Design Context Blog: Finalised Forces of Modernity Essay

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Forces of Modernity Essay

Focusing on specific examples, describe the way that modernist art & design was a response to the forces of modernity.

Modernism began in 1908, but did not receive the true admiration until the 1920’s. It is not a static concept & is influenced through a set of fixed rules. Although modernity is just a small fraction of history the rapid change created an overwhelming advancement and therefore left a constant search for renewal within society. Modernism is signified as the most powerful force in design during the 20^th century. And the movement included ideas that derived from the Industrial Revolution. The decade running up towards the World War 1 observed people losing their jobs due to machines taking over, with mass production become more viable.

‘Modernisation, modernity and modernism - three concepts around which thought about the modern world and its culture has tended to revolve' (Harrison, 1997, London, pp6)

In this quote by Charles Harrison, he comments on how the physical structure is dramatically changing around individuals in society. This development is reflecting the procedure of Industrialisation & Urbanisation. Paris amongst other cities has become a location for a ‘modern’ experience and therefore brought sightseers from outside of the city, to come and visit & feel the new visual culture & therefore find work while they are visiting the country this was known as the period of Internationalism.

People arrived to contribute into a fast developing civilization period of this time. Everyone wanted to gain as of the inexperienced life, with a need to progress and re-correct their life within society. This is what modernity was about and this is what they did in order to progress on from earlier accouterments. Another response to the forces of modernity is the modernization of Paris, and the revolutionary alterations Georges Eugene Haussmann created. Haussmann was bitterly known as Baron Haussmann, he was linked to the rebuilding of France. This is also superiorly known as the process of Haussmannisation

All the radical changes throughout Paris’s architecture were related to Haussmann and he was liable for the fundamental changes within the city. Such as the huge boulevards destroying the medieval small boulevards, and therefore the poor and the crime having to retire to the outskirts of Paris. This wasn’t marked in the metropolis and was a signal for change within the urbanized society that was launching to advance.

After World War 1, particularly in Europe, there was a desire for agreement and a communal society, with war veterans wanting to change the world for the better. Germany became very deprived due to the amount of debts they needed to repay, therefore created depression that mainly was worse felt on in Germany, consequently other countries felt threatened as they thought Germany would become very powerful and restart the war. To pay & service the large debts the German government owed. The German reserve bank began printing money to the position where money became worthless. This dropped the country into a deeper depression this we now refer to as the Great Depression. As money was short in the society people could no loner afford the expensive items, which was mainstream before the Great War. Designs were stripped back therefore to accommodate for the cash flow of the community. (www.answers.com/topic/modernism, 2013, Answers Cooperation) A good example of this is Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair

(fig. 1), which will be talked about in further detail towards the end of the essay. Modernism arose & and tried to stipulate a robust vision for the populace. Designers wanted to create mass producible goods that everyone could access, which also would have a widespread appeal. Which therefore would have to excel everyone’s preferences & difference in taste. This is why they wanted to control the machine, which where before it has defeated. To achieve the universal appeal they used the result of geometrical abstraction & removal of ornamentation. Forms was stripped their essentials only, highlighting the inventions basic characteristics.

Formerly came Internationalism this is debatably one of the reasons why modernist design is pursued after & also why it’s so highly priced as it attracts to all in society in present time. This is all due to the age of modernity as new materials & machines are now available to create novel designs that were once impossible to manufacture. The Industrial age provided designers with a chance to revamp the city’s metropolis in a new mechanical method, where machines now represent everyday life. This developed various disagreements as modernity changed the way designers thought. Now designs where based upon grips and geometric shapes and therefore it would be timeless and posses the same refinements as geometry. This connects back to the impression of internationalism & likewise is able to create a timeless piece.

Alongside modernism came an aim ‘A vision of how the designed world could transform human consciousness and improve material conditions’. (Greenhalgh, P, 1990, pp3). During the era of economic crisis the growth of industrialisation was expanding largely and therefore came the need of mass production, in which the Bauhaus (fig. 2) took the opportunity for the designers to develop this process during the industrial atmosphere by the construction of the Bauhaus using basic materials and simple structure.

The Bauhaus (fig. 2) largely influenced the 20^th century design through its promotion of modernism. Walter Groupius designed the Bauhaus (fig. 1) structure himself, the design morals that was used are ‘truth to materials’ & ‘form follows function’ intending that it has been stripped down to reduce it to the most minimal form for only the essential needs, doing its envisioned intention, therefore is not built to look effective within the aesthetics. The materials they used to build the structure was not extravagant as they wanted make it easily accessible to the whole population, and also affordable. This is therefore closing the gap of class division and bringing them together in one institution. The colour of the building is also an important factor to the classical modernism structure. They needed to connote transparency & tenuousness means, so the application of colour was aided through the materials used on the building, and also the use of rough & smooth textures. This is emphasising not only the functional building for the location of the space, but also in the sense of practical use. The building is not static, as it may seem that it’s made from concrete but it’s only the skeleton of a building.

"In the words of Wolf von Eckardt, the Bauhaus 'created the patters and set the standards of present-day industrial design; it helped to invent modern architecture; it altered the look of everything from the chair you are sitting in to the page you are reading now."(Postell, 2012,pp348)

Postell illustrates the power and significance of the educational ideas on the world we live in today. Because we are a class so preoccupied with both our own originality, and the brute world around us, the approaches by which we project into homes and possessions, is very important to our knowledgeable progression, level of stability, and comfort while in our surroundings. This is why the ideology detained by the Bauhaus school are so valuable, because to our present culture they have influenced the way we view our society by connecting art with craftsmanship, and bringing the attractive, practical, and principle into the reality of our environmental world.

The concept of functionalism is also brought through within the design as you can see the interior from the exterior due to the full glass wall. And finally there is no curves or complicated forms within the building as they are all flat panels joining together with right angles. The completed Bauhaus, with its simple cubic forms and glass surfaces, was seen to have announced a new international architectural style. This deprived style of the modernist design gave an uninteresting design connoting internationalism for its universal appeal its wants to achieve.

In Germany, the Bauhaus was changing the way they taught art & design they replaced the traditional teacher pupil working with group of artists working together bring each industry together and therefore replicating the modern day life. The Bauhaus movement arose when architects & artists began to rebuild their relationship after the Great War in Europe. The Bauhaus established the tone of modernist design and what it would finally become on either side of the Atlantic for partial of the 20^th century.

“No designer experiences disciplinary boundaries when they work” (Newark, 2007, pp118). This statement is a perfect example of the designer Herbert Bayer who rebelled against the typographic traditions, in the typeface ‘Universal’ (fig. 3) as typography usually has a variance of strokes & curves originating from calligraphy. Instead Bayer has created his typeface through using the obliterated use of uppercase letters as he considers the function of them to be unnecessary, as capital letters do not expose any difference in speech. The font has been invented through the arrangement of circles and straight lines, using a consistent thickness in strokes. This form demonstrates a highly functional approach through the use of a radically basic font. Bayer’s prevalent avant-garde thinking about form follows function, due to his obstinate & erratic typeface.

'in classic times capital letters (the only letters in use) were drawn with a slate pencil and incised with a chisel. no doubt their form was intimately associated with these tools. Lower case developed in the early middle ages from the use of the pen, and therefore inherits the characteristics of handwriting.' (Bierut, Helfand, Heller & Poynor, 1999, pg61)

Bayer’s argument has elaborated through his awareness of print at industrial scale. The steam powered rotary printing press & mass production of printed work brought Bayer’s typeface to be modern by the reason of social & economical understanding. In his thesis he explains that the typewriter would benefit from the lower-case typeface as it would reduce the cost due to the lack in mechanisms and the shift key, and also raise the speed in which people type. As where mass production is concerned Bayer writes that the lower-case alphabet would benefit the economy by only having a single case alphabet as it would reduce prices in typeset & printers establishments would be saving space due to the smaller type sets, this solution shows a typical social modernist view. It was effective communication that was the most important to the protagonist of modernism, and therefore this typeface was visualised to be at an ideal standard. As the society shrunk due to the industrialisation & transportation the way in which graphic designers communicated with people needed to strengthen the idea of social change & was an enhancement to society. Bayer understood the limitless application & the cumulative significance of graphic design in the social environment, he noted that people was reading more than before and therefore appreciated that contemporary needed to be legible & readable. Bayer also went to add on that typography needed to be read from far afield without difficulty, which is also reflecting the rapid pace in society. Supportive of the san-serif fonts Bayer implies that roman typefaces are inappropriate for the quick paced city setting.

Bayer was not the only designer to use the system of geometric lettering. And Josef Albers also used this method as he built letters out of replicated geometric constitutes to create his typeface named the stencil (fig 4). This follows a very similar direction of using geometric principles. He created a tool for reproducing the forms of the letters through a glass stencil, this is a more rigorous approach than Bayer’s universal alphabet (fig. 3). They shared the same constructivist and de stilj esthetic for design. Although Alber’s typeface (fig. 4) carries a key fault of which the main function is for reading and therefore needs to be legible as he wanted it to be more stylistic typeface he sacrificed the legibility & the use of it been an everyday font. They both are largely promoting the increasing economic pace of the modern world, and are both downgrading the typefaces to the essential components.

One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is in the field of furniture design. The most legendary piece of modernist furniture design is by Marcel Breuer called ‘Model B3 chair’ later to be renamed the ‘Wassily Chair’ (Fig 1) named after & linked to artist Wassily Kandinsky, who had been a member of the faculty with Breuer at the Bauhaus. This is famous due to its capabilities of never losing its significance in the world of design, due to the capability to be mass-produced, and at the time governments were embracing mass-productivity. With the creation of new materials such as metal tubing and leather, also the aid of manufacturing techniques, he has invented a fundamental change in the trend of interior design. The chair is simple, aesthetically pleasing & uses minimal amount of material, to create the look of basic design and therefore widening the ideology of modernism ‘form follows function’. The extruded nickel tubes provides a feather light effect, therefore makes it cheap to produce and easily mass producible. Mass productions of substance allows you to produce a large amount of goods with a small amount of time and money. The following statement strengthens this ideology:

“Modern man, who no longer dresses in historical garments but wears modern clothes, also needs a modern home appropriate to him and his time, equipped with all the modern devices of daily use.” (Wingler, 1978, pp109).

This reflects what Marcel Breuer was attempting to do when he designed the ‘Wassily Chair’. The fluid minimal design is complex in appearance but simple in structure. Its sleek & functional look represents industrial aesthetics and still carries associations & influences today within design.

The chair itself has similarities to the ‘Barcelona chair’ created by Mies van der roh’s (fig. 5) This was deeply inspired by campaign and folding chairs of the ancient times. The frame of the chair was made differently to the ‘Wassily chair’ (fig.1) as it was made by bolting it together but was later redesigned using a frame of stainless steel which gave the ‘Barcelona chair’ a prime and very attractive look. As for the material, the pigskin that was used earlier was replaced with leather around 1950s, which therefore is the same material used at the chair made by Breuer. The main similarity is the tubular bent steel frame, also the slightly tilted seat that is resembled as a proud angle and not perpendicular to the floor. Mies van der roh’s concentration on the advancement of the ‘Barcelona chair’ & it was the cantilever as a primary focus, whereas the ‘Wassily chair’ has the basic four-leg function. This chair was also very expensive to make unlike the ‘Wassily chair’ (fig.5) as it was created after the great depression.

The comparisons between (fig 1 & fig 5) is that they are both made up largely of geometric forms, although they have used as few as possible to create the desired effect. They have both used shapes to influence their design, which also makes it minimalistic and sleek, as there are no unnecessary forms produced. Which leads me onto my second point ‘form follows function’ they both have used this belief to create a visual impact without lessening the function’ & they have both strived for beauty. This was successful within the ‘Wassily chair’ (fig 1) but (fig 5) did not take after its name Universal as it wasn’t very popular but was used largely within the Bauhaus exhibitions, it was the main contribution to the rapid congregation of sans-serif typefaces. Although they are both still used largely in todays everyday society. Finally they are both very understated due to only the main commodities used to create the design. Which is arguably suitable for the increasing profitable pace of the modernist world, these both represent primary efforts to reduce their design to their vital components, removing any inessential ornamentation.

To conclude the earlier examples in this essay have reinforced the idea of how these designs was a force to modernity. Societies shift in cultural thinking & machinery advancements, which helped the alterations to develop the world we exist in today. Paris explored features within modernity including Haussmannisation, Urbanisation & Industrialisation. New machines & materials have been introduced and allowed design to never become out dated this isn’t created without insinuations within Art & Design. The humble term “Form Follows Function” is a rule to follow to not allow your design to become out dated, this term is a result of Industrialisation due to the need of sudden & large quantity of needs within society. With all the progression in development & discoveries it had to react with new styles & functionality. This is known as, Industrialisation and it was a large force within the period of the Bauhaus which therefore a solution to this force was mass production. After World War 1 it created a turning point for the encouragement of the Bauhaus. Overall, the forces of modernity have caused an obvious shift within the Art & Design movement that has formed how artists & designers work today within society.