Andy Warhol's Soup Cans

Warhol's Soup Factory

Artist Andy Warhol once remarked in his non-chalant fashion, "art is about liking things". Well Warhol must have been very fond of Campell's soup cans because he painted quite a few of them - 32 in total and all uniformly measuring 510 mm by 410 mm. They were created in 1962, using a silkscreen printing method and each can displaying the varieties of soup Campbells had on offer at the time. artist took ordinary objects from popular culture and emphasised them in ways that transformed them into iconic 'art'.

By the 1960s,the soup can, in all its glorious mundaneness, had been a familiar object to millions. By removing the cans from a familiar domestic context and placing them in a space normally reserved for works of art he was at once mocking the seriousness of the art establishment and at the same time elevating popular culture to the level of art.

Dadaists

Duchamps, Nude Descending a Staircase #2

My Heart Belongs to Dada
The predecessor to surrealism, the 'anti-Art' Dada movement, which encompassed art, literature and design, swept to prominence in the early 20th Century on a wave of exponential modernism and change that was to reshape Western culture.

Reputedly, the name Dada meaning "hobby horse" was picked at random from a dictionary, which seems appropriate for a movement which framed its raison d'etre  in the wilfully non-sensical.

Although  art was already in a great period of transition, Dadaism was a new and radical, somewhat nihilistic movement initiated in Zurich in 1916 by sculptor, painter and poet, Jean Arp, along with Max Ernst and Alfred Grunwald and others. From there it spread and  was in large measure a reaction to the Great War (WWI) which permeated everything, including the art world and with which the Dadaists were in revolt.

Pears Soap

Art.com Reproduction Pears soap poster

Reproduction Pear soap poster. Amazon

Pears soap is one of the oldest commercially made cleansers in the world and certainly one of the most familiar, not least because of the company's  famous old-fashioned advertisements which have been widely circulated and re-used over and over.

The story of the translucent soap can be traced back over 220 years, to Oxford Street in London , where farmer's son and trained barber, Andrew Pears, produced and sold his reddish brown see-through soap in 1789...the first of its kind. Pears was also the world's first registered brand and thus, technically, the worlds oldest lasting brand-name.

Selling Purity
Pears' commercial success in an interesting example of successful marketing. In the late 1700s, most soaps contained harsh ingredients such as arsenic and/or lead, ingredients which could themselves be damaging to the skin. Conscious of this, Andrew Pears experimented with natural ingredients and came up with a gentle, glycerin based soap. "Purity' was the selling point and the translucence of the soap helped sell the idea - if customers could see through the soap, they would be more inclined to believe there wasn't anything nasty or harmful lurking in there.

Eorographics Pears print poster

By the 1800s, Pears' Grandson Francis had joined the company and A and F Pears Ltd was formed. Andrew Pears eventually retired and unfortunately did not live to see his soap win a prize medal at the famous Great Exhibition (Crystal Palace Exhibition) of 1851.

Eventually, Francis Pears son-in-law, Thomas J Barratt, generally regarded as an early genius of advertising,was welcomed into  the company fold and it was he who turned Pears soap into one of the most successful consumer products ever to hit the British mass marketplace.

With an eye for commercial aesthetics, Barrett famously employed Pre-Raphealite artist,  Edward John Millais's 1886 painting, Bubbles, to advertise the soap -a campaign which was so successful, it was continued for several decades. Bubbles, with it's strong soap/child association, reflected an image of clean innocence and purity -everything Pears wanted to get across to the purchasing public and it was a theme that Pears would continue to promote via it's advertising campaigns over the generations.

Bubbles by Millais. For commercial purposes,  the painting was overlayed with Pears Soap lettering

Celebrity Endorsement

Lovely Lily Langtry, actress and Pears soap ambassador

Another successful ploy devised by Barratt was to hire the endorsement of popular actress, Lily Langtry, who was famous for her ivory-skinned beauty. It seems an obvious move for a marketer, yet at the time, such a thing was unheard of and indeed, Langtry was the first woman to publicly endorse a commercial product.

The connection of pears soap to children and beauty was further reinforced in the early 20th century, when Miss Pears competitions  were held every year, offering the winner a chance to appear in Pears promotional material.

Pears advertising was ubiquitous in Victorian and Edwardian newspapers, magazines and periodicals -often there were four page inserts. From 1891 to 1925, the company also produced a large Christmas annual, containing stories, advertisements and prints which could be removed and framed.

From one generation to the next, Pears soap was (and still is to some extent) as trusted and comfortably familiar as the family cat. Through careful, clever advertising and the right associations, the company had managed to create a brand loyalty that must have been the envy of every manufacturer in England and probably beyond.

Art Deco Posters

By Anthony Velonis, New York City Federal Art Project, WPA, 1938

Royal mail lines poster. Horace Tyalor,1925

Toward Modernism
The art deco movement of the early 20th century straddled the line between and the traditionally decorative and the harsh assertiveness of modernism and proved to be a transformative period in art and design.  Emerging from Paris in the 1920s, by the 30s, the style was ubiquitous - influencing fashion, jewellery, furniture, appliances, architecture and commercial and industrial design and art.

Defined by its bold lines and geometric planes, art deco rejected the organic elegance of art nouveau, which had dominated the preceding period, in favour of  modernist and futuristic style elements, though it did also draw inspiration from such exotic and ancient sources as Aztec and Egyptian design.

Reproduction of a New York decoscape. Available at Amazon

A Striking Statement

Grand Prix poster. 1937. Amazon

Not least because of its bold design characteristics, the style lent itself particularly well to commercial art and in the 20s and 30s, at the height of art deco's popularity, there were numerous posters depicting anything from tourism to cinema. The posters reflected the eclectic vibrancy of the jazz age and the promise of the modern world, with its rapidly expanding technological wonders.

Although by the close of the 1940s deco had lost ground in the popularity stakes, it was rediscovered in the 1960s and is now recognized as one of the most significant design movements in modern history and still widely popular, with collectors and the general public alike.

The Hoover Building
Art Deco and Modernist Society

Suitcase as ocean liner.Razzia print.  Montepanasse Gallery

Retro Fonts

Font Inspiration
If you're looking for a style guide to vintage lettering, look no further than Retro Fonts by Grigor Stawinski. Stawinksi's style guide has fonts going back to 1830, through to the close of the 20th century,

The book, which should be of particular interest to graphic designers and typographers, has eight sections, each reflecting a particular stylistic period and examples of the fonts in their own context. Some featured styles include Art Deco, Bauhaus, Swiss, Sixties, Disco and Punk. An extra bonus is a CD featuring 222 uncopyrighted fonts.

Apart from anything else, it's interesting to look back and reflect on how lettering mirrored the design influences and culture of the day. What do our fonts say about us..?

Future Retro

Fredric Sharp's (now hardcover) Future Retro shmick coffee table book features a collection of fantastic vintage drawings from the 1950s and 60s, showcasing the "beauty and ingenuity" of the American auto design industry. It's a peak period in the US auto industry, at a time when  all creative cylinders were flying.

Some of the drawings have never been published before and were used to present design concepts to the execs - a kind of showcase of ideas. Along with the images, there's an explanation of the drawings and interestingly, information about how aeronautical and rocket technology influenced the designs in the post-war mid-20th century period. No doubt this would make a great present for the auto-design lover. Available here.

The Edsel
Retro Futurism

Mid-Century Design

 El Gato Gomez

 El Gato Gomez

El Gato Gomez

Inspired by classic retro, Pittsburgh based artist/graphic designer El Gato Gomez has a perceptive eye for mid-century shapes and colours. GG's pencil and gouache pieces are far from mere reproductions..but rather quirky renditions that capture the design spirit of the era in a  captivatingly contemporary way.

Many old design features are recognizable in the paintings - such as boomerangs, elongated cats,  iconic kidney shapes and abstract shapes reminiscent of 1950s modern furmiture.

El Gato Gomez works are hot sellers on ebay and the artist also sells through his own website, which features a gallery of treats. Click the images to check out his many designs.

 
More on mid-century design...
Early 60s TV Table
Black Lady Lamps

Retro-Futurism

As a creative movement, retro-futurism is a fusion between retro style elements of the pre-1960s and futuristic technology...but a futuristic technology as imagined by the past. By extracting the technological predictions of a past era and putting them together with a hip modern sensibility, retro-futurism conjures a kind of futuristic nostalgia.
"Where Yesterday's Tomorrow is Still the Future"~Retrofuture Today

 It's all a bit confusing but one there's really two overlapping trends involved here - retro-futurism and futuristic-retro. What's the difference? Well, one takes technological visions of the past and depicts them with a contemporary perspective....kind of like what the present might have been and the future might be if we'd stuck stylistically with a pre-1960s style. The second trend uses futuristic technology and overlays it with stylistic elements of the past or vice-versa (as in steampunk, which marries futuristic technology and the Victorian era) As wikipedia puts it, it's the future as seen from the past and the past as seen from the future.

One common link between trends is a kind of conscious discomfort with the present and a desire to infuse a nostalgic element into what seems like an all-consuming technology, which is sometimes threatening, yet wondrous and with which we have a love-hate, tension-filled relationship. It's certainly one way to keep retro-love connected with the present and even the future.

For some illustrations of retro-futuristic art, teleport over to top design mag.