Art Movements as Posters, With a Prompt Each

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Art movements as posters

Each movement written as a poster the movement itself might have printed.

Most of these movements never made event posters. That is what makes them useful: ask for a poster a Futurist or a Dadaist would have printed and the model has to build something rather than copy something. The trick is to name the mechanics, not just the movement, so the result is a poster in that style rather than a painting with a title typed on it.

Before the break

4

The nineteenth century, when a poster was either a wall of wood type or a lithograph of a beautiful person holding a product.

Japonisme: Western subject arranged the Japanese way: flat colour, a high viewpoint and asymmetric empty space.
Japonisme
Western subject arranged the Japanese way: flat colour, a high viewpoint and asymmetric empty space.
Victorian Broadside: A wall of wood type: every line a different face, every line a different size.
Victorian Broadside
A wall of wood type: every line a different face, every line a different size.
Belle Epoque Lithograph: A joyful figure mid-movement, flat lithographic colour, and the title hand-drawn around her.
Belle Epoque Lithograph
A joyful figure mid-movement, flat lithographic colour, and the title hand-drawn around her.
Pre-Raphaelite Illustration: Jewel colour, medieval dress, and a figure looking somewhere sad and specific.
Pre-Raphaelite Illustration
Jewel colour, medieval dress, and a figure looking somewhere sad and specific.

The avant-garde shouts

5

1909 to 1925. Machines, war and revolution, and a generation that thought a poster should attack the reader.

Futurist: Words thrown across the sheet at speed, with force lines and no baseline.
Futurist
Words thrown across the sheet at speed, with force lines and no baseline.
Vorticism: Hard angular planes driving into a vortex, and enormous block capitals.
Vorticism
Hard angular planes driving into a vortex, and enormous block capitals.
Suprematism: Flat geometric shapes floating on white, tilted, with nothing behind them.
Suprematism
Flat geometric shapes floating on white, tilted, with nothing behind them.
Dada Collage: Cut newspaper, mismatched photographs and type at every angle, glued into nonsense.
Dada Collage
Cut newspaper, mismatched photographs and type at every angle, glued into nonsense.
Cubist Exhibition Poster: One subject broken into facets and shown from several angles at once.
Cubist Exhibition Poster
One subject broken into facets and shown from several angles at once.

Between the wars

4

Europe after 1918: a woodcut that shouts, a portrait that accuses, a dream painted flat, and colour treated as a subject in itself.

Expressionist Woodcut: Gouged black lines, angular distorted figures, and white where the knife took the block away.
Expressionist Woodcut
Gouged black lines, angular distorted figures, and white where the knife took the block away.
Neue Sachlichkeit: Cold hard-edged realism, an unflattering portrait, and a flat airless light.
Neue Sachlichkeit
Cold hard-edged realism, an unflattering portrait, and a flat airless light.
Surrealist: One impossible object in an ordinary place, painted as though it were completely normal.
Surrealist
One impossible object in an ordinary place, painted as though it were completely normal.
Orphism: Overlapping colour discs and arcs, saturated, with the colour doing all the work.
Orphism
Overlapping colour discs and arcs, saturated, with the colour doing all the work.

Postwar abstraction

4

After 1945: systems instead of feelings, children's drawing as a serious method, and art made out of what the eye gets wrong.

Concrete Art: A visible mathematical system: a grid of shapes built by a rule you can work out.
Concrete Art
A visible mathematical system: a grid of shapes built by a rule you can work out.
CoBrA: Thick raw brushwork, bright colour and figures drawn like a child would draw them.
CoBrA
Thick raw brushwork, bright colour and figures drawn like a child would draw them.
Minimalism: One element, placed exactly, on a very large empty field.
Minimalism
One element, placed exactly, on a very large empty field.
Op Art: Black and white patterns precise enough to make the flat sheet appear to move.
Op Art
Black and white patterns precise enough to make the flat sheet appear to move.

Pop and the street

4

Art made out of what was already printed: adverts, comics, rock bills and spray paint.

Pop Art: Commercial imagery blown up: Ben-Day dots, thick black outlines and flat primaries.
Pop Art
Commercial imagery blown up: Ben-Day dots, thick black outlines and flat primaries.
Psychedelic Sixties: Melting hand lettering that fills every gap, in colours that vibrate against each other.
Psychedelic Sixties
Melting hand lettering that fills every gap, in colours that vibrate against each other.
Big Eyes: A large-eyed melancholy child, painted in murky colour against a bleak background.
Big Eyes
A large-eyed melancholy child, painted in murky colour against a bleak background.
Graffiti and Street Art: Spray paint on a real wall: interlocking letterforms, drips, overspray and paste-up edges.
Graffiti and Street Art
Spray paint on a real wall: interlocking letterforms, drips, overspray and paste-up edges.

Make one of them

Copy a prompt into an image model and pay for that one run. No subscription.

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Other style groups

Graphic design movementsThe movements, and the wording that gets the look of each one.18 design movementsPrint and reproduction looksThe printing processes, and the wording for what each does to ink.11 print processesHandmade and folkWays to make a poster that looks like a person made it, not a studio.9 handmade looksPlace and eraNational and period styles, each with the rules that made it local.14 regional stylesPropaganda and protestPolitical traditions, and the visual rules each used to move people.7 political traditionsMusic scenesThe scenes, and the graphic rules each used to say who a night was for.10 music scenesScreen and digitalThe looks that came from a screen, and the wording that gets each one.10 digital looks
Drawing and render stylesDrawing a character rather than printing a sheet? The same reference, for how a picture is made.

Most of these movements never printed event posters, so the model cannot copy an existing template. It has to apply the rules of the movement to your content, and the result is far less generic than asking for a poster.