We will be looking at:
- terms 'modern' and 'modernity'
- modernity - industrialisation
- urbanisation
- artists response to the city
- psychology & subjective experience
- modern art & photography
- defining 'modernism' in art
- modernism in design
Up to 18th Century the word modern was used as negative.
William Holman Hunt - The Hireling Shepard (1851)
Paintings like these were classed as modern and shocking.
These days the idea to modernise is to move on and improve, loaded with the idea that it is to make things better.
Modernity 1750 - 1960
- It is now believed we live in a post modern era.
Process of rationality and reason.
Enlightment = period in late 18th Century when scientific philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds.
- secularisation.
Paris is both historical and modern.
- Eifel Tower glorifies the things of the modern world.
Caillebotte - Paris on a Rainy Day
This is not a portrait of the people in the painting, but of a day in paris. The new modern Paris, to show off what this new modern city life is like.
Paris 1850's onwards - A new Paris.
- the redesign bulldosed the slums.
- the center became a zone of wealth.
- a city designed and cleansed for modernity.
- paintings are now of people observing modernity.
At this time, psychology emerged as a subject discipline.
- Modernity produces a fragile attention span.
Degas - L'Absinthe
This painting shows how the people are having to get drunk basically because work and like is that shit.
Haiserpanorama 1883
This was a new bit of technology during this time.
- in it they look at things like
- erotica
- art
- pictures of the modern world
- it's wierd how they chose to do this rather than going out to
see it for themselves.
Modernism emerges out of the subjective responses of artists/designers to;
- MODERNITY.
- It's a response to the social shift towards the modern.
Alfred Stieglitz - Flat Iron Building 1903
Modern in image is towering above.
- designed to fit between broadway and 1 of the blocks.
- built like that because it fits, not because it's modern.
Skyscrapers now allowed people to view a different prospective of the world.
Modernism in design.
- the purpose was for them to work with the modern.
- anti-historicism
- truth to materials
- form follows function
- technology
- internationalism
Simple things such as cutlery were disguised to look like what they aren't.
- aids to nature
- disguising the materials to be something else.
Bauhaus Cutlery Set
These are true to form.
- steel looks like steel
- designed to be functional
- beauty from simplicity
The Bauhaus - The most influential thing of the 20th Century.
- modernist art school to teach modern design
- re wrote rules on how are is taught
- everything was interdisciplinary
- modernised education
- Walter Gropius - first director of the Bauhaus
- very modern house living a modern life.
Modern design is believed to be mass produced and available to all - but didn't turn out that way.
Technology
New materials
- concrete
- new tech of steel
- plastics
- etc
- aimed to develop the world and create a better future.
Internationalism
It is a language that is developed to be recognised and understoon on an international basis.
- good modern design
Harry Beck - London Underground Map 1933
Good example of modern design emerging.
Conclusion
"Modernity" 1750 - 1960
- social and cultural experience
"Modernism" range of ideas and styles that sprang from modernity.
The term modern is not a neutral term - it suggests novelty and improvement.
Importance of modernism
- vocab of styles
- art and design education
- idea of form follows function.
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