© 1958 Knightsbridge Films Ltd. © 2002 Criterion Collection
One of the best ways to look at art and design was actually written by English author, Joyce Cary in his novel The Horse’s Mouth (1944). Dordt’s library has two copies and the last time any of the books had been checked out was the early 1970s! Which is a pity because Cary’s work should be considered and read more. Actually, Sir Alec Guinness wrote a screenplay based on the novel and starred in the movie, made in 1958, with the same title — I’ve ordered a DVD for the library. The lead-in picture for this post is, in part, a copy of the original British movie poster that forms the re-release DVD package design for distributor Criterion. The Horse’s Mouth is the third story in a trilogy and is full of British irony, wit, and humor that is summed-up by the idiom of the title. The main character and narrator is the artist-painter, Mr. Gulley Jimson. In one scene, Jimson with his friend Coker are looking at a painting and all she can see is ‘A totty.’ ‘You don’t know what a picture is, Cokey’ says Jimson.
Jimson then explains what happens when you tell the truth and that the artist is a form of genius. Jimson (over) states, … ‘Now I know. And I’m not only a genius, I’m an artist. A son of Los’ ‘Los?’ says Cokey. ‘Los was the Prophet of the Lord,’ states Jimson, and he then goes on to quote a passage from the poem, ‘Milton,’ written in 1804, by Romantic artist, William Blake:And the sons of Los build moments and minutes and hours
Jimson follows this with how to look at a picture:
And days and months and years and ages and periods,
wondrous buildings;
And every moment has a couch of gold for soft repose,
And between every two moments stands a daughter of Beulah
To feed the sleepers on their couches with maternal care.
And every minute has an azure tent with silken veils;
Every time less than the pulsation of an artery
Is quality in its period and value to six thousand years,
For in this period the poet’s work is done.‘You haven’t got six thousand years this afternoon.’ Half a minute of revelation is worth a million years of know nothing.’ Who lives a million years?’ ‘A million people every twelve months. I’ll show you how to look at a picture, Cokey. Don’t look at it. Feel it with your eye. … And first you feel the shapes in the flat – the patterns, like a carpet. … And you feel it in the round. Not as if it were a picture of anyone. But a coloured and raised map. You feel all the rounds, the smooths, the cools and warms. The colors and textures. There’s hundreds of little differences all fitting in together.’
The author, by combining a portion of Blake’s poem and Jimson’s philosophy, I believe, is referring to the dimension of moments and time leading to simultaneous views of the same subject and multi-faceted vantage points. Doesn’t this sum up much of 20th century art? The complexity of Cubism per se?
I’d like to acknowledge professor Roy Behrens, University of Northern Iowa, for alerting me to this passage. Behrens, in his book, False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage cites Cary’s text, but, I needed to read the novel to find where the passage occurs and the context in which was stated.
First Trilogy, The Horse’s Mouth, copyright © 1958 Harper and Brothers. Page 90.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Horse's Mouth: How to Look at a Picture
Monday, May 25, 2009
René Clement exhibit at Dordt College Campus Center Art Gallery
A couple of weeks ago, René was back in the area to document the 'old world' Dutch costumes in the Orange City Tulip Festival, for his current book project. He had just come from a three-week photo documentary project in Bolivia for a Dutch magazine. He happened to stop by Dordt, for lunch, and to view the show — he took the photo above. I believe the show is successful on various levels but most of all through the photographs we can see how René works, thinks and cares compassionately about his subjects. One viewer left this comment in the register book: “Your work breaths life into otherwise nameless faces of war — stunning!”
Copyright © 2009 René Clement
The exhibit includes selected work from his West Bank/Palestinian photo essay and his Haitian conflict essay. If you would like to see more of his work (click here).
René mentions photographer James Nachtwey, Agency VII, as an inspiration for some of his work (click here). Clement’s portrait photography and documentaries have repeatedly claimed prizes in the Dutch Silver Camera competition. In 2003 Time Magazine selected his entry among the Pictures of the Year.
A native of the Netherlands, Clement, who’s a storyteller, is the co-founder of the Foundation for Photography and is a contributor to Dutch, Italian, and New York photo agencies. He has published seven books of photography and has traveled throughout the world.
Speaking of world traveler, what do you think about Anthony Bourdain’s: No Reservations?
Friday, May 22, 2009
Adobe Product Poll Results
This week we saw a 184.6% increase in voter turnout, if only the recent California state election saw a voter turnout increase even close to that...
Anyways, 11 new people voted (or 11 of you voted twice...), the results are as follows:
Acrobat: 0 votes, 0% of the vote - no big surprise there, I guess all of you hate how Acrobat always seems to open up your pdfs when you would much rather have preview open them!
Bridge: 1 vote, 4% of the vote - I don't know too many people who use this program so...
Dreamweaver: 3 votes, 12% of the vote - I guess...?
Flash: 0 votes, 0% of the vote - again...no big surprise here, this program just sounds like a hassle
Illustrator: 7 votes, 29% of the vote (third place!) - A bit surprised this didn't garner more votes, personally this is my favorite Adobe program, I'm trying not to take this loss personally.
InDesign: 14 votes, 58% of the vote (the majority) - Okay, if I would've known that this program was going to get so many votes I wouldn't have given it one of mine...this is probably my 3rd favorite program, so it was my third choice...too bad the rankings can't reflect that!
Lightroom: 5 votes, 20% of the vote - I'm gutted, my second favorite Adobe program scorned and thrown aside like some cheap specialty font! Come on people! How can you not love the versatility and ease of use that Lightroom offers?
Photoshop: 8 votes, 33% of the vote - Okay Photoshop is one of my least favorite programs of all time, yet it was runner up! How? This might be one of the hardest of the Adobe programs to even be decent with, there is no way that 8 of you consider this your "favorite Adobe product"!
Other: 1 vote - Professor Versluis? Is there an Adobe product I missed?
Thank you all for voting, don't forget to vote on the new poll: What is your favorite Art Movement? I do realize that the list of Art movements is by no means all-inclusive, I did leave out Post- and Neo-Impressionism, but...that's why I put (etc) after Impressionism. I know they are all unique etc, but for the sake of having a short list...bear with me. If you really feel I left something major out, just let me know.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Defining the Designer of 2015
Correlated to AIGA and the previous post — this will be of interest to both student and alumni designers as well. Please see the Designer of 2015 Next Steps article (click here). Let me know what you think, about what the piece says, regarding trends (click here) and competencies (click here). If you want to read further, check-out the paper (PDF) written by Meredith Davis (click here). Read More......
Reminders from AIGA
My AIGA
Stay connected and update your contact information by logging into your online member account and updating your contact information at my.aiga.org — This will ensure that you will receive mailings and email throughout the summer. This is a reminder to keep your contact information current as well. (you'll see My Account on the left side of the webpage)
Members urge AIGA to take long view, build a future for design, designing and designers
As you may recall, at our group meeting, on Assessment Day you responded to questions from the AIGA about how you viewed the organization from a student perspective. And since I was invited to participate in the Iowa AIGA chapter-organized roundtable on 8 April in Des Moines, I used the opportunity to bring your feedback and ideas for the organization. Please see the Insight article to see how your responses compare to others in the AIGA. Thank you for participating—the Iowa AIGA Board was impressed with what you had to say!
After School Special: Advice for Emerging Designers
Lynda Decker of Decker Design has created a great presentation that will give you helpful and valuable advice on making the transition from school to work. To view it, visit: After-School-Special.
Events
If you’re in or near Denver this summer, perhaps consider, Image Space Object 6: Tools for Transformation, Denver, August 6–9, 2009. For more information, visit: Image Space Object. Small teams of participants and studio mentors work together to create multi-dimensional environments, human interactions and brand strategies. User-centered narratives serve as a starting place for the design of graphic, interaction, product and environmental experiences. Research, modeling, team ideation and experiential prototyping are employed throughout the three days to produce tangible final presentations that can be brought back to work and used with your design teams.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Design History: Robert Estienne (Roberti Stephani)
Photographs and article, copyright © 2009 David M. Versluis.
The principal author of the Belgic Confession, written in French in 1561, was Guido de Brès, a Reformed church preacher in the southern Low Countries (Belgic) who was put to death for heresy in 1566. The Confession’s form and content indicate de Brès was familiar with the Confession of the Huguenot (French Protestant) Reformed churches, published in the late 1550s, which was written mainly by John Calvin. Interestingly, de Brès, in the second article of the Belgic Confession, uses metaphors for God’s revelation in creation: is before our eyes like a beautiful book and all creatures, great and small, are as letters. Apparently de Brès and Calvin were well aware of French graphic design and printed materials being produced at the time of the sixteenth-century. The era is regarded as the golden age of French Renaissance printing technology. French typography (Claude Garamond—perfecting Roman letterforms), graphic design (Geoffroy Tory—geometric constructions of letters) and book design (Oronce Finé and Simon de Colines—visual information) were considered to be the finest on the European continent. Many French graphic designers of this period were multi-talented people: Geoffroy Tory was a philosophy lecturer and poet and Oronce Finé was a mathematics professor, artist, and author. In addition to typography, French graphic design of this period is noted for the elegant and colorful illustrations, for Books of Hours, depicting animals, birds, insects, aquatic life, flora, and fauna that adorn the capital initials and border margins of the page. These illustrations, some of which are stylized, express a Renaissance humanist interest in the natural world, yet this interest also correlates with biblical scholars rediscovering, reexamining, recovering the meaning of scripture and appreciating the abundance of God’s good creation.
However, by the middle decades of the sixteenth-century, as a result of religious conflicts, the European printing center moved from France (Paris, Lyons) to the Netherlands (Amsterdam), England, and Switzerland. One of the best French scholar printers and principal graphic designers of the period, Robert Estienne (1503–1559) was renowned as a great printer, author, and classical scholar for the intellectual insight of his editorial process. He was also acclaimed for typographic refinement and clarity of his original language Bibles, Christian texts, and printed biographies by history writer, Paolo Giovio. Estienne was affected by the threat of persecution and turmoil of the Protestant Reformation and was harassed and abused for being suspected a heretic by the Sorbonne (University of Paris) theology faculty for his Protestant views. Heretic, in this case meant that Estienne, with his linguistic expertise in Greek and Hebrew was revising the Bible that he was printing because he was discovering translation errors in the Latin Bible (the Vulgate) by comparing it to the original written language. As a result, by the early 1550s, Estienne relocated his printing firm to Geneva, Switzerland to be with John Calvin. There he reissued Calvin’s Institutes in 1553 and again in 1559. The introduction to Calvin’s Institutes, published by Westminster Press in 1960 says this about Estienne:
One of the greatest of Renaissance printers came to Geneva from Paris in 1550 and resumed there, in close association with the Geneva ministers, his lifework in the production of Bibles and religious texts that he had found it impossible to continue in France. This was Robert Estienne (Robertus Stephanus), a distinguished member of the great Estienne family of scholar printers to whom the New Learning and the Reformation owed a measureless debt. In February 1553, he brought out the finest edition of the Institutio that Calvin had yet seen, a folio volume 13-1/2 by 8-3/4 inches, almost faultlessly printed in handsome type. It contains 441 pages.
The woodcut illustrated above, in close-up, was the printer’s mark (colophon) of Robert Estienne’s printing firm and usually appeared on the title page of his larger books. As is the case with many printers’ marks during the Renaissance the marks could be esoteric and yet convey great meaning that needed an explanation. Estienne’s mark has a double meaning. On the one hand it represents the metaphor of the ‘Olive Tree and Branches’ as told by the apostle Paul in Romans 11:20. The Latin phrase in the balloon banner, ‘Noli Altum Sapere,’ translates as ‘Do Not Become Proud.’ With this motto, Estienne is suggesting that we, as Christians, cultivate a spirit of humility in the face of excessive dogmatism. For Protestant Reformers, Saint Paul was regarded as the true Christian Church authority (other than Christ Jesus himself), rather than the Roman Catholic clergy. In addition, according to Estienne expert Elizabeth Armstrong as cited by Fred Schreiber in his book, 'The Estiennes' (1982, p. 249), the surname Estienne, is French for the Greek noun stepanos (Stephen in English)—which was the name of the olive branch crown wreath and the prize given to ancient Greek athletes for outstanding performance and excellence. So the mark, being a play on the word Estienne (stephanos), may be referring to the high standards for Robert Estienne’s scholarly work, printing craft, graphic design, and aesthetic quality.
However, we don’t know for sure who the figure in the mark is. He's probably Saint Paul—or could he possibly be a Greek or Roman humanist philosopher? I believe it's very plausible that the figure could be that of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr who was stoned to death for speaking the scriptural truths about Christ Jesus. In addition to reinforcing the name Estienne (Stephani), in the illustration, you will notice stones near the feet of the figure, which is traditionally associated with images of the Saint Stephen. However, in this case, the symbols are much more subtle and natural in contrast to typical Roman Catholic iconography.
