Although artists like Claude Cahun in the early 1900s helped pave the way for later feminist challenges, radical shifts in how women sought to visually represent themselves began to emerge in the 1970s. These shifts were inspired in large part by Laura Mulvey’s 1975 critical essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” This pivotal text in feminist theory utilized psychoanalytic concepts to present what Mulvey viewed as pressing concerns for feminists in cinema: principally, the presentation of feminine imagery as objects for an assumed white, heterosexual male scopophilic gaze. The idea of the gendered gaze had a profound impact on photographic art as well as cinema.

While visual strategies vary significantly from one artist to the next, a primary tool utilized by feminist photographic artists during the postmodern era to address the concerns presented by Mulvey and other theorists has been performative self-portraiture. The Untitled Film Stills series by Cindy Sherman in the late 1970s acts as a direct challenge to female representation in Western media as discussed by Mulvey; through exaggerated performance, Sherman’s self-portraiture exposes femininity as a masquerade of masculine desire. In the following decades, artists such as Rosy Martin address gender representation using a psychoanalytic approach, seeking to visually deconstruct the cultural development process by which women are denied the power of masculinity as well as to challenge the standard representation of the aging female body. Laura Aguilar addresses layered concerns in her work, using the nude female body to confront the male gaze by denying the stereotypical fetishized display of the female form, and simultaneously addressing the normative constructions of whiteness and heterosexuality in the representation of femininity. By examining specific photographs from these artists through the feminist lens established by Mulvey and others, we can evaluate how the ideas of gender representation and the gendered gaze have evolved, and how the artists have attempted to confront these issues through self-portraiture.
To analyze the photographs and series, I will rely on the framework of feminist art theory specifically as it relates to the gaze and female representation. As mentioned, Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” laid the groundwork for the emerging discourse of female representation in the 1970s. Understanding Mulvey’s conclusions about the male scopophilic gaze and the display of women as fetishized objects provides the context from which much of the feminist self-portraiture of the postmodern era arose. These ideas evolved as feminist art theory progressed, and Mulvey herself later clarified some of her previous claims in an essay titled, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun.” I will look not only to Mulvey’s writings, but to those by other influential scholars and theorists to parse the topic into its various elements.

Margaret Olin’s 1996 essay, “Gaze,” helps to define the idea of the gaze both generally and in terms of gender theory. Olin also discusses the strategy employed by many postmodern self-portrait artists of confronting/disrupting the male gaze to shift the perceived patriarchal power structure of artistic representation. Marsha Meskimmon’s books from 1996 and 2003 provide in-depth analysis of female self-portraiture, examining images and their meaning in terms of masculine bias, gender parody, the gaze, sexuality, desire and body image. Lastly, art historian Amelia Jones provides analysis of specific images by Sherman and Aguilar from a feminist perspective of body representation and the gaze in two articles from 2002. Using these sources as my primary framework, I will analyze specific female self-portrait images and series from Sherman, Martin and Aguilar within the larger context of feminist discourse on gender representation and the gendered gaze. Through this contextualized visual analysis, I will identify which visual strategies each artist employed toward addressing these critical concerns.

The Gendered Gaze and Representation

The term “gaze,” as used in art-historical contexts, refers essentially to the act of looking. However, the gaze goes beyond mere opticality, as Margaret Olin explains in her 1996 essay titled, “Gaze.” Olin writes that the gaze implies a sustained, deliberate looking that combines pleasure and knowledge, often placing those two elements within the negative context of power, manipulation, and desire. Olin also places the issues associated with the gaze firmly within the realm of feminist theory, explaining that they were “introduced into the mainstream of contemporary discourse in the contrasting contexts of formalist theories of painting and feminist theories of film,” (1) the latter referring to Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”

In her essay, Mulvey argues that in Freudian terms, women symbolize both a threat to masculinity through their lack of male genitalia (representing potential castration), and also the object of male fetishized sexual desire. The image of woman is thus classified as the “signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as a bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.”(2) In this way, women are the passive and often silent recipients of a scopophilic male gaze that is either active (repressive and controlling) or fetishistic (imaging women as sexual objects).
Mulvey writes:

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is the leit-motif of erotic spectacle… she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire.(3)

A gendered power relationship emerges from these active/passive roles. “Woman is the image; man is the bearer of the look. Power is on his side.”(4) From this power structure the female image in cinema is cast into either a passive and stabilizing identity or an erotic object of sexual stimulation for the male gaze, thereby neutralizing the threat in opposition to masculinity and/or fulfilling male sexual desire.

Among the immediate responses to “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” critics and theorists questioned Mulvey’s assumption of an actual male spectator. What happens to female representation when the physical audience is female? To address these and other concerns, Mulvey wrote an essay titled, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun,” in which she returns to Freudian psychoanalysis to further examine the role of femininity in narrative cinema. Mulvey explains the Fruedian theory that masculinity and femininity emerge from a phase of parallel development for both sexes. Masculinity is normative and active, whereas femininity diverges as opposition through passivity. For women, the development of traditional femininity “leads to increasing repression of ‘the active,’”(5) placing women firmly in a passive and controllable role. Films, Mulvey claims, are created from a male-normative, active point of view. The author further asserts that films structured around an active point of view and masculine scopophilia “allow a woman spectator to rediscover that lost aspect of her sexual identity, the never fully repressed bed-rock of feminine neurosis”(6) by assuming the masculine point of view as a spectator. Therefore, the actual gender of the audience is irrelevant in terms of female representation.

Mulvey goes on to discuss femininity within the context of several specific cinematic narratives. However, insofar as her theories pertain to still photography, those relating to scopophilia, the male-normative gaze, and passive and/or fetishized imaging of femininity are most pertinent.

Olin explains that Mulvey and other feminists posit that once the power of the gaze is exposed, scopophilia is threatened. Olin writes, “In large part the project of Mulvey and other feminists is to awaken in the male voyeur, enjoying the female as spectacle, the shame that comes from discovering someone is watching him.”(7) By directly addressing the viewer, for example, the gaze is confronted and it becomes more difficult to visually exploit the female image. She is no longer silenced, no longer displayed as an object to be looked at.

She is no longer silenced, no longer displayed as an object to be looked at.

Marsha Meskimmon addresses feminist self-portraiture as a means for subverting cultural constructions of female identity and representation in her 1996 book, The Art of Reflection: Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century. The third chapter of Meskimmon’s book deals directly with the self-represented female body, and the challenges that self-portrait artists face when addressing concerns of representation and the gaze. She writes, “By using their own bodies, women artists are able to rid the works of some of the inherent objectification involved in representing others and potentially liberate the images from stereotypical patterns of looking.”(8) Because of the male-normative power structure in representation, women must closely examine their gender representational strategies if they hope to create self-portraits as subjects instead of as objects, Meskimmon argues. Each artist’s strategy attempts in a different way to navigate the treacherous territory of female self-representation – imagery that can so often be re-appropriated to conform to the very desirous gaze the artists wish to challenge.

Meskimmon also points out that, by using the body as subject, female self-portraiture in the postmodern era addresses evolving feminist concerns in a variety of ways. Some artists seek to challenge gender representation by juxtaposing gender definitions and emphasizing slippages between them, or exploring cultural constructions of masculinity, femininity, and androgyny to confront the perceived male/female binarism in representation. Others attempt to redefine femininity and female sexuality in terms other than passive or submissive fulfillment of male desire, sometimes simultaneously addressing issues of female desire or sexual orientation in the process. Still others strive to disrupt the viewer’s expectations about the literal form of the female body, challenging the viewer to rethink cultural and artistic representation of the female body and his or her relationship to such representation.
For all of the artists I will examine, conscious performative representation of their own bodies as object and/or subject is crucial to the meaning of their work and their attempts to address evolving feminist concerns. As Meskimmon writes, “There are no ‘natural’ bodies in representation, there are only constructions of gender and the self… Women attempting to come into representation must negotiate the complex divide between their subject and object roles in visual imagery.” (9)

Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills Series

Figure 1. Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film Still #21, 1978. Gelatin silver print, 7-1/2” x 9-1/2”. Source: the online Brooklyn Museum collection, accessed 04/28/2013.

A woman, clad in a fashionable dress suit and hat and wearing makeup, gazes apprehensively to her left and out of the frame (fig. 1). Her countenance is uneasy, perhaps vulnerable, and there is a tension in her expression as though she has been frozen in mid-thought or mid-action. Though she is photographed at a slightly upward angle, her figure is dwarfed by towering office buildings behind her, accentuating her vulnerability. There is a nagging suspicion we have seen the image somewhere before, and its grayscale cinematic narrative quality lends a certain nostalgia for 1950s or 1960s movies.

Viewed independently, Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #21 invites us to create a narrative for the woman pictured, and to cast her within an imagined role. Perhaps she is a secretary walking to work, and perhaps someone just accosted her on the street. Maybe a leering man just catcalled her, and she is glancing over her shoulder at him nervously. As viewers, we can create any number of scenarios and can place the image firmly within a fictitious film in our imaginations, despite the fact that it is not actually a film still and we have not previously seen the image in any movie. However, when viewed with the other 68 photographs in the Untitled Film Stills series from the late 1970s, layered meanings become apparent that directly address the concerns of Mulvey regarding the gaze and the representation of women within cinema. It is Sherman herself pictured in each image, costumed and reiteratively enacting familiar yet elusive scenes of women as housewives, secretaries, tramps, victims of violence, starlets, fashion models, runaways, college students, or any number of other stereotyped interpretations commonly portrayed in visual media, transforming herself through performativity into a kaleidoscopic parody of femininity and desire. Mulvey writes of the series:
The accoutrements of the feminine struggle to conform to a façade of desirability haunt Sherman’s iconography. Makeup, high heels, back-combed hair, respectable but eroticized clothes are all carefully ‘put on’ and ‘done.’ Sherman, the model, dresses up into character while Sherman, the artist, reveals her character’s masquerade. The juxtaposition begins to refer to a ‘surfaceness,’ so that nostalgia begins to dissolve into unease.(10)

The deliberateness of Sherman’s poses in the Untitled Film Stills, the transparent creation of imagined movie genre scenes, encourages the viewer to fabricate narratives. Sherman presents herself, through cinematic representation of female stereotypes, as the object of the viewer’s gaze. While on the surface Sherman may appear here to enact and fulfill the desire for fetishized femininity sought by the perceived male gaze, the artist assumes a mask in order to be seen and to be photographable, thus posing as an object as a means to be represented as a subject.(11) It is through repetition of this strategy, argues Amelia Jones, that Sherman’s performative self-portraits become a site of “endless negotiation: a screen where subject and object meet.”(12) Furthermore, Jones contends that by using this screen, “the structure of fetishism itself is shown to be not about the insufficiency of femininity but about the ongoing machinations of the male gaze, which operates to mask and disavow heterosexual male lack by projecting it onto the bodies of others.”(13) By confronting and exposing the viewer’s gaze in this way, Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills photographs deny the male scopophilic desire to “freeze the female body as reassuring fetish.”(14) Instead of revealing information about Cindy Sherman as a person or as an artist through self-representation and providing unmediated access for our gaze, her photographs instead reveal the impossibility of such access through imagery.(15)

The viewer’s interpretation of the images, and any satisfaction derived from constructing roles for the characters portrayed by Sherman, are subverted by the realization that Sherman has purposefully cast herself in these roles; she is all of them and none of them at the same time, and we are left wondering who the artist really is. Sherman denies us any knowledge of the artist we might hope to gain from a traditional self-portrait, while simultaneously denying our attempts to fix her characters into stable feminine roles. She thus forces us through her various assumed identities into a position of examining our own motives in looking. This deliberate and repetitive fiction confronts the viewer’s gaze and our complicity in the construction and perpetuation of gender stereotypes in media representation. In Mulvey’s words, “The lure of voyeurism turns around like a trap, and the viewer ends up aware that Sherman, the artist, has set up a machine for making the gaze materialize uncomfortably in alliance with Sherman, the model.”(16) The pose and the image thus are masks that reveal more about the viewer than about the subject.

Clearly, Untitled Film Stills directly addresses the feminist concerns of feminine representation in cinema as presented only a few years prior by Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking critical essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Emerging from a new discourse of the scopophilic male gaze and Freudian theories of fetishized feminine identities, Sherman’s early work seeks to turn feminine stereotypes against the viewer to confront his or her own participation in the continuing objectification of women through media representation.

Rosy Martin

Where Cindy Sherman attacks the cultural representation of women and destabilizes the scopophilic gaze through repetitive parody, the work of British photographer Rosy Martin takes a more purely psychoanalytic approach to challenging gender roles and representation.

In collaboration with Jo Spence in the 1980s, and as a practicing therapist, Martin co-developed the practice of re-enactment phototherapy, which Martin explains:

Exploring the self as a series of fictions, as a web of inter-related stories told to us and about us, we used therapeutic techniques to look behind the ‘screen memories,’ the simplifications and myths of others, too long accepted as our own histories. We began to tell our stories through our therapeutic relationship and together we explored ways of making visible the complexity and contradictions of our own stories from our points of view.(17)

Among these explorations of self and identity are images that challenge cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. Martin’s 1986 collaborative self-portrait, Dapper Daddy (fig. 2) shows Martin dressed in traditionally masculine attire or, more specifically, as her father. Martin masquerades as her father in a form of phototherapy to address her own personal relationship to her father, and the process by which she, as a girl, was denied the opportunity to identify with her father during her formative years. Masquerading as one’s father is, “in psychoanalytic terms, the sign of the masculine position assumed by boys during their development, but denied girls.”(18)

Figure 2. Rosy Martin (in collaboration with Jo Spence), Dapper Daddy, 1986. Source: Meskimmon, The Art of Reflection, 121.

Dapper Daddy challenges the accepted mode of female childhood development and the conditioning of ‘correct’ femininity and masculinity by which women are deprived of power and designated as ‘other’ to the masculine norm. This Freudian theory was a central concern for Mulvey, who posited that this divergent development path was partly responsible for the passivity of femininity and the representation of women as submissive and silent objects of desire. Meskimmon writes that Martin “challenges this simple model of development which assigns women to positions of lack and perpetual ‘penis envy’ and investigates her own relationship to her father as an introjected part of herself, rather than desired ‘other.’”(19) Her masquerade as a masculine subject denies the fetishizing male gaze by visually opposing normative constructions of femininity. Meskimmon further argues that Martin thus undermines phallic power through mimicry, and reveals gender as a mere visual construction which can be manipulated, reconstructed, and appropriated.

Whereas Dapper Daddy implies the psychoanalytic subversion of gender identity and gender conditioning, Martin’s collaboration with Kay Goodridge 14 years later takes a more forceful and literal approach, addressing a broader range of feminist concerns including femininity, desire, and female aging. In After Women Have Lost Their Genital Function (fig. 3), from the Outrageous Agers series, Martin’s middle-aged, naked body is photographed from a low angle, her figure almost completely filling the frame and her face absent. Her hands are deliberately posed, one in a fist near her pubic region (mimicking a classic pudica pose), and the other between her breasts. The background is dark, but Martin’s body is illuminated by projected text. The text is from the writings of Sigmund Freud, and is not entirely visible. The full text, according to Martin, is:

After women have lost their genital function their character often undergoes a peculiar alteration. They become quarrelsome, vexatious and overbearing, petty and stingy; that is to say that they exhibit typically sadistic and anal-erotic traits which they did not possess earlier, during their period of womanliness. Writers of comedy and satirists have in all ages directed their invectives against the ‘old dragon’ into which the charming girl, the loving wife and tender mother have been transformed.(20)

Figure 3. Rosy Martin in collaboration with Kay Goodridge, After Women Have Lost Their Genital Function… from the Outrageous Agers series (2000).
Source: Marsha Meskimmon, Women Making Art, 104.

Martin’s body, far from the classic construction of the female nude in art (passive, compliant, submissive), is also a far cry from the “old dragon” Freud describes. Her figure seems monumental and confrontational. Martin’s fist is clenched in defiance of the words cast across her skin, as well as symbolically defying art-historical constructs of femininity through its visual relationship to the classic pudica pose.(21)

The text serves not only as context for the image, but as its very process of materialization; the form of Martin’s body is revealed only through the contours of the projected text, yet defies its content to redefine Freud’s “womanliness.” In Meskimmon’s words:

These photographs are not of objects, but are the condition by which this text/body exchange can take place. As viewers, we are invited to engage actively with this materialisation, working to read the bodies, envisage the texts and make their interface meaningful… As these words describe and inscribe the sensual surface of a woman’s skin, literally and letterally, they materialize female desire and subjectivity as embodied, sentient knowledge. (22)

After Women Have Lost Their Genital Function and the Outrageous Agers series not only address the cultural representation of aging women, but perform subjective female desire as an active, evolving process, a mutable force that continues throughout a woman’s life.(23) The images seek to redefine the female body as active, powerful and changeable instead of as a mute, fetishized object. The viewer’s gaze is thereby confronted and scopophilia denied through Martin’s unflinching presentation of her own defiant body; the male gaze cannot fix her in a stable or submissive role, nor can it fetishize her as a sexual fantasy.

Laura Aguilar

As feminism has evolved, it has seamlessly melded not only with issues such as aging in Rosy Martin’s work, but with the social-political landscape of sexual orientation, racial minority cultures, and other marginalized groups. Critics of early feminist works noticed a failure to escape a certain conventionality in the reiterative performances of femininity, due in large part to the visibility of the artists’ whiteness and/or heterosexuality.(24) American photographer Laura Aguilar is neither white nor heterosexual, and her work tackles a wide range of issues, including lesbianism, the non-normative body, Latino culture, and the female body as object.

Figure 4. Laura Aguilar, Nature Self-Portrait / No. 4 (1996). Source: Jones, “’Eternal Return’” 969.

Using her own obese figure as subject, Aguilar’s images visually disrupt the viewer’s preconceptions about the art-historical female nude in the landscape, confronting the normative gaze of the viewer in a direct way. Amelia Jones explains that Aguilar’s images operate by “soliciting a spectatorial relation that is highly charged and explicitly reciprocal, thus disallowing the normative (white, male) viewer’s claim to an empowered and one-way gaze that freezes the woman and/or colored body as ‘other.’”(25) By deliberately posing her non-normative body as subject, she denies the viewer’s ability to cast her within a stable, stereotyped feminine role or to fulfill scopophilic desire.

In Nature Self-Portrait / No. 4 (fig. 4), Aguilar lays nude, facing the viewer, at the edge of a small pool. Her eyes are closed, her excessive flesh slouching against the stone beneath her. The scene, although peaceful, is austere and minimal; its black-and-white mood is reminiscent of classic American landscape photography. Aguilar’s ample form comprises the obvious focal point of the composition, presented in duplicate through the pool’s reflection. We are immediately reminded of a range of art-historical references: the reclining and seductive odalisque, the prehistoric fertility symbol of Venus, and the “age-old trope of the female body as landscape to be traversed and conquered by the male gaze.”(26) In turn, each of these references confront the various possibilities of the viewer’s gaze and force us to examine our own normative assumptions.

Aguilar’s suggestive, relaxed nude form invites the male gaze, but at the same time turns the viewer’s gaze back on itself. Scopophilic male desire is immediately denied by the visibility of her ample flesh, which does not fulfill Western notions of the sexually objectified woman; Aguilar is not white, she is not slender, and she is not heterosexual. Her form in contemporary society is considered excessive, obese, even grotesque, something to be hidden. But Aguilar does not hide her body, and appears in the image as comfortable, accepting, at peace. Through this self-determined expression of her non-normative body, the probing male gaze is immediately stymied, as are the grasping gazes of other normative viewers. As Jones notes, “Aguilar’s brown fleshiness, the bulging and dimpled contours of her rotund form, sings a different tune, or a tune of difference: but again, the fact that I experience her in terms of difference simply serves to highlight the fact that my normativity… is otherness in relation to Aguilar’s apparent identifications.”(27) Whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, and thinness become other or lack in relation to Aguilar. As normative gazes grasp desperately and unsuccessfully at the image to fulfill their various desires, lost somewhere in Aguilar’s disorienting abyss of non-normative self-representation, viewers are instead challenged to apply themselves to the image and, failing to do so, see their own normativity refracted back to them.(28)

Jones contends that Aguilar’s layered, sophisticated self-portraits point out all that is “wrong” with the Western art tradition, yet at the same time the artist also sneakily highlights what is “right” about that tradition by using it to challenge normativity.(29) By casting the viewer as other in relation to herself, the normative gaze is not only questioned, but its probing, controlling, powerful aspect is turned against itself.

Conclusion

Through analysis of these images within the framework of feminist discourse, we can clearly see how female self-portraiture in the postmodern era reflects the changing nature of feminist art theory and sought to address its primary concerns. Each artist employs a different visual strategy: Sherman’s performative posing as stereotypical female figures in media culture; Martin’s exploration of gendered identities, aging and desire through psychoanalytic approaches; and Laura Aguilar’s visual disruption of the nude female form to turn the normative viewer’s gaze back upon itself. Each approach confronts the gendered gaze by questioning the viewer’s notions of gender representation and challenges the male, white, heterosexual normative viewpoint from which such representations are often created.

Female artists continue to address feminist concerns through self-portraiture in an ambitious and increasingly multifaceted attempt to question the visual and conceptual structures of art and society, and to reframe discourse around female representation. As Meskimmon concludes:

The sense in which women artists need to confront their potential to be devoured as subjects and reconfigured as objects is a perennial concern of their self-portraiture… To redevelop and reinscribe new definitions of female experience is to change conventions which have upheld binary forms of knowledge and society for centuries. To rethink difference is potentially the challenge of the century. Women’s self-portraiture is just one area in which this challenge has been welcomed. (30)

Perhaps one of the best ways to understand American modernism is thorough some of the works of art that helped define the movement. Paul Strand’s 1923 “Akeley Motion Picture Camera,” Grant Wood’s 1930 “American Gothic,” Diego Rivera’s 1933 “Detroit Industry,” and the 1939 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows all embodied different facets of American modernism.

“Akeley Motion Picture Camera” by Paul Strand, 1923. Image source: Philadephia Museum of Art online.

Paul Strand, a former student of socially progressive photographer Lewis Hine, not only managed to bridge the gap between photography and abstract modern art, but indeed helped shape the modernist aesthetic for decades. Like that of many of his modernist contemporaries, Strand’s work exemplified the quest for an American aesthetic as he “fought to free his art from Europe, from its suaveness and corruption” (3). Strand believed that only through “purity of use,” or “straight photography,” could the full potential of the medium be realized (4). His 1923 photograph “Akeley Motion Picture Camera” (pictured right) embodies not only his personal philosophy of straight photography, but it also illustrates American modernists’ preoccupation with machinery, technology, clarity and balance. This image is concerned with the formal elements of the machine, and venerates what Strand referred to as the new “God the Machine” (4). This image and other similar images by Strand were, simply put, “pure prayers to machinery” (3). Perhaps more importantly, these photographs helped to establish photography as a medium exceptionally suited to address the forms and textures of the modern machine age, (5) and “would lay the groundwork for the mainline modernist aesthetic values of photographic practice for nearly six decades” (4).

“American Gothic” by Grant Wood, 1930. Image source: The Art Institute of Chicago online.

When discussing American modernism, one would be remiss to neglect the artistic counterbalance to urbanity, machines, and technology. American modernism, though primarily engaged with the machine age, also incorporated a more nostalgic rural narrative. The Regionalists, spearheaded by painters Thomas Hart Benton, John Stuart Curry, and Grant Wood, sought to define American modernism, in contrast to the European avant-garde, through “a far more expansive aesthetic agenda of cultural nationalism grounded in a combination of modern art forms and American Scene subjects” (2). This endeavor arose partially from a passion for Americana, and partly from “a contempt for the foreign artist and his influence” (1). A prime example of Regionalist art, and also the most popular painting of the 20^th century in America, is Wood’s “American Gothic” (pictured left). Wood composed a formal portrait of his sister and their dentist, dressed as a farmer and his spinster daughter. The ambiguities of this painting have long been debated; some argue that the painting is a satirical jab at rural narrow-mindedness, while others interpret the painting as a reverent depiction of the modesty and work ethic of Midwestern rural culture (6). Wood himself consistently proclaimed that it represented “his sincere belief in the values of hearth and home” (7). This nostalgia for America’s rural past was a distinct element of American modernism, negating the belief that modernism was tied solely to urban modernity. However, Regionalist art like “American Gothic” did not necessarily advocate a return to pre-industrialized America, but instead espoused a path of modernization tempered by older American values of individualism, autonomy, and community in the face of an increasingly mechanized modern world (Doss, 112).

Another artist concerned with maintaining individualism, primarily for the worker, was Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Despite the prevailing xenophobia of the Regionalists and many Americans after World War I, there were indeed many immigrant artists playing a major role in the evolution of American modernism. Rivera was commissioned by the Detroit Institute of Arts to paint a mural (pictured right) depicting the Ford automobile assembly plant, the Rouge,

The north wall of Diego Rivera’s ‘Detroit Industry’ mural, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Image source: The Wall Street Journal online.

which pioneered the mass-production assembly line. Rivera, a Marxist who was deeply concerned with the plight of the proletariat, used the opportunity to extol the power of the worker, and in doing so he “interrogated America’s uncritical romance with industry by stressing the interdependence of man and machine” (2) that was so prevalent in modern life. Workers in the mural seem to fade into the obscurity of an oppressive mechanized system of production, their forms anonymous within the elaborately layered industrial imagery. Rivera’s mural warned against the dangers of worshipping the “’God-Objective of Mass Production’” (2) at the expense of the individual worker, and this narrative helped to inform yet another facet of American modernism; one which sought to maintain individuality and advocate for the working class, in the tradition of earlier social progressives such as Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis.

Perhaps the most dominant theme of American modernism was the primacy of consumer culture, as developed by the very system of mass production that Rivera criticized. In fact, the definition of what it meant to be modern in America became increasingly synonymous with conspicuous consumption. Advertisers and corporate capitalists drove an image of modernity in

World’s Fair complex, Flushing Meadows, NY – 1939. Image source: Wired.com.

which “’new’ products were identified as ‘modern’, and to be a modern American was to perpetually consume the latest fads and fashions” (2). Nowhere was this more evident than at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York (pictured left). The Fair’s central structures – the Trylon and Perisphere – were decidedly modern constructions, perhaps crafted after a Bauhaus or Constructivist aesthetic, reductive in their simple geometric forms. But beyond architectural statements, these structures and other exhibits were used to peddle a vision of modernism as tied not only to urbanization, industrialization, and technology, but also to consumption and capitalism. The Fair unapologetically sought to transform visitors into “eager participants in a modernist /consumerist future” (8). Various pavilions touted a modern vision of the future in which success comes primarily in the form of mass-produced material goods. The moral message of the 1939 World’s Fair, essentially, “was only a slight vulgarization of that quintessentially North American melding of piety and capitalist progress… Things, which come to anyone who works hard, are their own reward and contain within their shining palpability a gleam akin to the radiance that used to emanate from the locus of virtue” (8). Here, instead of merely venerating the God of Machine, the grandiose Fair complex also stood as a temple to the God of Consumerism, a deity that played an integral role in the evolution of American modernism.

American modernism was clearly multi-faceted, and its self-conscious aim to distinguish itself from the aesthetics of Europe made it both unique and complex. Best viewed through the lens of the works it produced, the American modernist movement simultaneously embraced: the machine age through images such as Paul Strand’s 1923 “Akeley Motion Picture Camera”; isolationist American nostalgia in Regionalist works such as Grant Wood’s 1930 “American Gothic”; concerns about maintaining individualism in the face of mechanized modernity in Diego Rivera’s 1933 mural “Detroit Industry”; and consumer capitalism at the 1939 World’s Fair. While much of the social upheaval of the modernist era has subsided, the artistic and cultural legacy persists. Indeed, the mechanized, automobile-dominated, consumerist “World of Tomorrow” promoted at Flushing Meadows more than 70 years ago was, in hindsight, unsettlingly accurate.

TEXT SOURCES:

(1) Hills, Patricia. Modern Art in the USA. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. Print.

(2) Doss, Erika. Twentieth-Century American Art. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002. Print.

(3) Washington Post. “Art; Paul Strand: The Photographer’s Spent Flash.” The Washington Post. (December 5, 1990, Wednesday, Final Edition ): 1797 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2012/05/08.

(4) Hirsch, Robert. Seizing the Light: A History of Photography. McGraw-Hill, 1999. Print.

(5) Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography. 4^th ed. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2007. Print.

(6) Burgher, Elijah. “Grant Wood’s American Gothic.” School Arts Oct. 2005: 35+. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. Date Accessed: 2012/05/08.

(7) Jones, Jonathan. “American Gothic, Grant Wood (1930)” The Guardian. (17 May 17, 2002, Friday edition). Web. Date Accessed: 2012/05/08.

(8) Dault, Gary Michael. “Nostalgia for the Future: Tomorrow is 50 Years Old.” Canadian Art, Vol. 6 #4, (December 1989): 1,442 words. The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art. Web. Date Accessed: 2012/05/08.

IMAGE LINKS:

“Akeley Motion Picture Camera” by Paul Strand, 1923. Image source: Philadephia Museum of Art online.

“American Gothic” by Grant Wood, 1930. Image source: The Art Institute of Chicago online.

The north wall of Diego Rivera’s ‘Detroit Industry’ mural, at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Image source: The Wall Street Journal online.

World’s Fair complex, Flushing Meadows, NY – 1939. Image source: Wired.com.

1918 • CWR Nevinson - One of the more progressive designs of the British WWI propaganda campaigns, this poster displays strong Vorticist elements in it typography and diagonal bayonets against the sky (3). The original design was a self-promotional poster made by the artist and later commandeered by war poster artists for propaganda purposes.

The poster holds an unassuming yet highly impactful place in the history of art and design. Created as public display ephemera for a variety of purposes – from product advertising to political campaigning – posters have long provided an economical and visually powerful mode of public communication.

Although poster design was already somewhat recognized within the art world of the early 1900s, its importance as a political tool was established by the ubiquitous government-sponsored poster art of the two World Wars. These posters, both in America and abroad, served a unique and challenging purpose, to “make coherent and acceptable a basically incoherent and irrational ordeal of killing, suffering and destruction that violates every accepted principle of morality and decent living” (1). To do this successfully required refined artistic skill and ingenuity from a broad range of artists.

War posters of all countries and eras are remarkably similar in their foundations, both ideological and iconographical. These posters invariably seek to: improve national morale; urge citizens to enlist or provide financial support for the war; encourage frugality and productivity among the populace at home; promote conservation of resources to provide material support to the war; and discourage the enemy whenever possible (1).

Specific visual devices used to accomplish these goals during and immediately following WWI included: images and/or quotations from beloved national leaders; utilization of culture-specific emotive symbols; memorable slogans; reference to cultural myths and metaphors; semiotic illustration; and dehumanization of the enemy (1). Although the underlying principles were essentially the same, specific styles and aesthetics varied greatly from country to country.

The War to End All Wars

When WWI broke out in Europe in August 1914, the involved powers all expected a brief conflict, a decisive victory, and that the war would “be over by Christmas” (2). Instead, a stalemate ensued, followed by four years of horrific carnage in the nearly immobile trenches at the front lines. To sustain and supply such a prolonged war effort, governments enlisted the efforts of illustrators and artists to create posters that could communicate efficiently to a worried and sometimes skeptical public. At this point, the word “propaganda” actually had a positive implication of public information, as opposed to the negative association with falsehood and deception that arose with the Nazis in WWII (2). The posters produced in the propaganda effort during WWI set a benchmark for the evolving advertising industry; first, it provided a memorable example of the organizing power of advertising, and secondly it set the standard of psychological advertising, using powerful subconscious emotive imagery to compel people to action (3). The propaganda posters of WWI, as well as some of the posters created in fragile new countries immediately following the war, are both beautiful and impactful, forever leaving their mark on the world of art and design.

Propaganda in Europe and the British Empire

1919 • Heinz Fuchs – This striking design features a unique incorporation of “popular horror-show imagery into an Expressionist and Futurist space” as well as a return to Latin typography (4). This aesthetic would have been considered quite cutting-edge for its time, with the use of strong diagonal composition and violent colors. Translated, the text reads, “Workers. Famine. Death Is Approaching. Strike Destroys. Work Nourishes. Do Your Duty. Work.” (9). This poster was designed to encourage productivity among the workers of the fragile new German republic after the war, and to warn them of the dangers of striking.

European WWI posters generally reflected the international art movements of the time. Art Nouveau lingered in many designs, but had been abandoned by most artists in favor of post-impressionism and, less commonly, the more experimental styles of cubism and futurism (3).

In France, however, commercial design had little impact on war poster design. French poster artists were mid-career, classically trained painters, using high art conventions and illustration styles derived from eighteenth-century classicism and nineteenth-century realism (4). As a result, the aesthetic of French posters did not generally reflect the progressive avant-garde, and instead relied on the visual conventions of classical painting. French typography of the time, though not exceptional, was skillful and professional, and most poster designs displayed mastery of lithographic technique (3).

German poster design probably displayed the most progressive artistic elements of all European WWI posters, both in terms of imagery and typography. The provisional socialist government of Germany decided that its people would be most persuaded by avant-garde design, and many German posters utilized expressionist and futurist visuals (4), as illustrated right. Furthermore, German and Austrio-Hungarian design displayed the most distinguished typography among WWI posters, presumably because several of their prominent poster designers were also accomplished typographers (3).

It is also worth noting that while America, France, and Great Britain commonly used dehumanizing, violent imagery to incite anger and hatred against the enemy, Austria-Hungary and Germany generally refrained from such tactics during WWI (3).

In the British Empire, the WWI propaganda campaign started under the auspices of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee and initially struck an advertorial tone, drawing upon fine art style and utilizing optimistic nationalist imagery to appeal to the moral virtues of potential recruits; one of the most powerful calls for men to enlist involved a sense of fighting a “just war” against an immoral opponent (4).

Unknown • 1915 – This poster, titled “Step Into Your Place,” demonstrated the directness – and evasiveness – of the British recruitment campaign. The line of men transitions from a variety of civilian positions in the foreground, into a seamless line of uniformed military in the background. The design carefully avoids portraying military life as gruesome or violent, and instead depicts an orderly procession. At the same time, the design directly addresses the viewer, leaving visual space for him to insert himself into the scene, and similarly into the military ranks.

Unlike WWII, involvement in which presented a clear moral imperative for the Allied powers, the complex national motivations for military action in WWI were more ambiguous. Thus a need arose for a rousing, albeit largely unsuccessful, recruiting effort in Britain.

Although lacking any discernible overarching strategy, the British recruitment posters did employ similar persuasive elements throughout the campaign, including: an absence of graphic violence (with a couple notable exceptions of posters in British colonies overseas); portrayal of military life as exciting, fulfilling and secure; utilizing open visual space for the viewer to insert himself into the scene, as pictured left; and the use of shame or flattery (4).

Other WWI posters in Britain, like in most of the warring countries, urged citizens to support the war effort at home through frugality, productivity, and investment in war savings certificates. To generalize, British WWI posters used direct, immediate, and impactful designs. Although a handful of artists distinguished themselves with the use of modern art technique, as pictured left, most British posters struck an advertorial tone, utilizing a naturalistic style coupled with the visual rhetoric of exaggeration and simplification (4).Typography was generally poor, as type choices were often left to the printers, and designers’ choices were regularly overruled (3).

Propaganda in the Soviet Union

1919 •El Lissitzky - This piece is titled “Beat Back the Whites with the Red Wedge,” and is probably the most famous single design by Lissitzky. Lissitzky’s involvement with revolutionary art was instigated by his association with Kazimir Malevich, who is credited with creating the geometric visual system of Suprematism. Lissitzky was immediately concerned with adapting the visual language of Suprematism to fit political purposes. In this particular piece, Lissitzky utilized a geometric motif of a red triangle (representing the Bolsheviks) cutting into a white circle (representing the Confederation of Counter-Revolutionary Forces) to make a Suprematist propaganda poster for the Revolutionary War effort (6). Lissitzky and Suprematism had a profound effect on the development of Constructivism, and subsequently the Bauhaus and de Stijl movements.

Russia entered the war in 1914 in response to Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia after the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Most of the propaganda developed by the Russian government in support of WWI was traditional and utilized fine art conventions.

However, Russia failed to remain involved in WWI until its conclusion, due primarily to internal unrest. As the Tsar remained at the front, Empress Alexandra’s incompetent governance led to growing protests in Russian cities.

In March 1917, demonstrations in Petrograd culminated a political coup by the Bolsheviks and the creation of a provisional government which shared power with the Soviet socialists. This created confusion and chaos in Russia and on the war front. The military’s effectiveness suffered as a result, and Russia’s involvement in WWI became increasingly unpopular among the citizenry. In 1918, Russia withdrew from WWI by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

These political and social developments were significant to the art and design world because the most notable Russian design of the WWI era was created not in support of WWI itself, but in response to the Russian Revolution and internal unrest. The image shown above demonstrates the beginnings of Russian Constructivism, which combined the formal principles of Suprematism with a proactive orientation toward production (5). The resulting aesthetic, visually emphasizing strong diagonal composition, flat color planes, and geometric design elements, later influenced German De Stijl and Bauhaus designs. A result of the movement’s revolutionary beginnings, Constructivism embodied a strong belief in design as a force of social change, and designs often blurred the line between fine art and applied art (5).

Propaganda in the United States

1915 • Fred Spears – This poster was created after the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat attack, which was one of the primary reasons behind America’s involvement in WWI. Spear’s poster design recalls the drowning of a mother and child during this incident, and without the recent memory of such occasion combined with the word ‘Enlist,’ this dreamlike painting of two submersed human figures would arouse no strong emotional response (3).

The United States was a latecomer to the Great War in 1917. Public support for involvement in a complex foreign war was fragile at best, and America remained neutral for the first three years of war. Americans watched with a mixture of shock and bittersweet satisfaction as the autocratic imperial powers of Europe set upon each other with brutal force in the trenches and open seas (7). Germany’s decision to use unrestricted submarine warfare, as well as the sinking of the British ship the Lusitania which killed 128 Americans, played a major role in Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the war, and a propaganda campaign ensued to prepare the army – and the nation – for war.

American art up until that point had remained largely uninfluenced by the European avant-garde movements, and instead adhered largely to a painterly, naturalistic aesthetic as pictured left (7). In fact, the sentiment toward progressive European movements such as Dada, Cubism, and Futurism was decidedly negative; Theodore Roosevelt referred to modernist artists as “the lunatic fringe,” and an art critic for the New York Herald wrote, “The United States is invaded by aliens, thousands of whom constitute so many perils to the health of the body politic. Modernism is of precisely the same heterogeneous alien origin and is imperiling the republic of art in the same way” (7).

With the exception of a few posters that hinted at Art Nouveau, most American WWI posters were illustrative and relied on traditional painting as a visual model (7). Images of heroism and bravery were coupled with hand-drawn lettering in a humanist mode, and portrayed the war as a battle between democracy and the forces of destruction (5).

1917 • James Montgomery Flagg – This poster is the best-known American poster of all time, and was designed by Flagg as a self-portrait of himself as the iconic Uncle Sam. The idea was taken from a British recruitment poster by Alfred Lee, which depicts Lord Kitchener urging Britons to enlist (pictured left). It is estimated that over five million copies of the American version have been printed since its creation, and the image is repurposed and given new symbolic meaning over time (3). The poster takes a direct approach to the viewer, imploring him to enlist in the military with a pointing finger and strong typographical features.

Like in Europe, American propaganda served several purposes in WWI: to urge men to enlist, to encourage frugality and the preservation of resources for the war, and to convince viewers to purchase war bonds.

Probably the most famous American poster design of all time, pictured above, was a recruitment poster based on a previous British design. Its creator, James Montgomery Flagg, later recounted his participation in the propaganda campaign with some melancholy, stating, “A number of us who were too old or too scared to fight prostituted our talents by making posters inciting a large mob of young men who had never done anything to us to hop over and get shot at… We sold the war to youth” (8).

Works Cited

1914 • Alfred Lee

1. Crawford,  Anthony R. ed. Posters of World War I and World War II in the George C. Marshall Research Foundation. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1979. Print.
2. Manion, Mary. “World War I poster art rooted in propaganda.” Antique Trader Weekly 16 June 2010: 11+. General OneFile. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.
3. Darracott, Joseph. ed. The First World War in Posters. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1974. Print.
4. Aulich, Jim and John Hewitt. Seduction or Instruction? First World War Posters in Britain and Europe. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2007. Print.
5. Drucker, Johanna and Emily McVarish. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2008. Print.
6. Oxford University Press. “El Lissitzky.” MoMA Collection: Art Terms. Museum of Modern Art.  Web. 11 November, 2011.
7. Rawls, Walton. Wake Up, America! World War I and the American Poster. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. Print.
8. Tungate, Mark. Adland: a Global History of Advertising. London/Philadelphia: Kogan Page Limited, 2007. Print.
9. Museum of Modern Art. “Heinz Fuchs.” MoMA Collection: German Expressionism. Web. 11 November, 2011.

1934 • Richard Floethe – Floethe’s designs strongly reflect his Bauhaus training in such elements as the Stencil typeface shown here, as well as the geometric abstraction and simplification of form. This poster also clearly displays a surrealist influence, and is indicative of Floethe’s willingness to explore creative styles and colors. (2)

These posters were in many ways unlikely candidates for noteworthy design. Created primarily to provide work for unemployed artists, many feared government sponsorship of art would stifle creativity. Furthermore, American design lacked a unified style at the time, instead borrowing aesthetics from European movements.

However, what emerged from the WPA poster division was both creative and innovative, producing a body of poster art described at the time as “more vital than any this country has ever known.” (2,9)

The Federal Art Project + the Poster Division

The WPA was the largest agency in Roosevelt’s New Deal, and it put unemployed artists to work through the Federal Art Project (FAP). As described by WPA official Bruce McClure in a 1935 New York Times article, the primary goal of the FAP was to “provide useful work at their usual occupations for the thousands of writers, artists, musicians and actors throughout the country who have been forced to accept public relief and whose creative gifts have suffered from unemployment.” (8)

But the creation of the FAP also arose from a democratic philosophy that the spiritual and aesthetic pleasures of art should be made available not only to the privileged elite, but to the masses. McClure expounded upon this goal in his article, writing that the FAP would serve also to “provide encouragement to the free growth of artistic expression and… make the finest products of our native artistic genius available to every one.” (2, 8 )

Furthermore, McClure wrote that the FAP projects were “planned in the belief that the artist’s contribution to a ‘full and abundant life’ for the American people is both vital and significant and that a discriminating and sympathetic public is necessary to the development of a national art.” Clearly, the motivation behind the FAP extended beyond mere employment to a deeply held philosophy about the role of art in American society. (8)

In 1935, the poster division of the FAP was born in New York City, which was widely regarded as the artistic center of the United States. The division was at first a small operation comprised of painters who painstakingly recreated posters by hand, and its scope was limited by the small output possible through such means. However, the application of commercial silkscreening processes to poster production, called serigraphy (see sidebar), allowed the division to grow rapidly. By 1938, poster division branches had been established in eighteen states. (2, 6)

The services of FAP poster artists were made available to any government agency requiring public display art. Posters were recognized not only as a powerful means of communication between government and citizenry, but also as a means of visually enriching the public sphere. Between 1935 and 1942, the agency’s poster division produced approximately two million printed posters based on over thirty-five thousand designs. The poster division was charged with producing posters to promote a wide range of programs, activities, and behaviors that the Roosevelt administration believed were important, including but not limited to: community involvement, education, health and hygiene, a strong work ethic, cultural experiences, art exhibits, sports, domestic travel, and conservation of natural resources. (2, 4, 6)

Many of the designs were both aesthetically powerful and formally innovative. Concerns that government oversight would stifle creativity quickly dissolved as artists explored new territory and produced groundbreaking designs. Freed from the constraints of a sales-driven commercial structure, artists experienced an unprecedented creative freedom within the poster divisions to experiment with typography, colors, visual styles and techniques. This freedom was due in part to the experimental and progressive nature of the New Deal government itself, and in part also to the leadership of encouraging FAP administrators. (2, 6, 9)

Richard Floethe, an administrator for the New York poster division beginning in 1936, was especially instrumental in fostering an atmosphere of adventurous creative experimentation and collaboration among poster artists. A graduate of the Bauhaus, Floethe brought many of its visual innovations to the FAP poster division, and as a result, the poster artists were in many ways at the forefront of incorporating various progressive international design strategies. (2, 6)

The poster division artists utilized concepts from European modernism and combined them with the two major trends in American art at the time; social consciousness and “American Scene” regionalism and agrarianism. Their artwork exhibited elements of surrealism, naturalism, cubism, collage, and elements from other modern art movements. (9)

Charles Verschuuren • 1939 – This poster, and many others like it, visualized the taboo subject of venereal disease without blanching at the word “syphilis.” This is indicative of the underlying theme of responsibility both of the WPA and the poster division. This poster also displays a streamlined Art Deco aesthetic. (2, 5)

Steven Heller wrote of the posters’ impact on American design styles, “America never had a truly national design style… but the W.P.A. posters came close to imposing an aesthetic — an amalgam of modernistic, classical and even frontier typefaces and flat, sometimes abstract but mostly representational artwork.” (5)

Author and professor Stephen Duncombe claimed the posters obtained their own aesthetic when he wrote,  “…also evident is the development of a unique American poster aesthetic, the bold strokes of modernist design softened with an almost nostalgic depiction of the people and places of the United States.” (4)

The See America Campaign

One of the distinctive campaigns produced by the FAP poster division was the “See America” campaign. During a time when most Americans could not afford to travel abroad and much of Europe and Asia were embroiled in war, The U.S. Travel Bureau enlisted the help of FAP poster division artists to encourage domestic tourism.

Through their choices of imagery, color, composition, and type, the poster artists revealed a deep appreciation for the diverse American landscape. Furthermore, the posters encapsulated a strong theme underlying many of the FAP posters: the display of landscapes of grandiose proportions and immense physical challenge reaffirms America as a land of personal opportunity. More than that, the posters urged Americans to rediscover the landscape as a catalyst for much-needed spiritual rebirth in a time of economic crisis. (2)

These posters also held social and racial significance, reflecting a democratic optimism and nostalgia for a perceived authenticity in history that was rooted in Native American and African American tradition. Cory Pillen wrote that the See America posters “equated tourism with a knowledge of the nation that extends beyond the topography of the land.” (10)

Alexander Dux • 1939 – In this poster the scene appears to extend beyond the edges of the poster, accentuating grandeur of the landscape. The figures appear small in relation to the natural elements, which is enhanced with the contrasting shades of blue. This positioning underscores the theme of Americans’ pioneering spirit and history. Like many of the posters in this series, the abbreviated elements in this artwork are easily bridged with rich colors, alluding to a naturalistic style. (2, 10)

Illustrating historical sites, popular cultural attractions, and natural landmarks, the series links national identity with a shared history as well as geography. In promoting destinations that represented the nation’s past and present, the collection exemplifies the depression era search for a usable past that could ameliorate social tensions and unite Americans by recovering and affirming national values.” Pillen explained further that many Americans “sought an alternative to the fragmentation and seemingly inauthentic experience of modern industrial life,” and strove to fulfill this longing by embracing what they viewed as a more authentic and primitive past. The “See America” posters tapped into this desire with imagery of teepees in Montana and other culturally suggestive icons. (10)

The Fate of the WPA Posters

By the end of the 1930s, many WPA projects had lost their funding, and their scope was greatly diminished. The FAP poster division remained alive only because it had been granted city sponsorship in New York under Mayor LaGuardia. In 1942, as the U.S. entered WWII, the FAP was transferred to the Department of Defense and became the Graphics Section of the War Services Division. The federal artists who remained produced some posters for the department, but their responsibilities expanded to include the creation of mess hall menus, window displays, camp insignia and other war-related materials. The aesthetic became rougher, and the products less well-designed. (2)

The WPA/FAP posters were, by nature, ephemeral. They were created to be displayed, consumed by the public, and subsequently torn down. And so they were. Out of the thirty-five thousand original designs, only about 2,000 have been preserved. You can view them at the Library of Congress website.

Perhaps these designs were discarded because of the lowly status of WPA art in general, or because of the belief that posters and other ephemera could not be classified among the ranks of art worth preserving. Whatever the reason for their relative obscurity, it is clear that these posters represent an important part of our national art heritage and are worthy of independent examination and appreciation. The posters demonstrated excellent design and craftsmanship, and facilitated important technical innovations. They were the product of talented and skilled artists working in a uniquely progressive and collaborative environment, providing occupation for influential artists who struggled in the Depression era. These posters not only provided a public service in raising awareness about social issues, but broadened public understanding of modern art principles and aesthetic. (2, 6)

Works Cited

1. Carter, Ennis. Posters for the People: Art of the WPA. Philadelphia: Quirk, 2008. Print.

2. DeNoon, Christopher. Posters of the WPA. Los Angeles: The Wheatley Press, 1987. Print.

3. Drucker, Johanna and Emily McVarish. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2008. Print.

4. Duncombe, Stephen. “Posters for the People: Art of the WPA.” Afterimage Jan.-Feb. 2009: 42. General Reference Center GOLD. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.

5. Heller, Steven. “Visuals: Other Worlds.” The New York Times Book Review 7 Dec. 2008: 34(L). General OneFile. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.

6. Heyman, Therese Thau. Posters American Style. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998. Print.

7. Library of Congress. “By the People, For the People: Posters of WPA.” Prints and Photographs Division website. Web. 18 Oct 2011.

8. McClure, Bruce. “FEDERAL RELIEF AIDS IN SERVICE OF ARTS.” New York Times (1923-Current file) Sep. 15, 1935. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 20 Oct. 2011.

9. McElvaine, Robert S. “Posters of the WPA.” Washington Monthly May 1988: 55+. InfoTrac Tourism, Hospitality & Leisure. Web. 19 Oct. 2011.

10. Pillen, Cory. “See America: WPA Posters and the Mapping of a New Deal Democracy.” Journal of American Culture 31.1 (2008): 49-65. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.

When Steven Heller asked philosopher Edward Tenner what he considered the most significant graphic design of the past century, Tenner responded, “For lasting and positive influence, I doubt anything beats the London Transport’s ensemble of structures, signs, posters, publications, and maps… It reflected an ideal of ultrarational, benignly hegemonic public authority… The basics of the design have remained, but the system has not kept up, even if its great heritage has been largely preserved” (1).

The Tube Map

Perhaps the most iconic and famous single design piece from the London Underground collection is the map design produced by Henry C. Beck in 1931, and published in 1933. This map, which helped to shape information design for decades to come, has been called “a breakthrough,” “revolutionary” and even “the prototype of the modern map” (2).

As the London railway system grew in the 1920s, the geographically accurate maps of the time became more and more cluttered with stops and lines, confusing passengers in a subterranean system devoid of surface landmarks. Beck, who was an electrical draftsman for the Underground, envisioned a diagrammatic map of the complex maze of rail lines similar to an electrical chart. To accomplish this, he would need to dispose of a certain level of geographic accuracy. In other words, Beck “traded geographical verisimilitude for topographical simplicity and followed a rigid formula: lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or on 45-degree angles” (3). Additionally, Beck represented the stations at an equal distance from one another on the map, irrespective of the actual geographic distances.

More importantly, Beck’s map introduced a new way of visually interpreting and expressing space, reorganizing geography to conform to visual priorities instead of to literal topography (2). The simplicity of this reorganization provided an unprecedented level of clarity and logic for public consumption because it reflected a cultural and technological reality which rendered previous notions of time and space anachronistic. This clarity was not dependent on an innate understanding of graphic design, nor on the ability of readers to visualize accurate geography; it relied instead on a shared understanding of modernity, urbanity and visual hierarchies. The map codified and standardized a system of connections and points in space, without regard to the temporal relationships between them. The geometric design served to “overlay everyday life with modernism’s concept of space and time as malleable and serviceable” (2).

This approach was indeed revolutionary. In fact, it was so radical that the London Underground rejected Beck’s initial design, claiming it would be confusing and incomprehensible to the public. When he resubmitted the design more than a year later, the Underground agreed to a trial printing, which they distributed to the public to elicit feedback. To their surprise, the diagrammatic map was an overwhelming success (2). The map was printed and universally distributed in 1933.

The original map is widely viewed as a seminal work in both cartography and graphic design (2). Perhaps indeed the prototype of the modern map, Beck’s design influence can be seen in transport systems across the globe. “All subway maps since, from Cologne to Tokyo to Washington, D.C., have owed a debt to Beck’s design” (3).

Henry Beck’s Legacy – The above modern transit maps (left to right: Paris, Madrid) illustrate the enduring impact of Beck’s original London Underground map design. All of these maps, though they bear little to no resemblance to the surface geography or landmarks of the cities, are easy to comprehend because they employ the same basic geometry and interpretation of space that Henry Beck utilized.

Johnston Typeface

In 1916, London Underground’s managing director, Frank Pick, commissioned calligrapher Edward Johnston to design a typeface for the transport company as part of an effort to strengthen the Underground’s corporate identity. Over the next two years, Johnston worked to develop a typeface that embodied Pick’s demands for “the grandeur and simplicity of classical forms – easy to read, individual, and eloquent in spirit” (4).

The resulting alphabet design, pictured right, was both elegant and innovative. Incorporating a perfect circle as its basis, the Johnston Underground (and later New Johnston) typeface “became known as the first humanistic sans-serif, in direct contrast to the ubiquitous, over-weight, heavyhanded, tortured-looking Victorian grotesque sans” (5).

Edward Johnston’s calligraphic influence can been seen in many of the lowercase letters, such as the curved tail on the “l” and the diamond-shaped dots on the “i” and “j” characters. Pick was pleased, and the typeface became the official type of the London Underground. It was incorporated into the roundel logo, and by the mid-1930s helped make the Underground’s corporate identity world-famous (5).

Johnston had durable influence, forever changing the evolution of 20th Century type design (4). Most notably, Eric Gill created the now-ubiquitous Gill Sans based on the Johnston typeface in the late 1920s (6). The typeface provided the basis for the humanist family of sans-serif fonts, elegant in their simplicity. Even today, the original Johnston typeface “still strikes an efficient modern note amidst the dirt and gloom” (7) of the typographic landscape.

The Art of Transportation • 1908 – 1940

The third groundbreaking element of the London Underground’s graphics campaign was a series of posters to advertise the public transport system and convey messages to its ridership. But beyond the surface-level messages was a deeper mission of art democratization, or “art for the people” (4). American designer J. J. Sedelmaier wrote of the posters, “I can’t think of a more substantial and influential collection of posters designed under one company’s umbrella than the posters of the London Underground” (8).

Poster • 1928 – This poster was designed by Clive Gardiner, and clearly reflects Post-Impressionist style, as well as Cubist influences. Poster designs such as this were very controversial.

To understand how these posters came to exist, we must first understand something of the patron who commissioned them. Frank Pick became the publicity director for the Underground Group in 1908. He spent the next few decades tirelessly working to renovate the corporation’s identity and by 1933 he was the first CEO of the consolidated London Transport (9).  Pick’s commitment to high standards of visual design in corporate graphics, and what he called “fitness for purpose” in the applied arts, became embedded in the corporate ideology of London Transport (9). He believed firmly in aesthetic cohesion, which eventually extended beyond print graphics to station architecture, lighting, and systems design for London Transport (4).

Pick began commissioning poster art in 1908 from both established and new artists. At the time, the existing legacy of poster design was largely Edwardian; type-dominant layout often designed by printers (4). But Pick saw the potential for Underground posters to transcend mere utility.

The early posters reflected the Arts and Crafts movement, and caused little controversy. However, by the mid-1910s, the posters began to push the boundaries of traditional art, with flat color images of nature that were considered radical and thoroughly unnatural (4). During the years of WWI, a series of bold posters served both as war recruitment advertisements and PR for London Transport. After the war, Pick’s choices in artists and style for the posters became bolder and more radical; enough so that the following letter was written to the London Mercury in 1921:

“Sirs:

Impossible ducks, futurist trees, vermillion grass and such like absurdities may appeal to what, as I have no wish to be offensive, I will call the higher thought. But believe me, sir, those people who live their lives in the ordinary conventional way need nothing more subtle in a poster than a straightforward appeal to their sense of pleasure and duty.

Yours sincerely . . .” (4)

Poster • 1930 - This poster was designed by Edward McKnight Kauffer, who would become one of the Underground’s most famous and prolific poster designers. The bold geometric design and mechanical elements reveal a modernist or avante-garde approach typical of Kauffer’s work.

This controversy only seemed to spur Frank Pick to continue his radical commissions, and during the 1920s-1930s the Underground’s posters reached a zenith of stylistic quality, with over 40 posters produced every year (10). In the 1930s, as the Nazis came to power in Europe, many avante-garde artists fled to Britain and were subsequently commissioned by Pick to design posters demonstrating strong elements of Futurism, Cubism, Constructivism and Vorticism (4). While Pick’s philosophy regarding poster art was that it could “move from the most literal representation to the wildest impression so long as the subject remained clear” (10), it should be noted that Pick also commissioned traditional landscape artists to depict peaceful country scenes to attract leisure ridership (4). While he knew these traditional posters could reassure the public, he also realized that through poster design their tastes could broaden beyond the traditional into the realm of the adventurous and even shocking (10).

Poster • 1934 – This poster was designed by Vladimir Polunin, and compares the patron saint of travelers with London Transport. The combination of formal dynamic elements and cubist forms embodies what became known as “cubo-futurism,” and was considered cutting-edge for 1920s and 1930s poster design.

These posters were significant in many ways. First, Frank Pick himself was extraordinary as a corporate patron of the arts, and in his commitment to progressive design. Second, the wider perception of poster art was transformed from being viewed as an economical means of advertisement, to an art form worthy of review in and of itself (9). Although Pick maintained the primary purpose of the posters was one of public relations and advertisement, he also realized that “every passenger is a potential critic; many passengers are dynamic ones” (9).

Works cited:

(1) Heller, Steven. “Edward Tenner, philosopher of everyday things.” Print 58.1 (2004): 38-120. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Web. 17 Sept. 2011.

(2) Hadlaw, Janin. “The London Underground Map: Imagining Modern Time and Space.” Design Issues 19.1 (2003): 25-35. Art Full Text. Web. 16 Sep. 2011.

(3) “The London Underground Map.” Print 65.4 (2011): 108. Education Research Complete. EBSCO. Web. 16 Sept. 2011.

(4) Rosoff, Margaret. “’Art for the people’.” Print May-June 1997: 78+. InfoTrac Vocation, Careers & Technical Education. Web. 17 Sep. 2011.

(5) Kono, Eiichi. “New Johnston.” Pen to Printer. Pages 36-42. Web. 17 Sept. 2011.

(6) The Eric Gill Society. “Eric Gill Biography.” The Eric Gill Society, n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2011. <http://www.ericgill.org.uk/Gill/>

(7) Harrod, Tanya. “ TYPOGRAPHY / The writing on the wall: Tanya Harrod looks at the importance of lettering, in the light of a new exhibition at Portsmouth.” The Independent (October 10, 1989). LexisNexis Academic. Web. 17 Sept. 2011.

(8) Heller, Steven ed. I Heart Design. Minneapolis, MN: Rockport Publishers, 2011. Print.

(9) Green, Oliver. “LONDON ILLUSTRATED: ART OF THE UNDERGROUND.” The Independent (December 7, 2003).
LexisNexis Academic. Web. 17 Sept. 2011.

(10) London Transport Museum. “The Golden Age of Poster Design.” 2010. Transport for London. 18 Sep. 2011.
<http://www.ltmcollection.org/posters/about/behindthecollection.html?IXstory=The+golden+age+of+poster+design>

That being said, I recognize that a big part of my job as a commercial graphic designer is to fuel the consumer economy. I design ads to sell client products and services. I design magazines and newspapers and websites that exist because of advertising revenue. I design logos and brandmarks that help to establish a brand identity for companies that sell products and services. My clients love me for it. My bank account exists because of it. This is all a good thing, right?

As part of my ongoing education as an artist and designer, I am currently taking a “History of Graphic Design” class at the university. I’m really enjoying gaining a deeper understanding of my profession and its deep social, political and artistic roots. Yesterday we watched the video below, which I had seen before (it was made a while ago) but enjoyed watching again. It’s worth watching and thinking about if you haven’t seen it:

Some of this information I was well aware of, but like most consumers I am able to conveniently ignore it in my everyday life. But what’s more pertinent is that I hadn’t really considered my role in this system as a designer.

Graphic design has a long and proud history of affecting social change, and its artistic intent has often been to be a vehicle for radical progress. Artists like John Heartfield are prime examples of this tradition. But there is a more mundane, more practical side to design within which most of us make our living. Instead of affecting change, we reinforce the status quo. We might produce clever, beautiful, informed designs, but ultimately our commercial work fuels consumerism.

I’ve decided I have no problem with this on the level at which I am involved. My clients are all small- to medium-sized, local companies and institutions. They are not contributing to the McWorld syndrome, nor are they exploiting women in maquiladoras. So I guess my work exists somewhere in the grey zone.

I can say, however, that I would not feel good about being a designer for Nike or McDonald’s or Wal-Mart or any other multinational featured in the film, even if the offered salary was astronomical.

How about you? What do you think about the film, about advertising, and about our role in the system as designers?

The site, fully constructed using Joomla and custom coding, provides a wide array of functionality essential to a publication website. Readers can access article content, download PDF versions of the publications, contact the publisher, view a local events calendar, and much more. Very excited to have this site up and running!

www.UpCloseAZ.com

Traditionally, an HDR image is created by merging 3 or more photos together that were taken at different exposures. By doing this, you maximize the details in all elements of the photo; underexposure to grab sky/highlight detail, correct exposure for midtone detail, and overexposure for increased shadow detail.  However, taking three identical shots is not always possible, especially when your subject is moving. With Photoshop Camera Raw and a few other tricks, it is possible to imitate the HDR effect with a single photograph.

For this tutorial, we’ll take this photo I took of a dive shack in the Belizean Cayes last year (below).

Begin with a RAW image whenever possible. Open the image in Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw. This is the best place to make major changes to an image without losing pixel integrity. To artificially create the effects of a HDR photomerge, we are going to drastically alter some of the RAW settings. Begin by underexposing the image with the “Exposure” setting (in the “Basic” tab). Next, slide the “Recovery” button all the way to the right, or close to it. This will help retain detail in the sky/highlights. Then slide the “Fill Light” setting to the far right as well to fill in shadow detail. The “Blacks” slider can be adjusted to darken the shadows and give more contrast and depth to your image. The “Contrast” slider should be used to adjust the contrast and give your image a dramatic look. The “Clarity” slider should also be moved dramatically to the right – this helps to give exaggerated edges to your details.

Many HDR images also feature selective over-saturation. I use the “Saturation” and “Vibrance” sliders sparingly, and prefer to use the HSL/Grayscale tab in Camera Raw instead. Screen shots below explain the settings.

Next, open the image in Photoshop. We will now apply some filters to achieve even greater effects.

Start by going to Image>Adjust>Shadows/Highlights. Use this panel to lighten some of your shadow features, and enhance your highlight detail. This will also create a “glow” effect around contrasted elements of the photo, like the shack and the sky in our example.  

Next, create a duplicate layer of your image in the “Layers” window. Select the top layer, and go to Filters>Other…>High Pass. Be careful not to overdo it on this filter, or your image will look grainy and too sharp. A radius of just a few pixels should do it, depending on your image size and quality. This will render the top layer into a sort of grey textured image. But we will use this layer to create a combined overlay effect with the background layer.

In the Layers window, go to the drop-down menu at the top of the window (default value is “Normal”). You will see a list of options for blending layers. Depending on the severity of effect you desire, select “Overlay”, “Vivid Light”, or “Linear Light”. You can play with these settings to see which one achieves the look you are after. Once you have applied this effect, flatten your image.

Next we are going to sharpen our image with Filters>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen. Again, a little bit goes a long way, so don’t get too crazy with this setting. But using it wisely will help to give that HDR-sharp look.

Once we do this, we will turn right around and use the Smart Blur filter by going to Filters>Blur>Smart Blur. This will help to soften the image just a bit, without losing detail. It will also help to eliminate any noise you created by sharpening and High Pass filtering.

Now let’s take a look at the final result! Without using 3 different images, we achieved similar results to an HDR photomerge. Ta-da!

Original image (above)

After our Faux HDR process (above)

Climbing is one of those sports which, in theory, is entirely egalitarian. Different body types lend themselves to different climbing styles, and women can just as easily send a 5.13 as men. Granted, perhaps the style of 5.13 may be different, but it is a fact that some of the best climbers in the world are women. Lynn Hill, Katie Brown, Steph Davis… just to name a few.

As a climbing photographer, and a female climber, it has been my personal mission as of late to take more photos of women climbing hard. Despite the 10:1 male to female ratio in the climbing community, I’ve been able to shoot some photos of some very inspiring ladies. Below are a few from my recent trip to Indian Creek, Utah.

Rachel Greenburg on “Scarface” (5.11-)

Megan Polk on “Family Home Night” (5.12)

Megan Polk on Pitch 2 of “Heat Searcher” (5.11+)

It was a pleasure both to shoot photos of these ladies, and to get to know them. Since my personal resolve for climbing has faltered in the past 2 years, it’s refreshing to meet other women who have overcome hardships while climbing, and have returned to the sport. For the first time in a long time, climbing has not only inspired me artistically, but physically and mentally as well. I look forward to returning to Utah next week.