Modernity & Modernism: An Introduction
Richard Miles richard.miles@leeds-art.ac.uk
Modernity & Modernism
1.Terms- ‘modern’, ‘modernity’ 2.Modernity – Industrialisation, Urbanisation – the City 3.Modern artists’ response to the city 4.Psychology and subjective experience 5.Modern art and photography 6.Defining ‘modernism’ in art 7.Modernism in design
The New Woman, photomontage, Spanish Pavilion, Paris International Exhibition, 1937
The Language of Postmodern Architecture (1977)
15 July 1972, 3:32pm Modernism dies, according to Charles Jencks
The demolition of the Pruitt - Igoe development, St Louis
Paris 1900
Trottoir Roullant ~ (electric moving walkway)
URBANISATION
Sites of Modernity
Process of rationality and reason Enlightenment= period in late 18th C when Scientific / philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds
Secularisation
The City
HAUSSMANISATION
Paris 1850s on = a New Paris Old Paris architecture of narrow streets & run down housing is ripped out Haussman, (city architect) redesigns Paris Large Boulevards in favour of narrow streets – this made the streets easier to police = a form of Social Control also the ‘dangerous’ elements of the W.C. are moved outside the city centre – the centre becomes an expensive M.C. and Upper class zone
Kaiserpanorama 1883
Max Nordau Degeneration 1892 (an anti modernist) wrote about his worries on the modern world he predicted that, “the end of the 20thC. . . will probably see a generation to whom it will not be injurious to read a dozen square yards of newspapers daily, to be constantly called to the telephone, to be thinking simultaneously of the five continents of the world, to live half their time in a railway carriage or in a flying machine and . . . know how to find [their] ease in the midst of a city inhabited by millions’
If we start to think about subjective experience . . . [the experience of the individual in the modern world] we start to come close to understanding modern art and the experience of modernity
Modernism MODERNISM emerges out of the subjective responses of artists / designers to;
MODERNITY
MODERNISM IN DESIGN ● ● ● ● ●
Anti-historicism Truth to materials Form follows function Technology Internationalism
Anti-historicism – no need to look backward to older styles “Ornament is crime” – Adolf Loos (1908)
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Truth to materials – simple geometric forms appropriate to the material being used Form follows function
The Bauhaus
Le Corbusier LC2
INTERNATIONALISM â—?
A language of design that could be recognised and understood on an international basis
Harry Beck, London Underground Map, 1933
Le Corbusier ‘Plan Voisin’ 1927
Example of Herbert Bayer’s sans- serif typeface �
He also argued for all text to be lower case, (to ditch capitals)
Times New Roman Font Stanley Morison 1932
Fraktur font
TECHNOLOGY NEW MATERIALS ● Concrete ● New technologies of steel ● Plastics ● Aluminium ● Reinforced glass MASS PRODUCTION ● Cheaper more widely accessible products ● Products made quickly
TECHNOLOGY â—?
NEW MATERIALS -reinforced resin and a steel core allowed for the design of the stiletto heel!
Conclusion ● ●
The term modern is not a neutral term – it suggests novelty and improvement “Modernity” (1750-1960) – social and cultural experience
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“Modernism” – The range of ideas and styles that sprang from modernity
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Importance of modernism 1. a vocabulary of styles 2. art and design education 3. Idea of form follows function