Sometimes all we really need is to be plopped down into a different environment to make us rethink our current situations. A day spent at a beach can refresh us for one month - a day at a spa, a funky night club, or dining in an unbelievable restaurant. Anything uplifting can switch something on inside of us, that normally might have been kept dormant. Original ideas inspire us to create unique things in our own lives. I like to think of it as a creative ripple effect. If you see inspired design, fashion or beauty - you will inevitably create inspired design, fashion or beauty. That is exactly the reason why I love to be in cities where there is a lot to take in. I especially love it when women and men dress beautifully and the buildings are awe-inspiring. I feel enlivened to put outfits together that I would have never thought of, paint new things, or copy the region's flavourful food. There's never too much inspiration to go around, it's highly contagious!
Inspirational Example No. One
Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis 1929-1994
A Style Icon that influenced many fashion
designers and still inspires women today.
Kate Middleton - England's Newest Duchess.
She epitomizes English tailorship and knows
how to put a great outfit together.
Inspirational Example No. Two
Art Nouveau
1890-1905
Who would have suspected that the fresh look of Art Nouveau was cultivated from a single artist's imagination? Czech artist Alphonse Mucha illustrated a play poster and posted it in the streets of Paris, where it became an overnight sensation. Parisians referred to the original artistic approach as: Style Mucha. Mucha's inspired lithographs in 1885 acted as a platform for other artists to interpret their own creations.
Art Nouveau (French for "New Art"), became an international
movement and inspired artists such as Gustav Klimt and furniture
designers like Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Gustav Klimt 1862-1918, Austrian Symbolist Painter
Charles Rennie Makintosh's Chair Designs and Fabric Print
Louis Comfort Tiffany Lamp circa 1920
The highly stylized and free flowing lines of floral motifs refined it's way into the architecture of Victor Horta in Belgium and Antoni Gaudi in Spain. Gaudi's architecture was exemplified by
Art Nouveau but was based on his own experience with the ocean. Just another example
of how inventiveness leads to a myriad of imaginative artistry.
Victor Horta Stairway, Brussels, Belgium
Antoni Gaudi 1852-1926, Barcelona, Spain, Parc Guell
Inspirational Example No. Three
Impressionism
At the turn of the 20th Century, many things were about to change in Paris- thanks to a group of artist's known as The Impressionists, who would revolutionize the academic art of their time.
By coming together and influencing each other's thinking during exhibitions and cafe meetings at places like Cafe Guerbois, The Impressionists made their mark in history.
Inspired by Eugene Delacroix's work, artists such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille, Charles Gleyre, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cezanne, Armand Guillaumin and Edgar Degas took to en plein air, and captured their sensations of the modern world on canvas. They broke the rules of stuffy still life painting, and began painting with shorter, more colourful strokes - revolutionizing an artist's way of seeing his or her subject matter. Not only was artistry changing, but Impressionists were inspiring and were being inspired by what was happening outside of the exhibitions.
Claude Monet
Science was undergoing a revolution of it's own, compliments of Thomas Atom, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr and later, Louis de Broglie. It seemed as if everyone was interested in light, waves and energy. Claude Monet's paintings are prime examples of how sunlight attributes to how we perceive the world around us, just like the scientists who were trying to understand our world in a very different way.
Impressionism led to creating harmonies in music differently,
as one can hear by the works of
Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
Clair De Lune, Claude Debussy, 1862 –1918 French composer
Virginia Woolf, also influenced by Impressionism,
described her character's mental health
in a different way by placing importance on their
sensations rather than the author's interpretation.
The wave lengths of Impressionism bred new artistic
movements such as Neo and Post-Impressionism,
Fauvism (The Wild Beasts) and Cubism.
Inspirational Example No. Four
The Italian Renaissance
Last but not least - the Rivalry between Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo became the world's most beneficial arrangement. Competing for commissions roused creativity from both contending alliances. After considering the results, The Italian Renaissance was undoubtedly the most optimal creative period of all time. It sparkled with effervescence and narrated a perfect sophistication.
