AM Cassandre Website Project

Adolfe Jean-Marie Mouron, known as A.M. Cassandre, was born January 24, 1901 in Karkov, Ukraine. Over the course of his lifetime, Cassandre developed an interest in art which he pursued in his education and later in his career. Cassandre began his career as an artist by designing posters, possibly as early as 1921. These early posters were likely done in the caricature style following the German school of poster design, and few of them survive. In 1922, the young artist moved to his first Paris studio, where he began to sign his advertisements using the pseudonym, A.M. Cassandre. Cassandre originally planned on devoting his artistic life to painting, becoming a poster artist until he could make enough money to do so, but in 1923 after creating his first large-scale commercial project, Au Bucheron, discovered a great interest in the medium as he realized his art reached a much larger audience and as such was a more modern form and function of art than painting. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, Cassandre worked as a poster and type designer, lithographer, painter, and theater designer, becoming “one of the greatest commercial artists of the past century.” His influences include what were contemporary movements such as Neue Sachlichkeit, cubism, and surrealism which he brought together in the commercial art for which he is best known (Mouron, 2000).

For my creative project assignment, I will further research, analyze, and discuss the life, works, and influence of A.M. Cassandre and present my findings in the form of an interactive website. The website will be divided into different pages according to the type of information being presented. The first page will be the general Home/Navigation page with links to the Biography, Works, Cassandre and Art Deco, Cassandre Today, and the Conclusion pages. The Biography page, as the title suggest, includes the story of Cassandre’s life and his development as an artist. The Biography page will also include a timeline that will show important dates in the artist’s life and work and will serve as a reference to world events taking place during his time as well. The Works page will organize the 8-12 works in four different pages (with 2-3 images for each page) according to timeperiod since Cassandre worked for over four decades as a graphic designer. By separating the images by decade, the viewer will be able to see the evolution of Cassandre’s style. Each decade will be linked to the next for easy viewing of all images and will also be linked to the Works page. Each image, when selected will open in its own window with my analysis of the artwork’s design, etc. The Cassandre and Art Deco page will explore the influences that Cassandre and his work had on the Art Deco design movement of the 1920s and 1930s and will include images that correspond to my research-based analysis. The page Cassandre and Today will focus on how Cassandre’s influence reaches into today’s world of design and will show this using modern day works that reference Cassandre’s design aesthetic. The final information page will sum up the information of the previous pages and will act as a conclusion, stating why Cassandre’s work is worthy of study. All pages will also be linked to both the sitemap and the references page. The primary navigation will remain available on each child page, but not on any grandchild pages (such as the decade image group pages or the individual image pages).

The design of the webpage will be based on one of Cassandre’s most famous works, possibly the L’Atlantique poster or one of the Nord Express posters. Black and grays will most likely be prominently used in the website with the addition of subtle hints of color, along with the use of geometric shapes and line, as Cassandre’s Art Deco works include.

Information source:
Mouron, R. (2000). Cassandre. Retrieved February 2009, from http://www.cassandre.fr/