F.T. Marinetti, “Manifesto of Futurism”; Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group”; and El Lissitzky, “Our Book” are found in our main text Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field by Helen Armstrong on pages 19-31.
The rapid development of technology in the 20th century played a huge impact of the manifestos, to break free from traditional art styles and to innovate new ways of approaching and expressing their work. These new changes created opportunities for artists/designers to separate themselves from other artists and showcase their own unique styles of art, which relates to the concept of authorship/ownership. Universal systems of communication like newspapers, magazines, books, etc were the only ways of obtaining information for most people back then and artists would use this knowledge to implement it into their work. If there is something social/political going on in the world, artists could make use of the event in their art piece.
 A common view that these artists share is that there should always be new ways to approach art and innovate new changes. However, there may be a disagreement on the tools used to approach it. A futurist would be more open to use technology as a tool to create new art, but a constructivist sees technology as an enemy of art and would prefer to use traditional tools such as paint, pencils, brushes. In our current century, the communication process has definitely changed. We now have social media, smartphones, computers, and technology all around us. When uploading a piece of work online, it is almost impossible to avoid feedback.
Annotations
Leave a Reply