Gold Monocle

This week we got a little more specific in looking at a particular element at the art of contemporary art: the icon. The icon is everywhere: in advertising, in graffiti, in labels, in logos, in comics, in cartoons, etc. Why does the icon matter? What artistic weight does the icon pull? What is an icon anyway?

Essentially, an icon is the message of an artist, stripped to the bare technical and simplified minimum. The icon’s goal is to say as much as it can in very little. Michael Salter’s art demonstrates this in its simplicity and yet very poignant statements. His characters provide social commentary however deceptively minimal their design is. In Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, we see another perspective on this. He states that “by stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning’, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t” (McCloud 30).  This statement accurately explains the power of the icon.  An artist such as Mr. Salter can take away elements and details of a piece of art that would otherwise only distract from the true meaning and really project an idea or agenda or whatever they wanted. In a realistic work, the audience gets caught up in the technical design and details and is distracted from the true meaning. You see this use of iconography in cartoons, comics, art and, especially, logos. Logos are particularly adept at using this technique of agenda sharing. Simple design choices can convey the purpose of the company and perhaps a little of what their company means and stands for. Mr. Salter mentioned a few seasoned experts in the field such as Paul Rand (who designed the logos for IBM, ABC, and UPS) and Saul Bass (who designed the logos of United Airlines, Dixie and the Girl Scouts of America as well as many famous movie posters and intros).  Here are a few that I think really stand out from other logos in this way.

Another element of logos that I believe is becoming more and more relevant in contemporary art today is using familiar icons in unfamiliar settings. Both Messrs. Michael Salter and Chris Coleman use this cacophony in their work. In Mr. Coleman’s The Magnitude of the Continental Divides and Informational Divides he uses icons that are familiar to us: people and graphics from safety manuals and boy scout books. However, he turns these icons on their heads. These icons are supposed to give us hope and calm us in the possibility of an emergency, but in these animations and sculpture, they are presented in an intense and slightly horrifying way. Salter, on the other hand, illustrates characters and objects in a style also familiar to us: people and items we find painted on windows and printed on packaging. These icons generally are intended to sooth the viewer in purchasing something, but in Mr. Salter’s work, they are seducing the audience into a crass and adolescent world. I really appreciate this social commentary and I think it is exceptionally relevant now, in a time of constant bombardment of icons and characters and images always trying to sway us one way or another. To bastardize these characters is to reveal the true nature and the invasive purpose of this relentless barrage.

Something that I feel really exemplifies this idea of extreme simplification in design, yet complete retention of meaning is the idea of the simplified movie poster. This idea, inspired heavily by the work of Saul Bass, an artist Mr. Salter mentioned in his presentation, has been passed around a few contemporary artists and is not only limited to movie posters. The goal is to simplify the design of the poster to contain the fewest elements and yet the movie should be easily recognized. While I have seen many examples of this particle idea, I feel the artist Olly Moss best portrays it.