Era of Art Nouveau

The overarching theme of lecture, for me, was the importance of Art Nouveau in the evolution of Graphic Design. The Beggarstaffs were particulary significant, especially with their Gestalt ideas of closure using “meaningful incompleteness” -- an incomplete image which challenged the viewer to participate by deciphering the subject.

Sharp silhouettes, and high contrast were the new vocabulary of form for the graphic artist. There was also the idea of the introduction of duality and plurality and the idea that in art you make shapes, but must also make a message. It was the very beginning of the reduction of iconicity -- cutting down subjects to the bare essentials, something which is in heavy use today.

Other important topics relating to the ideals introduced by Art Nouveau are:

• Ornament as Structure
• Historicism (use of past forms and styles to express the present intead of inventing new ones)
• Japanese design and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints and their influence (stylized form, the idea of artificial perspective and the distortion of forms --- basically the beginning of the poster)
• Aubrey Beardsley's introduction of dramatic interplay between positive and negative shape and the blurring of society's conventions of what should and shouldn't be allowed
• Jugendstil and Sezesionstil
• Gesamkunstwerk - to encompass every possible type of aesthetic expression.
• The idea that modernism is conveyed through students of different academies.
  
• Peter Behrens and the “New Objectivity”