In the first chapter of Graphesis, Johanna Drucker does an excellent job of creating a timeline of innovations in the field of what she terms “visual epistemology,” or (as on p.11) “an alternative history of images produces primarily to serve as expressions of knowledge.” By pulling from examples stretching over time, from roughly the Englightment period to the present day, and from disparate disciplines, Drucker lays out a thesis of an increasing level of systematization and complexity in information graphics over time. Her primary goal for the book seems to be to foster a greater understanding of the ways that information graphics have contributed to the humanities over time and provide readers with a set of reference points for further contributing to the visual humanistic realm.
Though the depth of her references across fields including Art History and Psychology is impressive, the reader is left with a somewhat piecemeal and Eurocentric vision of the field. Due to the brevity with which Drucker addresses a wide range of sources, this is perhaps to be expected. One point of contention I took was the way in which she exclusively created her timeline around European and American sources. While this is most likely a limitation of her knowledge base (and potential language difficulties), sources such as the Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones (cited p.27) clearly seek to draw inspiration from non-western traditions for the creation of a larger compendium of visual pattern. Drucker’s analysis largely elides this point. When she does address this problem directly toward the end of the chapter, her framing of the issue suddenly shifts: where her historical sources as well as her project all have a distinct Structuralist undertone, she suddenly adopts a more Post-Structuralist conception of the cultural specificity of form: “Our examples draw on long-standing conventions in Western culture and representation… But other graphical modes are culturally or historically specific…” (p.53). For having spent a significant amount of scholarly energy articulating “epistemological eras” and providing detailed, if brief, context throughout the text, this stance feels like a dodge of the issue.
Citation: 33 (page 35):
Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus movement:
The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 in the city of Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius. The group sought to bring a unity in the arts as reflected in the material world: through furniture design, product design, architecture and graphic design. This vision was laid out in the “Proclamation of the Bauhaus.” Drucker almost certainly cites Gropius as an influence on Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Laslo Moholy-Nagy for two reasons. First: that all of these artists were involved to varying degrees with the design education program that the Bauhaus developed (Klee and Kandinsky both taught the preliminary course for students in color theory and material relationships; Moholy-Nagy oversaw the typography program). Secondly: the approach that Gropius and other Bauhaus members advocated of radical universalism in the arts is clearly related to the later stages of their respective projects, and indeed Drucker’s interest in the two as thinkers. This breaking down of the distinctions between the fine and applied arts, combined with a turn toward flatness, abstraction, and grid-based design patterns, set a clear antecedent for later developments in the field of Graphic Design and aided in its professionalization in the early 20th Century.
Additional sources:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bauh/hd_bauh.htm