Art: Transformation (G, Delenn)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

With thanks to icepixie for the idea - I've been working on this ever since we talked about the Art Nouveau influences of the visual style on B5.

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Click to enlarge. :)

Comments

[icepixie]

icepixie has an awesome icon remarking on some of the furniture and interior decor on the station, which I'd never noticed until I saw the icon, but now keep noticing everywhere.

Heh. I only noticed it because of the chairs in the council chambers--they're exact reproductions of one of the classic Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs, which I've thought were cool for some years now. (Amusingly, my friends and I found two in a Starbucks when we were in Glasgow. Of course, I think pretty much every building in that town had something either by or inspired by Mackintosh in it...) A lot of the station has that Nouveau look to it, especially the light sources and walls. I hadn't really thought about it as a Minbari design element until you mentioned it a few weeks ago, but now I totally see the influence on their crests and ships. Though Minbar itself seems a bit more Deco than Nouveau to me--things are a bit more streamlined there, especially in the stained glass and building exteriors. (This may well be a function of CGI being in its infancy rather than a particular design choice...and Nouveau and Deco are so close together that it's hard to tell lots of pieces apart anyway.)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I just think it's so fascinating that, even on an extremely low-budget show, either some designer sat there and thought "okay, what can I actually do that will look both unusual and futuristic, but can be done on almost no money?" and came up with Art Nouveau, or JMS sat the set guys down one day with their plyboard and paint and a couple of bucks to go to garage sales or something and said "I think we need an Art Nouveau look, here." Whereupon they nearly died. Either version just delights me, and I admit that I sort of wish I knew which was the one that happened.

This may well be a function of CGI being in its infancy rather than a particular design choice...and Nouveau and Deco are so close together that it's hard to tell lots of pieces apart anyway.

I've wondered about that, too - they do seem more Deco, but... it's so painful in some of the shots on Minbar to wonder what it was that they were actually trying to get across, as opposed to what the computers actually managed to spit out. On the other hand, that's true of other, non-computer moments as well... I have a little bit of an angry determination that the glowy pastel erector set Delenn plays with through the first season was meant to be crystals... they're just so hideous, I couldn't help but ret-con them here.

(And yes, I admit that I tend to sort the two styles more or less into buckets based on "organic shapes = Nouveau, straight lines = Deco, which I know is not necessarily correct. But art history was a very long time ago, and I've yet to come up with another system that doesn't land me in the wrong buckets about the same amount as my false dichotomy, so...) Someday I'll figure it out for sure. Someday.)

[icepixie]

Either version just delights me, and I admit that I sort of wish I knew which was the one that happened.

They are both pretty delightful. I think a lot of the design actually does come from plywood and paint--like, practically every light source on the station is pretty much a florescent tube stood on its end behind a rectangle of frosted plastic, with some painted wooden strips over the top of part of it in the same checkered pattern as on the council chairs. If they'd gone for Star Trek-esque futuristic, they'd have been shelling out for lots of molded, rounded, plasticky stuff.

I have a little bit of an angry determination that the glowy pastel erector set Delenn plays with through the first season was meant to be crystals... they're just so hideous, I couldn't help but ret-con them here.

Bwahaha. I think they probably were meant to be crystals as well. They do definitely look like a kid's toy, though.

Your method of separating Nouveau and Deco is pretty much the same as mine. I've heard that much of Deco, especially early Deco, is Nouveau streamlined for mass production, which seems as good a comparison as any.