The "age of print" began around 1450 with Gutenberg's printing press. The invention of new technologies enabled the availability and accessibility of art and design to widen through the use of processes such as lithographic printing, screen printing and photography, and had an effect on art establishments (galleries and academies) as well as culture and the wider world in general.
Traditionally, the fine arts were seen as encompassing painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry. These were taught in art schools and academies and the only forms that art could take. There were a couple of institutions per country and they were usually linked to the aristocracy. There is a big history of paintings that glorified rich people and their world which was seen as the standard style of art. Academies taught this certain style of artistic practice - which was the same for hundreds of years and reproduced throughout the 1600's and 1700's.
When the Industrial Revolution happened, sometime between 1760 and 1840, society really shifted and huge factories were being created to new products on new machines. Textiles were being produced, books were printed, objects were manufactured at an astonishing rate. As a result, more factories were made to generate more profit and cities were erected from small villages, expanding ever larger, to compensate people living and going to work in the same areas. The working class.
The first sense of a class divide was present, exposing a class structure and ladder of labels, from the industry workers (living in terrible conditions) to the factory owners (of relative affluence) to the upper middle class and the aristocracy. Before this, there was just royalty and everyone else. There was now a noticeable, physical segregation between divides in society. Because the working class were isolated and confined to their machines and presses, a working class culture emerged - pubs, music halls, papers, pamphlets, penny dreadfuls - the birth of popular culture arrived because of industrialisation. The snobbery emitted from the upper classes is still echoed today; what is considered the fine arts and the graphic arts? Fine art of sculpture and painting is still seen as the upper class art whereas graphics are the popular working class arts.
When the Industrial Revolution happened, sometime between 1760 and 1840, society really shifted and huge factories were being created to new products on new machines. Textiles were being produced, books were printed, objects were manufactured at an astonishing rate. As a result, more factories were made to generate more profit and cities were erected from small villages, expanding ever larger, to compensate people living and going to work in the same areas. The working class.
The first sense of a class divide was present, exposing a class structure and ladder of labels, from the industry workers (living in terrible conditions) to the factory owners (of relative affluence) to the upper middle class and the aristocracy. Before this, there was just royalty and everyone else. There was now a noticeable, physical segregation between divides in society. Because the working class were isolated and confined to their machines and presses, a working class culture emerged - pubs, music halls, papers, pamphlets, penny dreadfuls - the birth of popular culture arrived because of industrialisation. The snobbery emitted from the upper classes is still echoed today; what is considered the fine arts and the graphic arts? Fine art of sculpture and painting is still seen as the upper class art whereas graphics are the popular working class arts.
Because of capitalism, new ways of experiencing paintings were fashioned. Instead of being commissioned from the aristocracy to paint a portrait and the notable figure then unveiling the piece in front of a small circle of wealthy friends, artists found that setting up their paintings in a gallery and charging people admission to look at the portfolio of work generated more money than selling a single piece of work. Selling through making reproductions of art as prints make fortunes; though the status of the artist is lessened. New institutions taught new forms of art and print, schools of design, and spread over the provinces. These are the inheritors of the art schools today, of which Leeds College of Art is a part of. Others were subsumed into wider universities. These art schools are the inheritors of schools of design; they aren't academies or universities. They give people the skills o work in production. New products and new machines gave way to new forms and new institutions - resulting in new markets and culture being rewritten because of new technologies.
Instead of going to a gallery, printed items such as the London Illustrated News were circulated and relayed where famous artworks come to us and we can have our own printed copy of the work to display. It then demystifies the art as it can be owned by anyone and placed above a fireplace. Technological reproduction of art removes the "aura" surrounding it; creativity, genius, external value, tradition, authority, authenticity, distance and mystery. The status of the creator of the art is lessened as well as the art itself.
When photography emerged, portrait painters were out of business; people preferred to have their pictures taken rather than commissioning a portraitist and sitting for hours on end while they were painted through a representation. Graphic design and new technology democratised culture; what was the culture of a few became the culture of many - which is a positive thing. Print capitalism developed where entrepreneurs who were looking for a "quick buck" profited from popular art and ripping off famous paintings. Fine art is commercially driven, there is a certain practice that is solely just based around profit.
William Morris as an example of a practice emerging that was pushing against print capitalism. He was a radical socialist who used new mechanical productions of making and printing as a weapon against the system. He created work that was beautiful, that showed the natural world and its beauty complexity. He was all for using the democratic potential of new mediums to create beautiful and affordable works. William Morris is often associated with his wallpapers - often seen in the houses of the rich elite - which he was against, so perhaps he failed in a way? He worked with Merton Abbey Mills in a collective, co-operative and collaborative studio where every crafter was not just a mere labourer and had a stake in the work made and the profits. Beautiful things were created that were affordable to everyone and they strived to work towards a fairer society.
Popular art was created through the industrial revolution. Before this there was a divide between high art and popular art which can still be seen today. I am the product of the working-class side of that divide as is the institution I study at, Leeds College of Art. Making art commercially, art that is understandable, and art that is for everyone is still an underlying motive a lot of what we do at LCA. It is still at the heart of the problem whether something is considered art or not. Maybe this is a false question? Is everything art? The popular arts and graphic arts want to be inclusive to everyone and previously Fine Art never did - preferring to align itself among taste-makers and the rich elite - and continued to disassociate itself until the Modernist art movement. What happens at this time is that culture, and those in charge of deciding what is considered a masterpiece, then gets democratised and the whole world is in control; no longer at the decision of just the taste makers. A deep political battle is at the core of all print practices today. There are printers striving to be artists or illustrators and some not wanting to be either. This frames everything and creates an interesting way of reading into print produced works.
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