Günther Kieser, Visual Poet

Miles Davis Poster, 1971 by Günther Kieser

I recall seeing the peculiar art of Günther Kieser at a young age. This week seeing the photorealistic ‘trumpet tree’ again piqued my interest in his body of work. A genius in his own time, Kieser created a whole new visual language. His early work exemplifies an ability to synthesize communications pieces that are visually unique yet clear in message.

His early work, Alabama Blues brilliantly uses the shape of a dove to contain the typography.  The Alabama Blues music was all about peace and justice as represented by the dove form.

Jimi Hendrix poster, 1969,  by Günther Kieser

Trained at the Offenbach College of Design in Germany, Keiser began his career with partner, Hans Michel, in 1952, designing postages stamps for the German postal service. They also created posters for one of the first German Jazz concert services, Lippmann & Rau. It was from Horst Lippmann  Kieser received his first commission for the music industry.  Kieser and Michel designed posters for concerts of Jazz greats including John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. Well versed in many mediums, he combined  collage, linocut, photography with his strong drawing skill.

After ending his partnership with Michel, Keiser continued to produce posters for the music scene.  His posters became a fixture in concert venues, bars and billboards. His treatment of political topics and current issues gave his work an iconic look and feel.   Keiser’s Jimi Hendrix Experience poster, 1969, is one of his most popular designs stamped in the memory of a post modern generation.  

Jazz Band Ball, 1963

 Meggs’ History of Graphic Design categorizes Keiser in the European Visual Poet camp. He had an uncanny ability to visualize text as form as seen in many of his works, including the Jazz Band Ball poster.   It is hard to believe Kieser’s work predates the digital age.   Günther Kieser still lives and works in Germany.

Sources:
http://www.nrw-museum.de/en/#/en/more/biographies/details/details/artists///guenther-kieser.html

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=8049  Jazz Band Ball

Traffic Poster, 1971, Günther Kieser

http://www.posterscene.com/html_index.cfm?page=item_page&itemoid=62677  Traffic Poster

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/g%C3%BCnther-kieser  Miles Davis Poster, 1971

Paul Rand and the NeXT Logo

NeXT logo by Paul Rand, 1986.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the NeXT logo designed by Paul Rand in this week’s reading. I started working for NeXT in 1988 as employee #244. I  didn’t know much about Paul Rand, but quickly learned about his famous logo designs that included IBM, Westinghouse, Adobe, and NeXT.  It was rumored at the company Steve Jobs paid Rand 100,000 dollars to design the logo.  Having seen the way money flew out the door, I didn’t doubt this amount.

The logo was an icon almost equal in stature to
Steve Jobs.   Placement of the logo at a 28 degree angle was no joke.  We employees could instantaneously lose our jobs by not following the logo use guidelines and corporate identity manual to the exact specifications.  Everything down to namebadges had perfect placement of the logo. The first system created by NeXT was a square black cube. Rand brilliantly created a logo that embodied the essence of a 3D cube with the company name.  
As Norman Ives would say, the logo embodied a "true gestalt".  
There are some wonderful videos on YouTube of Paul Rand
introducing his design to NeXT senior staff and of Steve Jobs
discussing Paul Rand.  Paul Rand lives up to his promise to 
'solve the design problem at hand'. 

^{Paul Rand as posted on YouTube}

VIDEO LINK as posted on YouTube:
Paul Rand introducing his design for NeXT to Steve Jobs and team:   Famous Graphic Desingers - Paul Rand Introducing the NeXT identity

VIDEO LINK as posted on YouTube: Steve Jobs Discussing Paul Rand

1993 interview re: Paul Rand and Steve Jobs

Google doodle as posted on Google homepage, 10/29/12

On the flip side, Google has found a way to retain a tight corporate identity while still making room for creative fun. The Google homepage ‘doodles’ that periodically alter the Google logo are clever and engaging. The homepage is a magnet, and I am usually pleasantly surprised.  I recently saw this doodle of the legendary Bob Ross.  It made me chuckle. Many of us have seen his lessons on public access television. I also love this doodle celebrating Kieth Haring's 54th birthday. In the end we all know what the official Google logo looks like. Google has created over 1000 doodles that play on the corporate logo. It now has a team of engineers and illustrators devoted to making doodles celebrating artists, holidays, science and random notions.

Google doodle as posted on Google web site.

The NeXT system was light years ahead of its time. Sadly, even with a world-class logo and engineering team, the company just couldn’t break into a hazy market. Was the system a pc or a workstation?   Lack of software for this trailblazing computer also played a big role.  NeXT being purchased by Apple was the ultimate silver lining. OS10, the current operating system of Apple products, was invented at NeXT. 

Resources:
http://www.logodesignlove.com/next-logo-paul-rand
http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/portraits/#.UKvCJmfrR8E

Bauhaus: Itten, Albers and Kandinsky on Color

“Color is life; for a world without color appears to us as dead. 
Colors are primordial ideas, the children of light.”  Johannes Itten

Three prominent figures on the faculty at the Bauhaus formulated groundbreaking theories concerning color: Johannes Itten, Joseph Albers and Wassily Kandinsky. 

Artist: Johannes Itten's Colour Sphere
1921. Courtesy Kaufmann Mercantile

Johannes Itten was a Bauhaus faculty member from 1919 to 1922. He is considered to be the grandfather of color theory and established fundamental teachings based on his version of a 12 point color ‘star’.  He approached color from an objective standpoint but also gave consideration to subjective, psychological principles.  Greatly influenced by Adolf Hölzel's eight tier color wheel, Itten developed fundamental art courses for students at the Bauhaus that included color theory. He was one of the first people to devise strategies for successful color combinations. He developed seven ways to combine colors based on contrast of saturation; value; extension; complements; simultaneous contrast; hue; and warmth and coolness of color.  His book, The Art of Color, was an influential textbook documenting
his color theories and techniques.

Study based on Albers, Courtesy: StudyArtHistory.com

Joseph Albers taught at the Bauhaus from 1925 to 1933. He was a student of Johannes Itten and took Itten’s objective approach to color one step further. In his work he organized flat, large planes of adjacent color blocks to show how color combinations affect each other. He conducted color experiments that are well known today. Staring at the black dot on the left casts a yellow shadow in the image with the solo dot on the right. He also explored the effects of space and depth by arranging squares of color.  Squares will appear closer or recede depending on the warmth of the colors, the contrast and the intensity of the color within the square. 

Joseph Albers Homage to the 
Square,  1964. 
Courtesy: StudyArtHistory

This exploration can be seen in his series, Homage to a Square. He produced over 1000 such squares over the course of 25 years. After the closing of the Bauhaus in 1933, he emigrated to the U.S. where he held faculty positions at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and at Yale in Connecticut.  He also published Interaction of Color (1963), a treatise on color theory that was used extensively in art education.

Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VIII
1923 courtesy: WebMuseum Paris

Kandinsky’s tenure at the Bauhaus lasted from 1922 to its closing in 1933. His approach to color was from a spiritual and psychological place. According to Kandinsky, colors produce a “spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical impression is of importance.”   He used metaphors relating to music to describe the artist’s relationship to color. One example is from his book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. “Generally speaking, colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings.”  He also felt that colors have a psychological effect.  He believed humans have reactions to color based on previous experiences and perceptions. One shade of red will remind a person of warmth from a fire and another shade of red will remind them of blood.  Strangely, my copy of Concerning the Spiritual in Art is in black and white.

References:

1. Johannes Itten. Kaufmann Mercantile, http://kaufmann-mercantile.com/johannes-itten/
2. Itten’s Color Contrasts.  WORQX.com, http://www.worqx.com/color/itten.htm
3. Color Contrast, Brown University http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/VA10/HTML/AlbersExplanation.html
4. Study Art History –an online guide for art history students and lovers. Josef Albers - Color Theory, May 9, 2011 http://www.studyarthistory.com/josef-albers---color-theory-255.php
5. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joseph Albers, 2011.  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/59.160
6. Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Dover Publications, Inc., 1977. Translated from the Art of Spiritual  Harmony by Wassily Kandinsky, 1914. 

Käthe Kollwitz, Expressionist

War, Never Again, Poster, Käthe Kollwitz, 1924

Käthe Kollwitz is an artist who has always intrigued me. I was glad to see her introduced in the realm of Expressionism. Her work deeply embodies the sentiment felt by artists in the Expressionist movement that, according to Meggs’ depicted “subjective emotions and personal responses to subjects and events.” Known primarily as a print maker and sculptor, Kollwitz created paintings, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, sculpture and drawings. Her emotional works were featured in antiwar posters as a reaction to World War I and World War II. Working figuratively, she can be categorized as part of the Die Brucke (the Bridge) Expressionist.

March of the Weavers, etching, Käthe Kollwitz 1895

 Born in Russia in 1867, she was encouraged early on by her father to pursue her artistic capabilities. Her parents recognized her keen drawing skill, and in 1881 she began studies with a local copper engraver. She later attended the Berlin School for Woman Artists where she ultimately held a part-time teaching position. In 1919 she was appointed to a full professorship at the prestigious Prussian Academy of Arts.

Widows and Orphans, Lithograph, 1919, MOMA site

The Sacrifice, woodcut, Käthe Kollwitz, 1922

The humanistic views of her parents and grandfather helped develop her deep sense of compassion for the human condition. A pacifist and socialist, she developed a feminist perspective from the readings of August Bebel, Woman and Socialism (1879). She was inspired by the teachings in this book that professed “one day in the new society women will be entirely independent socially and economically.” Married to a physician practicing in a Berlin working class neighborhood, Kollwitz expressed her impressions in her artwork. Interestingly, Kollwitz created seventy self portraits during her lifetime.

Death, Woman and Child, etching, Käthe Kollwitz, 1919

Kollwitz’ personal experience with loss and war also influenced her foray into expressionism. Her son was killed in World War I and her grandson was killed in World War II. She openly criticized Adolf  Hitler and his Nazi party, causing her to be arrested by the Gestapo. In 1938, her work, Tower of Mothers, was deemed “degenerate art” by the Nazi Government and seized from the Academy show.  In 1945 her family home in Berlin was destroyed during the bombing and she died shortly before the end of WWII.

As an expressionist Kathe Kollwitz explored topics such as poverty, war, death, plight of the working class, grief and despair. Her work was not only a reaction to her own pain and suffering but equally to 

those suffering around her.

The Lovers, plaster sculpture, Käthe Kollwitz, 1913

Sources:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTkollwitz.htm

http://www.rogallery.com/Kollwitz/Kollwitz-bio.htm

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/kollwitz_kathe.html

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3201
http://www.masterworksfineart.com/inventory/3207