Chapter 12

Question 1

The Studio

Answer 1

The first of nearly a dozen new 1890s European art periodicals, it had a strong influence on a group of young Scottish artists who became friends at the Glasgow School of Art

Question 2

The Glasgow School (The Four)

Answer 2

a collaboration of four students from the Glasgow School of Art: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, J. Herbert McNair, and Margret and Frances Macdonald. These young collaborators developed a unique style of lyrical originality and symbolic complexity. They innovated a geometric style of composition by tempering floral and curvilinear elements with strong rectilinear structure. Their designs are distinguished by symbolic imagery and stylized form. Bold, simple lines define flat planes of color. Their influence on the Continent became important transitions to the aesthetic of the 20th century

Question 3

Sezessionstil (The Vienna Secession)

Answer 3

Formed by Gustav Klimt, Joseph Maria Olbrish, Joseph Hoffman, and Koloman Moser. It came into being on April 3, 1897, when the younger members of the Kunstlerhaus, the Viennese Creative Artist’s Association, resigned in a stormy protest. Technically, the refusal to allow foreign artists to participate in Kunstlerhaus exhibitions was their main issue, the the clash between tradition and new ideas emanating from France, England, and Germany lay at the heart of the conflict. Theirs became a countermovement to the floral art nouveau that flourished in other parts of Europe. The group’s rapid evolution ran from the illustrative allegorical style of symbolist painting to the French-inspired floral style to the mature style, which drew inspiration from the Glasgow School. A major difference between this group and art nouveau is the artists’ love of clean, simple, sans-serif lettering, ranging from flat, blocky slabs to fluidly calligraphic forms. Their elegant Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring) was more a design laboratory than a magazine

Question 4

Ver Sacrum

Answer 4

• “Sacred Spring”
• Designed by the Vienna Secession and published from 1898 until 1903, this was more a design laboratory than a magazine. It focused on experimentation and graphic excellence and enabled designers to develop innovative graphics as they explored the merging of text, illustration, and ornament into lively unity. The magazine had an unusual square format, and its covers often combined hand lettering with bold line drawing printed in color on a colored background

Question 5

Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols (Celebration of Life and Art: A Consideration of the Theater as the Highest Symbol of a Culture)

Answer 5

This booklet by Peter Behrens may represent the first use of sans-serif type as running book text. All-capital, sans-serif type is also used in an unprecedented way on the title and dedication pages

Question 6

Berthold Foundry

Answer 6

Designed a family of 10 sans-serif typeface that were variations on one original font. This Akzidez Grotesk (called standard in the US) type family had a major influence on 10th century typography

Question 7

Akzidenz Grotesk

Answer 7

a typeface designed by the Berthold Foundry and called Standard in the United States. This typeface permitted compositors to achieve contrast and emphasis within one family of typefaces

Question 8

Behrensschrift

Answer 8

Peter Behren’s first typeface, released by the Klingspor Foundry, was an attempt to reduce any poetic flourish marking the forms, thereby making them more universal

Question 9

Deutsche Werkbund

Answer 9

• “German Association of Craftsmen”
• Founded in 1907 in Munich, this association was created to inspire high-quality design in manufacturing goods and architecture, advocating a marriage of art with technology. It recognized the value of machines and advocated design as a way to give form and meaning to all machine-made things, including buildings. Soon after it formed, two factions emerged. One, headed by Hermann Muthesius, argued for the maximum use of mechanical manufacturing and standardization of design for industrial efficiency. This group believed form should be determined solely by function and wanted to eliminate all ornament. Muthesius saw simplicity and exactness as being both functional demands of machine manufacture and symbolic aspects of 20th century industrial efficiency and power. A union of artists and craftsmen with industry, he believed, could elevate the functional and aesthetic qualities of mass production, particularly in low-cost consumer products. The other faction, led by Henry van de Velde, argued for the primacy of individual artistic expression

Question 10

Gesamkultur

Answer 10

a new universal culture existing in a totally reformed, manmade environment

Question 11

Sachlichkeit

Answer 11

• loosely translated “Commonsense objectivity”
• A pragmatic emphasis on technology, manufacturing processes, and function, in which artistic conceits and questions of style were subordinate to purpose

Question 12

analogous colors

Answer 12

often two or three sequential colors on the color wheel

Question 13

Frank Lloyd Wright

Answer 13

• 1867-1959
• an inspiration for the designers evolving from curvilinear art nouveau toward a rectilinear approach to spatial organization. He rejected historicism in favor of a philosophy of “organic architecture,” with “the reality of the building” existing not in the design of the façade but in dynamic interior spaces where people lived and worked. He defined organic design as having entity, “something in which the part is to the whole as the whole is to the part, and which is all devoted to a purpose.… It seeks that completeness in idea in execution that is absolutely true to method, true to purpose, true to character.” He saw space as the essence of design, and this emphasis was the wellspring of his profound influence upon all areas of twentieth-century design

Question 14

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Answer 14

• 1868-1928
• A founding member of The Four, he made notable contributions to the new century’s architecture, and realized major accomplishments in the design of objects, chairs, and interiors as total environments. His main design theme is rising vertical lines, often with subtle curves at the ends to temper their junction with the horizontals. Tall and thin rectangular shapes and the counterpoint of right angles against ovals, circles, and arcs characterize his work. Abstract interpretations of the human figure, such as in his Scottish Musical Review poster, had not been seen in Scotland before, and many observers were outraged

Question 15

Herbert McNair

Answer 15

• 1868-1955
• founding member of The Four

Question 16

Margaret and Frances Macdonald

Answer 16

• 1868-1933/ 1874-1921
• founding members of The Four. These sisters held strong religious beliefs and embraced symbolist and mystical ideas. The confluence of architectural structure with their world of fantasy and dreams produced an unprecedented transcendental style that has been variously described as feminine, a fairyland fantasy, and a melancholy disquietude

Question 17

Jessie Marion King

Answer 17

• 1876-1949
• She achieved a distinctive personal statement with medieval-style fantasy illustrations accompanied by stylized lettering. Her grace, fluidity, and romantic overtones widely influenced fiction illustration throughout the twentieth century

Question 18

Talwin Morris

Answer 18

• 1865-1911
• became art director of the Glasgow publishing firm Blackie’s, which provided him with a forum for applying the geometric spatial division and lyrical organic forms of the Glasgow group The Four to mass communications. He often developed formats for series that could be used over and over again with subtle variations

Question 19

Gustav Klimt

Answer 19

• 1862-1918
• the painter who was the guiding spirit of (and led) the Vienna Secession’s revolt against the Künstlerhaus. In his first Vienna Secession exhibition poster, he referred to Greek mythology, showing Athena, goddess of the arts, watching Theseus deliver the death blow to the Minotaur, a metaphor for the struggle between the Secession and the Künstlerhaus

Question 20

Joseph Maria Olbrich

Answer 20

• 1870-1908
• an architect who was a key member of the Vienna Secession.

Question 21

Josef Hoffmann

Answer 21

• 1870-1956
• an architect who was a key member of the Vienna Secession. He was appointed to the faculty of the Vienna School for Applied Art with Koloman Moser, and together they launched the Wiener Werkstätte(Vienna Workshops) in 1903.

Question 22

Koloman Moser

Answer 22

• 1868-1918
• an artist-designer who was a key member of the Vienna Secession. He played a major role in defining its approach to graphic design. His poster for the thirteenth Vienna Secession exhibition is a masterpiece of the mature phase. This evolution toward elemental geometric form was diagrammed by Walter Crane in his book Line and Form. Moser was appointed to the faculty of the Vienna School for Applied Art with Joseph Hoffman, and together they launched the Wiener Werkstätte(Vienna Workshops) in 1903

Question 23

Adolf Loos

Answer 23

• 1870-1933
• the polemic Austrian architect who wrote the famous article “Potemkin City.” He challenged all areas of design, and his writings roundly condemned both historicism and Sezessionstil. He called for a functional simplicity that banished useless decoration in any form. Standing alone at the turn of the century, he blasted the nineteenth-century love of decoration and abhorrence of empty spaces. To him, “organic” meant not curvilinear but the use of human needs as a standard for measuring utilitarian form.

Question 24

Alfred Roller

Answer 24

• 1864-1935
• made significant innovations in graphic design with a masterly control of complex line, tone, and form. A set designer and scene painter for theater, his principal work as a graphic designer and illustrator was for Ver Sacrumand Secession exhibition posters. Cubism and art deco are anticipated in his 1902 poster for the fourteenth Vienna Secession exhibition, and his poster for the sixteenth exhibition, later that same year, sacrificed legibility in order to achieve an unprecedented textural density

Question 25

Berhold Loffler

Answer 25

• 1874-1960
• anticipated later developments with his reductive symbolic images of thick contours and simple geometric features. Figures in his posters and illustrations became elemental significations rather than depictions

Question 26

Peter Behren

Answer 26

• 1868-1940
• the German artist, architect, and designer who played a major role in charting a course for design in the first decade of the new century. He sought typographic reform, was an early advocate of sans-serif typography, and used a grid system to structure space in his design layouts. He has been called “the first industrial designer” in recognition of his designs for such manufactured products as streetlamps and teapots. His work for the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, or AEG, is considered the first comprehensive visual identification program. He believed that after architecture, typography provided “the most characteristic picture of a period, and the strongest testimonial of the spiritual progress” and “development of a people.” His typographic experiments were a deliberate attempt to express the spirit of the new era. His twenty-five-page booklet, Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols (Celebration of Life and Art: A Consideration of the Theater as the Highest Symbol of a Culture), may represent the first use of sans-serif type as running book text. He also designed the Behrensschrift typeface. In 1903, he moved to Düsseldorf to become director of the Düsseldorf School of Arts and Crafts, where his purpose was to go back to the fundamental intellectual principles of all form-creating work, allowing such principles to be rooted in the artistically spontaneous and their inner laws of perception rather than directly in the mechanical aspects of the work. His work from the beginning of the 1900s is part of the tentative beginnings of constructivism in graphic design, where realistic or even stylized depictions are replaced by architectural and geometric structure. He formed the Deutsche Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen) with Hermann Muthesius and Henri van de Velde, and developed the Behrens-Antiqua typeface for the exclusive use of AEG. He also designed industrial products, including electric household products such as teakettles and fans, as well as streetlamps and electric motors

Question 27

L. Mathieu Lauweriks

Answer 27

• 1864-1932
• a Dutch architect who was fascinated by geometric form and developed an approach to teaching design based on geometric composition. His grids began with a square circumscribed around a circle; numerous permutations could be made by subdividing and duplicating this basic structure

Question 28

Emil Rathenau

Answer 28

• 1838-1915
• the director of the AEG who appointed Peter Behrens as its artistic advisor. A visionary industrialist who sought to give a unified visual character to the company’s products, environments, and communications.

Question 29

Frank Pick

Answer 29

• 1878-1941
• : a statistician and attorney who provided the vision necessary to lead the Underground Group to the forefront of innovative publicity and design. He responded to the jumble of advertisers’ posters competing with transportation information and publicity by designating poster boards at station entrances for Underground posters and maps, then limited advertisers’ posters to gridded spaces inside stations and on platforms. Underground station signs introduced in 1908 had a solid red disk with a blue bar across the middle bearing the station name in white sans-serif letters. These bright, simple designs stood out against the urban clutter. He commissioned Edward Johnston to create a new typeface specific to the Underground. His design advocacy expanded to include signage, station architecture, and product design, including train and bus design. Station platforms and coach interiors were carefully planned for human use and design aesthetics.