Happy Birthday Pierre Bonnard

Influence of versatile painter and graphic designer is still seen today.

Graphic Design has come a long way from the early days of posters for the Moulin Rouge. For me these early posters are the basis for a majority of our design and advertising layouts. Many credit Piet Mondrian a fine artist for his introduction of the geometric grid to the art world. I find the posters of Pierre Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec to be one of the masters of the graphic layout. In a lithographic entitled "France-Champagne" you see an excellent use of graphic elements and type in a layout that leads your eyes from left to right and top to bottom across the design. Even the use of fonts, you notice only 3 different styles, creates an order of importance in the text and allows your eyes to properly separate the message. The colors, although monotone in this example, contain depth and contrast. The light and airy nature of the woman's skin and the bubbles filling up the corner is striking against the opaque dress and background color.

As a member of the Nabis art movement, Bonnard's profession in the graphic arts was fitting. The Nabis believed that art should not be just for the affluent attending the salons. The importance was the end product and the goal was to integrate art with daily life. Bonnard's replications of posters as lithographic prints, allowed his work to be spread around integrated into fellow Parisian's daily strolls and enjoyed by many.

But, I can't stop at his posters alone. One of the most famous traits of Bonnard's work is his use of color. With a very loose impressionistic brush stroke, Bonnard has combined the bright colors of the post-impressionists with the forms of the impressionists. His subject matter ranges from popular table settings and nudes to interior and exterior domestic scenes. I particularly like his points of views, and how the scene is framed either within a window or door, or by using these as focal points to draw your eye into the scene.

An artist from Columbus, Ohio, Judith Vierow sites Bonnard as one of her influences. I discovered her art this summer at the Akron Art Expo. I was thrilled to find an artist that drew inspiration from Pierre Bonnard. Vierow states her paintings are scenes of domesticity gone slightly awry...a merging of folk art with a love of Bonnard tabletops. I see the connection in Ms. Vierow's colors, domestic scenes and the use of a door or window an important focal point in her layout.

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