The Scream', 1893 (oil, tempera and pastel on board)

Munch’s painting of ‘The Scream’ (1893) was equally influential. It provides us with a psychological blueprint for Expressionist art: distorted shapes and exaggerated colors that amplify a sense of anxiety and alienation. ‘The Scream’ is Munch’s own voice crying in the wilderness, a prophetic voice that declares the Expressionist message, fifteen years before the term was invented. "I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead tired. And I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

Die Brücke (The Bridge)

Die Brücke was founded in Dresden in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) , Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976), Erich Heckel (1883-1970) and Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966). The meaning of the name suggested they would build Die Brücke (the bridge) from the great German artistic past of Dürer and Grunewald over the contemporary artistic bourgeoisie to a new and better future. They even wrote a manifesto which Kirchner carved in wood proclaiming, 'Putting our faith in a new generation of creators and art lovers, we call upon all youth to unite. And being youth, the bearers of the future, we want to wrest from the comfortably established older generation freedom to live and move. Anyone who directly and honestly reproduces that force which impels him to create belongs to us.'

The members of Die Brücke adopted a bohemian lifestyle and lived as an artistic community in a working class district of Dresden, deliberately isolating themselves from the 'comfortably established'. They believed that artists should have total freedom of expression, unrestricted by social or artistic conventions.

Like many artistic movements they looked back to move forward. Gothic art, which had both a German lineage and an appropriately dark temperament, became Die Brücke 's natural inspiration. Its jagged forms were easily fused with the primal visual vocabulary of the African and Oceanic art that they had discovered in the Ethnographic Museum in Dresden.

The main artistic form that emerged from this fusion of styles was the woodcut. The woodcut had been a traditional German print medium for narrative illustration. When fused with the vocabulary of 'primitive' art, the medium became a powerful tool for personal expression. A modern alterative to this traditional technique was the linocut, a medium invented by Die Brücke.

The Die Brücke manifesto was an open invitation to other artists with similar values to join the group. Emil Nolde, whose painting was following a similar path to Die Brücke, joined in 1906. However, Nolde only remained a member for a few months as the community lifestyle did not live up to his expectations. He was older and had a more conservative nature than the young Die Brücke activists. Nolde's favourite subjects were dark brooding seascapes that recalled the landscape of his youth and biblical themes that reflected his strict religious upbringing.

 Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)

AUGUSTE MACKE (1887-1914)
‘Girls Under Trees’, 1914 (oil on canvas)

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was not exactly an Expressionist group, more a meeting of diverse talents who contributed to the publication of an almanac 'Der Blaue Reiter' and two exhibitions of the same name.

Der Blaue Reiter (the almanac) was published in May 1912 by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. The title was taken from a drawing of a blue horseman that was used for the cover of the almanac. Kandinsky stated, 'We both loved blue: Marc - horses, myself - riders. So the name invented itself.'

While Die Brücke artists adopted 'primitive' art as a raw style that would subvert the traditions of the establishment, Der Blaue Reiter artists were attracted by the more mystical aspects of the style, particularly its relationship with the spiritual and supernatural. Primitive art had a certain purity that set it apart from the materialism and corruption of the time - 'a bridge into the world of the spirit' as Marc put it.

Der Blaue Reiter exhibitions took place in Munich and preceded the publication of the almanac. The first, an exhibition of paintings by Kandinsky, Marc, Auguste Macke and some others, took place in December 1911, and the second, a graphics exhibition which included a wider range of artists from further afield, opened in the spring of 1912.

The aim of Der Blaue Reiter exhibitions was to highlight the similarities in different approaches to creating art, for example, finding common ground between the primitive and the contemporary. They outlined this objective in the catalogue for the first exhibition, 'We do not seek to propagate any precise or particular form; our object is to show, in the variety of the forms represented, how the inner desire of artists realises itself in multiple fashion.'

Der Blaue Reiter came to an end after the deaths of Franz Marc and Auguste Macke during World War 1.

WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944)
'Composition IV', 1911 (oil on canvas)

Kandinsky's painting was moving away from the depiction of realistic forms into the more spiritual realms of abstraction. Since childhood he had studied music, playing both the piano and cello. He also had a highly developed sense of synaesthetic response (experiencing colors in response to hearing sounds) and he recognized that color could trigger our emotions much in the same way as music touches our soul. This link between the visual and the aural inspired his experiments with color as an abstract element for the subject of a painting. The idea was reinforced by a chance experience in 1908, 'I was returning, immersed in thought from my sketching, when on opening the studio door I was suddenly confronted by a picture of incandescent beauty. Bewildered, I stopped and stared at it. The painting lacked all subject, depicted no identifiable object and was entirely composed of bright color patches. Finally, I approached closer and saw it for what it really was - my own painting, standing on its side on the easel.....One thing became clear to me: that objectiveness, the depiction of objects, needed no place in my paintings, and was indeed harmful to them.'

In his publication, of 1911, 'CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART' he states that 'Color cannot stand alone; it cannot dispense with boundaries of some kind ........A never-ending extent of red can only be seen in the mind; when the word red is heard, the color is evoked without definite boundaries.'

His paintings of this period are attempts to release this psychic quality of color by freeing it from the task of describing physical objects. In moving towards abstraction by breaking down the boundaries of realistic forms, Kandinsky tries to tap into the more expressive power of color as it exists in the mind. Although, as in the musically and abstractly titled 'Composition IV' above, there are still vague references to figures and objects in the landscape, color emerges as an ephemeral force that energizes the entire canvas.

Kandinsky was the first artist to push painting towards total abstraction. He is quoted as saying, "Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential."

PAUL KLEE (1879-1940)
'Ad Parnassum', 1932 (oil on board)

The Swiss artist Paul Klee took part in the second Der Blaue Reiter exhibition. Through the influence of Kandinsky, Marc and Macke, Klee became interested in the abstract use of color. Klee, like Kandinsky was a talented musician and the relationship between art and music was a driving force in his art. The painting above illustrates this link between the arts.

The title 'Ad Parnassum' (towards Parnassus) refers to both Mount Parnassus (the home of the Muses - the nine goddesses of the arts in Greek mythology) and 'Gradus Ad Parnassum' (the Path to Parnassus - the name of a classic 18th century textbook on musical counterpoint). The bold triangle at the top of the picture represents Mount Parnassus, the orange circle symbolizes the sun and the arch at the bottom indicates the door to the temple. The most important element of this painting is the way that Klee uses color to express a musical idea. The underpainted patches of background colors are like the deep base chords of a musical composition while the brighter mosaic-like surface of dots act like a counterpoint to complete the harmony.

FRANCIS BACON (1909-1992)
'Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X', 1953 (oil on canvas)

Francis Bacon, the British painter, also used the triptych format in his convulsive images of post-war angst and abandonment. While personally denying any Expressionist influence in his art, his electrifying version of 'Pope Innocent X', (again recalling the art of the past as it was based on the Velázquez painting of 1650), reinvents the original Expressionist prototype: 'The Scream' by Edvard Munch.

Contemporary Expressionism

The first use of the term Neo-Expressionism which is also known as Contemporary Expressionism is undocumented, but by 1982 it was being widely used to describe new German and Italian art. An extremely broad label, it is disliked by many of the artists to whose work it has been applied.

Neo-Expressionism, which is now shortened to Neo-Ex, was a reaction against both Conceptual art and the modernist rejection of imagery culled from art history. Turning their backs on the Conceptual art modes in which they had been trained, the Neo-Expressionists adopted the traditional formats of easel painting and cast and carved sculpture. Turning to modern and premodern art for inspiration, they abandoned Minimalist restraint and Conceptual coolness. Instead their work offered violent feeling expressed through previously taboo means which includes gestural paint handling and allegory. Because it was so widespread and so profound a change, Neo-Expressionism represented both a generational changing of the guard and an epochal transition from modernism to postmodernism.

It is difficult to generalize about the appearance or content of Neo-Expressionist art. Its imagery came from a variety of sources, ranging from newspaper headlines and surrealist dreams to classical mythology and the covers of trashy novels. The German artists have invoked early-twentieth-century expressionism to deal with the repression of German cultural history following World War II. Some American painters, such as Julian Schnabel, use eclectic historical images to create highly personal and allusive works. Others, such as Sue Coe, refer to contemporary events to create pointed social commentary.

Neo-Expressionism’s return to brash and emotive artworks in traditional and accessible formats helped fuel the booming art market of the 1980s and marked the end of American dominance of international art.

The Atomic Bomb

On August 2, 1939, just before the beginning of World War II,Albert Einstein wrote to then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein and several other scientists told Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify uranium-235, which could be used to build an atomic bomb. It was shortly thereafter that the United States Government began the serious undertaking known then only as "The Manhattan Project." Simply put, the Manhattan Project was committed to expediting research that would produce a viable atomic bomb.

Making Enriched Uranium

The most complicated issue to be addressed in making of an atomic bomb was the production of ample amounts of "enriched" uranium to sustain a chain reaction. At the time, uranium-235 was very hard to extract. In fact, the ratio of conversion from uranium ore to uranium metal is 500:1. Compounding this, the one part of uranium that is finally refined from the ore is over 99% uranium-238, which is practically useless for an atomic bomb. To make the task even more difficult, the useful U-235 and nearly useless U-238 are isotopes, nearly identical in their chemical makeup. No ordinary chemical extraction method could separate them; only mechanical methods could work.

A massive enrichment laboratory/plant was constructed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Harold Urey and his colleagues at Columbia University devised an extraction system that worked on the principle of gaseous diffusion, and Ernest Lawrence(inventor of the Cyclotron) at the University of California in Berkeley implemented a process involving magnetic separation of the two isotopes.

Next, a gas centrifuge was used to further separate the lighter U-235 from the heavier, non-fissionable U-238. Once all of these procedures had been completed, all that needed to be done was to put to the test the entire concept behind atomic fission splitting the atom," in layman's terms.

Robert Oppenheimer - Manhattan Project

Over the course of six years, from 1939 to 1945, more than $2 billion was spent during the history of the Manhattan Project. The formulas for refining uranium and putting together a working atomic bomb were created and seen to their logical ends by some of the greatest minds of our time. Chief among the people who unleashed the power of the atom was Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the project from conception to completion.

Testing The Gadget aka Atomic Bomb

Finally, the day came when all at Los Alamos would find out if "The Gadget" (code-named as such during its development) was going to be the colossal dud of the century or perhaps an end to the war. It all came down to a fateful morning in midsummer, 1945.

At 5:29:45 (Mountain War Time) on July 16, 1945, in a white blaze that stretched from the basin of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico to the still-dark skies, "The Gadget" ushered in the Atomic Age. The light of the explosion then turned orange as the atomic fireball began shooting upwards at 360 feet per second, reddening and pulsing as it cooled. The characteristic mushroom cloud of radioactive vapor materialized at 30,000 feet. Beneath the cloud, all that remained of the soil at the blast site were fragments of jade green radioactive glass created by the heat of the reaction.

The brilliant light from the detonation pierced the early morning skies with such intensity that residents from a faraway neighboring community would swear that the sun came up twice that day. Even more astonishing is that a blind girl saw the flash 120 miles away.

Upon witnessing the explosion, its creators had mixed reactions. Isidor Rabi felt that the equilibrium in nature had been upset as if humankind had become a threat to the world it inhabited.

After viewing the results several participants signed petitions against loosing the monster they had created, but their protests fell on deaf ears. The Jornada del Muerto of New Mexico would not be the last site on planet Earth to experience an atomic explosion.

Anti Nuke Campaigns.

Greenpeace has always fought  and continues to fight vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.

Nastya, from Belarus was only three years old when she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and lungs. According to local doctors the region has seen a huge increase in childhood cancer cases since the Chernobyl disaster.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It opposes military action that may result in the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and the building of nuclear power stations in the UK.

CND was formed in 1957 and since that time has periodically been at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK. It claims to be Europe's largest single-issue peace campaign. Between 1959 and 1965 it organised the Aldermaston March, which was held over the Easter weekend from the Atomic Weapons Establishment near Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square, London. The first Aldermaston March in 1958 went the other way (from London to Aldermaston) and was organised by the Direct Action Committee.

CND's current strategic objectives are:

·        The elimination of British nuclear weapons and global abolition of nuclear weapons. It campaigns for the cancellation of Trident by the British government and against the deployment of nuclear weapons in Britain.

·        The abolition of weapons of mass destruction, in particular chemical and biological weapons. CND wants a ban on the manufacture, testing and use of depleted uranium weapons

·        A nuclear-free, less militarised and more secure Europe. It supports the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It opposes US military bases and nuclear weapons in Europe and British membership of NATO.

·        The closure of the nuclear power industry.

In recent years CND has extended its campaigns to include opposition to U.S. and British policy in the Middle East, rather as it broadened its anti-nuclear campaigns in the 1960s to include opposition to the Vietnam War. In collaboration with the Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim Association of Britain, CND has organised anti-war marches under the slogan "Don't Attack Iraq", including protests on September 28, 2002 and February 15, 2003. It also organised a vigil for the victims of the 2005 London bombings.

CND campaigns against the Trident missile. In March 2007 it organised a rally in Parliament Square to coincide with the Commons motion to renew the weapons system. The rally was attended by over 1,000 people. It was addressed by Labour MPs Jon Trickett, Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, and Elfyn Llwyd of Plaid Cymru and Angus MacNeil of the Scottish National Party. In the House of Commons, 161 MPs (88 of them Labour) voted against the renewal of Trident and the Government motion was carried only with the support of Conservatives.

In 2006 CND launched a campaign against nuclear power. Its membership, which had fallen to 32,000 from a peak of 110,000 in 1983, increased threefold after Prime Minister Tony Blair made a commitment to nuclear energy.

The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental groups, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, national, and international level. Major anti-nuclear groups include Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and theNuclear Information and Resource Service. The initial objective of the movement was nuclear disarmament, though some of the focus has shifted to include opposition to the use of nuclear power.

There have been many large anti-nuclear demonstrations and protests. A protest against nuclear power occurred in July 1977 in Bilbao, Spain, with up to 200,000 people in attendance. Following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, an anti-nuclear protest was held in New York City, involving 200,000 people. In 1981, Germany's largest anti-nuclear power demonstration took place to protest against the Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant west of Hamburg; some 100,000 people came face to face with 10,000 police officers. The largest anti-nuclear protest was held on June 12, 1982, when one million people demonstrated in New York City against nuclear weapons. A 1983 nuclear weapons protest in West Berlin had about 600,000 participants. In May 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people marched in Rome to protest against the Italian nuclear program.

For many years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster nuclear power was off the policy agenda in most countries, and the anti-nuclear power movement seemed to have won its case. Some anti-nuclear groups disbanded. In the 2000s, however, following public relations activities by the nuclear industry, advances in nuclear reactor designs, and concerns about climate change, nuclear power issues came back into energy policy discussions in some countries. The 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents subsequently undermined the nuclear power industry's proposed renaissance and revived anti-nuclear passions worldwide, putting governments on the defensive. As of 2011, countries such as Australia, Austria, Denmark,Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Norway remain opposed to nuclear power. Germany and Switzerland are phasing-out nuclear power.

Two survivors, Ms. Setsuko Thurlow and Mr. Yasuaki Yamashita, share their reflections, remembrances and personal testimonies with Truman’s grandson, Mr. Clifton Truman Daniel and Peace Boat Executive Committee Member Mr. Akira Kawasaki. Mr. Daniel will recount his own journey toward understanding this event, including encounters with survivors during a recent trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while Mr. Kawasaki will introduce the work that Peace Boat has been doing to help survivors share their stories worldwide. This is the link to the video. Link http://www.japansociety.org/webcast/special-program-for-high-school-students

group 1 Manifesto

Manifesto

a public declaration of policy and aims, especially one issued before an election by a political party or candidate.

An art manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement. Manifestos are a standard feature of the various movements in the modernist avant-garde and are still written today. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system. Typical themes are the need for revolution, freedom (of expression) and the implied or overtly stated superiority of the writers over the status quo. The manifesto gives a means of expressing, publicising and recording ideas for the artist or art group even if only one or two people write the words, it is mostly still attributed to the group name.

The first art manifesto of the 20th century was introduced with the Futurists in Italy in 1909, and readily taken up by the Vorticists,Dadaists and the Surrealists after them: the period up to World War II created what are still the best known manifestos. Although they never stopped being issued, other media such as the growth of broadcasting tended to sideline such declarations. Due to the internet there has been a resurgence of the form, and many new manifestos are now appearing to a potential worldwide audience. The Stuckistshave made particular use of this to start a worldwide movement of affiliated groups.

Manifestos typically consist of a number of statements, which are numbered or in bullet points and which do not necessarily follow logically from one to the next. Tristan Tzara's explanation of the manifesto (Feeble Love & Bitter Love, II) captures the spirit of many:

A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it's always right, it's strong, vigorous and logical. Apropos of logic, I consider myself very likeable.

The Communist Manifesto   also known as Das Kommunistische Manifest, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a short 1848 publication written by the political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the Communist League, it laid out the League's purposes and program. It presents an analytical approach to the class struggle and the problems of capitalism, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms.

The Futurist Manifesto, written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was published in the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dell'Emilia in Bologna on 5 February 1909, then in French as "Manifeste du futurisme" in the newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. It initiated an artistic philosophy, Futurism, that was a rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry; it was also an advocation of the modernisation and cultural rejuvenation of Italy.

Group 1 Manifesto

We had to choose a person and then do research about his/her contribution to modern design and communication. We chose Scott Fisher who is a Professor and chairman of the Interactive Media Divission in the USCSchool of Cinematic Arts in Southern California. Scott Fischer was born on 24 December, 1955 in Michigan, USA. He is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on virtual reality. His field of interest includes Art & Media Technology, Immersive Virtual Environments & Technologies of Presince. His contribution to modern design is all about bringing  3D art to life and enhance human living condition through technology and making the lives of others better.

3D is The Future

We the undergraduate graphic design of mgi believe that although 3d is the future we still require the fundamental skills of drawing , digital design, typography, storyboards, history of graphic design and communication science. If analyzed carefully one will come to the realization that the above listed are prerequisites of 3d.

Even in modern day life we are constantly exposed to 3d use. From the tender age of 2 to the seasoned of 70 3d is used to keep our level of entertainment at a constant high.

Lets take anime for example, vitual effects are implemented to contrast a realistic effect, thus bring the cartoon to life.  You get anime for all ages. For little children, there are cartoons such as Digimon for adolescences, transformers, for young adults, high school of the dead and so forth.

We the undergraduate graphic design of mgi have also come up with a hypothesis stating that this up rise with the fascination of 3d animation is that it give us the illusion of reality, a certain accessibility to our imagination, a gateway into a new world.

Another example would be the movie avatar, the reason being that human are unsatisfied with society’s person of the world and humans and existence as a whole. Mankind is enthralled with the idea that “we are not alone”.

The religious believe in the existence of the spiritual realm; whether it is angels, demons or a significant higher power. The science fictional chooses to delve more in the existence of aliens, extra-terrestrials and other paranormal activity.

Our conclusion is that we love 3D and everything its made up of.