1. From Here to Modernity CCS Mini-programme 3 Andrea Peach
Powerful image - icon of modernism depicted as a sinking ship
Tigerman’s photomontage of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Crown Hall is emblematic of state in which modernism found itself at end of 20th century
Seen as monotonous and tyrannical (Vincent Scully: ‘brought so many cities to the brink of catastrophe) - very little left of ideals and ambitions which has started it
Rather than looking specifically at MODERNISM this programme will look at modernity and its influence on 20th century art/design and architecture. As title implies - we will be looking back at modernity to see what we can gain or what can be learned.
The Titanic - Photomontage, Stanley Tigerman, 1978, USA

2. From Here to Modernity CCS Mini-programme 3 Andrea Peach
Lectures:
Monday 1-2pm SB42
Stage 2 Seminars:
Tuesdays: SC24
Stage 3 Workshops:
Thursdays: SC24

3. From Here to Modernity CCS Mini-programme 3 Andrea Peach
Assessment:
Seminar Participation and Attendance
Stage 2 - Written Assignment
Submission date: Monday January 9th 2006
Check Stage 2 Textile Students who will miss seminar!
Stage 3 - Critical Notebook + Written Assignment
Submission date: Friday January 20th 2006

4. From Here to Modernity CCS Mini-programme 3 Andrea Peach
Programme Details to download:
• Course programme
• Lecture Notes
• Assessment Criteria
Course Readings: Outside GP20 and on Academic Reserve

5. What is and When was MODERNITY ?
Lecture 1:
What is and When was MODERNITY ?

6. Modernity and Modernism
Modernism and Modernity can be see as two sides of a coin - mean different things but can’t really have one without the other
In many ways Modernity as a term is less contentious that Modernism
Modernity refers to social political and economic conditions and experiences that result from modernisation and capitalism
Some argue that the present is a continuation of modernity; where others see postmodernity as the end of modernity.
Modernism in general means quality of being modern or up-to-date, but also implies a position or attitude with respect to Modernity.
Modernism - more conflictual as a term. Huge in scope and outwith parameters of a mini-programme like this. Will not be focusing specifically on Modernism in this programme but at the relationship between modernism and modernity.

7. Modernity and Modernism
surrealism
expressionism
Being a modernist is an affirmation of faith in the tradition of the new - a response to modernity.
Emerged as a philosophy of progressive arts in early years of the twentieth century but had is roots in the 19th and arguably the 18th century
Under the umbrella of modernism is an array of movements - cubism, expressionism, dadaism, futurism, surrealism, serialism etc. as well as ideas: functionalism, abstraction, atonality, free verse, most of which appear before of after the First World War.
When applied to visual arts (art, design architecture) it becomes a blanket term used to cover all of the modern period - was above all about the the need to innovate in matters of artistic form
Positioning Modernism historically - when did it start and has it ended?
Origins have been located in late 18th century and early 20th century -
With postmodernism implies Modernism has run its course depends on what value you have placed on it, what definition you have given it
futurism
cubism
serialism
dadaism
etc...

8. Modernism
Dominant ideology throughout western industrialised world in art, design and architecture for most of the twentieth century
One thing we can establish is that Modernism was the dominant ideology throughout western industrialised world in art, design and architecture, as well as literature for most of the twentieth century

9. Modernity and Modernism
The social conditions and experiences that are the effects of modernisation.
Technological, economic and political processes associated with the industrial revolution and its aftermath.
The precondition of modernism was the idea of modernity brought about by:
The industrial revolution of 1780s (Britain achieves self-sustaining economic growth)
Modernity = a continuation of the Period of Enlightenment = illumination, an age in which enlightenment was an attitude to problem solving, sustained by trust in the power of logic to solve problems rather than faith in God
Enlightenment philosophers believed that all things, including nature could be conquered and all social problems solved. Art was seen as a way with which humanity, both morally and socially could improve the condition of humanity.
The Enlightenment enabled:
The French Revolution (triumph of the bourgeoisie over the old regime)
United States moves from being a struggling former colony to being a strong nation state
Imperialism - advanced societies were penetrating uncharted territory, colonising
Scientific discoveries and inventions which transformed peoples understanding of the world (ken’s lecture: Davey Lamp and traffic lights at potsdammer platz in Berlin)

10. Forth Bridge under construction c 1888
Could argue that it was in Britain with Industrial Revolution that physical, economic, social and technological conditions of modernity first flowered.
The landscape as it was known was physically changing at a rapid pace.
Forth Bridge
Considered an engineering marvel throughout its construction. Largest single engineering project of the century - Scotland at its height in terms of technological innovation. Forth river was considered unbridgeable- was an icon of Victorian Scotland.
This vision of Modernity - Largely optimistic and positive
Forth Bridge under construction c 1888

11. Glasgow c 1880s But there was another side of modernity
The city features strongly in picture of modernity
Rapid urban growth brought social and economic problems as well as benefits.
As thousands converge on cities to seek opportunity conditions for many were squalid, overcrowded and lacking in water and sanitation - diseases such as cholera and typhus were rife.
Whereas city could be a place of great opportunity and luxuries for upper and middle classes, was place of great hardship for poor.
Glasgow c 1880s

12. William Turner, Steamer in a Snowstorm, 1842
This programme is looking specifically at artists responses to modernity.
Will see that artists responded to the condition of modernity in different ways
Turner looks at a modern invention - the Steamer, means ships are no longer reliant on nature (wind power), and places it against nature. Who will win the battle?
About Modernity - but makes man look small in the face of nature
Will also look at the way Turner is painting - rather than trying to create realism, paints in a way that is much more sensual, evocative - doing something that had never been done before with paint. Again, a response to modernity. Old ways of painting were no longer relevant
William Turner, Steamer in a Snowstorm, 1842

13. Modernity was a term first used by 19th century French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire to denote the experience of living in the new modern world
SO - when considering twentieth century art/architecture and design need to consider relationship between modern art/architecture/design and MODERN LIFE
Modernity was a term first used by 19th century French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire to denote the experience of living in the new modern world, and describe the art of the mid 19th century
Can say that modernism gives form and symbolic expression to the consciousness of modernity
Baudelaire wasn’t just describing physical or technological changes in the world (railway engines, new kinds of building etc.) but what it FELT like to live in new conditions
There was a shared structure of feeling which distinguished the modern world from the kind of experience people had of the world of the past.
The MODERN CONDITION - its difference being a key element of what made ‘the modern’ modern

14. life seemed to have speeded up
Baudelaire talked about the ephemeral, the fugitive and contingent aspects of living in the new modern world.
Baudelaire talked about the ‘ephemeral’ ‘fugitive’ and ‘contingent’ aspects - put simply: life seemed to have speeded up
Put simply:
life seemed to have speeded up

15. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away All that is solid melts into air Karl Marx 1848
This idea was something which also captured the minds of philosophers and writers, such as Philosopher Karl Marx wrote that under modern capitalism

16. Modernity:
speed and change
Modernism:
gave form and symbolic expression to the consciousness of modernity

17. Girl Running on a Balcony, 1912
Eadweard Muybridge, 1882
Ideas of Speed and Change (Modernity) reflected and Modernism in modern art
Muybridge and Marey pioneered photographic study of movement in ways that influenced modern rationalisation of labour and space /time - also influenced modernist artists such as Balla
Balla a Futurist and key painter of movement. Balla abandoned representation altogether to find a different, more appropriate way to depict speed, time and movement
Giacomo Balla
Girl Running on a Balcony, 1912
Etienne-Jules Marey, 1878

18. Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, Paris, 1861-3
The idea of modernity is often focused on the city and virtually every history of modern art is dominated by artistic production of the French capital Paris
During the 1850s Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann undertook the huge transformation of Paris - making it ‘modern’. Demolished slums and traditional quarters of city (rejection of history an important part of modernism).
This boulevard covered an old canal, those covering up a potential health hazard. The transformation of Paris was intended to ‘assure public peace by permitting the circulation of air, light and troops’ so that ‘the lot of the people will be improved and they will be rendered less likely to revolt’
Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, Paris,

19. The dandy, the flaneur, the hero, the stranger -
all figures invoked to epitomise the experience of modern life. Janet Wolff
Paris was the world art capital throughout the period of Its museums, galleries, art academies, art schools, shops and art studios were unparalleled and artists from all over the world converged on Paris
Gave rise to idea of the Flaneur (Walter Benjamin Marxist critic) - the stroller or window shopper that came into existence with the building of Paris Arcades in the 1840s
The Boulevard Montmartre 1870/79

20. Camille Pissarro, The Boulevard Montmartre at Night, 1897
Looking at how artistss/designers related to modernity
Impressionist painting is characterised by dabbed by dabbed brushstrokes, bright colours, blurred edges of forms - attempts to capture the feeling of moving around a constantly changing urban world
That feeling of constant change which can in some way be considered very positive could be very destabilising
Baudelaire: ephemeral, fugitive, contingent
Camille Pissarro, The Boulevard Montmartre at Night, 1897

21. The law of progress is immortal, just as progress itself is infinite
Gustave Eiffel Paris International Exhibition
Eiffel an engineer rather than an architect
Light up at night by electricity - there had been nothing like it. Electricity changed the evening landscape.
The law of progress is immortal, just as progress itself is infinite - Paris International Exhibition manager
Else Thalemann, Eiffel Tower 1930

22. André Kertész, Shadows of the Eiffel Tower 1929

23. Robert Delaunay Eiffel Tower 1910
Many modernist painters (Pissaro, Chagall, Dufy, Henri Rousseau, Picasso etc) were obsessed with the Eiffel Tower and tried to represent the way it dominated Paris from every direction using multiple viewpoints and fragmented planes
Delaunay painted over 50 canvases of the tower between 1909 and 1910
For many artists the Eiffel tower remained the supreme symbol of modernity

24. Robert Delaunay Sun, Tower, Airplane, 1913
Modernity = on one hand there was a great sense of exhilaration but on the other a sense of social alienation.
Because of the increasing mechanisation of industry many artists in the early twentieth century felt as if they were living between the cogs of a huge wheel (will look at idea of machine age next week)
Visually represented in films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times
Robert Delaunay
Sun, Tower, Airplane, 1913

25. Fernand Léger
The City, 1919
Faced with such changes, artists could respond in a number of ways: they could embrace is, as the Futurists did before the First World War; they could reject it for its materialism as did abstract artists such as Wassily Kandinsky or they could attempt to reform it (as did those who worked at interface of art/design/architecture) in years before war - as did those at the Bauhaus.
A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an eighteenth century artist
Fernand Léger 1914

26. Paul Citroën, Metropolis, 1923
The need for a new approach to art in the 19th century came was a result of new conditions and experiences which found the old way of doing art ‘wanting’
It can be argued that the new art was precisely modern because it did not try to directly represent or imitate modern reality but was instead expressive of the modern condition
Paul Citroën, Metropolis, 1923

27. Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a Mantelpiece
Georges Braque
Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a Mantelpiece
1911
Modern art = breakdown in western culture that connected the appearance of works of art to the appearance of the natural world
So typically shapes, colours and materials lead a life of their own - forming unusual combinations, or offering distorted or exaggerated versions of the appearances of nature, and in some cases losing all obvious connection to the ordinary objects of our visual experience.
Cubists, such as Braque, worked almost in monochrome, while focusing on the representation of 3 dimensions on the 2 dimensional canvas without trying to use techniques such as perspective to give the impression that the canvas was 3 dimensional.
Beginning of Flatness which art critics such as Clement Greenberg saw as the destiny of modernist painting.

28. Clement Greenberg art critic ( ) Modern art can be related to the changing forms of modern life, even when it does not depict modernity

29. Paul Cézanne, Montagne Sainte Victoire, c 1887
Clement Greenberg = Modern art can be related to changing forms of modern life - even when it does not depict modernity
Greenberg’s theories of modernism can be directly related to Cezanne’s work
Cezanne had a huge influence on artists in the 20th century, not because of what he painted (his chosen genres were conventional - apples, trees, nude figures, and this mountain over and over again). His importance was in HOW he painted. Comes very close to abstraction, almost all traces of drawing have gone , relying on planes of colour to create form.
His art exemplifies the modernist emphasis on formal aspects of art rather than its figurative content or subject matter
His work could not be considered a witness of the social conditions of his time, but there was a strong degree of modernity about his work, that would require a modern consciousness to make sense of it.
It was as if you needed new eyes to look at the work - once you had achieved that, everything else looked conservative and inadequate as an expression of the modern state of being.
Paul Cézanne, Montagne Sainte Victoire, c 1887

30. Paul Cézanne, Montagne Sainte Victoire, c 1887
Greenberg described modern art as being autonomous
To say that modern art is ‘autonomous’ is not to claim that it is entirely separate from modernity. Modern art is caused by modern circumstances
The modernist autonomy claim is more to do with the singularity of modern art’s effects
Abandons traditional representational format and concentrates on visual effects of painting itself
The artwork should be able to stand on its own, without political, ethical or religious support. The work of art itself is a modern object and to experience it is to have a modern experience
Led to a loss of overt and explicit reference to three dimensions of the world outside the work of art.
Modernist critical theory showed little interest in what art may depict of the world at large and more interest in the forms - shapes and colours of the work of art itself.
Solely interested in the artwork’s aesthetic effect on the viewer and its power to affect the emotions
Paul Cézanne, Montagne Sainte Victoire, c 1887

31. The whole arrangement of my pictures is expressive … Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at a painter’s disposal for the expression of his feelings.
Henri Matisse

32. Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red, 1908
Saturated red and arabesques on wall and table combine with the elimination of detail and the picture like view through the window, destroying the illusion of 3-dimensions.
The emphasis on flatness, on a shallow non-illusionistic pictorial space was a key element of modernist painting as articulated by Greenberg.
Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red, 1908

33. Essay: Modernist Painting 1960
Clement Greenberg
Essay: Modernist Painting 1960
Formalism: based on approach which emphasises line, colour, tone, and mass at the expense of the significance of the subject matter
Based on theories of Clive Bell and Roger Fry
Clement Greenberg - American critic
Particularly keen to establish the modern movement in art as the key to what was vital in modern culture. Greenberg more than anyone was responsible for introducing the word modernism into the language of art.
Tried to identify the characteristics which could be describe modern art - shaped modern art of the 1960s
Influential essay - Modernist Painting where Greenberg traces modernist tradition in art from abstract painting in the 1960 back to the 19th century.
Greenberg saw modernism as an historical reality - referenced the effect photography had on artistic practice of the mid-century and the crisis which resulted
Greenberg was very clear in his writing about the FORM in which modern art took. Focused on the LOOK which was so different and startling - the rejection of naturalistic conventions, the distortion of colour, the rejection of classical conceptions of the heroic in favour of the mundane.
Formalism privileges the aesthetic response as mediated through sight alone. Visual sensibility is a prerequisite of art appreciation
BEAUTY - not scientifically measurable but appreciated through feelings and aesthetic pleasure
Describe 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant as the first real modernist. Tries to make links between modernism and the enlightenment of the 18th century
Despite his close identification with the term modernism he was not the first to formulate modernist ideas - these had been evolving since late 19th century. In particular, English critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry.

34. modern painting as a shift away from imitation (representation) and:
Roger Fry:
modern painting as a shift away from imitation (representation) and:
“a direct expression of imagined states of consciousness”
Clive Bell:
“Signifcant form” in a work of art will generate an emotional response in the adequately sensitive spectator
So although a definition of modernism was not formally articulated until the 1960s, a modernist conception of art, rooted in French practice was established in the English-speaking world before 1914
‘Aesthetic emotion’ becomes inseparable companion of ‘form’
This relationship between form and aesthetic emotion is central to theory of modernism in the visual arts - the work of art is a formal configuration which effects an aesthetic response in the viewer.

35. Modernity and Modernism
Modernism and Modernity can be see as two sides of a coin - mean different things but can’t really have one without the other
Modernity refers to social political and economic conditions and experiences that result from modernisation and capitalism
Some argue that the present is a continuation of modernity; where others see postmodernity as the end of modernity.
Two major aspects of modernity that are essential to modern representation were speed and dislocation are speed and dislocation. Modernist ideas of alienation, dislocation, rapid transformation and anonymity become essential to views of artistic representation in capitalist society. In this way, modern art can be seen as a critique of capitalist society.

36. Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that we’re living in … It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique. Jackson Pollock 1950

37. Jackson Pollock, Number 1A 1948, 1948

38. Andrea Gursky, Los Angeles , 1998

39. Readings:
Frameworks for Modern Art - Jason Gaiger (ed)
Chapter 1 ‘Art of the Twentieth Century’
Modernity and Modernism - Paul Wood (pp )
Modernist Painting - Clement Greenberg
(pp )
When Was Modernism? - Raymond Williams
(pp.31-35)