Modernism

The Lecture;

John Ruskin 1819-1900; modern painters
Modern(of the moment) - not just the latest, known as the best
To make something more modern was to improve
15th July 1972 3:32pm modernism dies according to Charles Jencks (the demolition of the pruitt - Igoe development, st Louis)
Paris 1900 - turn of the century - most modern city at the time
-Troltair Roullant (electric moving walkway) urbanization
-Rapid advances in technology - industrialisation
-world time was standardized - because of the railway system - rapidly accelerates and changes
-new way to spend leisure time, shopping etc.
Hyde park picture house emerged in this time

Process of rationality and reason
-Enlightenment=period in late 18th century when scientific/philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds

The city - a site of moderism
Eiffel tower - sign of modernism - industrial palace
First attempt to capture this experience was a poet

Haussmanisation
Paris in 1850s = a new Paris
Old Paris architecture of narrow streets and run down housing is ripped out Haussman (city architect) redesign Paris
Large boulevards in favor of narrow streets - this made the streets easier to police = a form of social control
Also the 'dangerous' elements of W.C. to be moved outside the city

First phycology labs - 1893
-Come from thinking moderism will send people crazy
Alienation in the modern world (class divition)
Germany - kaiserpanorama - pay money to look through a hole to see slides or clips - investing into the modern
-rather than experiencing the world through a device rather than directly experiencing it - more mediated

Max Nordau Degenation 1892 (an anti modernist) wrote about his worries on the modern world - predicts
-constantly called on the telephone
-railway - or caridge machines

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
Paint a lot because of the threat of photography and new media, way of recording documents, new media is more accurate - painting has to reinvent views and angles to looking at the worlds relationship between science, new technology, investigation

Modernism in Design;
-Anti-historicism - look forwards
-Truth to materials - new materials and technologies
-Form follows function - things should work and be practicle and minimal
-Technologies - don't hide the fact, using new technologies
-Internationalism - everyone can understand it

Anti-historcism - no need to look backward to older styles 'ornament is crime' - Adolf loos (1908)
Truth to materials, simple geometric forms appropriate to the material being used
Forms a function

The Bauhaus - famous for producing the most famous modernist art and designers - modernist educators - modernist aethetic to the building - modern windows - box building to rationalize space - made with concrete - modern material - futura typeface, sans font, introduced in modernism

Internationalism;
A language of design that could be recognised and understood on an international basis
Example of Herbert Bayer's sans serif typeface, he also argued for all text to be lower case (ditch capitals)
Times New Roman - Stanley Morrison 1932 - British imperial greatness
Germany used Fraktur font on proporganda gothic Germanic supiriority

Importance of...
...a vocabulary of style
...art and design education
...idea of form follows function

Technology/ New materials;
-concrete
-new tech of steel
-plastics
-aluminium
-reinforced glass

The term modern is not aneutral term - it suggests novelty and improvement
"Modernity" (1750-1960) - social and cultural experience
"Modernism" - the range of ideas and styles that spring from modinerts