William Morris
The influence of William Morris directly impacted upon and shaped the Arts and Craft movement of the 19th Century, his contributions are precursors to the modern movement, and the repercussions of his legacy are still evident today. Although in his time his greatness was largely attributed to his writings primarily as a poet, hindsight pinpoints the direct impact he had on Arts and Craft of the 19th Century and Design today.
The term Arts and Craft was coined by Thomas Cobden-Sanderson in 1888 even though it had been a movement since the beginning of the decade. The movement came into being as a reaction against tradition that put practicality first and didn’t hold a disdain for the machine. It embraces an enormous variety of styles and technically refers essentially to the spirit and ethos of design. The Arts and Craft movement drew upon practical tradition and concern for useful design. Morris believed that handwork allowed the craftsperson creative contribution morally and aesthetically. He was also aware of the alienation of the worker from his work, he actively attempted to solve this problem through his influence in the Socialist and Arts and Craft movements. Morris adopted Ruskin’s belief that objects should not only give pleasure to the user but to the maker as well. These philosophies lay at the heart of the movement.
Morris attempted to create an equal status for the “lesser arts” eg. Architecture and bring them to the level of the established ‘high arts” like painting and sculpture. Morris made the Arts and Crafts respectable. Many significant organizations were established in the 1880’s that gave the movement form and substance. “I argue that how we view the world, and how it should look, changed in the 1880’s under Morris’s influence” (Stansky, p10). Morris was dedicated in improving working conditions and rejected industrialization and the separation of work, leisure and creativity.
Henry Cole believed that good design should equal profit through mass produced goods; Ruskin opposed this view. Ironically Cole and Morris shared the same concern for design and making worthy objects readily available. Morris’ concerns for decorative honesty, truth of material are directly related principles of the Modern movement. He transformed the status of decorative arts challenging mass production to re-establish the importance and integrity of handcrafted work.
Morris was insistent that design should contain simplicity and an unpretentious and honest use of materials. Morris conceived the concept of the Garden City where art and architecture never ignored the essence of human individuality and vitality, creating a relationship with the natural world. Morris’ style echoed the flowing free forms of the natural world and emanated his dedication to history; integrating art and life. He drew inspiration from medieval design, as he believed that it represented the last use of honest design. He believed that people could not flourish unless they protected and were in harmony with their environment. He was prominent in the establishment of the Protection of Ancient Building society. Morris wanted to bring art into people’s lives and make it accessible for all. In his 1877 lecture, ‘The Lesser Arts of Life’ Morris spoke:
I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few art will make our streets as beautiful as the wood …every man’s house will be fair and decent, soothing to his mind and helpful to his work…in no private dwelling will there be any signs of waste, pomp, or insolence, and every man will have his share of the best
Morris never thought that where people lived or what they used in their homes was unimportant his famous golden rule ‘ have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. He thought it profane that the Middle classes were subjected to a bombardment of low-standard, poorly crafted mass-produced reproductions. His insistence for quality and simplistic design was a covert attack on the 19th century consumerism and production of low quality goods.
The Arts and Craft movement developed under Morris’ omnipresent influence rather than by any direct action. Encounters by foreign artists vary from personal contact to viewing his products. He was a prominent social figure politically and artistically; many influential people of this time were inspired directly or indirectly by him or his work.
“Through the work of the firm and his lectures on art, society, and craftwork, he sent out a large series of radiating influences… the total impact of his ideas and practices… directly and indirectly bringing to birth a wide range of organizations such as the Arts and Craft Movement…” (Lindsy, 1975 pp. 384)
In 1898 his disciple Walter Crane was appointed principal of the Royal College of Art. He led the movement within the school away from ornament to free design. The school in turn widened its curriculum to encompass a wide range of arts. Morris’ life, work and lectures were extremely influential among the young men of Arts and Craft starting their careers.
His genius lay in his enthusiasm enabling him to create the new from his inspiration of the past and nature. He played a significant role in raising the status of the applied arts, vital to his argument was that design was reliant on technical knowledge of the medium being designed. He rediscovered the organic interrelationships between material, the working process, its purpose and the aesthetic form of an object.
“A craft skill can only be learned rightly by the experience of years in the particular work required. The power of each material, and the difficulties connected with its treatment, are not so much to be taught as to be felt; it is only by repeated touch and continued trial beside the forge or the furnace, that the goldsmith can find out how to govern his gold, or the glass-worker his crystal”
William Morris
Morris set a personal example, which was followed by all in the Arts and Craft movement. This brought a shift in design from the conventional ‘Victorian’ design to an amalgamation of his ‘Ruskinian’ view and loyalty to simplistic natural design. He contributed to a significant change in theory and practice of the Arts and Crafts creating ramifications, which continued long after his death and the end of the movement.
He had a keen interest in Architecture and his disillusionment with design at the time led him to commission his friend Philip Webb to build him a house which was named “The Red House”. Morris himself designed and decorated the interior including the furnishings and drapery. All Arts and Crafts houses after it owe a great deal to its principles and innovations of interior design. He established Morris and Co. in 1861 and soon after no fashionable home in England was without some item from the company, the name had become a symbol of good taste. A contemporary writer said, “Morris had changed the look of half the houses in London and substituted art for ugliness all over the kingdom” (Simpson, 1991)
Morris’ ideals transferred and were adopted, creating the basis for the beginning of the German Werkbund and later the Bauhaus. The Werkbund is similar with its ideals of design and concern for honest use of materials and simplicity. It added new meaning by combining architects, craftsmen and manufacturers and adding the awareness of industry and product. Effectively Morris’ artist-craftsman was taken on by Werkbund and then the Bauhaus and through mechanization and production evolved to that of industrial designer. Often seen as the catalyst for modernism Morris would have with no doubt found these additions to his theories contradictory.
His influence is not singularly of predominance in the Arts and Craft movement, its relevance and contribution are still evident even today. ‘Morrisism” was just as much about his standing in and view of politics as his design and products. Many might wave off the Arts and Craft movement purely as the culmination of previous decades quests for aesthetic fulfillment. It was at this time when England was at its greatest power and was having trouble maintaining it that Morris gave her direction through power in manufacturing. The natures of politics were being questioned, as were the arts. These doubts were what drove Morris to achieve arts that were answers to the circumstance of society at this time, a parallel of society and the arts forming politically driven design.
Designers and Craftspeople for the last 100 years have acknowledged the influence that Morris has had on their practices. His writings and lectures have been translated into many languages in his time and ours; they have been highly influential in politics and the arts.
“William Morris’s ideals and principles influenced the Arts and Craft movement… Arts and Crafts emphasized individuality and handcrafted work and stressed the importance of responding to the context of local architectural styles and cultural influences” (Wilhide, 1991 pp. 58)
The Mac
The iMac G3, the computer icon of the 20th century which re-established Apple Mac back into the computer market enabling them once again to compete against IBM and the world of personal computers. It has entered the genre of computers pushing the limits and has broken the traditional generic structure and signification process associated with computers. The iMac has set the pace for all industrial design and has carried the world of computers through to the 21st century. It has acquired cult status and influenced design creating a whole line of spin offs sporting transparent plastic casings.
Traditionally the generic signifiers of computers are the square shape, geometric bulky monitors, oversized keyboards, mouses and a chunky rigid mass for a tower. Before the iMac all computers were grey, most towers had metal casings all had endless amounts of cables connecting the different components. Traditionally these signs signified business, order, seriousness and stability. The colour grey signifies monotony and a rigid atmosphere void of experimentation and creativity. The square a sturdy shape relied upon for stability, which is evident and reinforced in everyday life. Metal is a signifier of sterile and industrial environments commonly found in the business world where the need for computers originated. Jonanthan Ive realised this and created a computer suitable for a wider market, people other than company workers and business professionals. The iMac has broken these codes and traditional generic markers by containing an exterior plastic composition of one third transparent and two thirds translucent colour. Its overall dynamic shape has changed also mimicking the form of a sphere and no longer has a separate hard drive and endless amounts of cables.
The NEC Corporation Ltd, has also moved away from some of the traditional generic markers but still maintain the same signified meanings which can be seen in the new C.A.N. Their focus was on creating an ecologically sound computer system which could be easily updated and rebuilt when new technology was available instead of forcing the customer to buy a completely different new machine and throwing the old machine away. They have streamlined the monitor, keyboard and mouse and abolished cables between the three. Although the visual codes have been altered, the primarily aluminium casing creates signified meaning of industrial, business, stability and control. The only differences to the signified meanings of the traditional generic codes of computers are the minimalist concept of the aesthetics.
IBM has abandoned the traditional generic signifiers of personal computers opting for subliminal organic structure while still maintaining the traditional signified meanings of the first computers. Similar to the C.A.N the IBM Life Network Infoportal utilises a streamlined screen and aluminium casing, it differs in that its keyboard is split in two and attached to either side of the screen which stems from a series of plant like branches. The shapes of the L.N.I are broken down fractionally compared to the C.A.N, but are still a long way from abandoning the traditional signification of computers. Ultimately the signification of the L.N.I is exactly that of the C.A.N with a slightly more organic twist. It too has signified meanings of business, order and rigidness.
The motivation for iMac to reinvent the Apple Mac was to create “a computer that was accessible and less terrifying for people who don’t feel comfortable with technology” Jonathan Ive explained “ We realised that a computers functions change fundamentally from one second to the next. It’s a drawing machine, a database, a digital video-editing suite. So we figured out a metaphor for this instant and constant transformation: translucence” (Farrelly 2000, pp. 87)
The most dominant signifier of the iMac; it’s candy coloured translucent plastic has been the grounds for a cult of spin offs but as Jonathan Ive commented on the imitators “ Some people think in really superficial terms- that the iMac is just about colour, it frustrates me that they’ve missed the point” (Farrelly 2000, pp. 86). The arbitrary sign of the colourful computers presents signified meanings of fun, candy and happiness. The iMac’s look is almost good enough to eat. The colours also present metaphors of children, youth and toys appealing to children and the child in everyone. The translucent plastic also contains a similar metaphorical meaning for youth but achieves this by allowing the receiver to evaluate the computer from a completely different way, inside and out. The signified shape of the iMac takes on a smooth and harmonious form lending to a metaphorical suggestion of calm and relaxation. The translucence adds to the curvaceous form exuding a non-threatening, less mysterious and more inviting atmosphere for users. The bright colours coupled with the smooth curves create a bubble or dome, which represent codes prominent in seventies and eighties. Science-fiction, space exploration, the future and disco were iconic symbols established for these eras and Ive has reinvented them into the design of iMac to mirror the same trend and exploration which has been reopened in the late 20th and early 21st century.
The shape of the iMac can also be metaphorically linked to Apple Mac’s logo and the metaphors hidden within it. Throughout time the apple has been a symbol of temptation originating from the Garden of Eden. Knowledge and food are also aspects signified through the apple. The apple logo contains a bite missing from one section of the apple almost tempting the receiver to take another “byte” from the apple and enhance their knowledge.
The iMac has undoubtedly done for computers what impressionism and cubism has done for painting. It has altered the generic markers and codes pertaining to the genre, which previously have remained unchanged. Companies like IBM and NEC have attempted to alter these markers and on a purely denotative level have achieved this. However on the connotative level the original metaphors have remained unchanged. Apple have created the iMac and reinvented the signification process and metaphors for the genre.
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley has been largely responsible in the direction art has followed in the 20th Century. It is widely agreed that Beardsley’s major contribution has been his adaptation of line and eclecticism of styles. His perception of the world around him and his interpretation and application of line was what set him apart from other artists of his time and influenced modern art indefinitely.
“ His output was phenomenal – poems, stories, articles and nearly five hundred published drawings in a career that lasted barely six years. His energy and originality were both conditioned by his awareness … as well as for his view of the world… ‘ I represent things as I see them,’ he wrote, ‘[and] I fear people appear differently to me than they do to others.’ ”
(Taylor-Martin, 2002)
The erotic elegance and sexual innuendo contained within his work has opened doors and removed moral barriers from art. The influence of his rejection of realism and observation, and movement towards art for its own sake has magnified in modern art and now remains a basic principle. Beardsley was the forefather of montage and merging of different styles. Many people believe that art fell away from realism because of the camera. They are however forgetting that Beardsley was instrumental in peoples’ attention being diverted from Victorian realism and being replaced with approachable and stylized art. Sturgis believes ‘His [Beardsley] best drawings in their elegance and economy of line might have been done yesterday’, referring to Beardsley’s universality and timelessness of his style (Taylor-Martin 2002).
“Beardsley is already a master of historical styles. From then on the key to his achievement is his capacity to become so intimate with a whole panoply of historical styles that he can regard the particulars of a Japanese print or a rococo book illustration as an expression of his own passionately fantastical nature. Beardsley’s for the history of art is fetishistic; but this is a dynamic, creative kind of fetishism. He is enraptured by the relative weights and densities of lines. He loves Japanese lines, medieval lines, rococo lines. And sometimes he lets his lines turn into disappearing act effects, by substituting dots and dashes. He lusts after a whole catalogue of curves and curls.”
(1999, Perl, J.)
Brigid Brophy, Erin Smith and Anna Gruetzner Robins, all share a similar view on Beardsley’s use of line which is comparable to Lord Leighton’s view that Beardsley was ‘the greatest master of line the world has ever known’.
Brophy who has written numerous books and articles on Beardsley expresses in ‘Black and White’ the tensions created and the relationships explored through Beardsley compositions and use of line.
“The tension that dominates all his compositions is entirely in the design and the medium… Out of the given style Beardsley sets his virtuoso line to pluck a pure, self-sufficient image. His sequences of drawings establish series of related images or conduct a single image through metamorphic variations. He is drawing not persons but personages; he is dramatizing not the relationships between personalities but the pure, geometric essence of relationship. He is out to capture sheer tension: tension contained within and summed up by, his always ambivalent images”
(Brophy, 1968, p12)
Erin Smith discusses in ‘The Art of Aubrey Beardsley: A Fin de Siecle Critique of Victorian Society” how Beardsley’s drawings criticized and mocked Victorian Society, and supported the break down of patriarchal ideals.
“Through his bizarre and symbolic style, Beardsley’s drawings blur gender lines and mock male superiority. They also play on Victorian anxieties about sexual expression and men’s fear of female superiority”
(Smith, 2002)
This compares to Brophy’s opinion; who believes that he was the only artist of his time who ‘was never sentimental’, she believes Beardsley to have ‘broken through the snobbery barrier’ and be acknowledge on the merit of his black and white illustrations rather than easel paintings (Brophy, 1968).
Brophy maintains that Beardsley upheld the poster as an argument against the notion that an artwork of worth must be something created in oil and hung on a wall. For this reason Beardsley discarded naturalism and realism and encompassed an art based on decorative composition and image making.
Smith believes that Beardsley’s work was largely concerned with social issues ‘particularly, the inequities and hypocrisies of Victorian society’ (Smith, 2002). She explores how Beardsley’s style grew from Art Nouveau and was closely linked to Symbolism and its rejection of realism in art. Smith articulates that the ultimate development of Art Nouveau occurred when symbolism was conveyed through
“The use of line which became melodious, agitated, undulating flowing, flaming… This aspect of Art Nouveau can be seen in the linear and symbolic qualities of Beardsley’s drawings. Other aspects of Art Nouveau which can be seen in Beardsley’s art include two dimensionality, decorative patterns and exotic influences.”
(Smith, 2002)
Comparatively Anna Gruetzner Robins in ‘Demystifying Aubrey Beardsley, focuses predominantly on the popularity of Japonisme and the influence which Japanese erotica had on Beardsley’s illustrations.
“The visual links with Beardsley’s art are undeniable. The Japanese effect of Beardsley’s exaggerated, stark, calligraphic style with its strong contrasts of black and white.”
(Gruetzener Robins, 1999, pp. 442)
She also discusses how Japanese erotic prints ‘shunga’ not only influenced Beardsley’s style but also his subject matter and portrayals of people. The majority of people who viewed Beardsley’s illustrations had previously never been exposed to such raw and open sexuality and reacted with disgust
“In their minds these images of lustful, masculine female bodies, and soft, effeminate male bodies with their hint of ‘deviant’ sexualities – lesbianism, homoeroticism and masturbation –were disgusting. What could not be stated was described as grotesque and revolting and the product of a ‘diseased imagination’.
(Gruetzner Robins, 1999, pp. 443)
Beardsley’s characters through out his illustrations contained a quality of animal like desire. Robins concludes her essay proposing that the images which Beardsley created flaunted the body and tested the boundaries of the permissible and acceptable in the Victorian society and served as
“a palimpset for changing sexual and cultural mores. If Beardsley is ‘wholly indispensable’ to ‘our full understanding of culture’, as Meier-Graefe thought then there is more work to be done on the way these fears, taboos and fantasies took visual form.”
(Gruetzner Robins, 1999, pp. 443)
The initial reign of Art Nouveau could be described as brief and it is commonly argued that by 1914 it was no longer fashionable. The same has been said about Beardsley and his illustrations. However as an international style in the early 20th century
“the style veered and changed directions; it became an abstract geometrical (Cubism) and functional style. In reality Art Nouveau never died, it only matured and evolved into styles that are popular today.” (Fraser Jenkins, 1998, pp. 49)
Beardsley’s illustrations and use of line have changed 20th century art and influenced a diverse range of artists and art styles. Beardsley received an unexpected emergence as ‘a poster boy for the flower children’ in the 1960’s. Pop artists borrowed and applied Beardsley’s use of line and flat areas of colour to their own art. And as Brophy points out ‘Beardsley’s disposition of white space which inspired the telling placing of Felix the cat on a mainly white screen’.
The Art Nouveau movement and Aubrey Beardsely have undeniably changed the direction of art.
‘Almost a century after the high watermark of the movement’s popularity, we realize its greatest contribution to the fine and practical arts was its lasting liberation of artists and designers from their long captivity by history and tradition that had shackled their creativity for hundreds of years.’
(Smith, 2002 )
