Modernism, Avantgarde and the Design Culture in the Early 20th Century Lecture 4 (Oct. 17, 2003) Modernism, Avantgarde and the Design Culture in the Early 20th Century

Modernism in Design -The need to harmonize design with the modern world -The machine as a central element of modern life and design -”Form follows function” as a guideline -Ornamentation should be controlled, or eliminated as unnecessary -Barriers between art, design, engineering, science should be removed

Adolf Loos: ”Ornament and Crime” The modern ornamentalist is either a cultural laggard or a pathological case. He himself is forced to disown his work after three years. His productions are unbearable to cultured persons now, and will become so to others in a little while.” (1908)

Futurism -Radical art movement, began in Italy, spread to other countries -First manifesto February 20,1908, Le Figaro (front page). Written by Filippo Tomaso Marinetti -Against ”passeism”: the culture of the past should be destroyed. New culture should be built from ground up! -Modern art must meet modern life: speed, machines, urbanism -Futurism extended to clothes design, architecture; little achieved -The Futurist dream: modern society as a ”total work of art”

The First Futurist Manifesto (1909) ”We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty - the beauty of speed. A racing car with its bonnet draped with exhaust pipes like fire-breathing serpents - a roaring racing car, rattling along like a machine gun, is more beautiful than the winged victory of Samothrace.” ”We will destroy all museums and libraries, and academies of all sorts; we will battle against moralism, feminism, and all vile opportunism and utilitarianism”

Futurist fashion

Constructivism -Began in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union in the 1920s, spread to other countries as a style -the idea of ”artist-engineer” a central concept: an artist can participate in the construction of a new society; creates both industrial experimental products and items for mass and serial production - ”An opportunity of uniting purely artistic forms with utilitarian intentions” (Vladimir Tatlin) -abstract, geometric forms in designs;dynamic oblique compositions in photographs; the use of graphics as ”attractions”

Late 20s textile, USSR

Important Constructivists -Vladimir Tatlin: workers’ clothing, ”Monument to the Third International” - Aleksandr Rodchenko:photographs, poster designs, multi-functional furniture -Varvara Stepanova: radical clothing and textile designs -El Lissitsky: ”the new typography” - Liubov Popova: stage design for Meyerhold, ”The Magnificent Cuckold” (1922): stage set as an ”acting machine”; also textile designs

Vladimir Tatlin: Monument to the Third International model, 1920

Meyerhold: Biomechanical Acting Liubov Popova: stage set for Meyerhold’s Magnificent Cuckold

Rodchenko: ”propaganda”

Rodchenko: interior designs for a workers’ club

Sports clothes by Stepanova and graphics by Rodchenko, 1923

El Lissitsky: Self-Portrait

El Lissitsky: graphic & font designs, 1920s

El Lissitsky: Proun Room (reconstruction), late 1920s

Constructivist designs, 1920s

-Based on idealist philosophy; search for a new vision of modern life De Stijl -Movement around the Dutch magazine De Stijl (”The style”), founded 1917 -Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doensburg, J.J.P. Oud, Gerrit Rietveld (Red, Blue and Yellow Chair, 1918), Rob van t’Hoff -Based on idealist philosophy; search for a new vision of modern life -Towards total geometric abstraction; influenced by theosophism and the idea of the mathematical order of the universe -Back to basics: line, plane,color; horisontal and vertical lines; colors and non-color; seen as universals -Equation between geometric forms and machine production

Piet Mondrian: abstract composition

Gerrit T. Rietveld: Red, Blue and Yellow Chair, 1918

Gerrit T. Rietveld: Villa Schröder, 1924

J.J.P.Oud: Architectural designs

J.J.P. Oud: Piano lamp design, 1928

Next Week!!! Midterm Instructions! -There will be two (2) alternatives, a design exercise and an essay -If you are interested in the design exercise, please bring: SCISSORS, PASTE, PAPER, maybe COLORED PENCILS if you like to add color -Read lecture slides carefully (reading the early chapters from Heskett’s book will be useful too…) -The use of the lecture notes, reader or the book during the midterm is not allowed!

Bauhaus, 1919-1933 -Radical art and design school, first in Weimar, then Dessau, finally Berlin - Founding director architect Walter Gropius: ”The Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come to terms with it” (1923) -Slogan: ”Art and Technology: A New Unity”(1923) - Teaching ideology: learning by doing, the destruction of previous learning, ”the freeing of the mind” - closed by the Nazis in 1933; many left for exile

Ruth Hollos: Tapestry, 1926 Gropius: Director’s Office at Bauhaus, Weimar, 1923

Bauhaus - artists and designers Artists as teachers: Johannes Itten Josef Albers, Vassily Kandisky, Paul Klee. Visitors: El Lissitsky, Theor van Doesburg - Martin Gropius: architect, industrial designer -Laszló Moholy-Nagy: radical innovator; multimedia artist and designer -Oscar Schlemmer: leader of the Bauhaus stage -Important students: Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Marianne Brandt

László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) -influenced by constructivism; embraced machine aesthetics; looked for a total vision, a new unity of art and design -Experimented with many tools: photography,film, light projections, machines as artworks, photomontage, abstract paintings, synthetic sound, abstract metal sculptures - books Painting, Photography, Film (1925);Vision in Motion (1947); - in 1937 moved to The New Bauhaus in Chicago,in 1939 director of his own Institute of Design, Chicago.Died 1946.

Moholy-Nagy: from Painting Photography Film, 1925

Herbert Bayer: letterforms and brochure for Bauhaus products, 1925

Bauhaus design: chair by Marcel Breuer (c Bauhaus design: chair by Marcel Breuer (c.1928) and Teamaker by Marianne Brandt (1928-30)

Oscar Schlemmer about the ”Bauhaus spirit”: ”The artistic climate here cannot support anything that is not the latest, the most modern, up-to-the-minute, Dadaism, circus, variety, jazz, hectic pace, movies, America, airplanes,the automobile. Those are the terms in which people here think.”

Oscar Schlemmer’s designs for the Bauhaus stage (Triadic Ballet)

Le Corbusier -French architect, an ”Arch-modernist” - With Amadée Ozenfant founded Purism; journal Esprit Nouveau (1920-) - Purism = Platonic idealism + mechanization and modernity - Emphasis on function, efficiency, precision, harmony - Book Vers une architecture (1923): radical manifesto for modernist design -Pavillion de l’Esprit Nouveau shown at Exposition des Arts Décoratives, Paris (1925): standardized mass-produced units and components

From: Vers une architecture, 1923

Le Corbusier: ”Machine for Living” - A house should be a ”machine for living”:a perfectly functioning organism to provide for the utilitarian needs of man -Factories,industrial buildings as models for homes (functionality!); portholes, steel railings -concrete as material; smooth undecorated surfaces; flat roofs (like factories); free-flowing interior spaces; large expanses of glass -Houses should be mass-produced, made by machines; still most designed for rich clients (paradox)

”Machines for Living”

Pavillion de l’Esprit Nouveau, 1925

Le Corbusier: City plan, 1925

Modernist heritage: Alvar Aalto, Finland, 1930s, Savoy Vase and Paimio Chair

Modernist influence: traces of constructivism in American and Chinese graphic design, early 1930s

Modernist influence: the impact of graphic design from Bauhaus, 1931

Modernist influence on advertising design

Advertising Design -The beginnings of modern advertising design in the 1920s, although anticipations had existed -Earnest Elmo Calkins: Modern Advertising (1905) suggested that advertising should act as ”a subtle,indefinable, but powerful force creating a demand for a given article in the minds of a great many people or arousing the demand that is already there in latent form” -Advertising not as information, but as persuasion; uses ”attraction” as tactic

Advertising and Attraction An attraction creates a sudden emotional shock; it is addressed at YOU! An attraction tries to stand out from its context, disrupt continuity

Logos, Trademarks, Emblems -Represent continuity, insert the product in a tradition (real or fabricated) -Serve identification; function as attractions (indexical signs) -Provide the product with symbolic values (reliability, etc.) -Provide legal protection for the company

The ”lifespan” of a Logo

Advertising Film -The new medium of film was used for advertising from the beginning (Edison: Dewar’s, It’s Scotch!, 1896) -Becomes more artistic and ambitious in the 1920s,partly influenced by the avantgarde, partly commercial competition and the creation of new marketing strategies -Avantgarde artists and filmmakers like Walter Ruttmann, Lotte Reiniger, Len Lye and Oskar Fischinger created innovative advertising films - A classic is Oskar Fischinger’s film for the Muratti cigarette company, Muratti Greift Ein! (1934)