The plot so far …
Marshall Bermann
‘All That is Solid Melts into Air: The
Experience of Modernity’ 1983
Modernisation:
The processes of scientific,
technological, industrial, economic and
political innovation that also become
urban, social and artistic in their impact
Marshall Bermann
‘All That is Solid Melts into Air: The
Experience of Modernity’ 1983
Modernity:
The way that modernisation infiltrates
everyday life and permeates sensibilities
Marshall Bermann
‘All That is Solid Melts into Air: The
Experience of Modernity’ 1983
Modernism:
The wave of artistic movements that, from
the early twentieth century onwards, in
some way responded to, or presented, these
changes
Lecture 2
Modernity and
the Machine Age
Theo van Doesburg
Since it is correct to say that
culture [modernity] in its
widest sense means
independence of Nature, then
we must not wonder that the
machine stands in the
forefront of our cultural willto-style…
The new possibilities of
the machine have created
an aesthetic expressive of
our time, that I once called
the Machine Aesthetic.
Simultaneous Counter
Composition 1929/30
The Machine Aesthetic 1910s/1920s:
Purism in France
DeStijl in Holland
Suprematism / Productivism in Russia
Constructivism at the Bauhaus (Germany)
Precisionism in North America
Futurism in Italy
Non-Geometrical abstract art ……versus
Geometrical abstract
art
Expressionism
Wassily Kandinsky, Two
Ovals, 1919
Constructivism
Piet Mondrian, Two
Composition, 1929
Fernand Léger
The Machine Aesthetic
I have more faith in it
[the machine] than the
longhaired gentleman
with a floppy cravat
intoxicated with his own
personality and his own
imagination
Fernand Léger, Propellers, 1918
Art is dead
Long live Tatlin’s
new machine art
International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920
Jacques Henri Lartigue
Grand Prix France, 1912
Giacomo Balla
Speed of an Automobile, 1913
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Russia 1923-30
‘Kingi’ (books)
Window Poster, 1925
‘Mess Mend’ book series 1924
Gino Severini, Machinery 1922
The method used for constructing a
machine is similar to that for
constructing a work of art
Charles Sheeler, Ballet Mechanic, 1931
Machine Art exhibition at Museum of
Modern Art in New York 1934
‘The beauty of machine art is in part
the abstract beauty of straight lines
and circles made into actual tangible
surfaces and solids by means of lathes,
rulers and squares’
Lewis W Hine
Mechanic and
Steam Pump
1921
The Bauhaus
Dessau 1925
Hans Roericht, Stacking service,
1959
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Light Space Modulator
1923-30
Mechanthropomorphism
(hybrid of machine and human)
Oskar Schlemmer - Triadic Ballet 1926
Mechanthropomorphism
‘No age, I believe, has been
more imbecile than ours’
Francis Picabia,
Parade Amoureuse, 1917
Mechanthropomorph as
Mechanoid Monster?
Jacob Epstein, Rock Drill, 1913-14
A house has to fulfill two
purposes. First it is a machine
for living in, that is, a machine
to provide us with efficient help
for speed and accuracy in our
work, a diligent and helpful
machine which should satisfy
all our physical needs: comfort.
But it should also be a place
conducive to meditation, and
Le Corbusier
Cook House, Paris, 1926
lastly, a beautiful place,
bringing much needed
tranquility to the mind.
1923
Le Corbusier
Villa Savoye
1928-31
Marseilles, 1947-52
Le Corbusier Unité d’Habitation,
Utopia / Dystopia
Things to Come 1936
Things to Come
William Cameron
Menzies
1936
Fritz Lang
Metropolis 1927
Fritz Lang
Metropolis 1927
Utopia / Dystopia
Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times, 1936
Mechanthropomorph to Cyborg
Stanley Kubrick 2001 A Space Odyssey, 1969
The Machine Aesthetic
The machine is as old as the
wheel, the wings of Icarus or the
Trojan horse. But it is only in our
century that it has transcended
its utilitarian functions and
acquired a variety of meanings,
esthetic and philosophical, which
are only distantly related to its
practical use.
John Baur 1963