Precisionism
And
The Machine Age
Precisionism
• The American version of “call to order that
swept Europe after WWI
• Tendency to look to the future and new
world order based on rationality and science
• Chose modern machinery and industrial
forms as models for precision, logic, purity
that they desired in society and art.
Influences
• Corbusier
• Cubism
• Replaced Cubist chaos, flux, illegibility
with order, balance, clarity
Characteristics
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Executed in dry, mechanical manner
Flat, hard edge planes,muted colors
Simplified geometric shapes of buildings
Stressed efficiency, order, calculation of
modern technology
• Based on machine and architectural
imagery
Philosophy
• Reverence for industrial subjects
• Correlation of industry and religion
• Equation of America with machine and
technology
• Exultation of the machine/industry
• Utopian vision of the city
• Aesthetic vision of industry
Artists
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Charles Demuth
Charles Sheeler
Louis Lozowick
Hugh Ferriss
Howard Cook
George Ault
Joseph Stella
Georgia O’Keefe
Demuth
• My Egypt, 1927
• Incense of a New
Church, 1921
Charles Sheeler
• River Rouge Plant,
1931
• Classic Landscape,
1931
Sheeler
• Industry, 1932
• Church Street, 1920
Louis Lozowick
• New York
• Pittsburg
Lozowick
Hugh Ferriss
• Study for Maximum
Mass Permitted by the
1916 New York
Zoning Law, 1922
George Ault
Jane Street at Hudson
And Sullivan Street in
Howard Cook
• Skyscraper, 1929
Joseph Stella
• Brooklyn Bridge,
• 1919;
• 1929
Georgia O’Keefe
Photographers
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Alfred Steiglitz
Edward Steichen
Lewis Hine
Ralph Steiner
Margaret Bourke-White
Gerald Murphy
Steiglitz
• Flatiron Building
Steichen
• Flatiron
Margaret Bourke-White
• Chrysler Corporation,
1929
Bourke-White
• Chrysler Building
Gerald Murphy
• Watch
Lewis Hine
• Girl Worker
• Powerhouse Mechanic
Ralph Steiner
• Typewriter
• Power Switches
Paul Strand
• City Hall
• Wire Wheel