Jason Keam: October 2010

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Paul Rand

whimsical and OGs of illustrator and graph artist

Mondrian is part of De stijil.
De Stijl (Dutch pronunciation: [də ˈstɛɪl], English: /də ˈstaɪl/), Dutch for "The Style", also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands.[1][2] De Stijl is also the name of a journal that was published by the Dutch painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931), propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), Vilmos Huszár (1884–1960), and Bart van der Leck (1876–1958), and the architects Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964), Robert van 't Hoff (1887–1979), and J.J.P. Oud (1890–1963). The artistic philosophy that formed a basis for the group's work is known as neoplasticism — the new plastic art (or Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch).
Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white. Indeed, according to the Tate Gallery's online article on neoplasticism, Mondrian himself sets forth these delimitations in his essay 'Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art'. He writes, "... this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour." The Tate article further summarizes that this art allows "only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical line."[3] The Guggenheim Museum's online article on De Stijl summarizes these traits in similar terms: "It [De Stijl] was posited on the fundamental principle of the geometry of the straight line, the square, and the rectangle, combined with a strong asymmetricality; the predominant use of pure primary colors with black and white; and the relationship between positive and negative elements in an arrangement of non-objective forms and lines."

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

V&A Pattern Series II

Last year, the Victoria and Albert Museum dug into its archives of decorative textile patterns and published its first set of pattern books. Next week, the London museum will release the second set in the series: V&A Pattern Series II. Like the first box set—which included four books arranged by theme and titled William Morris, Indian Florals, Digital Pioneers, and The Fifties—the second series features four books available individually or as a group: Owen Jones, Novelty Patterns, Kimonos, andGarden Florals. In addition to page after page of color images of the textile designs, each hardcover book includes a CD of hi-res images of the featured patterns. If you're in the UK, pick up the individual books or sets on the V&A Shop website or, if you're in the U.S., the books will be available on Amazon for $10.36 each or $31.35 per set. Watch our slideshow for a preview of the designs featured in V&A Pattern Series II.