This blog contains critical analysis of all sorts of media that I find inspirational; as part of a summer project for my graphic design uni course. Enjoy!
The other museum I visited yesterday in London was the Fashion & Textile museum at London Bridge, set up by British designer Zandra Rhodes in 2003. The exhibition they are running at the moment is the evolution of underwear.
Evolution is constantly around us, and it is always interesting to discover why certain things evolve in the way they do; in the clothing world function and fashion are the main duo that go hand in hand deciding what will be next and why, but culture always plays a huge part, and events that happen throughout history also have a great impact on how things develop.
The guidebook states that "Undercover is a celebration as well as an expose of the role of underwear in women's lives, tracing its evolution from health garment, shape enhancer, to fashion 'must have'."
In the 1900s the corset was originally designed for women's health as it removed pressure from the abdomen, making breathing easier and providing greater freedom for movement. It was known as the 'S' corset, pushing the bust forward and the hips back. However the 1910s saw the leaner silhouette and the 'empire line' replace the corset-shape fashion, and the first brassiere was 'invented' by Mary Phelps Jacobs by tying handkerchiefs and ribbon together to form a support that did not show under her evening gown. When WW1 broke out the absence of corsets remained popular as more than 2m women entered the workforce, and therefore required much more functional attire.
Flatter chests and freedom from corsets remained the craze for the 'flapper girl' throughout the 20s, but by the 30s a high pert bust made fashionable by the likes of Hollywood, in particular Lana Turner, started the 'sweater girl' trend that lasted into the 50s. By the 50s the hour glass figure was back in vogue and Hollywood's influence on fashion hit its peak with bullet bras and pin-up girls. A group that had also not existed before - teenagers - became a hige potential consumer market for these kinds of trends.
The 60s and 70s saw less of a demand for structured underwear as Twiggy's 'waif' look and the launch of pantyhose (tights) came into play. The feminist movement of the late 60s / 70s saw bra sales hit an all time low, as breasts in their unbound, natural shape became acceptable and companies began to develop lightweight 'no bra' bras. However the 80s brought lingerie back in an almighty bounce - bigger was better. With a love for aerobicised bodies and tv shows such as baywatch, women wanted to emphasise their clevage and with their high levels of disposable income, bras started to become more of a fashion statement. The 90s saw the relaunch of the Wonderbra, and the craze for the push-up look encouraging women to flaunt their assets.
The early noughties have followed this craze too, with more and more women getting breast implants, page 3 girls and magazines such as FHM promoting girls with big breasts to be better. There are also shops now which are solely for underwear and bedroom attire: Victoria's Secret, La Senza and not forgetting he infamous Ann Summers. These kind of shops have encouraged women to invest in their own underwear wardrobe, and just as we wear outer-garments to suit the mood, season or fashion, we can now do the same with underwear as a rich variety of colours, styles and patterns are on the market. Younger girls are now investing in bras as the young generation seem to be growing up more quickly then ever. My 5 year old cousin even owns a training bra! Who knows what future decades will bring but from looking at history things could certainly go either way. With the credit crunch now into full swing maybe we will even decide we can't afford underwear anymore, and all go for the 'natural' look of the 70s!
On a visit to London yesterday I decided to take a trip to a couple of museums I have never been to before, one of which was the Brand Museum in Notting Hill. I actually found out about it as I saw a picture from the museum's website on Nat Dodd's blog - thanks Nat! So I decided to investigate further as I had never heard of the museum, and it turns out that its incredible collection was right up my street.
I have always found the development of packaging design through history fascinating, and I spent a wonderful morning revelling in designs from the past, that went as far back as the 1800s. On arrival at the museum I thought the collection was going to be tiny, as one can only see into the first room; the ceilings are quite low and we are unaware that the museum has a lot more space than it appears to have. The collection is in fact very well laid out: above the doorways there are signs that inform you what decade you are about to walk through, and the window displays are arranged categorically eg. toys, games, food packaging, clothing etc. Most also each have their own little plaque, explaining and describing the contents from the era.
One of the highlights for me was speaking to a couple of elderly women who were also looking round the museum. Where the visit for me was more educational, their's was truly full of nostalgia and it must have been amazing for them seeing so many things in the museum that they were familiar with, whether they were from their childhood, their children's childhood or their grandchildren's childhood. I wonder of the concept of the museum seemed in any way strange to them; the items there are not amazing artefacts, rather just everyday items, however when seen all together next to their past and future selves they suddenly seem to become pieces of art, and one looks at something like a Frosties cereal packet in a completely different way.
I guess I got to experience a fraction of what those women felt, too, as there was a small section from the 90s! It was fun to see how things had changed, even if some things only slightly, and also to remember things that are not now popular or are no longer made. It also made me wonder what things will be in there once this decade is over, things that we love as they are to us now very modern, but in twenty years or so will be loved and marvelled over for the complete opposite reason.
Even though I took many photos at the museum, the staff there made it very clear that the photos are to be for personal use only, so unfortunately I can't post any on here. However if anyone wants too see them once back at uni I'll be more than happy to show them! This museum is well worth a visit from both design and historical points of view, and is good value for students - only £3.50. You can view the website here.
I went to see this film spontaneously last Thursday evening, not knowing a thing about it but rather just tagging along on a cinema trip with my flatmates. I don't often go to films that I haven't read up about first, and it was actually quite a nice experience not to have any expectations of enjoyment or knowledge of the storyline.
Inglourious Basterds is the latest work of Quentin Tarantino, and tells the story of Lieutenant Aldo Raine and his mini army of Jewish soldiers, the Basterds, in Nazi Germany, 1944. According to Empire, Tarantino has been talking about his WW2 action movie for nearly a decade; it has finally hit our screens with Brad Pitt taking the role of Aldo Raine, and the film providing for us a violent fairytale in which the ending of WW2 is completely reimagined by Tarantino so that cinema itself plays the principal role in bringing down the Nazis.
In true QT style the film is very dramatic in all aspects: use of close-up 'peering-through-one's-fingers' violence, striking music, the way it is shot and especially here the ostentatious use of language, carried off in a markedly expert manner by the character Col. Hans Landa aka "The Jew Hunter" (Christoph Waltz), who speaks a total of 4 different languages with comfortable ease throughout the picture.
My favourite scene takes place in a restaurant, where Landa comes into contact with Shosanna - a girl from the Jewish family he suspects of hiding in a French house under the floorboards at the start of the film, 3 years ago. He succeeded in killing the rest of her family, but she managed to escape and fled to Paris where she now owns the cinema that is to go on and destroy the Third Reich. In the restaurant we are not sure whether Landa recognises Shosanna, which causes a huge amount of tension that continues to build up throughout the scene with help from the fast, sharp, close up shots and flashbacks that are used. At the end of the scene, Landa looks at Shosanna and says to her, leaning close with a very uneasy sense of knowing, 'You know, there is one more thing I meant to ask you... but I just can't remember what it was.' And with that the camera zooms straight in to where he stubs his cigarette out on his apple strudel (which is a Jewish dessert), and which for me strongly symbolises Landa's horrific killing of Shosanna's family in the first scene.
I won't ruin the rest of the story for those that haven't yet seen the film (!) but I can certainly say that it is worth its full 3 hours of your time. It is a long film, but with so much to keep the audience entertained you will not be fidgeting in your seats checking to see how much time there is left! Inglourious Basterds is currently showing at cinemas now and you can view the trailer here.
This post proves that signing up to high-street shop email updates does not always cause a waste of inbox space! I received an urban outfitters newsletter email today that featured an advert for a project they are working on: Saved Polaroid. They have teamed up with The Impossible Project 'in a worldwide effort to restart and reinvent instant photography.' I'm sure most of us are familiar with polaroids, if not from when we were kids then more recently due to the popularity of retro trends. Let's face it though, they were pretty cool. Before the ease and convenience of the modern day digital camera, the polaroid was the key to a photograph you could look at pretty much as soon as you'd taken it - the birth of instant photography. But as soon as digital cameras came onto the market with better quality pictures, memory cards allowing many more photos to be taken and no need for film, plus their much smaller size and lightness, polaroids were quickly ditched for their newer, shinier, modern opponents. But now, it seems, we want them back! Production of analog instant film stopped in 2008, closing the factories in Mexico and the Netherlands. Impossible b.v. has been founded with the concrete aim to re-invent and re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras (www.the-impossible-project.com). The Impossible Project clearly states that their aim is not to rebuild Polaroid Integral Film however, but to re-invent it under a name brand name, developing a new product with new characteristics and optimised components. For all us arty types, this is something to look forward to! And in the meantime appreciate some of the really interesting polaroid artists around, including Jennifer Rumbach, and a whole range of artists found at Polanoir.
I came across 'Freshwest' this morning whilst reading an edition of the Telegraph magazine from earlier this year. Freshwest is the furniture design company of the design duo Marcus Beck and Simon Macro and 'embraces both experimental and functional design and is driven by (their) desire to realise ideas'. What caught my attention was the simplicity of furnitures' appearance, versus the obvious complexity of the physics behind some of the works, resulting in pieces that have the feel of half school-boy experiment, half modern art.
One of my favourite pieces by Freshwest is the recent 'Brave New World Lamp' (left), as all the wood pieces look to me like scaffolding, holding up the lamp, where in actual fact the wooden pieces are constructed in a way that they are themselves the lamp's form. The lamp was launched with the Dutch company 'Moooi' in April, and made an appearance at the Milan Design festival, quoted by many as one of the highlights of the festival.
The 'Lazy Chair' was also exhibited at the Milan Design Festival; in actual fact it was present at the entrance to the festival to grab people's attention as they walked by. The Lazy Chair is constructed of wood and strings, and the piece contains movement sensors so that when people walk past, the chair collapses. It reminds me of those little children's toys of say, a giraffe on a little wooden stand, that will collapse and reform when the button underneath is pressed and released.
In order to find inspiration for this blog, I , as well as many other students I'm sure, have been paying trips to various museums and art galleries, so that I might have something interesting to say about particular pieces of work, artists or just something that has inspired me from visiting these places.Last week I was on holiday with my family in Cornwall, and one day we explored the picturesque postcard-town that is St. Ives. Whilst there I thought that taking a trip to the St. Ives Tate would be a valuable addition to the inspiration I have been trying to gain for this blog.
However, I always seem to encounter the same problem with 80% of the modern art I come into contact with. I just don't get it. I'm sure I'm not the only one, in fact I'm sure I'm one of many; I try to find meaning, explanation or even just some kind of sense in some of the works that are displayed in these galleries, framed so perfectly and even seeming to demand respect, but for that 80% of modern art, I just can't appreciate what I see. There was one piece I came across by Katy Moran: an abstract oil on canvas painting comprised of mostly beiges, dark browns and blacks, and the little plaque next to the piece read "Muffin Power". Why? Where was the muffin? Maybe if there was something explaining why she'd named it that I could feel more open towards the piece, but as it stood, trying to find 'muffin power' in the harsh strokes brushed angrily across the canvas seemed like a hopeless mission, and all I felt inclined to do was move to the next piece.
The 'What is art?' debate has been going on for years, and will continue to do so as long as art is being produced. I do not deny that pieces such as 'Muffin Power' are not art; I believe that art is a form of self expression, and clearly pieces like these are. Maybe it's just that I like to know what's going on in a piece of art.
Despite finding many pieces in the St. Ives Tate that I did not connect with, what I did love about my visit there was the building itself. The white stone conjured a complete sense of calm, and combined with the building's curves made it a very aesthetically pleasing place to visit. At the front of the building was a very tall roofed sort of amphitheatre, that even had the feel of some sort of temple, as if to worship the work that the Tate houses. As one walks round the museum at the top, there is a balcony and rectangular window spaces in the wall that look through the amphitheatre onto the view of the beach and surrounding bay. It is as if these windows turn the views into pieces of art themselves, framing them simply and drawing one's attention to the vistas before them. It seemed to me a perfect building to house art, not only fulfilling its purpose, but creating ever-changing art at the same time, by the different views one can see from the rectangular spaces each day.
These are 2 of the new poster ads for Volkswagen, bearing the tagline: "Another example of Volkwagen efficiency". I really like the concept for these ads and I think they are very effective; notonly do they underline how and why Volkswagen'snew technologies are efficient through the copy, but the design plays by these rules too. The ad is made more time efficient to read as the main point is made by high-lighting specific words, which spell out a sentence on their own. I also likethe fact that there is more than one design for thisconcept; highlighting of words in one,and crossingout words in another. The posters are also efficientin other ways e.g. use only of type, no images (barthe VW and BlueMotion logos), use of one typefaceand colour for the main copy, and use only of 2colours overall (again bar the logos).
