Category: History of Graphic Design

The part of this week’s lecture that particularly interested me was ukiyo-e’s influence on art nouveau posters and even on famous Western artists such as Vincent van Gogh. I really like how ukiyo-e was a product of Japan trying to avoid Western influences by literally closing their country off, but had such a huge impact on Western artists when shipped abroad. I would have thought that developing a unique artistic identity through seclusion would result in the works being perceived by foreigners as weird but perhaps we can explore a little bit more on the influence of ukiyo-e.

Ukiyo-e developed from traditional Japanese picture scrolls, and were made using woodblock prints. Making a print involved the collaboration of 3 specializations, namely the artist, block cutter and printer. I find it regrettable that only artists such as Katsushika Hokusai are remembered for their prints, even though they wouldn’t be possible without the block cutter and printer. Ukiyo-e prints sought to portray fleeting moments in everyday life, and most commonly depicted women using flat patches of colour.

This print by Mary Cassat contains numerous examples of influence from ukiyo-e prints. Firstly the background (both the floor and bed) is made out of flat brown swatches with neither depth nor perspective, and the same can be said about the chair which blends into the wallpaper from afar. The colours used are also as unsaturated as those used in ukiyo-e prints, but what really highlights the Japanese influence is how the faces are portrayed. Both the woman and baby’s eyes are reduced to a thin, curved line which is a unique Asian feature, and the black-white gradient on the woman’s hair also resembles how women’s hair was depicted in ukiyo-e.

The focus on portraying women in art nouveau posters might also have stemmed from ukiyo-e prints, as from my research there were far less depictions of men, or perhaps ukiyo-e artists were better at drawing women. Even when depicting a woman engaging in sexual acts with an octopus, the image (top) still retains a certain amount of integrity and is seen as a piece of art, rather than Picasso’s sketch of the same scene (bottom) which resembles rude graffiti. One might argue that Picasso’s sketch was unfinished but I feel the difference lies in the ukiyo-e’s smooth yet realistic lines and pale tones, which is usually how dreams are perceived. Thus, when viewing the original (which is called The Dream of the Fisherman’s wife) a person is more likely to treat it as a fictional image and hence making the scene a little less distasteful.

The industrial revolution has always been a rather vague term for me as I never knew exactly what it meant, other than a period of progress, but after the last lesson (and a little bit of research on my own) I’ve come to a much better understanding of it. The industrial revolution was arguably the mother of all revolutions, for without it our lives would be vastly different.

To paraphrase the words of youtube smartguy John Green: every waking and sleeping second of your life is due to industrial revolution.

One thing that really surprised me was how the industrial revolution so drastically changed the way people live, for in the past people’s day began when the sun came up and ended before it got too dark to see anymore. Workers essentially followed the sun. After the invention of machines people from the country flocked to the city to work in factories, and their lives were scheduled around the clocktower.

Before the industrial revolution changes in technology were slow, and inventions like the spinning machine sought to make manufacturing processes more efficient, but like everything else it had its fair share of side effects. Working conditions in factories were terrible, wages were extremely low and people lived in slums. Marx spoke out against what he termed as ‘commodity fetishism’, where relationships between people were defined by money or commodities, and William Morris sought to put to an end the stream of ‘vulgar’ objects coming out of factories.

Technology brought along progress, but also a renewed appreciation for the past.

I feel that this is also reflected in our current society, where people are starting to take up interest in technologies of the past such as silkscreen printing and manual letterpress workshops.

I’m not entirely sure why this is so but I guess William Morris was right in saying that if people/designers are too far-removed from the process of creation (by becoming too digitalised and mass-produced) then works/products will begin to look cheap and devoid of any personal touch. I’ve read a couple of books about famous graphic designers and one piece of advice they all seem to give is to keep sketching, and it’s probably because drawing with the hand resembles the creative process more than moving things around a computer screen. The same could be said about the people who take up the activities mentioned above, where they derive more satisfaction in manually setting ink to paper than simply printing copies from a laser printer.

In conclusion, I don’t know what improvements in technology will bring about in the future, but I do know that along with the increased efficiency there will also be more appreciation for how things were done previously. Both of these extremes have their own setbacks. All I can strive for as a designer, as with almost everything else in life, is to use everything in moderation and hopefully produce beautiful things that William Morris would want to own.