New Culture Movement and Design Enlightenment
Catalog Design
Year of Completion
Fall 2022
Supervising Professor
Melissa Kuperminc
Statement
The New Culture Movement was an ideological emancipation movement against feudalism launched by some advanced intellectuals in China in the early 20th century from 1915 to 1923.
Through this exhibition, I want to show how the New Culture Movement has influenced Chinese art and designs.
Critical Analysis as background introduction
Constructivism has a huge impact on traditional Chinese design. People started to use geometric shapes in books and poster designs. Therefore, instead of the regular book binding method, I chose to use Japanese binding to create geometric shapes in the binding, including isosceles triangles, right angle triangles, and rectangles.
Start page
In 1915, The New Culture Movement Began. It fully changed Chinese art and design style in a more modern way. As you flip the red transparent sheet, the old-style traditional art and design are covered.
Lei Kuiyuan also applied pattern designs on potterys, such as tea pot, plates, etc.
Lei Kuiyuan was inspired by the pattern study in Western countries. Rather than studying Western styles, he wanted to create Chinese patterns. Moreover, in the book New Patterns, Lei always emphasizes the comprehensive principle that "we study patterns for production, in order to meet the needs of people's lives, we must pay attention to the economy, adaptation and beauty". (“Lei Guiyuan Art Retrospective”) Lei’s thoughts are the same as the progressive thought of Bauhaus modernism, which emphasizes practicality, frugality, and service to the public.
Lei Kuiyuan was inspired by the pattern study in Western countries. Rather than studying Western styles, he wanted to create Chinese patterns. Moreover, in the book New Patterns, Lei always emphasizes the comprehensive principle that "we study patterns for production, in order to meet the needs of people's lives, we must pay attention to the economy, adaptation and beauty". (“Lei Guiyuan Art Retrospective”) Lei’s thoughts are the same as the progressive thought of Bauhaus modernism, which emphasizes practicality, frugality, and service to the public.
Traditional Chinese artists appreciate painting landscapes, life, and work. They had a passion for realistic painting to record the beauty of this astounding world by using delicated strokes and bright colors.
Xunqin Pang is the author of these two paintings. He found Paris versatile, vivid, and colorful. The overall tone of Such Is Paris (on the left side) is delighted. He drew what he saw in Paris in the collage format with oil painting. He wanted to bring the hope of designs and paintings back to China and he achieved that.
You can open the page to see a larger picture of plate pattern designs.
Collaterals
I created collaterals for the New Culture Movement and Design Enlightenment exhibition, including a poster, a banner, tickets, tote bags, and tapes.
This was my first time trying Japanese binding and it was a big challenge for me, however, the whole exploring and experimenting process was interesting. Here is a short video recording of me binding the catalog.