Essay: Jules Cheret and Roy Liechtenstine

Jules Cheret 

Jules Cheret played an important role in the transition from the Victorian graphics to the Art Nouveau style. During the late 19^th century a new French law concerning freedom of press lifted many restrictions and allowed posters everywhere except on churches. The streets became an art gallery for the nation. The poster La biche au bois has a very Victorian approach starring Sarah Bernhardt. Both Bernhardt and Cheret took Paris by a storm as Bernhardt became the leading actress of her time while  Cheret pioneered the visual poster.Philip B. meggs. and Alston W. Purvis.eds., 2012. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Fifth Edition. Hoboken Canada: John Wiley & Sons,Inc.pg201

The above image is one of Cheret's early green and black poster used the multiple image format that was popular in the 1860's. the lettering is a harbinger of the swirling forms making his mature style.

He moved away from the Victorian by simplifying his designs and increasing the scale of his major figures and lettering. Cheret’s artistic influences included the idolized beauty and care free lifestyle painted by Watteau and Fragonard. Cheret than started to use a black line and primary colour (red, yellow, and blue).  

Cheret achieved a graphic vitality with these bright colours, and subtle overlapping allowed an astonishing range of colour effects. In Charet’s work one can see a vitality of bright colours and subtle overprinting allowed and astonishing range of colours and effects such as stipple and crosshatch, soft watercolour like washes and bold calligraphic chunks of colour, scratching, and splattering.  The women that Cheret painted had previously been depicted as either in purity or as whores. Cheret changed that freeing women from those corsets and allowing them to enjoy what was becoming a freer, open society. Ladies fashions became less confining and less concealing, and women began to engage in behavior once taught the exclusive province of man while establishing just what it meant to be a modern woman on the cusp of a new century. The Cherettes were emblematic of the cultural shift. 

Philip B. meggs. and Alston W. Purvis.eds., 2012. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Fifth Edition. Hoboken Canada: John Wiley & Sons,Inc.pg202

Roy Lichtenstein 

Roy Liechtenstein was the master of stereotype and the most sophisticated of mayor Pop artists. In term of his analysis of visual convention of past styles. Liechtenstein development as a mature painter, was marked by his tendency for working in successive serle groups. The later groups tend to be interpretations of earlier modernist styles, Cubism, Futurism, and Surrealism. Liechtenstein became famous in the early 1960’s for his deadpan reactions op popular imagery, particularly paintings based on was and romantic comics

 Liechtenstein pulled comics into a new paradigm, changing the form a humdrum existence with limited audience into a taught provoking art from where juxtaposed print, advertising and more to create a conceptual work for a more sophisticated audience. This work showed comics have stylistic characters that inescapably follow an aesthetic code. Primary colours (red, yellow and blue) and heavy black outlines were his favorite. Liechtenstein occasionally used greed. Instead of shades of colour Liechtenstein used the benday dot, which is a method by which an image is created, and its density of tone modulated in printing. Sometimes Liechtenstein selected a comic strip scene, recomposed it, projected it onto his canvas and stanciled in the dots.Roy Lichtenstein. 2014. Roy Lichtenstein. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.artchive.com/artchive/L/lichtenstein.html. [Accessed 2 February 2014].

References

Philip B. meggs. and Alston W. Purvis.eds., 2012. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Fifth Edition. Hoboken Canada: John Wiley & Sons,Inc.

Roy Lichtenstein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2014. Roy Lichtenstein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein. [Accessed 02 February 2014].

ules Chéret - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2014. Jules Chéret - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Ch%C3%A9ret. 

[Accessed 02 February 2014].

Roy Lichtenstein. 2014. Roy Lichtenstein. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.artchive.com/artchive/L/lichtenstein.html. [Accessed 15 February 2014].