 Ricard Opisso, four crowd scenes, Catalan, 20th century
Moritz
von Retzsch, ANARCHY - 22 x 17 cms - a line drawing engraved, townscape,
daylight, the scatterings of citizenry attacking each other in
a medieval german town with a mindless violence - the economy of
the production of the image allows no light and shade and the artist
has tired at the different ways one person can thump another. Lacks
a real sense of anarchy, and becomes funny because it lacks
imagination. I suspect he was more interested in the architecture,
and the other FAUST plates with fewer figures are much more successful.
A
street festival in USSR drawing from Fulop Miller c1922
A women in love with the crowd, T.A.Steinlen
Phonograph
demonstration, dispersal, drawing by Avelot 1905
Wind
dispersal of a crowd, drawing by Meggendorfer 1903
Jean
Duvet, L'Apocalypse fugurée, 1561 plate to Chapter
VI 30 x 21 cms a characteristic compressing of forms to create
the crowd, as a textured backdrop to the angels branding forheads
and a glimpse of the City beyond (right). A skilled depiction of
heads swirling into the composition creating flow and depth to
the shallow spaces. The head shapes merge with clous shapes and
defy the scale of mountian beyond. Duvet's Crowds are unique in
the economic means of devices, heads, hoods, crosses with a sustained
mood of intensity and joint purpose.
Gustave
Dore to Balzac's Les Contes Drolatiques Paris
1855 8 x 11cms, an idealised and comic vision
of the medieval French town with turbulent movement, key incident and
sly invention. See also Dore's illustrations to Rabelais, and his graphic
responses to the Crowds of London 1872 Much
use of plume, dress and sash to create a flickering movemnt, and
small notes of animals, one of which is pissing.
Gustave
Dore to Balzac's Les Contes Drolatiques Paris 1855 Crowd
scene in battle, at the siege of a medieval fortress -the Crowd of
Soldiers becomes the collapsing masonery, limbs almost cylindrical
in armour. To the left an advancement of dark knights act as a foil
illustration
to Otto Nückel's, DESTINY, Marriott London 1930 -
10 x 11 cms - a novel in pictures, a bankside restaurant and dance
floor with the Crowd as spiky interlocked elements within the composition,
using more contrasts of black and white that the Sarg poster beneath.
A contrast between the landscape structures and the jagged rectilinears
Tony
Sarg, Poster for London Transport, 'appy 'ampstead, 1913.
A contneted and amused crowd at the Fair (compoare with the next
image) a controlled composition with the crowd acting as pointer
to the respective booths, - solid here - rushing there, with the
clear outline drawing style allowing legs and arms to be used as
aids to direction. The crowd floats over a Japanese style shadow
free ground . Legs of military men act as a strong visual focus.
Subtle washes of slighter brighter yellows and reds.
Richard
Doyle, "Ye Publicke its Excytement on ye appearence of Miss
Lind", from Manners and Customs of Ye Engyshe, Mr Pips
his Diary, written by Percival Lee, Bradbury and Evans, London
originally published in Punch. undated c1860 16 x 17 cms, and typical
of Doyle's dry line style, adept in massing the bodies while integrating
funny incidents and characterisation.Impressive the vortex of figures
James
Ensor, The Triumph of Death 1894 etching also known as Death
pursuing the People. in the spirit of Dore but with an extra edge
of the macabre, Ensor uses the upturned faces as helpless and befuddled
repetiton of round shapes pouring through the narrow streets (of
Ostend ?) some figures teetering on the edge of the mythic, with
a separate cast of skeletons, much loved by the artist as a shaping
destroying force. Not comic but a pessimistic take of the Spirit
of Carnival.Ensor was enthusiastic about the differentiated crowd,
policemen, judges, toffs in different hats and uniforms, all together
advancing towards their Fate.
Breughel, Faith, engraving
c 1559, with the central figure focus of the Fides on the tomb,
to the right quiet hooded shapes and to the left more animated
groups engaged in action rather than contemplation
Breughel, The
Fight of the Money Bags and the Strong Boxes c1567,
and a satire on the relationship between war, money and violence,
Breughel using repeated volumes of figure unit traced
over with spears and swords at an angle. Blood spills but in
the shape of coins on the ground.
Breughel, The
Wedding Dance engraving; sixty figures cavort in a restricted
space.A curious parody of a religious crowd with Christ figure
at the centre c1566 -trees act as sturdy foils on the flanks
of the group.
THE
CUP AND BALL FAIR, SIXTEENTH CENTURY
THE
FROST FAIR 1715-16
LOUIS BOITARD, Crowd of the Foolish fleeing reports of an Earthquake 1715-16
THE
FROST FAIR 1814
Gathering
Shells by Low Tide , print by Kuniyoshi 1855
Poster for La Foule, film 1928
|
A women in love with the crowd, T.A.Steinlen
