Vienna Secession

Vienna Secession:

• Josef Hoffmann part of Vienna Secession, create workshop, Wiener Werkstatte
• Vienna Secessions Group want to make things that are useful, functional
• Strengths lie in proportion and materials, relating to Arts & Crafts Movement
• Wiener Werkstatte create chairs, strong vertical and horizontal lines
• Marks created are both geometric and lyrical, methodical like stained glass
• Hoffmann's designs use thin lines, black and white, creates a language
• Flat panels, figure-ground play, abstraction, negative space becomes form
• Peter Behrens page layouts believed to be first use of running sans serif text
• Behrens credited for creating first comprehensive identity program
• Behrens pioneers idea of non load-bearing walls, support is on the interior
• Behrens does dedication page, similar to other layout, rectilinear, planes
• Another pages design using sans serif, letterform relating to aesthetic of piece
• More pages from Behrens, running aesthetic, text in simplified blackletter
• In 1903 becomes director of Dusseldorf School of Arts & Crafts
• Guy joins faculty, interested in grids based on geometry, teaches Behrens
• Pavilion architectural exhibition 1906 geometric structure, circles, squares
• Poster uses same system, circles and squares even used as decorative motif
• AEG power company wants artistic director logo made of hexagons
• Uses metaphor of honeycomb representing structure and division of labor
• Develops logo, typeface and consistent layout system for corporate identity
• 1914 Deutsche Werkbund poster uses similar proportion system
• Poster shows man on horse bearing torch, metaphor for designers bringing light
• Even applied this to design of tea kettles, sell in range of colors and textures
• Designs turbine hall, form reflects function, creates glass curtains for light
• 1914 WWI begins, AIGA founded, 1917 Russian Revolution
• 1918 Czar assassinated, WWI ends, 1919 Bauhaus opens
• Lucian Bernhard enters competition, painting of matchsticks and name Priester
• Judges throw it away because of its simplicity, one judge didn't like the ones chosen
• Reaches down and pulls this piece out of the trash and says its the winner
• Plakastil is born from this poster, means "poster style" in German
• People emulate this with flat backgrounds, object and name of company posters
• U-Boat poster with U becoming form of person and also periscope, decoding
• Klinger poster with arrows in serpent, 8th bond drive, bond is the arrow
• Many posters used as propaganda for axis powers, falcon grasping RAF symbol
• Graphic, abstract and sophisticated, call for understanding of context, history
• Posters for allies are illustrative, layers of information, very relatable
• Imagery used to provoke, touchy-feely, loads of content, saccharin

I loved watching all the old film from the early 1900s in the movie we saw..there's something so mesmerizing about the graininess, randomness and how time appears to slow down and speed up..it's like something from a dream..or maybe I'm just overly nostalgic.. I thought the Berhrens posters were really amazing in their simplicity and geometric themes and I can see why geometry and design go hand-in-hand. I wish I liked the American propaganda posters as much as I did the ones coming out of Austria at the time..the American ones are just so cheesy that they come off as juvenile.