MODERNITY
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 ->didn't exist before modernity
6. Modernism in design ->architecture, graphic design, modernist art
John Ruskin 1819-1900 - Wrote a book called Modern Painters
William Holman Hunt - The Hireling Shepherd (1852)
Moral Lesson
is keep your eye on the job, don't be so randy. Kind of art was described as modern. At the time quite shocking, new. Old fashioned moral lesson. Described as modern at the time, actually quite old.
Modern - nowadays carries a value judgement - Anything "modern" is automatically better. E.g. TATE MODERN
Attaching the word modern usually usually means a progression
Fashion wouldn't exist without this idea.
The meaning of modern has changed over the years.
Paris 1900>modern age, most radical progressive city on the planet.
Later replaced by New York
People usually say modernity finished in the 60's.
Industrialisation was major effect on movement and progress
Urbanisation -> factories worked 24 hours a day
->brought with it many people to the city, thrust together with dense population, rather than rural communities.
Invention of trains->connected villages. Whole country accessible, world shrinks
Telephone was also invented, world seems to shrink further
New forms of entertainment, cinemas etc
Trattoir Roullent -> Paris exhibition ->alectric moving walkway
Paris exhibition ->exhibition of new inventions etc
Modernisation + Urbanisation starts to change your relationship with society Has an effect on our subjective consciousness
Great Exhibition - Crystal Palace 1851 -> competition
Paris Exhibition - Paris - 1855 -> race - who can be the most modern?
Things progress even faster
Process of rationality and reason
Enlightenment = period in late 18th C when scientific/philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds
Secularisation -> people 'ditching' god. Science over religion
The City - Paris
*Eiffel Tower built for 1889 exhibition -> symbolism. Rises above historic 'traditional' buildings and stands high and proud in the Paris skyline.
Truth to materials. Showing off technology/new materials and what it's made of.
Scale>Drive, ambition, power
Not everyone was happy with this pace of change
With rail network and world being smaller. time across countries had to be standardised. Something we take for granted today.
Fashion starts to become key identifier of identifying your role (jobs,class, role)
Hausmanisation
Paris 1850s onwards = a new Paris
Napoleon did over Paris, Hausman redesigns a NEW Paris.
Narrower streets, replaced by large boulevards - poorer people pushed out, became an aristocratic city, form of social control?
Arists start turning the city into a subject for art
->In the past, paintings were just for church, myths etc and now things are changing.
->Becomes a subject of Art
->Portraits of peoples experiences with city
->City is more of a subject than the people
Everyone seems quite lonely and isolated in thought
->1893 ->Psychology labs, first ones. Experiments. Growth of psychology
Monet - The Balcony 1880
->Painting of disconnected family, emotionally, modern family?
Changes in world. Electricity, science, etc. Almost forced art into a different plae. Society modernises art > not other way round.
Fashion becomes even more important. Rich people, would stroll slowly around the city -> Flanners/Flannery. Differences in class. Peoples interactions changed. Bigger social divide?
Seurat - Isle de la Grande jatte (1886)
>Made from dots, when you step back, it creates an image. Something new and kinda groundbreaking. Experimentation.
>That technique was adopted from evolvement in science. e.g. discovery that light travels in RGB
Shift time>work time
life becomes alot more disconnected.
Degas-Absinthe Drinker (1876)
->Getting pissed because life is so crap
->Composition is quite unique
->Direct influence of photography>brought into it new ways of cropping. Photography challenged and reacted painting.
Kaiserpanorama 1883 - Open seat inviting you to come sit down. Watch art/photography/pornography!
..People are prepared to pay and sit down and look at photos of the world rather than going out and seeing it themselves on their doorstop.
Technology becomes a fetish. People experiencing from technology, rather than first hard experience.
Max Nordan - Degeneration 1892
(an anti modernist) wrote about his worries on the world.
-Predicted
-half the time in a railway carriage
-Find their ease in the midse of a city inhabited by millions
-Constantly called to the telephone
The Lumiere Brothers - First Films ->video of oncoming train, people run out screaming
Films back then looked like witchcraft to the moviegoers.
MODERNISM
If we start to thing about the subjective experience
Modernism emerges out of the subjective responses of artists to modernity.
Contrast between:
Monet - Gare St. Lazare 1876
Powerll Hurth - The Railway Station 1862
-Modernism
Invention of photography makes portraits 'obsolete'. Makes paintings different. Abandon realism for expression.
New world allows you to take photos from high level, love, etc. Different view on the world.
Science experiments give us more understanding of how we ourselves function. Same time as e=mc2 by Einstein was workedo ut. Theory of relativity.
Futurist paintings > Giacomo Balle
Picasso - Not paint realistically, paint body from variety of angles at once. Creativity a 360 degrees sense of the body. Les Demoiselles D'Avignon (1907)
Modernism in Design
Informed by social experience of modernity
-Anti-historicism
-Truth to materials - Material not disguised e.g. Eiffel Tower
-Form follows function - simplicity, Bauhaus etc. Beauty comes from it's functionality.
-Key feature of modernist, GD is function for design
-Technology
-Internationalism - one language for all
Cutlery from great exhibition 1851 - definitely not modernist.
Contrast.
Bauhaust cutlery set 1930's - Pure modernist design. still looks new, Thought, Letting it look like what it's made of. Style that's eternal
-Adolf Loos 1908 - "ornament is Crime"
-No need to look backward to older styles
-Don't try and make your designs trendy, because trends go out of date, not timeless.
-Strip the designs, that design will never go out of fashion.
-Form follows function.
BAUHAUS
-Interdisciplinary - artists taught designers taught photographs etc.
-Bauhaus building in Dessau ->Truth to materials
-Massive window for art school. FUTURA created at Bauhaus movement everything NEW + FRESH
Walter Gropius house - still looks really contemporary - stripped down everything
almost designed life > everything is modern
Mies Van der Rohe - Barcelona Chair - Form follow function
Marcel Brear - B3 - Wassily chair
Bauhaus shut down when Nazis to came to power
INTERNATIONALISM
>A language of design that could be recognised and understood by anyone on a international basis
e.g. London Underground Map - Harry Beck
>Designed to be understandable to everyone -> copied by basically every country's underground
>Le Corbusier - Plan Voisin 1927
- Style of a building, very standardised, very erratic decoration, cropped up all over the world. Skyscrapers etc.
Herbert Bayer's san serif typeface
-Argued for need of serifs
-Argued for all text to be lower case, in the days of movable type
Times New Roman Font -> Stanley Morrison 1932
>References classical rome celebrates nationality
Fraktur font - Nazi font
-References the Geometric - backwards looking, historical nationalist.
TECHNOLOGY
e.g. Stilleto heels - reinforced design and steel core made heels possible.
New Materials
-concrete
-new technologies of steel
-plastics
-aluminium
-reinforced glass
MASS PRODUCTION
cheaper more widely accessible products
Variety of products
No comments:
Post a Comment