Helen's Writings

Nowadays, it’s difficult to go shopping anywhere without finding the effects of De Stijl, Bauhaus, or Swiss design marking furniture, clothing, and other household items for sale in such places as Walmart, Target, and, most famously, IKEA. De Stijl was developed as a response to the growing need for the consumer to have some power over their environment, while still maintaining a strong grasp on material cost efficiency and ergonomics. Style, effectiveness, and keeping costs low has defined many of the goals of design throughout the 20th century, leading into the 21st. This focus has seen the development of materials to better suit this goal, and even a different method of assembly: IKEA furniture. Affordable and available, IKEA furniture is shipped in pieces and usually must be assembled by the customer themselves. The instructions are always as simple as possible, and the designs are kept minimalist enough to avoid confusion in which pieces fit, slot or screw where. I admire t...

Reflecting on more traditional techniques for creating graphic art, Russian Constructivism overlaps somewhat with collage, as they seem to result in a similar independence of shapes and colors. With Constructivism, as with collage, each element can only be deliberately placed, as they’re individual objects being brought together to form a cohesive image. Their marked differences come to bear in just how deliberate they are. In most cases, collage as a technique is an art form in itself, but with Constructivism, the process isn’t nearly as important as the finished product. Collage incorporates not only shapes which can be difficult to form in the first place, whether by scissors or knife, and colors which are often already applied. Collage can be a more casual form of art-making, in which the process and its rough edges can be just as valuable as the finished piece. In some cases, adding to the collage, taking from it, and generally treating it like a boon by nature of being a ...

Dada emerged in Europe as a direct response to the horrors of the first World War, in which society had collapsed for the lives of so many, especially those in the trenches, that it seemed absurd to simply return to what was before as soon as the fighting was done. In a similar vein, the art, especially the anti-war art, which emerged in Vietnam-era America was a response to the horrors of the war, though both movements distinguish themselves from one another in key ways. For one, Dada’s focus was on disassembling and deconstructing all art which had come from society previously, in a way which valued irreverence and a satirical tone, as can be seen in Hugo Ball’s Karawane . In his specific instance, Karawane is a nonsense poem of phonetic sounds, almost lampooning the feeling of cruel absurdity which seemed to mark the lives of the artists who were forced to fight--and often die--in the trenches. As for Vietnam, much of the art produced was not in response to the horrors of...

  With the Industrial Revolution came the miracle and paradox of the 20th century. Never before in human history has technology reached such a state of rapid, clamoring, and all-encompassing advancement, to the point that with every new generation, the gap between the technologies they each grew up with only widens. With such a rapid shift in lifestyle, most notably towards the end of the era of massive population migration into cities in the early 20th century, many people had many responses. While some despaired, lamenting the loss of humanity’s connection to its roots, other movements took the shift in stride. I will focus on one such group, and juxtapose it against a similar, yet distinct modern movement known as the “Cyberpunk” genre, popularized by such films as Bladerunner, The Matrix, and Ghost in the Shell. Futurism had a bit of an identity crisis when it first emerged. Critics of the movement declared it hardly distinct from previous movements, such as Impressionis...

I found New Objectivity particularly interesting, as it sought, in a strange reversal, to rebel against Expressionism by emphasizing the mundane. In this regard, I believe Expressionism represents a romantic lens through which to view daily life, whereas New Objectivity seeks the truth of daily life. In this pursuit, they weren’t necessarily pessimistic, just as Expressionism isn’t necessarily more optimistic. I will seek to first break down the differences in tactics between the two to portray their meaning, and then I will break down the differences between the meanings themselves. In Expressionism, it distorts daily life through several avenues: warping forms, dulling or brightening colors, or simply portraying impossible situations in which to frame the emotion they seek to portray. Overall, Expressionism deals in emotion and the metaphysical: curiosity, doubt, lust, and fury all inflict themselves on the surroundings first and foremost, shaping the world and thereby the moo...