The Democracy of Art

In the later half of the nineteenth century, a Printer named Louis Prang Chromolithographic prints that became very popular in America. Prang advertised his prints with the following statement:
"PRANG'S AMERICAN CHROMOS. 'THE DEMOCRACY OF ART' . . . Our Chromo Prints are absolute FACSIMILES of the originals, in color, drawing, and spirit, and their price is so low that every home may enjoy the luxury of possessing a copy of works of art, which hitherto adorned only the parlors of the rich."

Prangs marketing strategy here was to make the average person feel that when you purchase his art prints, you were some how "leveling the playing field". You might be working in the factory of some rich capitalist, but you have a "piece of art" that until now only he could afford! It's much the same marketing strategy as the "Giclee" prints of today, which is an overpriced name for a digital inkjet reproduction art print.

But the question is; Is a small inexpensive copy of a painting or drawing really the same thing as having the original? (The original is still hanging in the rich guy's parlor, by the way.)

My view is that a piece of art is a unique expression of an idea. When multiple mechanical copies exist of a piece of art, not only are they not going to hold the same value as the original, but it somehow cheapens the original too.

What are your feelings?

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

There were so many inventions and innovations that changed graphic design and the printing industry during the Industrial Revolution. There were innovations to the machinery i.e. improved presses, etc. and mechanized manufacture of paper. However, the one invention that in my mind revolutionized graphic design, typographic composition, and the printing industry in general was the Linotype machine.

In 1825 Ottmar Mergenthaler registered his patent for the Linotype machine and by 1886 he had perfected his machine. Type composition was the most time consuming step in the printing process. Prior to this machine, each individual letter had to be set in place by hand, and then after the press run had been completed each letter would have to be removed from the galleys and carefully sorted back in to two type cases; the upper type case for capitol letters, and, you guessed it, the lower case for the minuscule letters. (Today we still use the archaic terms of upper and lower case letters.) With the Linotype, the operator sat at a keyboard and when a "key" was hit a small brass "matrix key" would drop into place. When the entire line of text was set into place the lead/tin/antimony alloy was poured into the keys and a line of type was "set" into a slug. Now when the press run was finished it was simply melted down to set the next edition.

Bridging from Rococo to Modern

During the period between 1720 - 1770 an interesting style emerged in France. Rococo came at the end of the Baroque period. The style can apply to visual arts, graphic design, architecture and music and is characterized by elaborate ornamentation and superficial elegance. In graphic design it took the form of elaborate scroll work, tracery and plant forms. Rococo exhibited the extreme excess of the French aristocracy.  

Rococo fell out of favor after the French Revolution. It was rejected and replaced by a less lavish return to simpler classic forms and themes. This Neoclassicism focused on ancient Greek and Roman themes and art form. 

The world was changing fast. and with the invention of the steam engine by James Watt in 1781 the industrial revolution was just around the corner. It would create profound social upheaval and change. The world went from a largely agrarian, handmade society to a world of machines and mass-production. People left their farms and moved into the cities to work in the factories.

Graphic design advanced along with the rest of the world with advances in the design of presses, paper manufacturing and the invention of the Linotype.

Early German Illustrated Books vs Renaissance Illustrated Books

For me, one of the big differences between early German illustrated books and Renaissance illustrated books was in the actual production of the books. The earliest books were a collaboration between the printer, who worked strictly with type, and the illuminator who would add hand drawn initials, ornamentation, and illustrations.

An example of a hand colored woodcut in an early German book by Konrad Von Megenburg.


In 1476, however, the first book to use both multiple colors and illustrations along with text in one press run was produced by a master printer named Ratold. It was the "Calendarium"  which was an almanac of sorts.

Shown here is a two page spread from Calendarium with multicolored illustrations recording information about eclipses. 

Another innovation from Renaissance printers was the use of more legible fonts. the early German type was intended to mimic the hand lettering of the illuminated manuscripts. Throughout the Renaissance printers started developing and using roman letter forms which were much more legible and compact.

One last thing I'd like to comment on is the overall page design. In the renaissance, printers appear to have started thinking about the best use of the entire page as a whole.  Below is a two page spread from a book produced in 1499 by the Aldine press. The book is "The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili". Note the smaller margins, the thoughtful page layout and the integration of the illustration into the text. Compare this to the example above by Megenburg.

Supplemental Post: The Aberdeen Bestiary

The subject of my last blog was the illuminated manuscripts. Quite by accident I stumbled on an article that is very relevant to this subject so I thought that I would mention it in a supplemental post.
The subject of the article was a rare illuminated manuscript that is currently housed in the Aberdeen University Library. It is a "bestiary" that was owned by Henry VIII and is a primer of sorts which contains stories and anecdotes about the animal kingdom. The official name of this manuscript is No.518 Liber de Bestiarium Natura and was first listed in the inventories of the Royal Library in 1542. This manuscript is extremely well preserved. The colors are described as "rich and bold". Each of the illuminations are set in a frame with a background of burnished gold.
I am including a link to the official Aberdeen site which has translations, commentaries, and illustration details. Go to "Full Index" under Bestiary.

http://abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/contents.hti

Illuminated Manuscripts and the First Printed Books

In my opinion, some of the most intricate and beautiful examples of illuminated manuscripts come from the British Isles, and the best surviving examples include The Book of Kells, The book of Durrow, The Lindisfarne Gospels. The examples below are, from left to right: The opening page of the Gospel of St Mark, The Lindisfarne Gospels; The opening page of the Gospel of St Mark, The Book of Durrow; A detail of a decorative initial, The Book of Kells.

These amazing books were hand scribed by Celtic Monks in Insular Half Uncial, a rounded letter form that was a fairly fast hand, on animal skin parchment. The color was ground pigment mixed with egg whites as a binder. The strictest definition of "illuminated manuscripts" would indicate that the manuscript had been decorated with gold and/or silver as well as the colored pigments.
As shown in the above examples these manuscripts were carefully scribed into near perfectly ruled lines and columns with large, decorative capitols. in order for these large monograms to work into the text, they utilized a system of  decreasing scale of the graphic information called diminuendo, where the information would begin with the large monogram initial, then followed in decreasing size to a smaller initial, then decreasing in size until you reach the size of the body of text.

After Gutenberg perfected the process of casting antimony/lead movable type it opened up a whole new world where books could be produced much more quickly and less expensively than the old hand-scribed manuscripts. New methods, however, mimicked old forms, as seen in the examples below. The new printed books were patterned somewhat after the old manuscripts, just not on such a grand scale, and certainly not with as much of the carefully crafted ornamentation. The example on the right shows an interesting process that some early printers went through in this effort to mimic the old manuscripts. They would leave a blank square at the beginning of the paragraph so that a scribe could hand letter a larger red initial in the space, but if you look closely, they printed the letter in the space so that the scribe would know what letter to draw in the space.

Artistically, these early books were a far cry from the hand lettered manuscripts of the past, but the the process opened the floodgates of knowledge to the masses and paved the road into a more enlightened age.

Chinese Contributions to Graphic Design

The Chinese writing system was developed 4000 years ago and is one of the oldest written languages. Throughout the years, the Chinese writing system has not changed very much but there are five distinct periods of Chinese writing.


The Chiaku wen (c. 1800-1200 BCE) was the earliest of Chinese symbols when the symbols were engraved into turtle shells and animal bones.  These were primarily used for divination, attempting to contact the dead to predict future events etc.

The Chin-wen (c. 1100-700 BCE) These Characters were inscribed on bronze vessels. Again, these were used for divination.

Hsiao chuan (c. 280-208) This style of writing unified the writing system of Imperial China under Emperor Shih Huang Ti

Li-shu (c. 206 BCE-220 CE) Clerical Style

Kai-shu (c. 200 CE - present) Regular Style

The invention of paper and printing revolutionized the western world through the democratization of knowledge. Knowledge is power, and until the printed book only the rich and powerful had access to knowledge but the printed page put power in the hands of the people. ironically these to inventions that so radically changed western culture, were both invented in China.


Paper (c. 105 CE) The invention of paper attributed to Ts'ai Lun

 "Chop" chinese signature blocks (c. 3rd century CE)

Block printing: Diamond Sutra (c. 868 CE)

Movable type: Pi Sheng (990 - 1051 CE)

Development of Written Language

Necessity is the mother of invention. As settlements grew larger and more complex, so did the need of inventories, records, marks of ownership, census records, etc. Memory alone was not sufficient so there was a need to develop a way to record transactions, keep an inventory of property, and laws and agreements that had been decided upon.  When life was simple, records could be simple. drawings of thing being traded or transferred with a simple numeric indicator so they know how many. As life got more complicated, more complex systems were developed to meet the needs of the task at hand.

 

Two examples of proto-cuneiform tablets. 

The top image is from the Kish tablet estimated at 3500 BCE

 

An example of early cuneiform.

 

An example of fully developed cuneiform

 

This chart is an example of how cuneiform evolved from pictographs.