Collage is a technique devised in the early twentieth century to the creation of avant-garde works, initially adopted by exponents of Cubism, and later took on more complex three-dimensional features in the Neo-Dada and Pop Art movements.
Visionary abstract structures, sparse and clean-cut that we find also in the unusual montages of visual artists of Cuban-American Richard Vergez origins, whose minimalist iconography combines human and technological elements, distilling syntactic snapshots from a modern identity in rapid transformation, in an attempt the disenchanted and playful acceptance.
His absurd compositions are inspired by the Dada movement, Surrealism, the Russian dell’avanguardiacostruttivista techniques, however, passing over: the clean geometry and balanced use of negative space creates a singular focus on the narrative of the image, which becomes powerful, direct and unexpectedly tangible.
The inventiveness of Vergez is not confined only to the field of graphic design: its production also involves the contamination of other artistic fields such as experimental music and video making. Through the use of outdated materials and ephemeral, he aims to recover a dream state linked to childhood and post-punk influences of a bygone era MTV.

Francesco Marino

[His work] found and distilled the poetry of the modern, industrialized world. Martin Scorsese

Saul Bass was an Art director, designer, photographer, illustrator and filmmaker Saul Bass was one of the most iconic and influential of the last century visual communicators, perhaps the best known graphic designer of all time. His unconventionality gave aesthetic form of creative generations, impressing his brilliant touch to the opening titles of Cinema Hollywood.

Versatile and curious, pioneer of a minimalist graphics, Bass performed each project in a simple and enigmatic style, which fully reflected his interest in Modernism and Surrealism. Inventor of a synthetic design and evocative, loved to play with metaphors and abstract symbols, synthesizing the meanings with easily decipherable elements and always leaving something unsaid, to force the intellectual involvement of its audience. A simplicity that contained different interpretations, able to hide from the public, with making ambiguous, certain metaphysical implications that always led to a review of hidden meanings. But in spite of the inherent complexity levels in his work, Bass approached the Modern Art to anyone, thanks to a visual language from the immediate emotional impact.

The man with the golden arm (1955, directed by Otto Preminger)
An arm jagged challenge the taboo of heroin addiction, suffered by the jazz musician played by Frank Sinatra. primary colors, geometric shapes and angled decided accompany the opening credits that Saul Bass decides to turn for the first time in an animated sequence. Otto Preminger provides that in theaters the film is screened from the earliest moments to curtain raised. A real revolution.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959, directed by Otto Preminger)

The pieces that make up the outline of a dead body begin to slip in and out separately from the screen, highlighting the titles that alternate to the rhythm of jazz sound column written by Duke Ellington.

Psycho (1960, directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

The written broken and the alternating and obsessive movement of the bar graphic, symbolically suggest the fractured psyche of Norman Bates. Saul Bass are also the film’s storyboard and the famous shower scene.

Francesco Marino

Aggressive, tormented by a deep sorrow, iconoclastic. Francis Bacon, with a cut violent neo-expressionist, had collected the Scream by Munch projecting it into the twentieth century disintegration of bodies and souls, committed to nothing. This pain no chance to rest, and the consummation of the figure, which becomes part and monstrous, hit by the breakup, the abyss becomes an expression of the Abyss century.

Bacon shows, in a period dominated by the art or abstract colored consumerism of pop art, the figure at the observation center and grasps a phenomenon that he believes irreversible: the human decay – which is not only decadence – comparing it often , with the human titanism of Renaissance and post-Renaissance painting. Of particular interest, as we shall see in the movie, it is the British painter technique that becomes an act of blatant revelation of his every thought.

He chooses or take photographs that spoils, accounts, submit to a consummation ritual cannibal; violently that prefigures, in abraded sheet, scarred and wrinkled, the development of the paint layer cakes that excess, creating a mass fleeing of shape or is fractured from cuts or lacerations. The direction is very clear, as nell’Urlo Munch: the loss of the sense, the collapse of the supernatural, the panic and the horror of existence, but at the same time, in Bacon, nostalgia and hatred against an age in which man was at the center of the Vitruvian circle.

The photograph is subjected to cuts and lacerations before becoming pictorial work matrix

Francis Bacon – Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velázquez (1953)

Francis Bacon – Two Figures (1953)

Francis Bacon – Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer on light ground (1964)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV6T2MO_KTQ&feature=youtu.be

Francesco Marino

Following the meeting with Michael Bierut at the academy, I was struck by his work (in my opinion “beautifullyimperfects”) to Saks Fifth Avenue, one of the most familiar and enduring fashion icons and business America, the Saks logo has been updated for the 21st century.

The new brand logo is the program of a global branding, highlighted by a visual vocabulary. To create it, Michael Bierut (who collaborated with Massimo Vignelli) has divided the logo in 64 pieces only square, which then resized, rotated and re-combined form an imperfect framework that is both romantic and family.

Bierut nicknamed him the “DNA” because the boxes are the essential elements of the single identity of Saks Fifth Avenue, reflecting both the logo and the brand. How products by Saks Fifth Avenue, each box is a piece of DNA integral brand that becomes even more amazing and beautiful in combination.

The new images appear everywhere, from stationery and windows of credit cards and shopping bags. Saks is working with some of the world’s top designers such as Diane von Furstenberg, Christian Louboutin, Albert Kriemler of Akris, George Sharp of Ellen Tracy and the Moncler design team to develop unique and exclusive objects, and each incorporates the new DNA.

Francesco Marino

http://www.pentagram.com/#/search/Saks%20Fifth%20Avenue

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In seguito all’incontro con Michael Bierut in Accademia, mi ha colpito il suo lavoro (a mio avviso “beautifullyimperfects”) per Saks Fifth Avenue, uno dei America più familiari e durature icone di moda e di business, il logo Saks è stato aggiornato per il 21° secolo.

Il logo nuovo di zecca è programma di un branding globale, evidenziato da un vocabolario visivo. Per crearlo, Michael Bierut (che collaborò con Massimo Vignelli) ha diviso il logo in 64 pezzi quadrati unici, che poi ridimensionati, ruotati e ri-combinati formano un quadro imperfetto che è al tempo stesso romantico e familiare.

Bierut lo soprannomina il “DNA” perché le caselle costituiscono gli elementi essenziali dell’identità unica di Saks Fifth Avenue, riflettendo sia il logo e il marchio. Come i prodotti a cura di Saks Fifth Avenue, ogni casella del DNA è un pezzo integrante del marchio che diventa ancora più sorprendente e bello in combinazione.

Le nuove immagini appaiono ovunque, dalla cancelleria e vetrine di carte di credito e le borse della spesa. Saks sta collaborando con alcuni dei migliori designer del mondo come Diane von Furstenberg, Christian Louboutin, Albert Kriemler di Akris, George Sharp di Ellen Tracy e il team di progettazione di Moncler per sviluppare oggetti unici ed esclusivi, e ognuno incorpora il nuovo DNA.

Francesco Marino

http://www.pentagram.com/#/search/Saks%20Fifth%20Avenue