Modernity & Modernism: An Introduction

Richard Milesrichard.miles@leeds-art.ac.uk

1.Terms- ‘modern’, ‘modernity’2.Modernity – Industrialisation, Urbanisation – the City3.Modern artists’ response to the city4.Psychology and subjective experience5.Modern art and photography6.Defining ‘modernism’ in art7.Modernism in design

Modernity & Modernism

The New Woman, photomontage, Spanish Pavilion, Paris International Exhibition, 1937

The demolition of the Pruitt - Igoe development, St Louis

The Language of Postmodern Architecture (1977)

15 July 1972, 3:32pm -Modernism dies, according to Charles Jencks

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

HAUSSMANISATIONParis 1850s on = a New ParisOld Paris architecture of narrow streets & run down housing is ripped outHaussman, (city architect) redesigns ParisLarge Boulevards in favour of narrow streets – this made the streets easier to police = a form of Social Controlalso 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)

● Truth to materials – simple geometric forms appropriate to the material being used

● Form follows function

The Bauhaus

Le Corbusier LC2

INTERNATIONALISM

● 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 FontStanley Morison1932

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● 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

● “Modernism” – The range of ideas and styles that sprang from modernity

● Importance of modernism1. a vocabulary of styles 2. art and design education

3. Idea of form follows function