| Retro
Art, or Retro Clip Art (also known as Retro Clipart), is the
term which commonly refers to advertising artwork which was
created mainly during the '40s and '50s. Although a certain
amount of color artwork was also produced during that era,
many printed materials were limited to one color due to the
often rudimentary printing methods found in many cities at
the time. As a result, professional illustrators were forced
to develop a style of artwork which could be easily reproduced
with a low degree of printing technology if necessary.
There are also some other reasons
of course which led to the development of retro art: In
the late 1800's, the popular style of illustration for commercial
purposes was engraved artwork. Artists would go to tremendous
trouble to create very fine line shading in all the drawings,.
We've all seen this style of artwork in posters and ads from
the old west, or the Victorian era for example.
At the turn of the century came the
Art Nouveau revolution in France, which featured highly simplified,
graphic drawings; a style which was largely frowned upon by
art experts at the time. This style was quickly followed by
Russian Constructivism during the Bolshevik Revolution in
the teens, which truly solidified the trend towards simplified,
graphic drawings, and helped contribute toward the Art Deco
movement of the twenties.
By 1930, the effects of all these
trends had fully seeped into the world of commercial art,
at which point commercial illustrators collectively decided
to do away with the meticulous cross-hatching, stippling and
other intricate forms of line shading which had been the norm
up to that time. This type of shading was now seen as "old-fashioned",
and the trend began in earnest towards creating drawings which
contained no line shading whatsoever. With practice, they
got better and better at it, and by 1940, every artist worth
their salt was able to figure out how to divide any image
into pure black or white regions.
This is the main element which is
so fascinating and captivating about this style of artwork,
besides the quaint and often humorous subject matter, clothing
and hairstyles. Just the fact that these artists could represent
anything without using color or line-shading at all, makes
retro art a truly unique and significant style of illustration
for all times.
Retro Art has become extremely popular of
late, mainly because we are so overwhelmed with unbelievable
computer graphics, but also due to a recent yearning to get
back to the simpler ways of yesteryear. Ironically, combining
these types of simple retro images with modern layouts, provides
more depth and dimension than could ever be acquired through
the implementation of the most complex 3D modelling techniques!
Finally, Retro Art is only now beginning
to achieve the same level of status and historical recognition
as is accorded Art Deco, Russian Constructivism or Art Nouveau.
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