Q: The Style of the Ayn Rand Stamp
Victor Manta
http://arthistory.heindorffhus.dk/frame-Style19-ArtDeco.htm
its author asserts:
"Art Deco declined after 1935 but enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and 1970s,
particularly in the US, where numerous illustrations appeared in books and
magazines. A philatelic example is the below stamp depicting the author and
philosopher Ayn Rand."
Do you think that the design of this stamp (issued by the USPS on April 22,
1999) belongs to Art Deco?
Victor Manta
P.S. Eventually visit also my page "Ayn Rand, The Stamp Collector":
http://www.values.ch/champs/ayn-rand.htm
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the flies
U...@uni-berlin.de>...
> On the page:
> http://arthistory.heindorffhus.dk/frame-Style19-ArtDeco.htm
>
> its author asserts:
> "Art Deco declined after 1935 but enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and 1970s,
> particularly in the US, where numerous illustrations appeared in books and
> magazines. A philatelic example is the below stamp depicting the author and
> philosopher Ayn Rand."
>
> Do you think that the design of this stamp (issued by the USPS on April 22,
> 1999) belongs to Art Deco?
>
Sure! Brightish color, geometricized form, glorified skyscrapes.
Looks pretty art deco to me!
Ralph Hertle
Victor Manta wrote:
> On the page:
> http://arthistory.heindorffhus.dk/frame-Style19-ArtDeco.htm
>
The commentary by Heindorff is not all that factual. It is confused in a
way that is popular in Post Modernism, that facts about the past don't
have to be treated that factually.
I suggest consulting more books on the subject of Art Deco, and
especially the precursor styles including Art Nouveau. Picture books
that show architecture, crafts, advertising, typography, fashion design,
furniture and manufactured products should be reviewed and good
histories sought out. You have to think for yourself on the matter of
what is, causes, defines, and characterizes Art Deco.
The trends and styles mentioned are mixed up by Heindorff, and the
essential precursors to the Art Deco style were not mentioned at all.
Not mentioned were the Arts and Crafts movement, the Mission style,
Modern apparel and craft fashions of the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s,
Scottish modern style, and the Austrian Modern style.
Not mentioned is the machine esthetic of the Bauhaus which isn't Art
Deco. The author of the piece, Heindorff, says that Art Deco is an
example of the machine esthetic, and that isn't quite true either.
Bauhaus design and the Art Deco style are not the same, however, in the
greater words of things made they are corollaries and they complement
one another.
She says that Art Deco was developed as a reaction to the Art Nouveau
style. That isn't quite true. The distilled appearances of works done by
different artists are different, however, certain philosophical causes
are the same. The discovery made by the Art Nouveau artists was that the
structure of a made object can be beautiful in as of itself, and that
applied ornamentation or decoration is not necessary in order to provide
beauty. That principle was common to both Art Nouveau and Art Deco, and
there are not two more philosophically friendly, and yet concretely
different, styles in existence. The principle was also causal for many
of the Bauhaus designer's works.
The Streamline style of the late 1930's mostly came from American
Industrial Designers, and it is the result of attempts to combine the
Art Deco with streamlining and solid surfaced geometrical motifs.
Heindorff says that one of the characteristics of Art Deco was symmetry.
That means bi-lateral symmetry, and that is far from being true. Art
Deco was a turn away from the expected in favor of the exciting and the
dramatic. To do that Art Deco incorporated the re-discovered geometrical
principles of proportional harmony of design and architecture of the
Ancient Greeks called the system of Dynamic Symmetry.
She says that chrome was one of the popular materials. Not so. Chrome
plating was too shiny, and even in auto design they used relatively
little of it. The most popular metals used in architecture were the
bronzes. These range from copper, brass, higher copper content brass
rather than higher zinc content brass was preferred, bronzes and
stainless steels that had higher iron, copper, and nickel content for
the lower luster, and usually less chromium content (The stainless
steels used on the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building did have
somewhat higher chromium content, but the nickel content was higher than
what is popular in the 2000s. Chrome metal itself was mostly never used
in architecture.
> its author asserts:
> "Art Deco declined after
Art Deco was rather transformed. The style was the same except that the
sub-themes were not so much architectural from the Egyptian and Mayan,
to name just two of numerous possible sub-themes, the streamlining theme
of the American industrial designer found its way in. The Dynamic
Symmetry that was the defining principle of the Art Deco was in use to a
lesser extent. That was probably due to the increase of GDP of the late
1930s; the GDP of 1939 had finally reached the levels of 1928. What I
mean is that the excitement of the new industrial production and
business was being newly expressed in design. WWII charged everything.
Huge amounts of airplanes, tanks, trucks, and other war materiel were
being produced in the few years prior to Pearl Harbor. The fear of
possible war had its effect on the emotionally sensitive Art Deco
designs, and the more emotionless streamlining came to be. After WWII
the employment of designers was all screwed up. Those that returned
found that the key esthetically motivated businessmen and art buyers
were not the same people. Art Deco and its subtleties of materials,
refined colors, form innovations, and dramatic proportions were out. The
streamline style was in for certain.
> 1935 but enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and 1970s,
> particularly in the US, where numerous illustrations appeared in books and
> magazines. A philatelic example is the below stamp depicting the author and
> philosopher Ayn Rand."
>
> Do you think that the design of this stamp (issued by the USPS on April 22,
> 1999) belongs to Art Deco?
>
> Victor Manta
The Ayn Rand stamp decidedly falls into the Art Deco classification. The
composition of the motif elements suggests the arrangements used with
Dynamic Symmetry in Art Deco works. The bronze sun rays on the left side
of the stamp could also be wings, and so could the skyline of the
buildings on the right. Three of the bronze triangles appear to be
30-60-90 degree triangles that are commonly found in dynamic
proportions, and one is approximately 32-58-90, and I cannot say why
that is, except possibly artistic license. The stepped and lighted
skyscrapers are definitely New York City, a common theme element used in
Deco designs. Author Rand is her own Objectivist angel in the stamp, and
her business apparel, including a dark triangle, is fashioned from
golden wings and skyscrapers. Deco used many symbolic elements, however,
the gist of Deco works was always the happy, proud and the exotic. Art
Deco said that you are here now, and you are great - enjoy this.
Question.....I believe that I may be pixelated in what I see in the four
stamps on the post card. Each of the four stamps appear to have a
slightly different picture of the subject. The eyes are different, for
example, in each stamp. I don't have the original to check. I do have
the original sheets of twenty stamps, and each, stamp appears to be
exactly the same as the next. Are the four stamps on the postcard the same?
Ralph Hertle
Acar
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Hertle" <ralph....@verizon.net>
Newsgroups: humanities.philosophy.objectivism
Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: Q: The Style of the Ayn Rand Stamp
> (Snip)
> The Ayn Rand stamp decidedly falls into the Art Deco classification. The
> composition of the motif elements suggests the arrangements used with
> Dynamic Symmetry in Art Deco works.
> (Snip)
Thank you for this explanation of Art Deco. It's a pleasure to read a
commentary from someone who clearly knows his stuff.
Ralph Hertle
Acar wrote:
[blip]
> Thank you for this explanation of Art Deco. It's a pleasure to read a
> commentary from someone who clearly knows his stuff.
When you see the proportional harmony system of Dynamic Symmetry that is
used in Art Deco designs you are seeing elements of the same system of
dramatic proportions that was used in the design of the Parthenon by the
respective architects, Iktinos and Kallikrates. The system they used has
the same name today, Dynamic Symmetry, and was primarily invented by
Pythagoras.
Two hundred years later the Platonists borrowed heavily from the then
still continuing Pythagorean educational, mathematical, and
social-ethical system. The Platonists, of course, Platonized it, and
they bad mouthed it. My personal understanding is that the Platonists,
and also the Christian Platonists, redefined the terms and corrupted the
meanings. What the Christians failed to do to completely stamp out the
Pythagorean mathematics concepts, i.e., the XYZ solid coordinate system
[that we know today as the Cartesian Coordinate System] and Dynamic
Symmetry, is to destroy the Ancient Greek Temples. It didn't bother them
to burn Hypatia, the director of the Great Library at Alexandria or the
later several tens of thousands of other women they burned at the stake,
but they couldn't destroy a mere fifty of the Greek temples.
Archaeologists and architects measured the temples, and with the help of
the writings by Euclid and many others were able to reconstruct the
Pythagorean mathematical and geometric system. When some think of the
Radio City Music hall they think of the Rockettes; and others think of
the hallmark of Pythagoras in every Art Deco design and dramatic
compositional detail.
Ralph Hertle
Fred Weiss
01...@verizon.net>...
> Victor:
>
> Victor Manta wrote:
> > On the page:
> > http://arthistory.heindorffhus.dk/frame-Style19-ArtDeco.htm
> >
>
That was my reaction as well, even though I am far from an expert on the su
bject.
In contrast, Ralph is well worth listening to because this is own area of e
xpertise.
Fred Weiss
Victor Manta
> Victor:
>
> Victor Manta wrote:
> > On the page:
> > http://arthistory.heindorffhus.dk/frame-Style19-ArtDeco.htm
> >
>
> The commentary by Heindorff is not all that factual. It is confused in a
> way that is popular in Post Modernism, that facts about the past don't
> have to be treated that factually.
Thanks to all who commented.
It is interesting to notice that in your opinion, even if Mrs. Heindorff is
"not at all factual" and she has "confused" so many things regarding Art
Deco (what I don't contest), she nevertheless correctly identified the style
of the AR stamp.
Personally, I have some doubts, that come as well from my
knowledge/deductions concerning the origin of the stamp as from the idea
expressed in French as "comparaison n'est pas raison".
"The stamp art was illustrated by Nicholas Gaetano, who also illustrated
book jackets for several recent editions of Ayn Rand's books."
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a368e70641e4d.htm
He, if I still remember well, read AR's works, so that I can suppose that he
at least knows what is his work about.
For the knowledgeable people here, the fact that the designer decided to
show on the stamp some skyscrapers shouldn't come at a surprise, especially
because we know (see also the cancels on the FDCs) that the stamp was
launched in New York City.
I think that the stamp's design is rather an attempt to approach AR's own
style, the romantic realism, then a descendant of the Art Deco style.
The romantic realism consists, as you all know, in making life more
beautiful and interesting that it actually is, yet give it all the reality,
and even a more convincing reality than that of our everyday existence (The
Letters of Ayn Rand). I'm not sure that the same principles also cause,
define, and characterize the (quite eclectic) Art Deco movement, and for
this reason I prefer to judge the stamp by its own merits.
In what concerns the First Day Cover (it is the term that we, the stamp
collectors, use for such a cover) that features four stamps of AR, all
stamps should be identical. Eventually take a look at the scan of the same
FDC on my page dedicated to AR:
http://www.values.ch/champs/ayn-rand.htm
Victor Manta
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Art on Stamps: http://www.values.ch/
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Communism on Stamps: http://www.values.ch/communism/
David Buchner
> ....the gist of Deco works was always the happy, proud and the exotic. Art
> Deco said that you are here now, and you are great - enjoy this....
Cool. Thanks for the entertaining discussion of art styles, accessible
to the art-history-ignorant. But it leaves me with more questions. I
wonder if anyone here knows of a handy on-line art history primer, with
example pictures and brief explanations. I'm sure I have a mixed-up and
blurred idea of the various definitions and periods: I've often
identified stuff I like as "Art Deco" -- from Flash Gordon rocketships,
to the entrance of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, to the
Ford 8N tractor, to Buckminster Fuller, to my blender and my martini
shaker.
> ...,the excitement of the new industrial production and business was being
> newly expressed in design. WWII charged everything. ....The fear of
> possible war had its effect on the emotionally sensitive Art Deco designs,
> and the more emotionless streamlining came to be. After WWII ....Art Deco
> and its subtleties of materials, refined colors, form innovations, and
> dramatic proportions were out. The streamline style was in for certain.
I wonder where this guy, whose stuff I like a lot, fits in: