Modernity & Modernism: An Introduction

3rd November

1750-1960 - the time depicting modernity?
Present time - Post Modernism

Paris 1900 - the hub of modernity in it's time
Urbanisation - a shift in society
- people moving from rural areas to urban areas based on levels of work, factories etc
Telegraph, Telephone, Railways expanding, Transportation develops
Fundamental changes in life
Music Halls, Cinema, Galleries, Shopping - increase in leisure activities
Paris - both historic and modern

World Time Standardised - essentially linking the world together, making it smaller?
Working defined by shifts and set start/end times

Enlightenment - period in the 18thC when Scientific/Philosophical thinking leapt ahead, replacing/leaving Religion behind

Shift in artistic responses, change in the definition of art. Documentation?

Haussmanisation - Haussman, CIty Architect reddesigns Paris
1850's - a new Paris
City centre becmes an expensive middle/upper class area
Grand boulevards replace tiny backstreets - a form of social control, a more socially desirable city

Portraits of Modernism - of Alienation?

Psychology - has an affect on everybody
- emerges as a discipline

Modernity - Produces a fragile attention span, speeds up life but also makes its scarier

Condensed social space - rich/poor divide

New techniques - pointalism
depicting class division + leisure activities
paddling vs yachting

Degan 1876 - L'Absinthe - depression?

Kaiserpanorama 1883,
erotica, art, pictures of the modern world,
viewed through a lens, not in person

Cinema - The Lumiere Brothers,
cinematic footage of a train pulling in - caused spectators to flee the cinema
advances in technology debunk the idea of God

Modernism emerges out of the subjective response of artists and designers to Modernity

Photography replaces painting as a form of documentation

Alfred Stieglitz - FLat Iron Building 1903
skyscrapers give a new, empowering perspective

Paul Citroen - Metropolis, 1923 (photo montage)

Modernism in Design
- anti-historian
- truth to materials
- form follows function
- technology - new materials and mass production
- Internationalism

Adolf Loos, 1908 - Ornament is Crime

The Bauhaus - cornerstone of modernism, shut down by Nazi's due to being to forward thinking
Foundation courses still defined by this

Modernism haunts Humanity

Internationalism- Design that could be recognised anywhere, by anyone on an international basis

Harry Beck - London Underground Map, 1933

Herbert Bayer - sans serif typeface
- argued for the abolition of upper case letters

Times New Roman, 1932 - Stanley Morison



Conclusion
Modern is not a neutral term, it suggests improvement, sometimes novelty

Modernity defined by 1750 - 1960
- the ideas and styles that came as a direct product of Modernism

Importance of Modernism - Vocabulary of style
- Art and Design Education
- Idea that Form follows Function

(see handouts/notebook for reading list and books of interest)