found this and reminded my of vesalius' de corpore fabrica, right? this is nunzio paci.
hi kids: as you can see, i was able to fix our blog a little bit. it will get better.
there's plenty to comment on, pick your favorite subject: incunabula, gutenberg's printing revolution, maps, bible translations, baskerville, caslon, blake, romantic imagery...
below there are seven posts i couldn't discuss with you because our website's glitch: bembo, imagines morti, garamond and geoffroy tory. take a look at them. remember i said that roman typeface comes back?
ok, go ahead!
19 comments:
The part of last week’s class that stood out the most for me was the discussion on maps and the way that they are a great example of graphic design and the way that it is applied and a crucial part of things that have become necessary to our society. Last semester, I took my first geography class, where we learned how to use ArcGIS, a program to create and render maps. I always described it as using Photoshop and math to create art that we can and will use. The process of creating a map is very much designed around the user and the way that it will be most efficient to convey the information that thee creator wants to get across, which is what I always connected to graphic design. It was very exciting to see the same argument but from the point of view of someone in graphic design applying to cartography and map making. It was also very interesting to see the way that it has evolved through time and how this evolution does not only come from us knowing more about the land, but also from influences in art, graphic design, and the technological and scientific advances.
Martina Sandoval Iriarte
What captivated me most from last weeks lecture was the discussion on Romanticism style. While discussing Romanticism, you said something that really resonates with style and emotion captured in the images. “Death of romance is redeeming and better than living”. The artwork that conveyed this idea best was the Theodore Guericault painting, Raft of the Medusa. Not only the expressions on the men’s faces, but the body language depicts the dismay and desperation of these men lost as sea. Bodies flaccidly laying around, men supporting each other in what appears to be some of their last moments alive, all glorifies the beauty of death if it was worth dying at sea. The artist romanticizes about death and doesn’t treat this as a horrific site because you see no wounds, scars, or blood on these men; simply the positions they’ve been placed in. The same could be said about Euguene Delacroix’s, Liberty Leading the People. The French flag being held high, weapons in head, is all symbolism of Patriotism justifying death for country. No battle wounds, cut, bullet holes are show on the men or woman; but death is implied by the people laying on the floor.
-Bryan Vargas
In my opinion, the most interesting topic from last week’s lecture was how maps are designed and how they have evolved through time. It is very interesting everything that goes into designing a map and how one of the most important things is the audience. One point that made a lot of sense to me was that every map could be different depending on what the audience is interested in, for example topography, highways, etc.
It is amazing how technology has advanced and how maps nowadays are so different from before. Now we have GPS technology and maps work differently. They have features that are really helpful like alternate routes depending on traffic, specific directions, visuals that are easier to understand, etc. It is very interesting to see how as technology and science evolve, art and design evolve with them.
-Anat Sterental
The most interesting aspect of last class was the obsession with romanticism. I am a lover of Shakespearian works as well as artwork that depicts romanticism, because I feel like it looks the most elegant and beautiful. The fact that it was more honorable and, for lack of a better term, romanticized to succumb to death early rather than life a long prosperous life is very interesting and intriguing. The morbid, yet beautiful, messages of the romantic paintings are clearly expressed without a hint of abstractionism. "Liberty Leading the People" shows the nobility of the nation of France, as Liberty herself is bright, boisterous and centrally placed. The dead, lifeless bodies are painted in dark colors, contrasting with Liberty. Ophelia, while lifeless, still possesses an air of beauty with her delicate features and floral surroundings.
-KB
The printing press helped to herald the spread of knowledge, the bible, and differing . The printing press is argued to be one of the causes of the reformation but the first book printed was the Bible in Latin. The printing press receives a lot of press for its role in the northern renaissance and especially reformation but would the change have occurred without the printing press. The renaissance was already occurring in Italy before, Da Vinci’s works was done by hand so it is possible that the printing press had nothing to do with the northern renaissance, rather the renaissance spawned the printing press and the reformation. The reformation probably would have occurred but at a later date, allowing for a longer diffusion . The speedy diffusion of ideas allowed for ideas to spread faster and quicker. Going back to the Gutenberg Bible, a four language bible had been printed 100 years after the Gutenberg Bible challenging the power of the Catholic Church . Answering my own question, there had been other movements that challenged the Church but had been stomped out. The printing press allowed for dissenting ideas to emerge and spread faster than the church could stomp it out.
Dante Petersen Stanley
The most captivating part of last week’s lecture was the Romantic imagery. As an artist, the Romanticists inspire me to produce artwork that has a personal emotional context to it. Romantic artists like Goya, Fuseli, and Waterhouse are some of my favorites. Their paintings, with the strong neutral tones and conceptual elements leave me lost in them as a viewer.
Goya is still one of my favorite Romantics. My art history teacher last year mentioned the Black Paintings of Goya, fourteen mural paintings that he completed during the last years of his life. I had the fortune to view these in person last summer at the Prado and pictures do not do them justice. “Saturn Devouring His Son” had such emotion in the eyes of Saturn; it was hard to look away. The red oil in the painting was so saturated I could almost taste it. The other paintings, especially “The Women Laughing” had almost a bitter ambience to them. They seemed cruel and reflected Goya’s bitterness towards humans in his later years. As a painter, it shows me that the Artist can truly imprint the artwork with whatever state of mind he/she desires.
-Ana Gonzalez
What really struck my interest from this past week’s discussion is the variety of printings and translations of the bible that emerged. Gutenberg sparked a new era—similar to that of the digital age today—with the invention of a process for mass-producing movable type. With this process, he created the Gutenberg Bible that embodied the mastering of movable type and typographic legibility. This version, written in Latin, had the wide margins and clean columns of the high gothic and has been regarded as the best book ever published. Plantin utilized this process in his translation of the bible, though he designed the book to contain the books of the bible in four different vernaculars. This graphical feat seems unprecedented. Even though it was funded by King Phillip II, the process of completing nearly sent Plantin into bankruptcy. I found this idea of putting the creation ahead of his personal wealth showed the passion embodied in the book.
-Tami Lake
I always find it fascinating when there is a connection between an aspect in the lesson and architectural elements. When you specified how clarity and elegance in a manuscript is equivalent to beauty, beauty in architecture is also defined. Since every architect's and spectator's outlook on elegance and clarity is different and is dependent on taste, the reinforced idea that open space, nonexistent ornamentation, and the so called "trial and error" resulting in perfect legibility points facilitate the beauty demonstrated in the exampled showed in class. This is like the beauty placed in minimalistic architecture or even projects produced by architects like Le Corbusier where open space (piloti for open floor concept), with no decorations (empty clean walls), and the result of trial and error design results in a beauty that can only be described with elegance and clarity. The topic on maps was also cool; to think about how society's dependency on technology and the digital world would truly effect if they were to one day crash.
-Adrianna Rivera
In my opinion, the most impressed topic of last class was romanticism. I’m a super fan of 19’s Europe and romanticism was very influential in 19th century. It had a significant effect on art, music, literature and even politics. All the romanticism artworks represent a strong emotion. They conducted the senses of anxious, horror and terror. They were focus on beauty of death, shades and the dark side of humanity. Those fabulous, pale figures seem silence and lifeless. However, I think they are screaming at bottom of their bodies and trying to against their fate. The sense of sublimity reminds me the medieval altarpiece. Unlike those boring golden backgrounds, romanticism artworks emphasize the beauty of nature. For example, my favorite canvas Ophelia. Millais depicted the foliage in the riverbank by using pop green color. Her dress and flowers are floating on the river. The contrast between pale Ophelia and bright, intense color of nature makes she look venerable and on the verge of death.
P.S. the model died of flu after posing for this canvas because of the cold river water.
-Jane Zhang
What really stood out for me last class was the Nuremberg Chromicles. I wonder how people came up with the idea to make illustrstions of figures with strange and impossible bodies and why they made these illustrations. Actually today, we still make images and even movies with non-realistic figures like aliens and monsters. I think it is just our imagination which we like to express in real images and we like to fantasize about non-realistic and impossible things. What I also found really interesting were the maps. I really like the pictures of the old maps. I just imagine people using those maps and how they thought that this is what the world looks like. Today we have the advanced technologies like satellites where we can make realistic pictures with of the world. Gps gives us realistic maps of the world. I am still wondering how people in the old times made their maps, because they are not so much different from today's maps, at least they kind of knew how the countries were shaped. How did they know how the land was shaped? The last thing what I liked about last class were the Romanticism paintings. I think Romantic paintings are very beautiful. The use of light and shadow creates very dramatic scenes. Especially paiting were the sky is painted with very dramatic lighting through the clouds.
One of my favorite topics was learning about Baskerville and other type faces. I don’t know much about type but learning about the little details of what distinguishes a certain type from another is something that I find very interesting during this course. Going back to the topic of type creates a mood, actually zoning in on what makes a type unique is interesting to relate it to. Seeing how type evolves over time, and how type affects other type, is interesting to learn and see it in a timeline type of format. Another topic I really enjoyed learning about was the maps and how they are an example of graphic design. I have never learned about designing a map, so learning about the science of map making was interesting to learn. Such as map editing, map projection, map generalization, and map design. The comparison to the earliest maps to todays GPS was fascinating .
-Emily Warren
What impressed me from last week’s class is the invention of different types of map. Piris Resi map of the Mediterranean basin is a great example. As you pointed out last class, audience should always be the first as to design. In the contemporary society, when we study geography in school, it is unnecessary for us to use the complete world map when we are learning a specific country’s topography, because the complete world map is too detailed and there is much information about other countries that we do not need at this time. What we need is a map with the topography of only the specific country that we are learning at. Another map design that impressed me from last class is Henricus Hondius’ World Map. This is not only a globe map, but also a map with impressive painting on it. The painting is pretty much like renaissance style of painting. The top of the painting looks like fresco in the Sistine Chapel. It decorates the map and makes it looks more fascinating.
-Yiming Zhou
The romantic imagery we saw and the story behind the great romantic geniuses of the era really inspired me. At first I didn't understand the idea of dying young. Why would you want to die early on and not fully live your life? But to them, it would be living a long but dreary life that would be meaningless. Dying young had a certain nobility in the minds of the romantic geniuses. You had the bravery to live and die in the name of something you truly believed in.
I also really enjoy the Nunzio Paci because it is a beautifully illustrated drawing of a tree growing out of a human chest. It is funny how humans reflect nature. We intake oxygen through our lungs, and if you look at diagrams of the lungs, they actually look like branches of a tree. And trees are the lungs of the Earth, because they release oxygen and intake carbon dioxide.
-Agnes A
Romantic imagery has always captured my interest, last class when we discussed how artists began using romantic representation in their pieces, in reminded me how in present day media we use this method of presentation as well. For example, very similar to the way artists in the 1800’s used romanticism to express death, our current generation uses the same method when expressing such causalities. For example, in most movie scenes that a character dies, a death is expressed in a very dramatic and overly emotional way. The lighting is exaggerated, the figure is highlighted as the focal point of the scene and facial expressions of grief and anguish are zoomed in close for us to see every tear drop shed. Besides making it pretty to look at, it also started a trend in making everyday events more interesting, better to watch or think about. It started giving more things around us, relevance and importance. And it got farther away from depicting reality and closer to expressing the world purely through the eyes of emotional interpretation.
-Liliette Ferro
16th to 19th century, in a way, is really the age of “explosion” or “chaos”, religiously, culturally, socially, and politically. Reformation first swept over in Northern Europe, and then Catholic church had their Counter-Reformation followed by Thirty Years’ War, death, doubts, and poverty. Friderich’s Wanderer Above the Sea Fog, although was long after the Reformation and Age of Enlightenment, is still the impeccable reflection of what people are probably thinking and exploring during that period of time. In this work of art, the figure is confronting the sublime of the nature/God’s creation. However, meanwhile, there is sense of uncertainty infusing in this painting. Since Friderich himself was born in a Catholic family in Protestant Germany. It was possible that he tried to find his identity and place in this religious context. In addition, the thoughts and beliefs of Enlightenment also had a strong influence on people. God was not considered as the only truth, way, and light, and science became the authority and answer in some ways. Wanderer is the mirror of not only his, but also a large number of others’ double-dilemma in that period of time.
- Emma Fu
Although some people believe bible translations distort the word of God, they are actually very beneficial. First off, without bible translations many people would be unable to read the bible. Further, the various bible translations in English alone have evolved over time in response to changes in vocabulary. This has allowed people to gain a better understanding of the bible, since they are able to read words that are familiar to them. On a similar note, the Catholic Church’s masses were only in the Latin language until the 1960s, when the Vatican Council gave permission for masses to be in different languages. As a result, all Catholics are able to understand what is being said at mass, and thus they are more engaged at mass. Overall, translations are very advantageous.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-latin-facts-idUSTRE74C2C220110513
-Emily Griffith
The most interesting thing I found about last class was the context around the development of Baskerville and Caslon typefaces. In particular, I found it interesting to think about these typefaces as beginning originally in Rome with Trajan’s Column, travelling north and spreading throughout Europe and gradually evolving into Gothic, and then returning back to a Roman style with Baskerville and Caslon. Additionally, I think it is interesting to see how this return to a Roman style coincides with the Neoclassical movement that overtook Europe in the last half of the 18th century. It is interesting to see that the Neoclassical movement was not solely an arts and architecture trend, but rather encompassed all aspects of visual design, including typefaces as evidenced by Baskerville and Caslon.
--Will Uelk
The most interesting part of the lecture last week was how graphic design evolved in relation to the development of different scientific fields and technologies. I think that the resurrection of roman-style, classicism might have been initiated by the invention of printing press. The clean crisp letters printed by the ‘machine’ rather than human hands might have enabled the popularization of classicism in book graphic designs. I wanted to learn more about the style, meaning. Role… of graphic design throughout history. Another topic that was interesting to me was romanticism. During class, we discussed how romantics preferred romantic death rather than a mundane life. It made me wonder if most of the romantic poets, painters… other known “artists” thought the same way. (It also made me think if romantic genius died early because they wanted to.) It made me think if there is any romantic aspect still pervasive in our culture today.
- Min A Jang
In my mind, the most interesting part form the last lecture was Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a man in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and inscribed in a circle and square. It is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry. From the lecture, renaissance humanism affected the cultural, political, social, and literary landscape of Europe. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most typical artists in renaissance. One thing was interesting; I have seen a documentary which talks about Leonardo da Vinci. In the documentary, the narrator said the man who in the painting Vitruvian Man maybe is Leonardo da Vinci, so Vitruvian Man perhaps is da Vinci’s portrait. This conjecture has branded a deep impression on me. Leonardo da Vinc left so many mysteries to us.
-Yaoli Wang
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