It's post war time. Germany has lost the war to end all wars. The country was in a state of confusion, one second they were Nazis and now they are not. Now they have to listen to the big allied forces that tell them to reconsider being mean to everyone else and get a good slap on the head. Germany looks back on its good old days, the good old days of the Bauhaus. 'Wow weren't we cool then? With our revolutionary art school? Wasn't that cool?' So they quickly(ish, took them until 1953) decided to open a new art school in Ulm. The school had its own proof to the big scary allied forces that it wasn't part of that Nazi elitist nonsense and was founded by Sophie and Hans Scholl two members of the White Rose (an anti fascist group) who subsequently died in World War II for throwing out some anti Nazi flyers. The school itself was very anti Nazi and that was exactly what America and Europe wanted to see. So they decided to give it some funding to help set it up so the school could in some way or another help with the reformation of Germany. And that's how the HfG Ulm came to be. 

In the 1910s the world was about to birth something new, something amazing, something revolutionary and that something was the Bauhaus school of art. An art school that taught other things than art which is the best and only way to teach art students, in my opinion, because art students are hilariously good at procrastinating and doing anything else other than art. In all seriousness, the Bauhaus school was the school to become other schools, the main reason that today we have art foundation courses and we are taught art the way we do. Where we don't specialise in one technique or another but rather teach ourselves a little bit of everything from every medium we can. 

The teaching methods of the Bauhaus were similar to the modern day foundation course, as previously mentioned. The preliminary course was the one most similar to it, where before they could be allocated to specific workshops where they would train and study to become world face architects or product designers or artists they would have to learn the basics of art and to become individual people. Johannes Itten was one of those who taught at the Bauhaus as a master (doesn't he look like a zen buddhist monk in that picture or is it just me?) In the Bauhaus itself Itten encouraged those who worked under him to embrace their own thoughts and feelings and put it into their work. He himself specialised in colour theory, and the paintings he created were quite amazing in my opinion. Itten was born in Switzerland in Sudern-Linden and before becoming the renowned artist and master he became he actually trained to become an elementary ​school teacher. Then later in 1909 he went ahead and studied in  École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva but was disappointed by the tutors there and so returned home. He was taught under Ernst Schneider at the Bern-Hofwil Teachers' Academy which later helped him teach at Bauhaus. But before Bauhaus Itten opened his own private school in Vienna which was where he adopted his basic shape style where he would use circles, squares, rectangles, spirals to create pieces which described colour. He would also not correct individual students if they had made a mistake but rather would correct the class as a whole, this was also taught to him from Schneider. He joined the Bauhaus and taught in the preliminary course from 1919 to 1922. There he taught starting up students composition, material characteristics and for what he's known for; colour. Itten devised his own colour theory which were all the variants of contrasts in colour such as hue, temperature, compliments, value and saturation. His lessons also sometimes included gymnastics and relaxation techniques to help improve students creativity. Itten later went on to publish his own book which was all about colour theory and he developed the 12 colour wheel (as seen below). When Bauhaus closed he went on to open his own weaving school with the help of a fellow Bauhaus weaver Gunta Stolzl.

I was probably one of the many that believed that modern art began when Andy Warhol popped out of nowhere and started using stuff and making it into art to annoy people, I was almost surprised to find out that modern art was something that began a long time before that. It all began when people stopped caring about recreating art by the classics from the renaissance and instead looked towards the future, which was considerably wild back then. Modernism has a meta narrative and always questions itself as much as everyone else questions it.  and it has a timeline of influences and how those influences influence each other and create it's own influence baby. That baby is modernism. From modernism stems a lot of other branches from the cubists to what I'll be writing about today which is constructivism. 

Constructivism was developed in Russia, it revolutionised the idea of propaganda art and design. It was used in the beginning of communism, and it's probably one of the sole reasons we see red and probably think straight away about either Russia or communism. It's whole idea was to combine psychology and minimalism to sway the Russian people. It was anti-western and probably gave the people of Russia a sense of pride given the fact it is quite appealing, even now. 

shows how Lissitzky uses black and white print effectively. He also uses red in significant parts of the poster where it draws you in. I feel the face is what unnerves me the most. Way to make Russia look like an evil overlord that's always watching. Its possibly the eyes combining into one where the boy and the girl meet and on their forehead all it reads is USSR. You as a person belong to the USSR and that's it. Overall it's quite fascinating how a poster can make you feel so uneasy yet so compelled at the same time, the use of the text and the geometric shapes is so effective that you just want to stare at the poster for some strange reason. 

.The year is 1850 something or another, and Japan is about to get the culture shock of its life. That culture shock being America forcing Japan to open it's tiny floating world up for the rest of the world to find out what its secrets were. Japan has been a bit of an obsession of my own since I was around 10 and watched probably way too many cartoons. It stemmed from anime and manga and eventually evolved into this curiosity about Japan, even now as it is sometimes the country as a whole feels like one huge mystery. It's always also been one of the greatest places for illustration and art in general, it could be seen as the smartass of the world. It was smart, and it was good, and it's always known its been good. So to hear about Japonism in the 1800s was no surprise to me, the west has always had a weird obsession with the east, or perhaps its just an obsession with what seems so unattainable, and an entire country blocking itself off was the perfect little treasure trove for western artists to unlock and discover. 
​

For the two pieces of art I decided to compare I took a look at a book on Japonism and found a section that took my fancy. That section being cats. What really took me by surprise was the Theophile Steinlen poster of Le Chat Noir being so influenced by the way Japan drew cats. It doesn't seem that obvious at first, but when I took a look at everything else that was cat related during the 19th centure seemed the same as everything else you would think of when it comes to a classical painting. The lines for the poster of Le Chat Noir are very flowing like it was done with a paint brush, the sharp claws of a cat reminded me of the way Japanese artists always drew the claws of a demon, and that linked up with what Japan thought of cats in general. Apparently in Japanese folklore Japan thought cats were in fact demons, or oni. As well as being demons at night they would become young women that would probably seduce every man within sight, sort of like a cat does when it feels like being affectionate. The other part of the drawing that is similar to the characteristics of the Japanese art was the face. It definitely does resemble a cat but there's something almost quite evil about it in both the poster art and the original Japanese art it's almost as if they knew from the start that cats are definitely going to take over the world at some point within the near future.