Design Context

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Golden Age of Comics

Comics have been in existence since the end of the 19th century, however it wasn't until the end of the depression that the popularity of newspaper cartoons expanded into the major industry which we now recognize as modern comic books. The precise era of the Golden Age is often debated, however it is more or less agreed to have begun alongside the 1938 debut of Superman in Action Comics #1, published by Detective Comics (predecessor of DC Comics). The success of Superman quickly led to a number of imitations from other companies, such as Captain Marvel (introduced in Whiz Comics #2, published by Fawcett Comics) who – whilst not as enduring as his contemporaries – was the best-selling superhero title of the era, reaching sales of approximately 1.4 million copies per issue.

Action Comics #1 (June 1938), Art by Joe Shuster The sales of comic books increased markedly during World War II. They were cheap, portable and had inspirational, patriotic stories of good triumphing over evil – with a clear child-like distinction between good and evil, to an almost propaganda-like degree. The tales very much reflected the events and values of the time. Pro-American characters were popular, particularly Captain America, a superhero whose entire creation was based on aiding the country’s war effort.  Patriotic heroes donning red, white, and blue soon became almost synonymous with the Golden Age. Many heroes of this time period battled the Axis powers, with covers such as Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941) showing the title character punching Adolf Hitler.

Captain America Comics #1 (March 1941), Story & Art by Jack Kirby

After the war, the superhero genre lost steam, marking what many consider to be the end of the Golden Age. This was cemented  in 1954, with the establishment of the Comics Code Authority – whose strict censorship on what was acceptable to be featured in comics had an undeniable hand in the changes to the medium that would become typical of the “Silver Age” that followed. The Golden Age itself, though, left an indelible mark on comic books with many of the characters created during the time remaining popular up to the present day, with the first superhero, Superman, remaining relevant in popular culture even today. Perhaps one of the most important impacts of the Golden Age was the establishing of the comic book as a mainstream art form, with its own unique language and creative conventions.

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Roy Lichtenstein & Drowning Girl

“Drowning Girl” (A.K.A - “Secret Hearts” or “I Don't Care! I'd Rather Sink”), is a painting in oil and synthetic paint by artist Roy Lichtenstein. The piece utilizes the conventions of Golden Age comic book art, such as a thought bubble to convey the thoughts of the figure, and Ben-Day dots to echo the effects of the mechanized print process. It is oft considered one of the most iconic paintings of the Pop Art movement. The image's depiction of a woman in a tragic situation was one that would feature frequently in the work he created during the mid-1960s.

“Drowning Girl”, Roy Lichtenstein, 1963

The image was mostly derived from a splash page from the comic "Run for Love!", with much of the graphical and narrative context removed, and the waves further adapted from “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai. The new narrative, made clear through the "I Don't Care! I'd Rather Sink — Than Call Brad For Help!" thought bubble, acts to highlight the cliched melodrama of the isolated image, a woman “drowning in a sea of tears”, while the off-handed reference to the unseen Brad helps add to the absurdity of the piece (notably, it is one of many by Lichtenstein to reference “Brad”).

"Run for Love!" (illustrated by Tony Abruzzo and lettered by Ira Schnapp) from Secret Hearts #83 (November 1962), published by DC Comics

Like the work of Andy Warhol, Lichtenstein's comic-based work was hotly debated, with many not even regarding it as real art. During the 1960s claims by critics that Lichtenstein was “the worst artist in the US” were rife, although his work has been more kindly regarded in recent times – as people became more amenable to the validity of comic art as fine art. He still receives much criticism for his methods however; as his works never attributed original creators or paid them royalties. It is also notable that despite the association of Lichtenstein with romance comics (as a result of his numerous pieces which appropriated them), his skills have rarely been considered good enough to have been hired to work on them – it is perhaps as a result of this that he developed his unique style of artistic incorporation.

“The Great Wave off Kanganwa”, Hokusai, 1826-1833

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Andy Warhol & Campbell’s Soup Cans

“Campbell's Soup Cans” (occasionally referred to as “32 Campbell's Soup Cans”) is a work of art by Andy Warhol, produced in 1962. It comprises 32 individual canvases, produced via screen printing – a “non-painterly” method – with each canvas representing a different variety of soup offered by the Campell's Soup company at the time. Campbell's Soup Cans' appropriation of popular culture helped to usher in pop art as a major art movement in the United States.

One of 32 separate canvases comprising the piece “Campbell’s Soup Cans”

As a result of the semi-mechanized process used, the simplistic style, and the commercial subject matter , the pieces initially drew a lot of ire from the art community, as the work's blatantly mundane commercialism represented a direct affront to the technique and philosophy of abstract expressionism – which was the dominant art movement during the post-war period. The controversy caused by this led to a great deal of debate about the merits and ethics of such work, with the discussion continuing to present day.

Example of the colour variations Warhol was able to utilize thanks to the screen-printing method.

Warhol made use of the the Campbell's Soup Cans in his work on numerous other occasions later in his career, and his use of images from the world of commerce and mass media continued throughout his career. There are numerous anecdotes claiming to reveal the reasons behind his decision to utilize the cans in the first place. One explanation “blames” Roy Lichtenstein, as Warhol's respect  for his work forced him to eschew comic books as a subject – with Muriel Latow (an aspiring interior decorator) being pointed to as the one who suggested the soup cans as a replacement.

Small Torn Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot), 1962

This piece, along with it's counterpart “Big Torn Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot)”, also 1962, is perceived to be a metaphor for life - in the sense that all things, even packaged food must meet their end. They are often viewed as expressionistic by art critics.

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“Do as I say, not as I do”

Piece inspired by the work of Roy Lichtenstein, referencing a panel from “The Wicked + The Divine”.

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Pop Art

Pop Art is a movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain, and in the United States soon after. Pop Art challenged the traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects – with an emphasis on the banal or kitschy. Often these references are isolated and removed from context. Widely believed to be an evolution of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art is also considered to be a precursor to the Postmodern Art movement – in some cases, believed to be an early example of the movement. Beyond the visual aesthetic, the Pop Art movement is also associated with the mechanical means of reproduction – such as those utilized in the prints of Andy Warhol – which placed an emphasis on the more commercial aspects of art. Imagery which was currently used in advertising (such as product labels and logos) featured prominently in the work of numerous pop artists, for example “Campbell's Tomato Juice Box” by Warhol. As American artists where comparatively more exposed to mass-produced imagery and advertisements than the British it was often the case that their work was more dramatic and aggressive, in order to distance themselves from the commercial artwork they were inspired by.

Roy Lichtenstein, “Drowning Girl”, 1963

One of the most important, and iconic, pop artists would be Roy Lichtenstein, whose work represents a very quintessential example of the Pop Art ideology. His subject matter was extrapolated from Golden Age comic books – a great example of mass-produced art – focusing on a single panel within the strip and re-imaging the composition, adding or removing elements, modifying text and otherwise modifying the context of the image and turning it into something different than it had originally been intended. Lichtenstein not only used the thick outlines and bold colours synonymous with comic book imagery, but he also utilized Ben-Day dots (the small dots used to render colour in mass-produced comics), in a rather innovative way which was soon imitated by other artists. His attention to detail, and the fact that his images were hand-painted, helped to blur the line between high art and mass reproduction. Lichtenstein's most famous piece is most likely “Drowning Girl”, which was appropriated from the panels of a DC comic book.

Andy Warhol, “Campbell’s Soup Cans”. 1962

Besides Lichtenstein, the most famous pop artist would doubtlessly be Andy Warhol – whose name is synonymous with the movement (to the point that many ley individuals consider Pop Art to be attributed solely to him). Warhol is probably most well-known for his vividly coloured celebrity portraits (which have taken on a whole new lease of life in recent years), though his subject matter was much more varied throughout his career. His most common inspiration, as with most pop artists, was mass consumer culture. Coco-Cola bottles and Campbell's soup cans, reproduced ad infinitum, were a prominent feature of his early works, and he soon transitioned from producing hand-painted artwork to screen-printing to further facilitate the mass-manufacturing element of his work. Warhol's insistence on these methods rejected the more “commercial” notions of artistic authenticity, instead acknowledging the commodification of art – seeking to prove that artistic merit could be found in a can of soup just as it could in a painting.

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Psychedelic Art Experiments

Will be writing about Psychedelic Art in the near future, but before doing so I decided to play around with a “diluted” form of Psychedelic Art, inspired by work of Jen Bartel, a digital artist whose work often contains a mild element of psychedelia - especially in this series. (Jen Bartel, “Galactic Cats”, 2015.)

With these pieces in mind, I returned to a wolf study I had completed a few days previous, with the intent of giving it a new lease of life. By utilizing a variety of different layer-merging methods, I combined the image with a photograph of a galaxy, and a digital painting of the same I had produced a few weeks ago, to create a pair of images that I feel capture a similar essence to those above.

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Another example of datamoshing used for commercial art - this time, it is used (alongside numerous other effects) to create the bizarre visual smorgasbord that is “Off The Air”. (Datamoshing effect first appears at approximately 1:35)

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An example of a commercial application of the datamoshing technique - used here to enhance the visual appeal of this music video by the band Chairlift.

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Faux-Glitch Art Experiments

A collection of image manipulations, created by myself, inspired by glitch art whilst also retaining my own personal aesthetic. Felt encouraged to push the visuals a little further than I would normally in an attempt to capture the spirit of the glitch art I’ve been viewing, however I have yet to wrap my head around the actual art of databending - so the following images were manipulated in my normal way.

I sources the images from the movie “Memories of Matsuko”. Whilst I would normally only work with images I had created myself, I wanted to try and take visuals that were already established and transform them into something different - as is the general purpose of glitch art.

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Sabato Visconti, cont’d

Glitch Art is a movement which encompasses a wide variety of techniques; and an even wider variety of possible methods to achieve these techniques. I believe a part of it's appeal is it's inherent modernism – it's reliance on new technologies which eschew tradition and the relative “norm” established by modern art. In fact, it is because of this loosely accepted ethos that I believe glitch art to be a natural evolution of pop art and the post-modern movements – as it shares a firm sense of “intentional otherness” and a desire to break away from, and question, society's definition of art.

Moving on from the examples of his work featured in my previous post, I've decided to focus on another series of images by Sabato Visconti, which he has titled “Apocalypse Beach”. Tying in with the themes of contrast which often feature in glitch art works, these images were created with the intent of creating a juxtaposition between instability and intimacy – in the artist's own words “where the indifference of individual experience meets the indifference of an environment poised to swallow us whole.”

The following images were all created through a technique called “Datamoshing” - a common application in glitch art which involves the manipulation of compressed video formats, and the way in which the frames are encoded. By removing the “i-frames” ((also known as keyframes) which contain information about each frame's pixel data) and leaving behind the remaining “p-frames” (which only contain information on the pixels which move within each frame) the resulting imagery grants the viewer a unique perspective with which to view the relatively mundane subject matter – transforming it into an entirely different experience.

Apocalypse Beach series, Sabato Visconti, Date unknown

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Sabato Visconti

Technically speaking, a glitch is a fault – often transient in nature. The result of a temporary malfunction, glitches have become a common source of frustration for consumers of digital media in the modern age – with the resulting visual effects being instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in the last few decades. Unlike bugs, a more tangible source of error that can usually be diagnosed and repaired, the causes of a glitch are often unknown – creating a vague sense of mystery around them, in addition to the amusement often caused by their iconic visual effects.

In recent years, as computer literacy has become more commonplace and specialist software has granted even the most ignorant of leypeople a certain degree of control over the inner workings of digital media, glitches have begun to creep into the world of digital art in an intentional way. Indeed, flaws which once may have condemned an image as ruined by some are now highly sought by others – those working with the relatively novel medium of “Glitch Art”, which amongst other things is used by artists to demonstrate the fragility and imperfection of modern technology.

One such artist is Sabato Visconti, a Brazilian multimedia artist who has embraced the genre through it's many different applications – and utilizes glitches in photography, illustrations and various other forms of new media. The most intriguing of these applications, in my personal opinion, is his experimentation with “animated glitch art GIFs”, short animated loops which capture the essence of glitch art, with a decidedly post-modern twist, by utilizing the process of ROM hacking to create visual experiences which corrupt images of popular culture into undeniably unique forms.

b_00iii, Sabato Visconti, 2014-15

[%%% Nite Checkout], Sabato Visconti, 2014-15

Friday Nite B Like, Sabato Visconti, 2014-15