Minimalist Art Star Wars Travel Posters

If Star Wars took place in the 1920s, instead of "a long time ago", travel posters might look like this. There are five at the link, all done by artist Justin Van Genderen.

Link via DudeCraft | Artist's Website

Art Blogging: Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (1883-1971) was a French modernist fashion designer. She was born into an impoverished family in the Loire valley. At the age of twelve, hardship forced her into a convent school, where she learned sewing. Affairs with wealthy men introduced her into the world of the decorative arts, as well as provided the financial backing necessary to launch her own line. By 1913, her hatmaking had brought her to the attention of the Paris fashion world. Her voice was a dominant one during the Art Deco period, ended only when she closed up her businesses at the onset of World War II. She returned from retirement in 1954, although her later works were not as popular in Europe as they were in the United States.

Chanel broke with the fin-de-siecle norms of elaborate dress for a more reductionist approach that emphasized simplicity and comfort. She was instrumental in the development of the vertical-lined flapper dress, which was modeled men's on work clothes and military uniforms. This creation eventually morphed into the proverbial "little black dress." Chanel thus redefined femininity for a generation.

Jacqueline Kennedy's pink suit, stained with blood on the day that her husband was assassinated, is often attributed to Coco Chanel. This is not entirely accurate -- it was an American-made knock-off of a Chanel work. The infamous pink suit does, however, reflect Chanel's invention of the women's suit -- a simple work of straight lines and forms.

Art Blogging: Pierre Le Faguays

Pierre Le Faguays (1892-1935) was a French Art Deco sculptor. A native of Nantes, he studied in Geneva and exhibited at the Salon from 1922 on. Le Faguays specialized in figurative work in ivory, wood, stone, and bronze.


It was this work, Faun and Nymph from 1925, that caught my attention. Most of the decorative bronzes that I have seen from the Art Deco era (such as those of Ferdinand Preiss and Demetre Chiparus) reflect Jazz Age subject matter, but were essentially academic in style. Yet here, Le Faguays takes the three-dimensional medium of sculpture and adopts the heavy lines and two-dimensionality of Art Deco graphic design. This may be seen the most strongly in the poses and hair of the figures and the musculature of the faun.

It reminds me of Hildreth Meiers's sculptures on the outside of Radio City Music Hall. These were, by necessity, flat. But Le Faguays faced no such limitation and simply adopted the sharp angularity for purely aesthetic reasons.

Art Blogging: Emile Aubry

Emile Aubry (1880-1964) was an Algerian-born French Art Deco painter. He won the Prix de Rome in 1907 and the Salon prize in 1920. I like his work because it exemplifies how an artist could break free of Academic norms and express the human figure in not simply a portraitive, but a decorative manner. Take, for example, his painting The Voice of Pan. The subject matter is completely within the classical norms of the Academic painting, but its crowded use of space and stacked two-dimensional figures is entirely Art Deco.

In Hylas, the companion of Hercules is kidnapped by the nymph Dryope. Oil on canvas, 1926.

Art Blogging: Jean Despujols

Jean Despujols (1886-1965) was a French Art Deco painter. He studied in Bourdeaux and at the Academy in Paris, where he subsequently won the Prix de Rome in 1914. The First World War, however, interfered in his plans, and he shipped off to his designated army unit. His sketchbook from that era is a testament to the horrors of that war.

After the end of the war, he was able to accept his reward and study in Rome for a year. During the 1930s, a colonial society hired him to travel through and document life in French Indochina. He produced many idealized portraits of doomed French colony. Later, Despujols taught in the United States and eventually became a U.S. citizen.

The Vinyard, oil on canvas, 1925, at the French Consulate to NATO.

Bourdeaux, Museum of Aquitaine.

The Fishing Party, oil on canvas, 1925, Museum of the 1930s.

Art Blogging: Edouard-Marcel Sandoz

Edouard-Marcel Sandoz (1881-1971) was a Swiss sculptor who worked in bronze, stone, and ceramics. He studied in Geneva and at the Academy in Paris. Sandoz was associated with the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements, and his subject matter was mostly the human figure and animals. During the First World War, he began producing ceramic bottles, boxes, and tableware in the shape of animals for the Haviland Limoges company, and continued to work with that firm for thirty years.


One of his most iconic images is that of this condor, produced in granite.

Nursing Mother, bronze, Garden of the National Museum, Monaco.

An Important and Unique Cat, marble.

Art Blogging: Jean Puiforcat

Jean Puiforcat (1897-1945) was a French Art Deco designer, working primarily with silver. Born to a family of silversmiths in Paris, he studied sculpture with Louis-Aime Lejeure before beginning commercial work in 1922. Puiforcat reached the peak of his popularity in 1937, when an entire pavilion of the Paris Exposition des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne was devoted to his work. He fled World War II to Mexico, where he continued his work until his death in 1945.

[Above] Soup tureen (silver, 1935, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal).

Teapot (silver, gold, and lucite; 1935; Dallas Museum of Art).

What Ever Happened to Johnny Crawford from The Rifleman?

We've previously discussed the marvelous TV Western The Rifleman. Child actor Johnny Crawford played Mark McCain on the show. After it ended, he used the skills that he learned on the show and worked the rodeo circuit for two years, served in the army, and then acted in a few other roles.

But Crawford discovered the love of his life in 1920s-era Big Band and Swing music. Being an Art Deco person myself, I can understand why.

For years he has led the Johnny Crawford Orchestra in tours across the country. This is his website.

And here is a sample of his music, with Crawford singing After You're Gone:

Art Blogging: Paul Landowski

Paul Landowski (1875-1961) was a French Art Deco monumental sculptor. Born in Paris, he was educated at the Academie des Beaux Arts. Landowski won the Prix de Rome in 1908 and became renowned as a sculptor of large monuments, erecting no less than thirty-five within Paris alone. Heavily influenced by Rodin, he was able to translate Rodin's breach with Classicism into Modernist norms.

The Sons of Cain (bronze, 1906, Le Jardin de Tuileries).

Christ the Redeemer (concrete, 1931, Mt. Corvacado). This 125-foot tall statue of Jesus overlooks Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

















Song of Songs (bronze, 2000).

Art Blogging: Jean Dunand

Jean Dunand (1887-1947) was a Swiss Art Deco sculptor and designer. He studied at the Ecole des Arts Industriels in Geneva before moving to Paris to design interior furnishings. Dunand excelled in creating works in bronze and lacquer. He is best known for dark colors and simple geometric forms. Dunand studied lacquerwork under Japanese master Seizo Sugawara and introduced that medium to the European scene.

Battle of the Angels (lacquer on wood, 1925-26, at the Met). Pieces of egg shell, mother-of-pearl and gold leaf are embedded in the may layers of lacquer, creating a richly textured surface.

Panel (lacquer on wood, 1928-1930, at the Met).











Fire Screen (lacquer on wood, 1929, at the Gallerie Jacques De Vos).

Art Blogging: René Lalique

Rene Lalique (1860-1945) was a French Art Nouveau and later Art Deco glassmaker and jeweler. Born in the region of Champagne, France, he grew up in Paris. Lalique studied art at the College Turgot and was later apprenticed to a master jeweler at the age of sixteen. He studied further at Syndeham Art College in London and developed his skills in naturalistic depiction. After his return to Paris, he received commissions from the great jewelry firms of that era: Cartier, Aucoc, Boucheron, Cartier, Destape, Gariod, Hamelin, and Jacta. By 1885, he had his own workshop in Paris.

Lalique's reputation grew gradually as he was increasingly recognized by art critics as an emerging master craftsman, and Art Nouveau rose in prominence. At the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, his work was debuted to the entire world, and Lalique's name became famous. He applied glass to different settings, creating the marketing concept of selling perfume in ornate bottles instead of ordinary and designing elaborate glass interiors for luxury trains and ocean liners. In 1925 he designed the pavilion for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes -- the exhibition that coined the term "Art Deco". Lalique continued to produce countless works right up until the closure of his shop after the Fall of France in 1940. He died two days before the end of World War II.

Centerpiece (Silver and glass, 1903-1905, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian). A delicately-crafted nymph emerges from a lily pond in this mytho-pastoral scene.

Pansy Brooch (glass, gold, enamel & sapphire, 1902-1904, at the Walters Art Museum). This gossamer masterpiece is representative of Lalique's frequent floral theme.

Hairpin (horn, gold, diamonds, 1902-1903, at the Rijksmuseum). Many of Lalique's works seem to brazenly defy the laws of tensile strength and gravity.

Art Blogging: Edgar Brandt

Edgar Brandt (1880-1960) was a French Art Deco metalworker. He was educated at the crafting school Ecole Nationale Professionelle de Vierzon and served in the army before opening his own shop in 1901. He won a Salon prize in 1908 and was popular throughout the 1920s and 30s. Additionally, he was an accomplished weapons designer, particularly in the domain of artillery.


Deer (bronze, 1920). What Erte did in bronze for people, Brandt did for the animal kingdom.




The Temptation (bronze, 1920s). Brandt recalls the fall from Edenic paradise with this serpent coiled around a luminescent fruit. The light glistens off the snake's scales, giving it a lustrous quality.

Like the Art Deco movement, and its preceding Arts and Crafts movement, most of Brandt's bronework was designed to be functional in the home; a sculpture is not simply a slab of metal taking up space, but a useful floor lamp.










Persian Grill (iron, 1923). Brandt was most famous for his ability to turn metal into feathery gossamer, as seen in the delicate work on this furnace screen.

Art Blogging: Norman Bel Geddes

Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) was an American Art Deco theatre and industrial designer. Although born into a wealthy family in Michigan, his father lost his fortune in the stock market, and then his life in alcoholism a few years later. Though he now grew up poor, his mother was highly cultured and exposed her son to the arts. Expelled from school in the ninth grade, he was able to get into the Cleveland Institute of Art. Geddes initially entered the field of theatre set design, where he developed innovate techniques in lighting, but later turned to the industrial arts.

Manhattan Cocktail Set (1937). His style reflected norms of Art Deco: precise, symmetrical, machine-made lines formed in the quintessential Art Deco medium: stainless steel.

Geddes was among the first designers to apply the principles of aerodynamics to products, such as this fanciful 1934 car, which never reached mass production.

Geddes is most famous for his creation of Futurama, the pavilion of General Motors at the 1939 World's Fair. This elaborate complex of displays showed Geddes' vision of an industrialized future of peace, prosperity, and flying cars. This is a picture of his scale model city, featuring new transportation flow concepts which would allow for faster, safer traffic of people and products.

The television show Futurama was named in honor of this highly optimistic vision of the future.

Art Blogging: A.M. Cassandre

A.M. Cassandre (1901-1968) was a French Art Deco commercial illustrator and typeface designer. Born in the Ukraine, he and his family moved to Paris in 1915. Cassandre studied at Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and at the Academie Julian. Influenced by Cubism, he created simplified forms and lines. He formed his own highly successful advertising agency during the 1930s until its collapse in the chaos following the 1940 fall of France. Cassandre continued to work in various media, including stage design, until his suicide in 1968.

Normandie (1935) is his most famous work today. The shape of this liner is vastly exaggerated vertically to give it a regal splendor and strength.













Northern Express (1935) is my favorite of Cassandre's works. The dynamic angles stretching out into the distance speak of the era's optimism about technology, and the narrow parallel lines which frame it are representative of Art Deco's concept of symmetrical elegance. Compare.




Although a stylish and classy typeface, Cassandre ironically created it in 1937 for practical reasons of legibility on posters. Its most famous use was on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Art Appreciation and Christian Values

I have no formal training in art theory, so readers will forgive me for these erratic thoughts as I try to piece together a coherent thesis.

I have, of late, developed an appreciation for the Art Deco period of illustration, design, painting, and sculpture. I have described it as "a geometry of clean, crisp lines drawn in broad, sweeping gestures" that makes no pretense of subtlety or attempt to mask its aesthetic yearnings. It is not in any way ashamed of being beautiful. But there are many different kinds of beauty, and Art Deco (and to a large extent its parent movement, Art Nouveau) is one in particular: elegance. Elegance is the glorification of the elite -- of refinement, poise, and finesse -- and seen as qualities of the upper tier of society.

As I've developed this appreciation for the Art Deco and Art Nouveau movements, I have at the same time been bothered by certain values conveyed by them. They glorify and even deify science and technology as the saviors of humanity. And perhaps most disturbingly, they idealize wealth -- that to be rich is the best of all possible worlds. This idea, of course, stands in sharp contrast to Christian values. One cannot be both wealthy and a Christian. 'Wealthy' is a subjective term, and I suppose that as a Christian grows richer, s/he tends to define the term ever upward. But whatever we may definitively nail down as 'wealthy' is alien to Christianity. And yet Art Deco glorifies wealth, suggesting that one should not be ashamed of being rich.

Let me provide an example of the contrasting concepts of beauty in Art Deco and Academicism. This is Young Shepherdess Standing by the Academic Neoclassical master William Adolphe Bouguereau. Depictions of barefoot peasant girls were among Bouguereau's most common subjects. He idealized the lifestyle of the poor rural Frenchman, attributing Edenic qualities to the agrarian lifestyle. This shepherdess is not an icon of beauty for her splendor and grace, but for her simplicity. The fact that she smells like sheep and will lose most of her teeth by the age of 30 is unmentioned. Bouguereau suggests that true beauty is found not in wealth, but in poverty.







Now a contrasting image: This is Dancers by Art Deco sculptor Demetre Chiparus. These are not peasants, but the wealthy elite of society. The woman is not dressed in a converted flower sack as the peasant girl above is, but a carefully designed and tailored gown. She wears high heels, an item of fashion which prevents a person from engaging in manual labor (and is therefore a conspicuous display of wealth). The couple is engaged not in an effort to create food and clothing, but an economically useless activity: dancing. This sculpture is a rejection of Bouguereau's concept of beauty, and instead replaces that definition with one of wealth and high social class. Both images express beauty; both define them very differently.

So am I moving away from Christian values by appreciating a movement which highly esteems wealth (Art Deco, Art Nouveau) instead of one that highly esteems poverty (Academic Neoclassicism)? Ah, but here is where the ethical formulation gets complex! The Bouguereau in question was produced once and is worth millions of dollars, whereas the Chiparus was mass produced and is worth thousands of dollars.

So a century ago, a profoundly wealthy person might have had one of Bouguereau's peasant girls hanging on his wall. He might think to himself "If only I were a simple peasant, without a care in the world, instead of having to worry about my many investments all hours of the day!" And a middle-class person might have a Chiparus knock-off (or maybe an original) on his mantle and say to himself "If only I were rich, dancing without a care in the world, instead worrying about the mortgage all hours of the day!" The rich glorify the poor, the poorer (comparatively, but not absolutely) glorify being rich. To each, the grass is always greener on the other side.

So even though Art Deco glorified wealth, its decisive element was not a particular concept of line and form or color, but mass production. What makes Art Deco Art Deco is that it was produced in vast quantities by machines. There are exceptions, of course, such as painters whose work could not mass produced (until the advent of clever businessmen like Thomas Kinkade). Whereas once art was the sole possession of the very wealthy, thanks to the tools of capitalism, it is now available to everyone. Art Nouveau and Art Deco represented the new Age of Capitalism -- when the rising tide lifted the boats of all people, most especially the poor. Capitalism invented the middle class, which took advantage of its newfound wealth to access the arts once restricted to the elites. And that's a good thing, because being poor sucks.

Still, these movements glorify wealth, though they make art accessible to the non-wealthy. Its predecessor did not glorify wealth, but was only accessible to the wealthy. Here is a reflection of one of the ironies of Christian ethics. We are told to give our resources to the poor so that they may no longer be poor. But what if we succeed and the poor become rich men stuck in the eyes of needles? We are told that greed is evil, but greed is the essential motive of capitalism, which among all economic systems does the most good for the poor. Christian objectives and the means to achieve them seem to be in conflict.

Now I've written myself into a corner as my attempt to synthesize my faith and my aesthetics is still fuzzy. This is a work in progress. What do you think of the ideas that I have put forth here?

Art Blogging: Louis Lozowick

Louis Lozowick (1892-1973) was an Art Deco lithographer. Born in the Ukraine, he was educated in Kiev before immigrating to the United States. He then studied at the National Academy of Design and Ohio State University. Lozowick composed innumerable prints over a fifty-year period about American life.

New York (1923). For Lozowick's generation, New York City was the icon of progress.
Bridge Repair (1938). Art Deco emphasized clean, crisp lines glistening in the light of industrial, mass-produced perfection. Lozowick wrote: "The dominant trend in America of today, beneath all the apparent chaos and confusion, is toward order and organization which find their outward sign and symbol in the rigid geometry of the American city: in the verticals of its smoke stacks, in the parallels of its car tracks, in the squares of its streets, the cubes of its factories, the arc of its bridges, the cylinders of its gas tanks."

Art Blogging: The Chrysler Building

One writer referred to this Art Deco masterpiece as "a timeless work of Jazz Age poetry in steel." Constructed from 1928 to 1930, it was the first building to surpass 1,000 feet in height and was for several months the tallest building in the world. Though it lost that position to the Empire State Building, it remained the pinnacle of Art Deco achievement.

The spire is clad in stainless steel, that quintessential medium of the age, representative of a time of industrial optimism. It glistens gloriously in the sunlight, parabolic curves punctuated by triangular windows in a rhythmic verticality.
Steel eagles intentionally resembling car hood ornaments look out over the New York skyline from the 61st floor. Eagles -- what a particularly American gargoyle. And they do not simply rest on ledges, but jutt out far in flight over the city in a fierce but silent stillness.


Flying hubcaps celebrate the achievements of capitalism and industrialism.

Energy, Result, Workmanship and Transportation by Edward Turnbull -- an enormous mural inside the lobby, restored in 1999.


The elevator doors remind us that the Art Deco voice is one not only of capitalistic dynamism, but refined elegance as well. They are masterpieces of marquetry -- the medium of bonding thin sheets of wood together to create intricate textures and patterns.