Unit 3: Contextual and Cultural Referencing in Art and Design

Unit 3: Contextual and Cultural Referencing in Art and Design

Kazimir MALEVICH He was born on February 11 1878 in the Ukraine to parents of Polish origin. He received a basic education and started drawing aged 12; intent on an artistic career he attended a number of art schools. He worked in a number of styles; such as Cubo-Futurism which resulted in a dynamic geometric deconstruction of figures in space. The Black Square became an icon that has stirred the imagination of many generations of abstract artists, freeing them from the reliance upon the real world. Malevich is a Russian paint and founder of the artistic and philosophical school Suprematism. He is acknowledged for painting the first geometric, nonrepresentational picture. His ideas would go on to become the foundation of nonobjective/abstract art. In 1915 he put forward Suprematism in his manifesto, which abandoned figurative elements in favour of pure abstraction. He believed that shape and colour should reign supreme over subject matter in art. His first Suprematist work was Black Square in 1915 which he revealed in the last futurist exhibition called 0.10 which was held in St. Petersburg. His paintings were arranged in a way that mimicked Suprematist compositions and he hung the Black Square in the top corner of the room which led to controversy as it is a place reserved for Russian icons for devotion. In the 1920s he developed his Suprematist ideas through architectural models wof utopian towns called Architectons. Rectangular and cubic shapes were arranged to enhance their formal qualities and aesthetic potential, the models did not consider the practicalities that an architect must think about.

The Soviet government in the 20s supported Social Realist Art thus supressing all other art styles. The government saw abstract art as ineffectual as a tool for propaganda. In his later years, he painted less and when he did he returned to peasant and genre scenes as well as portraits of friends and family. He was suffering from cancer and in the lead up to his death he designed his own coffin which was adorned with Suprematist motifs. He died in 1935 and was buried underneath a black square.

Zaha HADID She is an Iraqi born British architect, famous for her radical approach to architecture. She is the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. Her father was a politician and with no shortage of female role models in liberal Iraq, she thought she had no reason why she couldn t be just as ambitious. In 1972, she enrolled at the Architectural Association (AA) in London which was the breeding ground for would be architects, its students and teachers have gone on to be household names. The AA dreamt up a new modernism. After graduating she set up her own firm in 1979 and went on to teach at the AA while developing her own brand of neo modernism architecture, one that harked back to modernist roots in constructivism and suprematism. Her firm gained acclaim for the competition winning entry called The Peak in 1983 a leisure and recreational centre in Hong Kong, it was a horizontal skyscraper located on a hill site. Her geometric designs, with its fragmentation, instability and movement are reminiscent of Malevich and she painted her designs to evoke the intended feeling of the spaces in a way that technical drawings couldn t. The Peak didn t materialize and that along with her radical designs for competition entries in the 1980s and early 90s led to her being known as a paper architect one whose designs didn t go beyond the sketch phase. She wouldn t compromise however and her architecture stood out in a male dominated profession. Her first built project was the Vitra Fire Station in 1989 in Germany, function wise it was not a success as the Fire Service moved out; it was later converted into a chair museum. Her competition winning design for Cardiff Bay Opera House in 1994 was met with opposition but the experience helped her learn the politics of getting her work built.

By 2000 her works were being built, starting with the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio and it is the first American museum to be designed by a woman. The building features what she calls an urban carpet that invites people from off of the bustling street. The entrance to the museum is right on the street and has a glass façade that makes the building accessible and peaks the interest of passers-by. Cincinnati proved that her designs could be built and she refined the ideas embedded in the Rosenthal Center in other large scale projects like the MAXXI Contemporary Arts Centre in Rome which won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2010. I admire her strong will for sticking to her guns and not dumbing down her architecture in order for it to be built and she is a great example of someone who has been truly inspired by an artist, in her case Malevich. In the advent of computer software, more fluid forms have arisen in her work to further test the boundaries of construction. I love the idea of the urban carpet and hope that functional concepts like this is not lost in her work which seems very form driven.

Jason BROOKS Born in 1969, he grew up by the sea in Brighton. He started drawing/painting at an early age and received his first freelance commission when he was a teenager. He studied Graphic Design at Central St Martins where he won the Vogue Sotheby s Cecil Beaton Award for Fashion Illustration, this led to him working for British Vogue. He went on to do a masters in Illustration at the Royal College of Art and got a number of jobs visually reporting at fashion shows. He is one of the first to utilize computer technology in fashion illustration and his style of drawing women has earned him a place in fashion illustration history. His work is instantly recognisable and is often imitated. Outside of fashion, he has defined the visual identity of the record label Hedkandi. Through the stylization of his subject matter, he paints a glamourous and luxurious lifestyle in his works which makes him the go to artist to promote such brands like Virgin airlines. Travel is a consistent theme for him, as a student he travelled extensively and recorded his adventures visually. He finds inspiration through travel and is currently making a series of journals that act as a love letter/guidebook to cities.

He first garnered fame in the 80s for co creating the comic strip Tank Girl, the title character first appeared in Atomtan - a fanzine he produced with fellow Northbrook College students. This caught wind and led to them contributing to a start-up magazine called Deadline which was about graphic art and culture. The Tank Girl comic strip was their contribution and was instantly popular. He became more in demand and began working with bands to produce covers. He is one of the few comic book artists to break into the mainstream and he achieved this with the Gorillaz a virtual and satirical anti-band. This came together when he was living with Blur s Damon Albarn, Albarn worked on the music and Hewlett did the character designs, they both came up with the members of the band. His work on the Gorillaz led to him winning the Design Museum s Designer of the Year award in 2006. To date the cartoon band has made 1 EP and 4 albums. When Deadline got cancelled he created the strip Get the Freebies which he used as a vehicle to vent, story would often take second place to the jokes. This was adapted by BBC for a pilot called Phoo Action.

Outside of the Gorillaz, Hewlett and Albarn collaborated on the stage adaptation of the novel Monkey: Journey to the West. Albarn would write the score and Hewlett designed the set, animation and costumes. Monkey: Journey to the West and his association with the BBC led to them being commissioned to create the animated into to the BBC s Beijing Olympic coverage and was titled Journey to the East and featured the monkey character.