Historical Design Essay Plan

Historical Design Essay Plan

The title chosen for this assignment will be ‘Surrealism: A design movement’

For this assignment the design movement Surrealism will be discussed including topics centred around the historical design including the history of surrealism, the growth and population of the design and some of the key artists related to the movement including one of the most famous artists Salvador Dalí.

I decided to choose Surrealism as a basis for my essay for a couple of reasons. The main reason for my choice is based on the fact that; out of all the design movements I have learnt about and researched, Surrealism is the one that stands out to me through its history and its artwork. The second and probably the main reason I chose Surrealism as the basis for my essay was my interest and fascination with surrealist art, more specifically the art of Salvador Dalí who is one of the most famous surrealist artists. The ideas behind his paintings as well as his personality have always intrigued me and by writing this essay I’m hoping to find out more about his reasoning and ideas behind some of his most popular paintings.

I will be setting this essay out in the style of a report; I will give an introduction into surrealism as a design movement and will then use several key sub-titles to break up the report into different sections. The sub titles below will be a rough guide to what the essay will be about and give a brief overview of the layout of the assignment;

·         

•        Surrealism; A design movement
•          The history of Surrealism
•          The designs of Surrealism
•          Key artists of Surrealism
•          Salvador Dalí
•          Conclusion

In order to make this essay as personal as possible I will be searching for a number of key research areas and materials to make sure I gather as much information as possible rather than just using a generic information database such as Wikipedia. I will be using a number of materials for my research such as Surrealism websites and books from the library regarding the history of surrealism as well as specialist books on Salvador Dalí and other key artists in the movement.

Design Movement Assignment

For university, we are being given an assignment relating to a design movement of our own choice. For this assignment i have decided to go with the Surrealism design movement for a couple of reasons. Firstly i love the idea of creating art and design based on the workings of the subconscious and the idea of creating a 'dream world' where artists often painted what they saw in their dreams. One of the key artists in the surrealist design movement was a man named Salvador Dalí. Salvador Dalí is responsible for some of the most famous piece of surrealist art and is a personal favourite artist of mine, I like the way his work seemed 'out of this world' and was nothing anyone had ever seen.

Futurism Mood Board

Surrealism Mood Board

Bauhaus

Staatliches Bauhaus or as it is more commonly known Bauhaus (translating to ‘School of Building’) was an art school in Germany which operated between 1919 and 1933. The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius, a German architect who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture in 1919 and is most famous for its approach to the teachings and exposure of design focusing on the crafts and fine arts.

Bauhaus is a very unique style of design and focuses massively on cubic/ right angle style shapes with smooth facades straying away from an overly decorated style of design. The key to Bauhaus was to turn toward rational, functional and sometimes standardized buildings or design.

In 1930 Mies van der Rohe took over the school of Bauhaus and transformed it into a private school allowing none of Hannes Mayers (The schools previous second director) supporters to attend. Unfortunately in 1933 the Bauhaus school was closed down by its own leadership after extreme pressure from the Nazi regime.

However although the Bauhaus school of art and design closed down in 1933, the movement still lives on and is still widely regarded as one of the most influential post-modern movements. Even nowadays it is still widely used with people such as Steve jobs saying Bauhaus is a huge inspiration to him and his designs.  

Surrealism

Surrealism is a design movement that was established in Paris in the early 1920s and is highly regarded for its literature and visual artwork. The founder of surrealism was a poet and writer named André Breton who is best known for his surrealist manifesto written in 1924. The Surrealist movement started off in Paris but later grew and spread all over the world also affected various other forms of art including music, visual arts as well as social theory and philosophy. The surrealism movement was greatly inspired by Dadaism, a European art movement of the early 20^th century based on the horrors of World War 1.

The idea of the surrealist art movement was to express the workings of the subconscious and is regarded as fantastic imagery and absurd concurrence of subject matter. Many of the most highly regarded surreal artists such as painter Salvador Dalí often said they painted what they saw in their dreams. Below are some of his more famous pieces of art;

No one has ever had any evidence regarding the end of the surrealist movement or if there ever was an end. Many people suggest that the start of World War 2 saw the movement disband whilst others believe that the death of the founder of surrealism, André Breton in 1966 was the end of the movement. 

Futurism

Futurism is a design movement that originated in Italy in 1909 by a man named Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Futurism was a huge trend in Italy but later expanded to European countries such as England and Russia, with other movements appearing elsewhere. The main themes of futurism emphasized the contemporary concepts of the future such as industrial artifacts, speed, technology, youth and violence and objects such as buildings and vehicles.

Futurism branched out into a substantial variation of arts including painting, graphics design and even architecture. A key figure of futurism architecture is a man named Antonio Sant’Elia who joined the futurism movement in 1912. His architectural designs featured skyscrapers and aerial walkways which embodied ideas of the future that people had never seen before.  The picture below is one of his more famous architectural designs, La Cittá Nuova created in 1914.

Futurism is now regarded as an extinct artistic movement said to have died out when the founder Marinetti passed away in 1944.  Although this may be true, from the influence of futurism came a number of other artistic movements such as Surrealism, art deco and vorticism.