1. 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

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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”

5. 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”

6. Futurist fashion

7. 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”

8. Late 20s textile, USSR

9. 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

10. Vladimir Tatlin: Monument to the Third International model, 1920

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

12. Rodchenko: ”propaganda”

13. Rodchenko: interior designs for a workers’ club

14. Sports clothes by Stepanova and graphics by Rodchenko, 1923

15. El Lissitsky: Self-Portrait

16. El Lissitsky: graphic & font designs, 1920s

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

18. Constructivist designs, 1920s

19. -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

20. Piet Mondrian: abstract composition

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

22. Gerrit T. Rietveld: Villa Schröder, 1924

23. J.J.P.Oud: Architectural designs

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

25. 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!

26. Bauhaus,
-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

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

28. 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

29. 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.

30. Moholy-Nagy: from Painting Photography Film, 1925

31. Herbert Bayer: letterforms and brochure for Bauhaus products, 1925

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

33. 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.”

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

35. 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

36. From: Vers une architecture, 1923

37. 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)

38. ”Machines for Living”

39. Pavillion de l’Esprit Nouveau, 1925

40. Le Corbusier: City plan, 1925

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

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

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

44. Modernist influence on advertising design

45. 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

46. 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

47. 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

50. The ”lifespan” of a Logo

51. 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)