Report

Celtics are amid the greatest peoples of history and pre history. Long before the Roman’s and their conquest of the known world, the Celtic clans shared many links in language, art, culture and customs. The Celts etiquettes stretched over a vast array of continents from Britain and Ireland, but also as far as Spain and France, to southern Germany and the alpine lands, Bohemia and later in Italy, the Balkans and even central Turkey.
The non-literate Celts pasted their knowledge down through the generations verbally. Until recent times our only view on the Celts has been through the biased classical texts of the Greeks and the Romans, portraying the Celts as fearsome and dangerous barbarians. However in recent times we have seen that the Celtics were more intelligent, complex, wealthy and accomplished and the sources of many modern social cultures and customs.
Archaeology has given the Celts a voice through the physical traces they left behind, revealing the Celts to be a society centred on economic, religion and social class.
Today’s modern, post renaissance western society hold’s essences of the Celtics culture. Modern society of the 21^st has subconsciously broken it’s self down into similar class structures as the pre history Celts. The Celts were very heavily centred on Social structure and kinship, as modern society is today. Most descriptions from the classical texts have the Celts divided into three categories, Warrior, aristocracy and intellectual, as society today has white collar, blue collar and socialites. The Celtic also believed heavily in study and lifelong education which has filtered down for thousands and thousands of generations until today with mandatory secondary qualification i.e. School Certificate, as a prerequisite for job placement.
Money and wealth has always been an indicator of class status. The presence of high status items, including fine metal work, such as the Torque, was also an indicator of wealth and social status.
Celtic women also paved the way in the social standards, making a very early stand on woman’s right and woman’s equality. During the Halstatt and early La Tene Iron Age, it was possible to identify a number of high ranking female graves by the sheer amount of jewellery for which the evidence points to a society at one and the same time pre occupied with appearance on the one hand, and on the other, which sought to display it’s surplus wealth and power through a kind of visual expression, e.g. overly eccentric art.

Throughout the 18 hundreds Impressionist artists would struggle to gain recognition in the Paris Salon. Being accepted into these Salons was a matter of survival for some artists; reputations and careers could be started or broken, based solely upon acceptance into these exhibits. Too many artists of this time, their art were their life, and an exhibition meant a longer life.
With the increase in Impressionist artists, the number of submissions to the Paris Salon also increased and in 1863 the Académie des Beaux-Arts rejected over 3 000 paintings to the Paris Salon. With such a large rejection it did not take long for there to be uproar from the people and artists, calling for the right to judge the art works themselves. It didn’t not take long for Napoleon III to allow the Salon Des Refus to exhibit in an adjacent annex to the Paris Salon, due to the public demand.
Impressionism catapulted itself into social acceptance after years and years of rejection in favour of the tradionalist’s pre approved Académie des Beaux-Arts style. The Impressionists culture of the Salon De Refus paved the way for many more great art cultures such as Post Impressionism and Expressionism who did not follow the Academies’ rules.

To any designer the amount of time, effort and detail that has been poured into these pieces is mind blowing. Without computer aid, Escher crafted every pieces of art by hand, a pain stakingly gruelling process. Not only did Escher have to think 2 dimensionally, but rather 3 dimensionally, visually planning the walls, the floor and the ceiling, as well as the overall concept.
To most lay people the simple art of seamless transition between two remotely differing subjects, buildings and birds, is impressing enough as it is. But also the simplicity of the pieces, the minimal uses of colour and lines to create something so complex.

For me personally, I find the history, where art has come from, evolved, to be the interesting part of the past. For example without the innovative en plein-air impressionists who discovered the means of transporting paint through a dried pigs bladder with an ivory cork stopper, allowing them the move around the outdoors freely, discarding the old tradition of field sketching and finished the masterpiece later in the studio.
It is also interesting to see the struggle of some infamous artists to be where they are today. The way we take art and design for granted, as an easy profession of just drawing and painting all day, compared to the likes of the Traditionalists or Neo Classicalist artists who had to follow the Academie Des Beaux’s rules to a T, only being allowed to paint about religion or mythical legends, all in dull earthy muted colours.
Or perhaps the French Moulin Rouge culture which saw the immerge of early graphic design through the likes of Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, the farther of shadows and de framed limes.
With out all these and many more our art and culture would not be what it is today, and that’s what makes it is interesting to look back upon.

It’s always handy to look back through history to see what has been done and created before, what is out there that can be recontextulised in to modern design solution, as only the great artists survived. For example, when designing posters or flyers, anything with a 2 dimensional limit, there comes a time when you run out of spaces. Through our history we can find the solution in Brunelleschi’s, who was the first Renaissance artist to uses Linear Perspective to create the effect of space and depth on a flat surface.

I have always been heavily influenced by Frida Kahlo and her Mexican and Amerindian cultural style throughout her work. The very naive of folk art style of painting that has an earthy hand draw touch to it. This cultural influence through Frida’s art really changes my view on creating or producing art. Frida once said “I never paint my dreams, I only paint my reality”. Ever since reading that line I have always tried to create work that is purely my own and never a conjured up creation that has only come about because of its aesthetic qualities, rather than its meaning and purpose.