COP LECTURE 6 - Print Culture & Distribution

Print Culture & Distribution

The age of print began in 1450 when Gutenburg’s printing press was invented, it dragged humanity out of the dark ages.

1780 summerset house London, royal academy art school only for rich or royalty. The arts that were taught were:

painting

architecture

sculpture

music

poetry

only men were allowed to attend and only men were allowed to be life models there, most of the paintings produced were exaggerating a mans strength and showing them as empowering.

1760-1840 industrial revolution, production isn’t about hand made anymore, it’s about mass production therefore new technologies were created to aid this. The industrial revolution also saw a divide being created in cities, with the middle class factory owners living in nice clean areas and the working class living in slums that were in heavily polluted parts of the city. The working class pulled together and created their own methods of entertainment as well as their own way of creating art using these new technologies invented. The possibility to become an artist was no longer just for the rich and royal. People began to make money from reproducing already famous paintings through paint or engravings.

1867

Matthew Arnold attempted to define culture in his book ‘culture and anarchy’. One of the quotes from this is ‘to minister the diseased spirit pf our time’ which refers to the working class. A sense of snobbishness is prominent through out his book implying that the working class culture is not art in attempt to put the working class people ‘back in their place’

F.R Leavis shared similar views and believed that there was only an intellectual minority that could maintain the same kevel of culture

19^th century Penny Dreadful, produced by working class for the working class

Government school of design opened in Summerset house with the function to get people ready to work in industry, they took off and one opened in every province. These are what form our art schools today yet only 3 still exist.

1936

Walter Benjamin believed that technological reproduction of art removes:

Creativity

Genius

Value

Tradition

Authority

Mystery

1842

Newspapers began being able to use images / illustrations in their publications, readers were able to take these out and display them on their walls at home. There became less of a desire to go to galleries because art work was so easily accessible at home.  

1840

Photography took over from portrait painters as it was a quicker and cheaper process therefore there was no longer a job for portrait painters.

1842

Print capitalism emerged out of the industrial revolution, replacing art with a new form of art.

1862

William Morris emerges from print capitalism and wanted to create something complex and argued that that craft workers aren’t labourers, they’re artists. He was a revolutionary, wanted to not only level culture but also level the world. His work was born out of a period of struggle. It is political in a desire for a world that’s better than capitalism therefore focused on nature, something that is beyond the horrors of capitalism.

He went on to set up Morton Abbey Mills, a giant studio run by a collective effort that created textiles on mass that everyone could access and have in their homes. However this did not take off but created an opposite of mass production.

This is visible today, people moving back from digital design and going back to handmade.