OUGD603 - Research Brief - Anniversaries - Further Research

Looking closer at obscure subjects/events/people/buildings which will be celebrating an anniversary in 2018. Wanting to choose a subject matter that would lead to a creative outcome I began looking closer at artists/art movements/paintings that have a significant anniversary in 2018.

•  The Royal Academy of Arts in London was founded on 10 December 1768 by a group of artists led by Joshua Reynolds, although it wasn’t until 1870 that the RA moved to its current home at Burlington House. In the year of its 250th anniversary, the institution is expanding again with a major redevelopment designed by David Chipperfield.
• Jacopo Tintoretto at 500 - This year Venice celebrates the 500th anniversary of the birth of Jacopo Tintoretto, one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school in the late years of the Renaissance. Apparently, although most of Tintoretto’s masterpieces have remained in Venice, the city has not hosted a major exhibition of his work in more than 80 years.
• The death of Cubism -With practitioners from Picasso and Braque to Delauney and Duchamp, Cubism was one of the most important and influential styles of modern art. And yet it flourished for a relatively brief length of time, beginning in 1907 and generally agreed to have begun declining around 1918 when Louis Vauxcelles (the critic who coined the term) declared Cubism dead. A century later, the Centre Pompidou, in partnership with the Kunstmuseum Basel, brings the movement back into the spotlight with a major survey bringing together approximately 300 artworks by many of its key players.
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh The Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in 1868. On the sesquicentenary of his birth, Mackintosh’s native city of Glasgow is planning a year-long programme of celebrations, most notably perhaps the reopening of the newly restored art nouveau Willow Tea Rooms.
• Chippendale The tercentenary of the birth of famed Yorkshire-born cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale (1718–79) will be celebrated this year with a series of exhibitions and events across the UK. The centrepiece of the programme is Leeds City Museum’s survey, which brings together original drawings, documents and key examples of Chippendale furniture, opening on 9 February (until 9 June).

Finding anniversaries with events and celebrations attached to them was easy, I wanted to celebrate an anniversary which was not getting the coverage, an overlooked person event or date - this lead me to look at other more obscure artists from different backgrounds and cultures. 

• Olga Rozanova - Russian Avant-Garde Artist - Died 7th November 1918 - 100 years since death.
• Edouard Vuillard - French Artist Born 1868 - most known for the Nabis - Les Nabis were a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s.
• Suzanne Valadon - Died 1938 - 80 Years  In 1894, Valadon became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
• Issey Miyake - Born 1938 - 80 Years - Japanese fashion designer - Italian Baroque painter, today considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. 425 Years since Birth.
• Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. - Mannerism - 425 years since death.
• Jacques-Louis David was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. 200 years since birth.
• Lucio Fontana was an Italian painter, sculptor and theorist of Argentine birth. He is mostly known as the founder of Spatialism. 50 Years since death. 
• Brice Marden, is an American artist, generally described as Minimalist, although his work may be hard to categorize. Born 80 years ago.
• Vincent Van Gogh Chops His Ear off. 130 Years ago. 

Having looked closely at these artists and their works, I found that the most appealing of these people to be Olga Rozanova, someone I had not heard of or seen before this research, but someone whose work resonates with the most well known of Russian Avant-Garde artists. I would like to explore how her work and her life would work within this project, which of course is based around typography which will communicate the subject matter.