Before Class, Chapter 11

Ukiyo-e came from Japan and was a huge influence on the Art Nouveau style. The term Ukiyo-e means "pictures of the floating world" and defines Japan's Tokugawa period. Ukiyo-e combined emaki and decorative arts and used a lot of woodblock prints. Hishikawa Moronobu was considered the first master of the ukiyo-e prints. Other great artists include Okumura Masanobu, Suzuki Harunobu and Kitagawa Utamaro but the most renowned artist is Katsushika Hokusai who made 35,000 works in 70 years. Hokusai started his career making "yellow backs", cheap yellowish looking novelettes, and soon started illustrating for major novelists. Since he was 20, he illustrated over 270 books, including several of his art such as Hokusai Gashiki and Hokusai Soga.

Ando Hiroshige was the last master of the japanese woodcut of the time. He inspired the European impressionists with his spatial composition and transient moments of the landscape. In the late 19th century western mania called for a Japonisme movement. It wanted everything Japanese to stream itno Europe including books on the Japanese art and ornaments.

Art Nouveau was an international style during 1890-1910. This style included all aspects of design from architecture, furniture, fashion and graphics. Art Nouveau is a term from a gallery in Paris meaning "new art". Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Design was one of the first to really show off the art nouveau style. Art Nouveau was a transitional style from the historic styles that dominated design. The symbolic subject matters became birth, life, grown, death and decay. These complex ideas allowed contradiction in interpretations. Some say it's an expression of the decade while others say it's a reaction against retroagression and materialism of the era. Graphic designers and illustraters tried to make art a part of every day life and was able to make a much higher quality of visual communication.

Jules Cheret and Eugene Grasset played huge roles in the transition between Victorian to Art nouveau styles. Jules Cheret used the Arts and Crafts movement to start a new respect for the applied arts. Cheret is supposedly the father of the modern poster. Around 1870s, Cheret moved from the victorian style and started simplifying his designs and increased the major figures and letters. In 1890, Cheret was named to the Legion of Honor by the French government for making a new branch of art which the needs of commerce and industry needed. After he retired to Nice, the Jules Cheret Museum opened to preserve his work. The first to rival Cheret was Grasset. He studied medieval art and loved exotic oriental art. A noteworth achievement was the Histoire des quatre fils Aymon (Tales of the Four Sons of Aymon) in 1883 which was designed and illustrated by Grasset. The design is important for its total integration of illustraions, format, and typography. He ultimately made wallpaper, fabric designs, stained glass windows, typefaces and printer's ornaments.

English Art Nouveau was mostly concerned with greaphic design and illustration vs. architecture and products. Aubrey Beardsley was called the "enfant terrible" of art nouveau. He was famous for only 5 years since he got famous at 20 and died at 26 of tuberculosis. A lot of his work copied William Morris's work which pissed Morris off a lot and thought of legal action. Everyone else though was encouraging of Beardsley and was even named editor of The Yellow Book, which was a London magazine-- not a book.  Beardsley later rival was Charles Ricketts, who was first a wood block engraver, who then became a designer for several pritning firms.

Other great designers include Georges Auriol, Tenri de Toulouse Lautrec and Theophile- Alexandre Steinlen, all of whom met Jules Cheret in person from a nighclub for artists and writers. Lautrec was the creator of the famous Moulin Rouge poster. Alphonse Mucha was originally from Czech but went to Paris at 27 with a great drawing tallent. He is famous for the Sarah Bernhardt poster and only got the job through luck for being at work on Christmas Eve.

During these this artistic era British and French influences came to America. Louis Rhead studied in England and Paris, moved to America, went back to Europe, studied Grasset's style and came back to America. Wiliam Bradley was a self-taught artist and was inspired by a lot of magazines, library books and artists like William Morris. Ethel Reed was the first American woman to achieve national recoginition as a graphic designer and illustrator. She started as a well known book ilustrator and poster designer at 18.

Belgium started their transtion around the 1880s, with the Cercle des XX (Group of Twenty) put on a show which included paitnings byGauguin and Van Gogh.Van de Velde was an architect, painter, designer and educator was able to combine Japanese Print, French Art Nouveau, English Arts and Crafts and Glasgow School. Even though he was prominent in the art nouveau style he wanted to continue to push forward the arts and crafts philosophy.

When Art Nouveau came to Germany it was called Jugendstill, youth style after a new magazine called Jugend (Youth) published in 1896. In its first year, Jugend gained 200,000 readers per weak and was covered in art nouveau ornaments and illustration. Otto Eckmann and Peter Behrens became widely known for large multicolor woodblock prints inspired by the French art nouveau and the Japanese prints. The Klingspor Foundry was the first German typefoundry to allow new fonts from artsits and in 1900 released Eckmann's Eckmannschrift.