Zemni Design

Design Explorations by Linda Mayoux

Feminist Design

Tag: feminism

  • Feminist Design

    Feminist Design

    NOTE: Post for significant development 2025

    Feminist art and design

    • What were the social and political conditions that made these artists communicate in the ways they did?
    • How is this demonstrated in their work?
    • How did these artists establish their own artistic
      identity?

    “I have had to go to men as sources in my painting because the past has left us so small an inheritance of woman’s painting that had widened life….Before I put a brush to canvas I question, “Is this mine? Is it all intrinsically of myself? Is it influenced by some idea or some photograph of an idea which I have acquired from some man?”

    Georgia O’Keefe
    http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/modern/Georgia-OKeeffe.html

    For an interview with Georgia O’Keefe visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYwKRVJaNEA

    What is feminism?

    Some people have found it helpful to think about the history of the feminist movement in terms of first, second and third waves. Broadly speaking, these are:

    • First wave – from the formation of the National Women’s Society for Women’s Suffrage in 1867 to full female enfranchisement in the UK in 1928.
    • Second wave – from the feminist movements associated with the American civil rights movement of the early 1960s to equality legislation in the UK in the 1970s.
    • Third wave – from the 1980s to the present day, more about social and political change than legislative change.

    http://www.ehow.com/facts_4910333_history-feminist-art-movement.html

    feminist designers

    For further research

    https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/feminist-art

    https://www.vermeulen-design.com/blog/feminism-graphic-design

    https://www.antalis.co.uk/home/what-we-do/print/news-events/latest-news/2022/03/design-for-good-force-feminism.html

    https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/how-feminist-movements-co-opt-graphic-design-to-express-themselves

    https://futuress.org/stories/canon-misbound

    https://saraoliveirablender.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/primary-research-feminism-in-graphic-design/

    Hannah Höch (1889–1978)

    Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980)

    Frida Kahlo (1907–54).

    Sketchdesk 2024: The undeniable impact of women in design

    These 15 female graphic designers didn’t just break barriers. They reshaped the landscape of graphic design with their lifelong commitments to creativity, innovation, and vision. Ivy Croteau March 7, 2024

    Paula Scher

    Paula Scher is a trailblazer in the world of graphic design, known for her bold and eclectic style. As a partner at Pentagram, she worked on iconic projects like the rebranding of Citibank and Microsoft Windows. As a designer, Scher’s innovative approach to typography and branding earned her numerous accolades, solidifying her place as one of the most influential female graphic designers of our time.

    Carolyn Davidson

    Carolyn Davidson is best known for her creation of the iconic Nike “Swoosh” logo. Her minimalist yet impactful design became synonymous with the global sportswear brand, showcasing her innate ability to capture the essence of a company through visual identity.

    Jane Davis Doggett

    Jane Davis Doggett made history as the first woman to design signage for a major airport – the iconic Miami International Airport. Her innovative use of color and typography transformed airport way-finding systems, setting a new standard for environmental graphic design.

    Jessica Walsh

    Jessica Walsh is a design powerhouse, known for her vibrant and experimental approach to graphic design. Co-founder of the creative agency Sagmeister & Walsh, she worked with major brands such as Levi’s and The New York Times. As a designer, Walsh’s bold and imaginative designs continue to push the boundaries of visual communication.

    Susan Kare

    Susan Kare is a pioneer in the field of digital iconography. In the height of her career, she designed many of the original icons for the Apple Macintosh computer. Her pixel art designs, including the iconic “Happy Mac” and “Command Key,” are ingrained in pop culture, cementing her influence on user interface design.

    Jessica Hische

    Jessica Hische is a lettering artist and typographer renowned for her intricate and elegant designs. Her work spans branding, book covers, and editorial design, with clients including Wes Anderson and Penguin Books. As a designer, Hische’s dedication to craftsmanship and attention to detail earned her widespread acclaim in the design community.

    Leta Sobierajski

    Leta Sobierajski is a multidisciplinary designer known for her bold and unconventional approach to visual communication. Her playful use of color and texture challenges traditional design conventions, resulting in dynamic and engaging work across print and digital platforms.

    Louise Fili

    Louise Fili is a master of typographic design, celebrated for her exquisite craftsmanship and vintage-inspired aesthetics. With a career spanning over four decades, she created iconic branding and packaging designs for clients like Tiffany & Co. and the New York Public Library.

    Marian Bantjes

    Marian Bantjes is celebrated for her intricate and ornamental typographic designs that blur the line between illustration and lettering. Characterized by its meticulous attention to detail and whimsical aesthetic, her work garners admiration from designers worldwide.

    Bea Feitler

    Bea Feitler was a pioneering art director and graphic designer whose work revolutionized the world of editorial design. As art director for publications such as Harper’s Bazaar and Rolling Stone, she brought a bold and innovative approach to magazine layout and design, shaping the visual landscape of the 1960s and 70s.

    April Greiman

    April Greiman is a visionary designer known for her groundbreaking work in digital design and new media. A pioneer of the “New Wave” design movement, she embraced technology to create dynamic and interactive design experiences. Greiman’s innovative approach continues to inspire designers to push the boundaries of traditional graphic design.

    Deborah Sussman

    Deborah Sussman was a prolific designer whose colorful and exuberant designs helped define the visual identity of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Her bold use of color and geometric forms brought a sense of joy and vibrancy to the Olympic experience, leaving a lasting legacy in the world of environmental graphic design.

    Cipe Pineles

    Cipe Pineles was a groundbreaking female art director and designer, breaking barriers in the male-dominated world of editorial design. As the first female art director at Conde Nast, she played a pivotal role in shaping the visual identity of publications such as Vogue and Glamour, paving the way for future generations of female art directors.

    Zuzana Licko

    Zuzana Licko is a pioneering type designer and co-founder of the digital type foundry Emigre. Her experimental approach to typography challenged traditional design norms, leading to the creation of groundbreaking typefaces that revolutionized the industry. Licko’s innovative designs continue to influence contemporary typography and graphic design.

  • Saudi Arabian women artists

    Women are at the centre of the contemporary Saudi art scene, posing questions on the current political climate and women’s rights.

    Alaan Artspace

    Riyadh’s first curated contemporary art platform. The name Alaan, meaning ‘now’ in Arabic, is supposed to represent the energy and power of the prevailing art scene in Saudi Arabia. The exhibition shows works entirely created by women, who are both diverse methodologically and in terms of their artistic style. Further, the founder, creative director and chief curator are all women. The gallery also hosts master classes and workshops, organized by Sara Raza (the former curator of public programmes for London’s Tate Modern Museum), teaching prospective artists about contemporary art. Moreover, Alaan Artspace funds its non-commercial exhibitions, commissions new works and offers free non-profit educational arts programming through revenues from its shop, restaurant and café.

    Manal Al Dowayan

    website

    Manal Al Dowayan (1973) was born in Dhahran, the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Initially she studied Systems Analysis (MSc) and worked as a Creative Director in an oil company. She was working and producing art for 7 years until she became a full time artist in 2010. This was a result of an active art industry that was evolving in her region. Dowayan has rapidly become one of the leading advocates of contemporary artists in the Middle East. She studied abroad in a number of art institutions including USA, London, Dubai and Bahrain. She works mostly with photographs and installations and her work is largely feminist in nature. Her most revered piece is ‘Suspended Together’, a flock of doves made from fiber-glass with stickers on their bodies . The doves are interlocked and made up of permission slips that women in Saudi Arabia must have signed by their husbands or male guardians to have permission to travel.

    An internationally acclaimed artist, she has exhibited her work at the Venice Biennial Collateral show “The Future of a Promise” in 2011 and at the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of exhibition that showcases their public acquisitions of Middle East Photography titled “Light From the Middle East” in 2013 and the American Biennial Prospect New Orleans in an exhibition titled “Notes For Now” in 2014 where she showed a collection of 20 photographs and 11 videos titled “If I Forget You Don’t Forget Me” she also participated in Fluid Form: Contemporary Art from Arab Countries (2010) in Seoul  at Freedom to Create (2011) in New York  and at Simply Words in Switzerland (2012)

    Samiah Khashoggi

    website

    Samiah Khashoggi, born 1958 in Abha, is an interior designer, painter, and organizer of Saudiaat, an art exhibition.  In 1982, she graduated from Kingston University in the UK with a bachelor’s degree in interior design, and in 2005 completed her Masters of Fine Arts from De Montfort University. She is an assistant professor of interior design at Dar Al Hekma College. For a few years starting in 1983, she worked as the first female designer at her brother’s furniture and design company.

    Working on her MFA required her to interview and organize an exhibit for local female artists. Her exhibition for her MFA turned into a regular exhibition called Saudiaat, featuring contemporary female Saudi Arabian artists. As well as featuring artwork, Saudiaat also supports local female artists and educates the public about the techniques involved in their work. As of 2012, the group has had four exhibitions, with the 2012 exhibition, titled “Directions”, having been held in Jeddah.

    Basmah Felemban The Hand

    Other women artists

    Important exhibitions

    Nabatt

    Nabatt: A Sense of Being (2010) is an exhibition of contemporary art from Saudi Arabia. It is presented by the Saudi Arabian Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. Amongst the artists exhibiting, it features works by Shadia & Raja Alem, Reem Al Faisal, Lulwah Al Homoud, Jowhara Al Saud, Noha Al-Sharif] & Maha Mullah. The show attempts at engaging with the diverse nature of life, notably human relationships and the interactions amongst and within social groups and communities.

    Edge of Arabia

    Edge of Arabia (2003) is a UK independent non-profit organisation, founded by an artist collective.

    We Need to Talk: Jeddah

    In January 2012, it organised a 40-piece exhibition entitled ‘We Need to Talk’. More than a third of the works displayed were by women.

    Come Together: London

    In October 2012, it presented ‘Come Together’ curated by Stephen Stapleton displaying large-scale, multi-media work by leading Arab artists. The name of the exhibition, Come Together was a reference to social networking channels and their influence on individual expression in the Arab World. The show featured the work of 30 emerging artists which included works by Saudi Arabia’s Sarah Al Abdali and Manal Al Dowayan. In addition to the exhibition Edge of Arabia teamed up with The Crossway Foundation, Dar Al Mamûn and Future Shorts to incorporate an education programme comprising workshops, film screenings, topical discussions, and guided exhibition tours.

    Soft Power

    Soft Power (September 26 – December 10, 2012) was the inaugural show at Alaan Artspace. Soft Power represents an innovative project, looking at the complex domain of a woman’s role and the position of women within contemporary Saudi society. It features three Saudi female artists: Sarah Abu Abdallah, Sarah Mohanna Al-Abdali and Manal Al Dowayan. The exhibition, rather than being explicitly political, explores the subtleties of the political and social contentions prevalent in Saudi Arabia. Throughout the exhibition, there are references made to the guardianship laws adopted in Saudi Arabia. The female subjects represented are givers, consumers, objects, power-brokers and caretakers. As stated by the exhibitions website, the artists embrace ‘a nuanced and at times humorous approach towards exploring the position of women within contemporary society.’ The name of the exhibition encapsulates this stance, and the subjects of the works themselves, which attempt at reshaping the expected narrative. Moreover, it offers a platform for discussion and dialogue on matters concerning art in Saudi Arabia.

    Wadjda

    Wadjda, is the first feature film to be made in Saudi Arabia it was directed by a woman. Haifaa Al Mansour, made her debut at the Venice film festival. Her feature film explores the restrictions placed on women in the conservative Islamic kingdom. It took her three years to have the permission and backing to make. It is a Saudi/German co-production, produced by the Berlin-based Razor Film Produktions with support from Rotana Studios. It is the first film entirely shot in Saudi Arabia, documenting the everyday trials and tribulations of a young Saudi Arabian girl, Wadja. It encapsulates her childhood journey opposing social norms and restrictions both at home and school. Al Mansour hoped the film would help to change attitudes towards women and film both within and outside Saudi Arabia. However, the film is yet to be seen in Saudi Arabia until its subsequent television release. Al Mansour claims to have faced a number of challenges casting and filming in a country steeped in conservative attitudes. She aimed to depict the segregation of women in Saudi Arabia. Namely, the fact that women have lower legal status than men, are subject to guardianship laws and are banned from driving.

  • Art Nouveau

    Art Nouveau

    Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art – especially the decorative arts – that was most popular during 1890–1910.  Art Nouveau is known as Jugendstil  in Germany, Modern in Russia,  Modernisme in Catalonia,  Secession in Austria-Hungary and Stile Liberty in Italy. Art Nouveau tendencies were also absorbed into local styles. In Denmark, for example, it was one aspect of Skønvirke (“aesthetic work”), which itself more closely relates to the Arts and Crafts style. Likewise, artists adopted many of the floral and organic motifs of Art Nouveau into the Młoda Polska (“Young Poland”) style in Poland.

    Origins and influences

    The origins of Art Nouveau are found in the resistance of the artist William Morris to the cluttered compositions and the revival tendencies of the 19th century and his theories that helped initiate the Arts and crafts movement.

    The first realisation is often considered Arthur Mackmurdo’s book-cover for Wren’s City Churches (1883), with its rhythmic floral patterns.

    A key influence was Japonisme with its organic forms and references to the natural world that was popular in Europe during the 1880s and 1890s. The flat perspective and strong colors of Japanese wood block prints, especially those of Katsushika Hokusai, had a strong effect on the formulation of Art Nouveau.

    Feature image above generated by AI in Adobe Illustrator

    Characteristics

    Art Nouveau is considered a “total” art style, embracing architecture, graphic art, interior design, and most of the decorative arts including jewelery, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils and lighting, as well as the fine arts. It s viewed by some as the first self-conscious attempt to create a modern style. It was a reaction to academic art of the 19th century, inspired by natural forms and structures, not only in flowers and plants, but also in curved lines.

    decorative “whiplash” motifs, formed by dynamic, undulating, and flowing lines in a syncopated rhythm and asymmetrical shape

    As an art style, Art Nouveau has affinities with the Pre-Raphaelites and the Symbolist styles,Unlike Symbolist painting, however, Art Nouveau has a distinctive appearance; and, unlike the artisan-oriented Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau artists readily used new materials, machined surfaces, and abstraction in the service of pure design.

    The style was the first major artistic stylistic movement in which mass-produced graphics (as opposed to traditional forms of printmaking, which were not very important for the style) played a key role, often techniques of colour printing developed relatively recently.

    A key influence was the Paris-based Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, who produced a lithographed poster, which appeared on 1 January 1895 in the streets of Paris as an advertisement for the play Gismonda by Victorien Sardou, featuring Sarah Bernhardt. It popularised the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris. Initially named Style Mucha, (Mucha Style), his style soon became known as Art Nouveau in France. Mucha’s work has continued to experience periodic revivals of interest for illustrators and artists. Interest in Mucha’s distinctive style experienced a strong revival during the 1960s with a general interest in Art Nouveau.

    However, Art Nouveau was not limited to Mucha’s style solely but was interpreted differently by artists from around the world as the movement spread. Artists such as Gustav Klimt, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Jan Toorop, René Lalique, Antoni Gaudí and Louis Comfort Tiffany, created Art Nouveau works in their own manner. Magazines like Jugend helped publicise the style in Germany, especially as a graphic artform, while the Vienna Secessionists influenced art and architecture throughout Austria-Hungary.

    Two-dimensional Art Nouveau pieces were painted, drawn, and printed in popular forms such as advertisements, posters, labels, magazines, and the like.Japanese wood-block prints, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces, contrasting voids, and flatness of visual plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from many parts of the world.

    Art Nouveau and the Erotic

    From VandA Article

    A fetishistic concentration on the erotic potential of the object is implicit in much Art Nouveau – echoing fin  de siècle obsessions in novels and literature when the erotic briefly came to denote the modern.

    Art Nouveau produced erotic sculptural or decorative domestic objects : ink-wells, carafes, centrepieces, candelabra, lamps and figurines – that manipulated the female body to create often playful symbolic narratives. These objects demanded contact – furniture or carafes where the handles are naked women that must be grasped; vessels that metamorphose into women inviting touch; lamps that provocatively pose women in suggestive positions.

    Some were mildly erotic, some were much more direct and in some instances pornographic:

    • Rupert Carabin’s chair of 1898 plays with the physical restraint of the body. A bound female is made to support and envelope a presumably male user. It is a vision of erotic subjugation that is powerfully disturbing.
    • Max Blondat’s humorous door knocker designed for a Parisian brothel, is of a nude female figure peering into the interior of the brothel while simultaneously signifying the pleasures to be obtained within.

    The scale of the production and dissemination of these kinds of objects denoted a widespread ‘taste for the erotic’, not only among upper-class and aristocratic collectors of the more explicit and expensive objects, but also by the middle classes, concerned to achieve the height of modern decorative style in their homes.

    The end of the century also saw the advent of mass advertising. Just as the promise of sex could fill the theatres of Paris, so sex could sell anything from cigarettes and cars to painting and poetry. The erotic content in Art Nouveau advertising ranged from the subtle to the explicit. Designers did not just aim to sell the promise of sexual fulfillment to a male audience, but also, and extremely significantly, they were selling the idea of a sophisticated, decorative and glamorous identity to women – increasingly the dominant consumers. As it was women who often held the domestic purse strings, it was they who came to be associated with shopping.

    Traditional gender divides were reinforced through the symbolic use of male and female imagery. Women’s capacities were traditionally perceived as being for pleasure and instinct. Designers often used used the female body to sell products and for entertainment.

    Many designers used women to sell products.:

    • Alphonse Mucha created images of woman that epitomised the sophisticated and decorative Art Nouveau woman. His strategy of combining women with products sold a lifestyle dream, just as lifestyle became an issue for a growing metropolitan middle class with a disposable income.
    • Gallen-Kallela’s poster Bil-bol for a car dealer makes the promise of sexual fulfillment explicit: in an adaptation of a traditional Finnish folk story, a naked woman is violently snatched and restrained.
    • Leo Putz’s woman in Moderne Galerie seems to offer sex in a playful and surprisingly modern way. The idiom of Putz’s woman is that of the Bond girl. Putz in fact produced explicit erotic material, as did a number of prominent Art Nouveau graphic artists such as Fritz Erier and Aubrey Beardsley.

    Designers used the male body to promote industry and technology – Men’s capacities were perceived as being for action and intellect. The perfect male body emerged in many images of the period, most often when the subject-matter demanded a ‘serious’ approach.The Italian designer Marcello Dudovich’s poster Fisso l’idea employs the muscularity and erotic potential of the male figure to promote ink and pigments. Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Gustav Klimt and Adolf Munzer all created images that used the male body to denote virility and action. These images, although not overtly erotic, sit within and promote the Classical homoerotic ‘cult’ of the male.

    Homoeroticism and androgyny

    The fin de siècle not only witnessed the formation of various constructions of female sexuality, but also the crystallisation of attitudes towards male sexuality. Decadence had become increasingly associated with non-conformity, and sexuality was perceived as another area for experimentation. Photography became a particularly rich area for homoerotic depiction in the period. Works by Baron von Gloedon and Fred Holland Day concentrated on representing the nude male body, both adult and child, often in erotic poses. An important element in homoerotic depiction was androgyny. Androgyny provided a vehicle free from restrictive gender codes and often allowing disturbing messages to be conveyed. Many fin de siècle artists used the androgyne to represent the resolution of what Octave Uzanne called the ‘eternal misery of the body fretted by the soul’. The androgyne could be both man and woman, adult or child, and became the ultimate fin de siècle enigmatic erotic symbol, simultaneously denying sex and providing endless erotic possibilities. Sar Piladan, leader of the Symbolist Rose+Croix group, described the androgyne as the ‘nightmare of decadence’, ‘the sex that denies sex, the sex of eternity’.

    Art Nouveau style was short-lived, collapsing finally in the years prior to the First World War. The fundamental subversiveness of eroticism, its disregard for conventional morality or social structures, was  seen as a destabilising factor as functionality and technological progression came to signify the new modernity,

    Sculpture

    Art Nouveau did not eschew the use of machines, as the Arts and Crafts Movement did. For sculpture, the principal materials employed were glass and wrought iron, resulting in sculptural qualities even in architecture. Ceramics were also employed in creating editions of sculptures by artists such as Auguste Rodin.

    Architecture and interior design

    Art Nouveau in architecture and interior design eschewed the eclectic revival styles of the 19th century. Though Art Nouveau designers selected and ‘modernised’ some of the more abstract elements of Rococo style, such as flame and shell textures, they also advocated the use of very stylised organic forms as a source of inspiration, expanding the ‘natural’ repertoire to use seaweed, grasses, and insects. The softly-melding forms of 17th-century auricular style, best exemplified in Dutch silverware, was another influence.

    Architects tried to harmonize with the natural environment. Hyperbolas and parabolas in windows, arches, and doors are common, and decorative mouldings ‘grow’ into plant-derived forms. Japanese-inspired art and design was championed by the businessmen Siegfried Bing and Arthur Lasenby Liberty at their stores in Paris and London, respectively.Like most design styles, The text above the Paris Metro entrance uses the qualities of the rest of the iron work in the structure.

    Art Nouveau architecture made use of many technological innovations of the late 19th century, especially the use of exposed iron and large, irregularly shaped pieces of glass for architecture. By the start of World War I, however, the stylised nature of Art Nouveau design—which was expensive to produce—began to be disused in favour of more streamlined, rectilinear modernism, which was cheaper and thought to be more faithful to the plainer industrial aesthetic that became Art Deco.

    Art, drawing, and graphics links

    Fine Art and Graphics

    Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)

    Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939)

    Edward Burne-Jones

    Gustav Klimt (1862–1918)

    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)

    Jan Toorop

    Architects:

    Victor Horta

    Paul Hankar

    František Bílek (1872–1941)

    Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (1876–1942)

    Walter Crane (1845–1915)

    Jules Chéret (1836–1932)

    Hans Christiansen (artist) (1866–1945)

    Eugène Gaillard (1862–1933)

    Eugène Grasset (1845–1917)

    Ludwik Konarzewski (1885–1954)

    E. M. Lilien (1874–1925)

    Józef Mehoffer (1869–1946)

    Will H. Bradley (1868–1962)

    Georges de Feure (1868–1943)

    Paul Philippe (1870–1930)

    Erwin Puchinger (1876–1944)

    József Rippl-Rónai (1861–1927)

    Valentin Serov (1865–1911)

    Konstantin Somov (1869–1939)

    Margaret MacDonald (1865–1933)

    Virginia Frances Sterret (1900–1931)

    Théophile Steinlen (1859–1923)

    Henri Privat-Livemont (1861–1936)

    Janos Vaszary (1867–1939)

    Aleardo Terzi (1870–1943)

    Hans Unger (1872–1936)

    Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907)

    Eliseu Visconti (1866–1944)

    Elisabeth Sonrel (1874–1953)

    Gerda Wegener (1886–1940)

  • Varvara Stepanova

    Varvara Stepanova (1894-1958) was a Russian painter, photographer and designer. She was influential as member of the Russian avant-garde movement and, later in her career, she would refer to herself as a constructivist. Her work shows a direct influence of the Cubists and the Futurist art movements and she spent her career dedicated to trying to use her work to create revolutionary change within society.

    Life

    Varvara Stepanova was born in a peasant family in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. In 1910 she entered the Kazan Art School, where she met Rodchenko, her future husband and life-long colleague. Still at school she bought herself a Singer sewing machine, worked as a seamstress and learned dress design. She designed Cubo-Futurist work for several artists’ books, and studied under Jean Metzinger at Académie de La Palette, an art academy where the painters André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier also taught. She was a friend of the feminist artist and printmaker Lubov Popova.

    In the years before the Russian Revolution of 1917 she and Rodchenko leased an apartment in Moscow, owned by Wassily Kandinsky. In 1917 Stepanova began creating her innovative non-objective and graphic poetry, based on expressive combinations of sounds and their corresponding expression in form and color. In 1918 she published her books of graphic poetry “Rtny Khonle”, “Zigra Ar”, “Globolkim”. In her 1919 series of “Figures” the artist has moved towards shematization of the human figure. She painted them in geometrical simplified forms, in vivid and bold colors, against dark background or made of larger forms, busy with some kind of well-familiar human activity and social interaction: dance, play, music, walk. Rarely did the subject repeat. There is almost no trace of brush strokes, the paint was applied directly over a stecil plate, making the texture uniform. For the figures of 1920 a white backround was introduced, disattaching the figures as it was from their surroundings. At this time she also worked as assistant director of the Art and Literature section of IZO Narkompros (1919-1920).

    In the years following the revolution, Stepanova involved herself in poetry, philosophy, painting, graphic art, stage scenery construction, and textile and clothing designs. She contributed work to the Fifth State Exhibition and the Tenth State Exhibition, both in 1919.

    Constructivism

    In 1921, together with Aleksei Gan, Rodchenko and Stepanova formed the first Working Group of Constructivists, (the INKhUK 1920-1923) and was their research secretary. Together they redefined the concepts of composition and construction – they considered an object’s form already incorporated most of the construction and composition in its very structure; and therefore the designer artist’s role was to help bring it together in practical ways by use of colour and material design. They rejected fine art in favour of graphic design, photography, posters, and political propaganda.

    In her paper on Constructivism Stepanova wrote: “Industry and technology are developing continuously. … The realization of ideal beauty is thereby eliminated as a function of artistic activity, forcing the artist to move into industrial production in order to apply his objective knowledge of forms and constructions.” And then: “The intellect is our point of departure, taking the place of the ‘soul’ of idealism. From this it follows that, on the whole, Constructivism is also intellectual production (And not thought alone) incompatible with the spiritualuty of artistic activity”.

    In 1920-1921 the Constructivism group advanced from their definition “from invention to construction” to “from construction production”. They attempted to introduce various production art into the VKhUTEMAS.

    In 1920-1922 Stepanova was a member of the Presidium of the IZO section of the Union of Art Workers (RABIS), and taught in the studio at Krupskaya Academy for Communist Education (1920-1925).

    A pair of “5×5=25” exhibitions was held in the Union of Poets hall, with participation of five artists (A. Vesnin, L.Popova, A.Rodchenko, V.Stepanova, A.Exter), exhibiting five works each. The forum was used to announce the mvoe of the Constructivism artists from the easel to design and production. The second of the two, which was dedicated to graphic works, included designs  for construction of stage portals. This attracted the interest of Meierkhold, who invited Popova nad Stepanova to work in his theater.

    Stepanova declared in her text for the 1921 exhibition 5×5=25, held in Moscow: ‘Composition is the contemplative approach of the artist. Technique and Industry have confronted art with the problem of construction as an active process and not reflective. The ‘sanctity’ of a work as a single entity is destroyed. The museum which was the treasury of art is now transformed into an archive’.

    Theatre sets

    She designed the sets for The Death of Tarelkin in 1922. An adaptaion of play by A.Sokhovo-Kobylin, this was a total innovation in the theatre world. Stepanova made her set fully interactive with the actors and their play. The set was a combination of individual mechanical devices, designed to look like the most basic furniture, uniform in appearance and transforming at the actor’s will. The play itself included acrobatics and other fair-entertainment performance techniques, which interacted neatly with the set. The costumes were made of dark blue and light gray fablic, in stark geometric design.

    Clothing design and textiles

    In clothing design Stepanova developed the approach of “prozodezhda” (professional clothing) at a new angle: she differentiated between several groups of clothing, according to utilization. She designed several basic models, which could then be modified for the particular profession. In all she made the distiction between working “prozodezhda”, “sportodezhda” (sport clothing) and “spetzodezhda” (specialized clothing incorporating extra requirements, as for pilots, surgeons, firement etc). In article printed in the journal “LEF” 1923 the following observation is made: “Fashion, which psychologically reflects our daily life, habits and aestethic taste, is giving way to clothing organized for working in various branches of labor, for a specific social function, to clothing which can be worn only during the work process, to clothing which had no self-sufficient value outside real life”.

    In addition, she considered that the clothing has no need of additional decoration. The very seams, the design, the pockets, the fastening etc. are to provide the form; while the fabric design gives the color and visual pattern.

    From here the next step of fabric design was a very logical transition. Stepanova wrote: “We are now approaching a point where a gulf separating the fabric itself and the ready-made garment is becoming a serious obstacle to improving the quality of our cloting production. Itis time to move from designing clothing to designing the structure of fabric. This will allow the textile industry to jettison its present excessive variety, and help it standardize and improve, at long last, the quality of its production”.

    In the year the artist worked at the First Textile Printing factory she  designed more than 150 different fabrics. About two dozen were put into production. This was the very action upon the slogan “from construction into production”. Popova and Stepanova did not limit themselves in the textile industry with pattern design of the fabric. They were actively involved in incorporating designs into the production process, perfecting the printing processes; worked out models and cuts. To understand the processes and work together with its technological developers and engineers was essential in their approach. They strived to incorporate the design from within the very fabric, weave it in, dye it in, design the very physical properties of the fabric. And outside the process – there was the advertising of the industry and its achievements.

    In 1923 Stepanova became professor in the Textile Department at VKhUTEMAS. She held the view that the faculty needed to teach designer-artists, “artist-constructor in the textile industry, not an applied artist”. She made her students carry a special notebook, noting in it the people’s manner of dress, then anylizing it; created assignments of designing window-displays for fabric stores; designing actual clothes for people.Book illustration was Stepanova’s most consistent activity for over 30 years, from 1924 to 1958. In this field she was able to fully exploit her organizational and managerial skills along with the artistic and technical design of the polygraphic industry. She was a permanent staff member of the journals “LEF” and “New LEF” in 1923-1927. In 1933-1934 she served as an art editor for the “Partizdat” publishing house. When the conditions became difficult, in the 30s, 40s and 50s, she was forced to move more to the duties of technical editor, publisher and editorial secretary. But in the 20s this was the industry most suitable for the graphic expression of Constructivism – in the book, the poster, the periodicals of the time.

    During the WWII Stepanova and Rodchenko were evacuated to Perm and Ocher in Molotov District, and worked in the Ocher Agit-poster studio (1941-1942). At the end of 1942 they returned to their old apartment in Moscow.

    Varvara Stepanova died May 20th 1958

  • Martha Rosler

    Martha Rosler is an American artist. She works in photography and photo text, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler’s work is centered on everyday life and the public sphere, often with an eye to women’s experience. Wikipedia

    Rosler’s work is quite diverse, but can be seen as underwriiten by four main themes around the question ‘What is subjectivity in the context of late capitalism?’

    • Biopolitical: the way that power orchestrates the body, particularly for women. Draws on de Beauvoir, Lefevre and later Foucault.
    • Everyday/ordinary/banale and commodification
    • Vernacular projects referencing Pop Art, snapshot photography and citizen journalism
    • Urbanism an political economy of place

    Her work is directly linked to her activism: feminist, anti-power, anti-militarist and in support of human subjectivity. She draws on the theory and practice of ‘estrangement’ of Brecht and Godard where the work invites the viewer to recognise/misrecognise and then deny the content of what they are seeing – leading to critical thinking – leading to taking a position that things should be different.

    Website: http://www.martharosler.net

    http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Martha-Rosler.html

    Martha Rosler photos and photomontage:
    http://home.earthlink.net/~navva/photo/index.html

    Rather rambling unfortunately.

    The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems

    She has used image and text in different ways. Some of her work is very effective in exploiting gaps and contradictions between the two ‘descriptive systems’.

    This work is a large gallery frieze of a series of photographs of buildings and store fronts with bottles in various positions as traces of events, as a dyptych with ‘poems to alcohol’ – lists of words and phrases referring to drunkenness. They were produced as a counter to what Rosler sees as the voyeuristic and parasitic photography of homeless people and people with alcohol issues with quotations from them that are often taken by students, journalists or NGOs.

    I find the unusual juxtaposition of two ‘ descriptive systems’ of image and text that are ‘inadequate’ in themselves to communicate collisions of power very poignant.

    Semiotics of the Kitchen

    Short video intended for easy showing and distribution shot in single frontal framing. Contrasts single spoken words for everyday kitchen objects with video of possible ways in which they can be used, generally with explicit or implicit violence and a dark feminist humour.

    House beautiful: bringing the war home

    House Beautiful: Bringing the War Back Home is an activist series of collage images that integrate comforting domestic images of American life (mostly from Life Magazine) life with images of the Vietnam war that were shown on TV each evening. She is concerned with the ways in which viewer distancing from identification with people in the photographs is achieved as a means of raising their political awareness. Some of these images are very striking in their juxtaposition and captioning eg ‘Cleaning the Drapes’. These images were photocopied and handed out to protesters on marches, and reprinted later as part of protest against other US comflicts eg Middle East.

    Other works are much more direct and – I think to a modern audience used to very polished and well-constructed video on what are nowadays common themes – rather cliche. Though the same issues remain.

    • Look up
    • secrets from the Street
    • Middle East photomontages
    • Garage
    • Passionate Signals
    • rites of passage
    • airports

  • Roni Horn

    Roni Horn (born September 25, 1955) is an American visual artist and writer. Horn has been intimately involved with the singular geography, geology, climate and culture of Iceland. 

    https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/roni-horn-2402

    Saying Water

    Have you ever stood by a river and stared into the black water? In this video acclaimed artist Roni Horn takes us down by the riverside, performing a powerful 40 minute monologue based on her associations with water, including tales of sex and murder. https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/roni-horn-saying-water

    https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/roni-horn-interviewed-dayanita-singh

  • Barbara Kruger

    Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist. Most of her work consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as “you”, “your”, “I”, “we”, and “they”, addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality. Kruger currently lives and works in New York and Los Angeles.

    Most important element is the political content, making it clear and bold, though often based on enigmatic images and contradiction.

    She works visually with text usually short quotes in bold typeface eg futura, and uses black, white and ‘lipstick’ red, sometimes other bold colours or limited palettes. Sometimes in caps, sometimes lower case and often reversing front and background colours.

    Appropriation eg images from 1950s used in 1980s. Silkscreen.

    Short introductory overview.

    Image and Text

    Much of Kruger’s work pairs found photographs with pithy and assertive text that challenges the viewer.

    Kruger has said that

    “I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t.” 

    A larger category that threads through her work is the appropriation and alteration of existing images. In describing her use of appropriation, Kruger states:

    Pictures and words seem to become the rallying points for certain assumptions. There are assumptions of truth and falsity and I guess the narratives of falsity are called fictions. I replicate certain words and watch them stray from or coincide with the notions of fact and fiction.[16]

    Her method includes developing her ideas on a computer, later transferring the results (often billboard-sized) into images. Examples of her instantly recognizable slogans read “I shop therefore I am,” and “Your body is a battleground,” appearing in her trademark white letters against a red background. Much of her text calls attention to ideas such as feminism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, frequently appropriating images from mainstream magazines and using her bold phrases to frame them in a new context.

    Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989

    Belief+Doubt (2012) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

    Kruger discusses how she constructs her work – deciding which elements of the image interests her most, then placing text accordingly.
    Barbara Kruger discusses her life and work and how it has evolved from magazine cut and paste to large public murals.
    The questions are the important thing. Enjoys putting questins on a buge mural space.
    Kruger discusses a collaborative project. It is the questions that are important in having a critical view of the world. Whose values, whose hopes and whose fears?

    Her poster for the 1989 Women’s March on Washington in support of legal abortion included a woman’s face bisected into positive and negative photographic reproductions, accompanied by the text “Your body is a battleground.” A year later, Kruger used this slogan in a billboard commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Twelve hours later, a group opposed to abortion responded to Kruger’s work by replacing the adjacent billboard with an image depicting an eight-week-old fetus.

    Kruger’s early monochrome pre-digital works, known as ‘paste ups’, reveal the influence of the artist’s experience as a magazine editorial designer during her early career. These small scale works, the largest of which is 11 x 13 inches (28 x 33 cm), are composed of altered found images, and texts either culled from the media or invented by the artist. A negative of each work was then produced and used to make enlarged versions of these initial ‘paste ups’. Between 1978 and 1979, she completed “Picture/Readings,” simple photographs of modest houses alternating with panels of words. From 1992 on, Kruger designed several magazine covers, such as Ms., Esquire, Newsweek, and The New Republic. Her signature font style of Futura Bold type is likely inspired from the “Big Idea” or “Creative Revolution” advertising style of the 1960s that she was exposed to during her experience at Mademoiselle.

    In 1990, Kruger scandalized the Japanese American community of Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, with her proposal to paint the Pledge of Allegiance, bordered by provocative questions, on the side of a warehouse in the heart of the historic downtown neighborhood. Kruger had been commissioned by MOCA to paint a mural for “A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation,” a 1989 exhibition that also included works by Barbara Bloom, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince. But before the mural went up, Kruger herself and curator Ann Goldstein presented it at various community meetings over the time period of 18 months. Only after protests did the artist offer to eliminate the pledge from her mural proposal, while still retaining a series of questions painted in the colours and format of the American flag: “Who is bought and sold? Who is beyond the law? Who is free to choose? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?”. A full year after the exhibition closed, Kruger’s reconfigured mural finally went up for a two-year run.

    In 1994, Kruger’s L’empathie peut changer le monde (Empathy can change the world) was installed on a train station platform in Strasbourg, France. One year later, with architects Henry Smith-Miller and Laurie Hawkinson and landscape architect Nicholas Quennell, she designed the 200-foot-long (60 m) sculptural letters Picture This for a stage and outdoor amphitheater at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. Between 1998 and 2008, she created permanent installations for the Fisher College of Business, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Price Center at the University of California, San Diego. For a site-specific piece that she produced at the Parrish Art Museum in 1998, Kruger placed across the upper range of the museum’s Romanesque facade stark red letters that read, “You belong here”; below, on columns separating three arched entry portals, stacked letters spelled “Money” and “Taste.” As part of the Venice Biennale in 2005, Kruger installed a digitally printed vinyl mural across the entire facade of the Italian pavilion, thereby dividing it into three parts—green at the left, red at the right, white in between. In English and Italian, the words “money” and “power” climbed the portico’s columns; the left wall said, “Pretend things are going as planned,” while “God is on my side; he told me so” fills the right.[23] In 2012, her installation Belief+Doubt, which covers 6,700 square feet (620 m²) of surface area and was printed onto wallpaper-like sheets in the artist’s signature colors of red, black and white, was installed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

    http://www.barbarakruger.com

    https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/barbara-kruger/

    http://www.artnews.com/2017/11/03/no-uncool-jokers-here-barbara-kruger-debuts-installation-at-les-skate-park

    https://ago.ca/exhibitions/barbara-kruger-contact-2010

  • Jenny Holzer

    https://projects.jennyholzer.com

    Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick Falls, New York. The main focus of her work is the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces.

    Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler.

    The public dimension is integral to Holzer’s work. Her large-scale installations have included advertising billboards, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, and illuminated electronic displays. LED signs have become her most visible medium, although her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including street posters, painted signs, stone benches, paintings, photographs, sound, video, projections, the Internet, and a race car for BMW. Text-based light projections have been central to Holzer’s practice since 1996. As of 2010, her LED signs have become more sculptural.

    Holzer is no longer the author of her texts, and in the ensuing years, she returned to her roots by painting. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jenny-holzer-1307

    https://www.nowness.com/series/private-view/jenny-holzer-klaus-thymann

    The Subversive Pleasure of Jenny Holzer’s Truisms

  • Shirin Neshat

    Shirin Neshat (Persian: شیرین نشاط‎‎; born March 26, 1957) is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. 

    Her artwork centres around the contrasts between Islam and the West, femininity and masculinity, public life and private life, antiquity and modernity, and bridging the spaces between these subjects. Neshat often emphasizes this theme showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through motifs such as light and dark, black and white, male and female.

    Although Neshat actively resists stereotypical representations of Islam, her artistic objectives are not explicitly polemical. Rather, her work recognizes the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world. Using Persian poetry and calligraphy she examined concepts such as martyrdom, the space of exile, the issues of identity and femininity.

    Neshat has been recognized countless times for her work, from winning the International Award of the XLVIII Venice Biennalein 1999, to winning the Silver Lion for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009, to being named Artist of the Decade by Huffington Post critic G. Roger Denson.

    In July 2009 Neshat took part in a three-day hunger strike at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in protest of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.

    Work

    Neshat’s earliest works were photographs exploring notions of femininity in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy in her home country as a way of coping with the discrepancy between the culture that she was experiencing and that of the pre-revolution Iran in which she was raised.

    Unveiling (1993):

    Women of Allah (1993–97):  portraits of women entirely overlaid by Persian calligraphy.

    Logic of the Birds 2001-02 a full-length multimedia production with singer Sussan Deyhim andproduced by curator and art historian RoseLee Goldberg. Neshat uses sound to help create an emotionally evocative and beautiful piece that will resonate with viewers of both Eastern and Western cultures.

    Neshat has also made more traditional narrative short films, such as Zarin.

    Book of Kings series

    Other Works

    • Turbulent, 1998. Two channel video/audio installation.
    • Rapture, 1999. Two channel video/audio installation.
    • Soliloquy, 1999. Color video/audio installation with artist as the protagonist.
    • Fervor, 2000. Two channel video/audio installation.
    • Passage, 2001. Single channel video/audio installation.
    • Logic of the Birds, 2002. Multi-media performance.
    • Tooba, 2002. Two channel video/audio installation based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men.
    • Mahdokht, 2004. Three channel video/audio installation.
    • Zarin, 2005. Single channel video/audio installation.
    • Munis, 2008. Color video/audio installation based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men.
    • Faezeh, 2008. Color video/audio installation based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men.
    • Possession, 2009. Black & white video/audio installation.
    • Women Without Men, 2009. Feature film based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men.
    • Illusions & Mirrors, 2013. Film commissioned by Dior and featuring Natalie Portman.

    Biography

    Neshat is the fourth of five children of wealthy parents, brought up in the religious town of Qazvin in north-western Iran under a “very warm, supportive Muslim family environment”, where she learned traditional religious values through her maternal grandparents. Neshat’s father was a physician and her mother a homemaker. Neshat said that her father, “fantasized about the west, romanticized the west, and slowly rejected all of his own values; both my parents did. What happened, I think, was that their identity slowly dissolved, they exchanged it for comfort. It served their class”.

    As a part of Neshat’s “Westernization” she was enrolled in a Catholic boarding school in Tehran. Through her father’s acceptance of Western ideologies came an acceptance of a form of western feminism. Neshat’s father encouraged each of his daughters to “be an individual, to take risks, to learn, to see the world”, and he sent his daughters as well as his sons to college to receive their higher education.

    In 1975, Neshat left Iran to study art at UC Berkeley and completed her BA, MA and MFA.

    After graduating school, she moved to New York and married a Korean curator, Kyong Park, who was the director and founder of Storefront for Art and Architecture, a non-profit organization. Neshat helped Park run the Storefront, where she was exposed to many different ideologies and it would become a place where she received a much needed experience with and exposure to concepts that would later become integral to her artwork.

    During this time, she did not make any serious attempts at creating art, and the few attempts were subsequently destroyed.

    In 1990, she returned to Iran. “It was probably one of the most shocking experiences that I have ever had. The difference between what I had remembered from the Iranian culture and what I was witnessing was enormous. The change was both frightening and exciting; I had never been in a country that was so ideologically based. Most noticeable, of course, was the change in people’s physical appearance and public behaviour.

     
    Source: edited and extended from Wikipedia

  • Guerilla Girls (forthcoming)

    Guerilla Girls, a feminist group fighting sexism in arts practice. Formed in New York in 1985, the group maintain their anonymity by wearing gorilla masks and using the names of dead female artists as pseudonyms, e.g. Frida Kahlo and Hannah HÖch.

    They put pressure on organisations such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York by uncovering statistics that reveal the extent of patriarchy in the art world past and present. The original group disbanded in 2001 but several Guerrilla Girl spin-offs still exist.

    Recent campaigns include ‘Unchain female directors’ targeted at the male-dominated world of the Hollywood film studio.