1.
Photo manipulation
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Photo manipulation involves transforming or altering a photograph using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results. For example, Ansel Adams employed some of the common manipulations using darkroom exposure techniques. There are a number of applications available for digital image manipulation. Photo manipulation dates back to some of the earliest photographs captured on glass, the practice began not long after the creation of the first photograph by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce who developed heliography and made the first photographic print from a photoengraved printing plate. Negatives can be manipulated while still in the camera using double-exposure techniques, in the early 19th century, photography and the technology that made it possible was rather crude and cumbersome. While the equipment and technology progressed over time, it wasnt until the late 20th Century that photography evolved into the digital realm. At the onset, digital photography was considered by some to be a new approach. Close observation of the photograph raises questions and brings to light certain details in the photograph that simply do not add up, Photo manipulation has been used to deceive or persuade viewers or improve storytelling and self-expression. Often even subtle and discreet changes can have a impact on how we interpret or judge a photograph. As early as the American Civil War, photographs were published as engravings based on more than one negative, Joseph Stalin made use of photo retouching for propaganda purposes. On May 5,1920 his predecessor Vladimir Lenin held a speech for Soviet troops that Leon Trotsky attended, Stalin had Trotsky retouched out of a photograph showing Trotsky in attendance. In a well known case of damnatio memoriae image manipulation, NKVD leader Nikolai Yezhov, in the 1930s, artist John Heartfield used a type of photo manipulation known as the photomontage to critique Nazi propaganda. Some ethical theories have been applied to image manipulation, during a panel on the topic of ethics in image manipulation Aude Oliva theorized that categorical shifts are necessary in order for an edited image to be viewed as a manipulation. In Image Act Theory, Carson Reynolds extended speech act theory by applying it to photo editing, in How to Do Things with Pictures, William Mitchell details the long history of photo manipulation and discusses it critically. A notable incident of controversial photo manipulation occurred over a photograph that was altered to fit the vertical orientation of a 1982 National Geographic magazine cover, the altered image made two Egyptian pyramids appear closer together than they actually were in the original photograph. The incident triggered a debate about the appropriateness of falsifying an image and we regarded that afterwards as a mistake, and we wouldn’t repeat that mistake today. There are other incidents of questionable photo manipulation in journalism, one such incident arose in early 2005 after Martha Stewart was released from prison. Newsweek used a photograph of Stewarts face on the body of a much slimmer woman for their cover, staley also explained that Newsweek disclosed on page 3 that the cover image of Martha Stewart was a composite
2.
Immersion (virtual reality)
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Immersion into virtual reality is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, the name is a metaphoric use of the experience of submersion applied to representation, fiction or simulation. The degree to which the virtual or artistic environment faithfully reproduces reality determines the degree of suspension of disbelief, the greater the suspension of disbelief, the greater the degree of presence achieved. According to Ernest W. Players feel in the zone while perfecting actions that result in success, Strategic immersion Strategic immersion is more cerebral, and is associated with mental challenge. Chess players experience strategic immersion when choosing a correct solution among an array of possibilities. Narrative immersion Narrative immersion occurs when players become invested in a story, in addition to these, they add a new category, Spatial immersion Spatial immersion occurs when a player feels the simulated world is perceptually convincing. The player feels that he or she is there and that a simulated world looks. It is defined as a subjective sensation of being there in a scene depicted by a medium. Most designers focus on the used to create a high-fidelity virtual environment, however. It is the perception, although generated by and/or filtered through human-made technology. Virtual reality glasses can produce a feeling of being in a simulated world. According to Oculus VR, the requirements to achieve this visceral reaction are low-latency. Michael Abrash gave a talk on VR at Steam Dev Days in 2014 and it consists of immersion in an artificial environment where the user feels just as immersed as they usually feel in consensus reality. The most considered method would be to induce the sensations that made up the reality in the nervous system directly. In functionalism/conventional biology we interact with consensus reality through the nervous system, thus we receive all input from all the senses as nerve impulses. It gives your neurons a feeling of heightened sensation and it would involve the user receiving inputs as artificially stimulated nerve impulses, the system would receive the CNS outputs and process them allowing the user to interact with the virtual reality. Natural impulses between the body and central nervous system would need to be prevented, a feedback system between the user and the computer which stores the information would also be needed. Considering how much information would be required for such a system and this will allow the correct sensations in the user, and actions in the virtual reality to occur
3.
Diorama
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Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle modeling, miniature figure modeling, or aircraft modeling. The word diorama originated in 1823 as a type of picture-viewing device, the word literally means through that which is seen, from the Greek di- through + orama that which is seen, a sight. The diorama was invented by Louis Daguerre and Charles Marie Bouton, first exhibited in Paris in July 1822, the meaning small-scale replica of a scene, etc. is from 1902. Daguerres diorama consisted of a piece of material painted on both sides, when illuminated from the front, the scene would be shown in one state and by switching to illumination from behind another phase or aspect would be seen. Scenes in daylight changed to moonlight, a train travelling on a track would crash, or an earthquake would be shown in before, one of the first uses of dioramas in a museum was in Stockholm, Sweden, where the Biological Museum opened in 1893. It had several dioramas, over three floors and they were also implemented by the National Museum Grigore Antipa from Bucharest Romania and constituted a source of inspiration for many important museums in the world. Miniature dioramas are typically smaller, and use scale models. Such a scale model-based diorama is used, for example, in Chicagos Museum of Science and this diorama employs a common model railroading scale of 1,87. Hobbyist dioramas often use such as 1,35 or 1,48. An early, and exceptionally large example was created between 1830 and 1838 by a British Army officer, william Siborne, and represents the Battle of Waterloo at about 7.45 pm, on 18 June,1815. The diorama measures 8.33 by 6 metres and used around 70,000 model soldiers in its construction and it is now part of the collection of the National Army Museum in London. Sheperd Paine, a prominent hobbyist, popularized the modern miniature diorama beginning in the 1970s, modern museum dioramas may be seen in most major natural history museums. Often the distant painted background or sky will be painted upon a continuous curved surface so that the viewer is not distracted by corners, seams, all of these techniques are means of presenting a realistic view of a large scene in a compact space. A photograph or single-eye view of such a diorama can be especially convincing since in case there is no distraction by the binocular perception of depth. Carl Akeley, a naturalist, sculptor, and taxidermist, is credited with creating the first ever habitat diorama in the year 1889, akeleys diorama featured taxidermied beavers in a three-dimensional habitat with a realistic, painted background. With the support of curator Frank M. Chapman, Akeley designed the popular habitat dioramas featured at the American Museum of Natural History, combining art with science, these exhibitions were intended to educate the public about the growing need for habitat conservation. The modern AMNH Exhibitions Lab is charged with the creation of all dioramas, miniature dioramas may be used to represent scenes from historic events. A typical example of type are the dioramas to be seen at Norways Resistance Museum in Oslo
4.
Combination printing
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Combination printing is the photography technique of using the negatives of two or more photographic images in conjunction with one another to create a single image. Similar to dual-negative landscape photography, combination printing was technically more complex. The concept of combination printing stemmed from the desire to more of a fine art within photography. Combination printing was popular in the century due to the limitations of the negatives light sensitivity. For example, the long exposures required at the time to create an image would properly expose the subject, such as a building. The sky would then lack detail, usually appearing as solid white, the technique was also used to create new, original compositions and provided new ways for photographers to be more creative with their work. Later on, the technique paved the way for yet another artistic process, in combination printing, you use two or more negatives to make one good print. Combination printing required a lot of work to plan out the concept of what the final image was desired to look like. It was also a task of great skill and patience, in actually exposing the negatives to combine them, the photographer must control the exposure of the portion of the initial photo that they will be adding to or replacing. Therefore, for adding clouds into the sky, the photographer would have to back light from the sky area. Then, when printing the negative of the clouds, do the opposite and only expose the cloud, after this, they would be able to combine the two negatives by blending them together. Photographers such as William Frederick Lake Price and Oscar Rejlander are famous for using combination printing, starting as early as the mid-19th century, new methods such as the combination printing, began to change the way people looked at different photographic techniques. Controversy broke out in the community about the use of combination printing. Photographs originally had been regarded as truth and that the camera never lied, however, with the newfound ability to manipulate the final product, the notion that photographs depicted truth was soon shattered. Henry Peach Robinson, considered to be one of the pioneers of combination printing, was not only an artist, but also an author. He then published a book in 1869 entitled Pictorial Effect in Photography, in pointing this out, he is saying that it is often necessary to add artistic techniques to photographs. His writings show his knowledge and his passion for creating new content in his photos using this process. During the Victorian Era, another proponent of the technique of printing was Queen Victoria herself
5.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
6.
Postcard
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A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope. Shapes other than rectangular may also be used, there are novelty exceptions, such as wood postcards, made of thin wood, and copper postcards sold in the Copper Country of the U. S. state of Michigan, and coconut postcards from tropical islands. In some places, one can send a postcard for a lower fee than for a letter, stamp collectors distinguish between postcards and postal cards. While a postcard is usually printed by a company, individual or organization. The worlds oldest postcard was sent in 1840 to the writer Theodore Hook from Fulham in London, the study and collecting of postcards is termed deltiology. Cards with messages had been created and posted by individuals since the beginning of postal services. The earliest known picture postcard was a design on card, posted in Fulham in London by the writer Theodore Hook to himself in 1840. He probably created and posted the card to himself as a joke on the postal service, since the image is a caricature of workers in the post office. In 2002 the postcard sold for a record £31,750, in Britain, postcards without images were issued by the Post Office in 1870, and were printed with a stamp as part of the design, which was included in the price of purchase. These cards came in two sizes, the larger size was found to be slightly too large for ease of handling, and was soon withdrawn in favour of cards 13mm shorter. The first known printed picture postcard, with an image on one side, was created in France in 1870 at Camp Conlie by Léon Besnardeau, Conlie was a training camp for soldiers in the Franco-Prussian war. While these are certainly the first known picture postcards, there was no space for stamps, in the following year the first known picture postcard in which the image functioned as a souvenir was sent from Vienna. The first advertising card appeared in 1872 in Great Britain and the first German card appeared in 1874, Cards showing images increased in number during the 1880s. Images of the newly built Eiffel Tower in 1889 and 1890 gave impetus to the postcard, Early postcards often showcased photography of nude women. These were commonly known as French postcards, due to the number of them produced in France. The first American postcard was developed in 1873 by the Morgan Envelope Factory of Springfield and these first postcards depicted the Interstate Industrial Exposition that took place in Chicago. Later in 1873, Post Master John Creswell introduced the first pre-stamped Postal Cards, Postcards were made because people were looking for an easier way to send quick notes. The first postcard to be printed as a souvenir in the United States was created in 1893 to advertise the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago, initially, the United States government prohibited private companies from calling their cards postcards, so they were known as souvenir cards
7.
Victorian era
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The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victorias reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities. Some scholars date the beginning of the period in terms of sensibilities, the era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period. The later half of the Victorian age roughly coincided with the first part of the Belle Époque era of continental Europe, culturally there was a transition away from the rationalism of the Georgian period and toward romanticism and mysticism with regard to religion, social values, and arts. The end of the saw the Boer War. Domestically, the agenda was increasingly liberal with a number of shifts in the direction of political reform, industrial reform. Two especially important figures in period of British history are the prime ministers Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. Disraeli, favoured by the queen, was a gregarious Conservative and his rival Gladstone, a Liberal distrusted by the Queen, served more terms and oversaw much of the overall legislative development of the era. The population of England and Wales almost doubled from 16.8 million in 1851 to 30.5 million in 1901, Scotlands population also rose rapidly, from 2.8 million in 1851 to 4.4 million in 1901. However, Irelands population decreased sharply, from 8.2 million in 1841 to less than 4.5 million in 1901, mostly due to the Great Famine. Between 1837 and 1901 about 15 million emigrants departed the UK permanently, in search of a life in the United States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia. During the early part of the era, politics in the House of Commons involved battles between the two parties, the Whigs/Liberals and the Conservatives. These parties were led by such prominent statesmen as Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli, Victoria became queen in 1837 at age 18. Her long reign until 1901 was mainly a time of peace, Britain reached the zenith of its economic, political, diplomatic and cultural power. The era saw the expansion of the second British Empire, Historians have characterised the mid-Victorian era as Britains Golden Years. There was prosperity, as the income per person grew by half. There was peace abroad, and social peace at home, opposition to the new order melted away, says Porter. The Chartist movement peaked as a movement among the working class in 1848, its leaders moved to other pursuits, such as trade unions
8.
Edwardian era
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The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victorian era. The new king Edward VII was already the leader of an elite that set a style influenced by the art. The Liberals returned to power in 1906 and made significant reforms, below the upper class, the era was marked by significant shifts in politics among sections of society that had been largely excluded from wielding power in the past, such as common labourers. The Edwardian period is sometimes imagined as a golden age of long summer afternoons and garden parties. This perception was created in the 1920s and later by those who remembered the Edwardian age with nostalgia, the Edwardian age was also seen as a mediocre period of pleasure between the great achievements of the preceding Victorian age and the catastrophe of the following war. Recent assessments emphasise the differences between the wealthy and the poor during the Edwardian era and describe the age as heralding great changes in political and social life. Robert Tressells popular novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists is an example of the eras social critique. Despite this, this type of perception has been challenged more recently by modern historians, the British historian Lawrence James has argued that, during the early 20th century, the British felt increasingly threatened by rival powers such as Germany, Russia, and the United States. There was a political awareness of the working class, leading to a rise in trade unions. The aristocracy remained in control of top government offices, the Conservatives – at the time called Unionists – were dominant from the 1890s to 1906. The party had many strengths, appealing to voters supportive of imperialism, tariffs, the Church of England, a powerful Royal Navy, and traditional hierarchical society. There was a powerful leadership base in the aristocracy and landed gentry in rural England, plus strong support from the Church of England. Historians have used election returns to demonstrate that Conservatives did surprisingly well in working-class districts and they had an appeal as well to the better-off element of traditional working class Britons in the larger cities. Nevertheless, the weaknesses were accumulating, and proved so overwhelming in 1906 that they did not return to power until 1922. The Conservative Party was losing its drive and enthusiasm, especially after the retirement of the charismatic Joseph Chamberlain, there was a bitter split on tariff reform, that drove many of the free traders over to the Liberal camp. Tariff reform was an issue that the Conservative leadership inexplicably clung to. Support among the top tier of the class, and in lower middle class weakened. The 1906 election was a landslide for the opposition, which saw its total vote jump 25 percent, the Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906
9.
Holmfirth
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Holmfirth is a small town on the A6024 Woodhead Road in the Holme Valley, within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, England. Centred upon the confluence of the Holme and Ribble rivers, Holmfirth is 6 miles south of Huddersfield and 13 miles northeast of Glossop and it mostly consists of stone-built cottages nestled in the Pennine hills. The Peak District National Park around Holme Moss is 4 miles to the south of the town, historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Holmfirth was once a centre for pioneering film-making by Bamforth & Co. which later switched to the production of saucy seaside postcards. Between 1973 and 2010 both Holmfirth and the Holme Valley became well known as the location of the BBCs situation comedy Last of the Summer Wine. The town originally grew up around a mill and bridge in the 13th century. Three hundred years later Holmfirth expanded rapidly as the cloth trade grew. The present parish church was built in 1778 after the church built in 1476 was swept away in a flood the previous year, in 1850 Holmfirth railway station opened, on the branch line built by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company. Local men who served and died in the First and Second World Wars are commemorated on the Holme Valley War Memorial found outside Holme Valley Memorial Hospital. Holmfirth was the home of Bamforth & Co Ltd, who were known for their cheeky seaside postcards – although around the time of the First World War. The printing works on Station Road has now converted into residential flats. Bamforths company were pioneers of film-making, before they abandoned the business in favour of postcards. There are a number of instances when flooding has occurred in the Holme Valley affecting Holmfirth, the earliest recorded Holmfirth flood was in 1738 and the most recent was 1944. The most severe flood occurred early on the morning of 5 February 1852, following a severe storm in 1777 the River Holme burst its banks, sweeping away people and property with the loss of three lives, the stone church built in 1476, was also swept away. A storm in 1821 again caused the river to burst its banks, the flooding on the night of 29 May 1944 was not nationally reported and it was then overshadowed by the D-Day landings the following week. Holmfirth is the setting for the BBCs long-running comedy Last of the Summer Wine, thousands of tourists flock to the area each year to enjoy scenery and locations familiar from the series. Filming of the TV Slaithwaite-based drama, Where the Heart Is, had taken place in. The former Lodges supermarket building had been sitting empty in the heart of the town since the Co-op moved to new premises in Crown Bottom, Lodges was built in the 1970s by the prominent local grocery company. It was opened by Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn and occupied a location over the River Holme beside the towns small bus station
10.
Watercolor painting
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Watercolor or watercolour, also aquarelle, a diminutive of the Latin for water, is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork, the traditional and most common support—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is paper. Other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum, or leather, fabric, wood, Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton, which gives a good texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolors are usually translucent, and appear luminous because the pigments are laid down in a form with few fillers obscuring the pigment colors. Watercolors can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white, in East Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting. In Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, india, Ethiopia, and other countries have long watercolor painting traditions as well. Fingerpainting with watercolor paints originated in mainland China, however, its continuous history as an art medium begins with the Renaissance. The German Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, who painted several fine botanical, wildlife, an important school of watercolor painting in Germany was led by Hans Bol as part of the Dürer Renaissance. Despite this early start, watercolors were used by Baroque easel painters only for sketches, copies or cartoons. Notable early practitioners of watercolor painting were Van Dyck, Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, however, botanical illustration and wildlife illustration perhaps form the oldest and most important traditions in watercolor painting. Botanical illustrations became popular during the Renaissance, both as hand-tinted woodblock illustrations in books or broadsheets and as tinted ink drawings on vellum or paper. Wildlife illustration reached its peak in the 19th century with such as John James Audubon. Several factors contributed to the spread of watercolor painting during the 18th century, Watercolor artists were commonly brought with the geological or archaeological expeditions, funded by the Society of Dilettanti, to document discoveries in the Mediterranean, Asia, and the New World. This example popularized watercolors as a form of personal tourist journal, the confluence of these cultural, engineering, scientific, tourist, and amateur interests culminated in the celebration and promotion of watercolor as a distinctly English national art. William Blake published several books of hand-tinted engraved poetry, provided illustrations to Dantes Inferno, from the late 18th century through the 19th century, the market for printed books and domestic art contributed substantially to the growth of the medium. Satirical broadsides by Thomas Rowlandson, many published by Rudolph Ackermann, were extremely popular. Among the important and highly talented contemporaries of Turner and Girtin, were John Varley, John Sell Cotman, Anthony Copley Fielding, Samuel Palmer, William Havell, the Swiss painter Louis Ducros was also widely known for his large format, romantic paintings in watercolor. These societies provided annual exhibitions and buyer referrals for many artists, in particular, the graceful, lapidary, and atmospheric watercolors by Richard Parkes Bonington created an international fad for watercolor painting, especially in England and France in the 1820s
11.
George Grosz
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George Grosz was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic and he emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. Abandoning the style and subject matter of his work, he exhibited regularly. In 1956 he returned to Berlin where he died, George Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried Groß in Berlin, Germany, the son of a pub owner. Grosz grew up in the Pomeranian town of Stolp, where his mother became the keeper of the local Hussars Officers mess after his father died in 1901. At the urging of his cousin, the young Grosz began attending a weekly drawing class taught by a painter named Grot. Grosz developed his skills further by drawing meticulous copies of the scenes of Eduard von Grützner. From 1909 to 1911, he studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Richard Müller, Robert Sterl, Raphael Wehle and he subsequently studied at the Berlin College of Arts and Crafts under Emil Orlik. In November 1914 Grosz volunteered for service, in the hope that by thus preempting conscription he would avoid being sent to the front. He was given a discharge after hospitalization for sinusitis in 1915, in January 1917 he was drafted for service, but in May he was discharged as permanently unfit. In the last months of 1918, Grosz joined the Spartacist League and he was arrested during the Spartakus uprising in January 1919, but escaped using fake identification documents. In 1921 Grosz was accused of insulting the army, which resulted in a 300 German Mark fine and the destruction of the collection Gott mit uns, by contrast, in 1942 Time magazine identified Grosz as a pacifist. In 1922 Grosz traveled to Russia with the writer Martin Andersen Nexø, upon their arrival in Murmansk they were briefly arrested as spies, after their credentials were approved they were allowed to meet with Grigory Zinoviev, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Vladimir Lenin. Groszs six-month stay in the Soviet Union left him unimpressed by what he had seen and he ended his membership in the KPD in 1923, although his political positions were little changed. Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power, in June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach the summer semester at the Art Students League of New York. In October 1932, Grosz returned to Germany, but on January 12,1933 he, Grosz became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1938, and made his home in Bayside, New York. In the 1930s he taught at the Art Students League, where one of his students was Romare Bearden and he taught at the Art Students League intermittently until 1955. In America, Grosz determined to make a break with his past
12.
John Heartfield
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John Heartfield was an artist and a pioneer in the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements, Heartfield also created book jackets for authors such as Upton Sinclair, as well as stage sets for such noted playwrights as Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. John Heartfield was born on 19 June 1891 in Berlin-Schmargendorf and his father was Franz Herzfeld, a socialist writer, and his mother was Alice, a textile worker and political activist. In 1899, Helmut, his brother Wieland Herzfelde, and his sisters Lotte, for a while, the four children resided with an uncle in the small town of Aigens. Heartfield, his brother and George Grosz launched the publishing house Malik-Verlag in 1917, in 1908, Heartfield studied art in Munich at the Royal Bavarian Arts and Crafts School. Two commercial designers, Albert Weisgerber and Ludwig Hohlwein, were early influences, on the back of a photograph which was taken in 1912, his name is written as Helmut. While living in Berlin, in 1917, he anglicised his name from Helmut Herzfeld to John Heartfield, in 1916, crowds in the street were shouting, Gott strafe England. In 1916, John Heartfield and George Grosz experimented with pasting pictures together, in January,1918, Heartfield joined the newly founded German Communist Party. In 1917, Heartfield became a member of Berlin Club Dada, Heartfield later became active in the Dada movement, helping to organise the Erste Internationale Dada-Messe in Berlin in 1920. Dadaists were the lions of the German art scene, provocateurs who disrupted public art gatherings. They labeled traditional art trivial and bourgeois, Heartfield was a member of a circle of German titans that included Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, Hannah Höch, and a host of others. Heartfield built theatre sets for Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, using Heartfields minimal props and stark stages, Brecht interrupted his plays at key junctures to have the audience to be part of the action and not to lose themselves in it. In 1919, Heartfield was dismissed from the Reichswehr film service because of his support for the strike that followed the assassination of Karl Liebknecht, with George Grosz, he founded Die Pleite, a satirical magazine. Heartfield met Bertolt Brecht in 1924, though he was a prolific producer of stage sets and book jackets, Heartfields main form of expression was photomontage. Heartfield produced the first political photomontages and he mainly worked for two publications, the daily Die Rote Fahne and the weekly Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung, the latter of which published the works for which Heartfield is best remembered. In the Museum of Modern Art in New York hangs a George Grosz Montage entitled, during the 1920s, Heartfield produced a great number of photomontages, many of which were reproduced as dust jackets for books such as his montage for Upton Sinclairs The Millennium. Heartfield lived in Berlin until April 1933, when the National Socialists took power, on Good Friday, the SS broke into his apartment, and the 52 Heartfield escaped by jumping from his balcony and hiding in a trash bin. He left Germany by walking over the Sudeten Mountains to Czechoslovakia, in Czechoslovakia, John Heartfield rose to number-five on the Gestapos most-wanted list
