The Selling of Modernity and Progress

Jan. 11AK 2100 - Art and Technology

Defining Modernity

• The 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment: humanist belief in reason as the supreme guiding principle

• Freeing the mind from the restraints of superstition and ignorance

• Characterized by dynamism, the dismissal of tradition, and its global consequences

• Secular humanism, the notion that man (not God) is the measure of all things, a worldly civic consciousness, and "utopian" visions of a more perfect society

Defining Modernity

• Scientific Revolution of the 17th and early 18th centuries• Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton:application of reason to the study of Nature • The open-minded 18th-century thinker believed that virtually everything could

be submitted to reason: tradition, customs, history, even art.• "the truth shall set you free." • Through truth and freedom, the world would be made into a better place. • Belief in the perfectibility of humankind. • Inquiry into the Nature of the Social Contract. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1763

Defining Modernity

• Belief in progress and power of human reason to produce freedom• Problems (anxieties) of modernism come from these same roots• Unintended effects of classifying, ordering and rationalizing modern

life• Modernity replaces the rules of tradition with routines of factory life

or the regulations of the bureaucratic organization.

Defining Modernity

• Modernity questions all conventional ways of doing things, substituting authorities of its own based on science, economic growth, democracy and law.

Defining Modernity

• Differentiation• Rationalization• Urbanism• Discipline• Secularity

Expressions of Modernity - architecture

Urbanisation called for a new approach to building- new technologies would have to be embraced, offering cheaper, more efficient means of satisfying a larger population and a growing number of industrial clients.

The De La Warr Pavilion, Erich Mendelsohn, 1935

Expressions of Modernity - architecture

Form follows function

“A House as a machine for living in” - Le Corbusier

The Barcelona Pavilion, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, 1929

Expressions of Modernity - architecture

Form follows function

“A House as a machine for living in” - Le Corbusier

LE CORBUSIER Savoy house [1928-30]

Expressions of Modernity - furniture

Less is more

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Expressions of Modernity - architecture

Avery Fisher Hall (formerly Philharmonic Hall), Lincoln Center for the Performing ArtsMax Abramovitz1962

Expressions of Modernity - architecture

A Human Modernism

Truth to Materials

Trellick TowerLondon, Ivor Smith & Jack Lynn, 1961

Expressions of Modernity - architecture

Siemenstaad housing (1929)

Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as "professional art". There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies.

Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.

WALTER GROPIUS

The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus masters on the roof of the Bauhaus building in Dessau. From the left: Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stölzl and Oskar Schlemmer.

The Bauhaus

Bauhaus Institute, Dessau Germany, 1926

The Bauhaus

Standard Office Furniture, 1927

Expressions of Modernity - furniture

MARCEL BREUER Wassily chair (1925-6)

Expressions of Modernity - furniture

MARCEL BREUER Wassily chair (1925-6) - assembly instructions

The 1939 World’s Fair

Building the World of Tomorrow

Science and technology as a means to economic prosperity and personal freedom

Emphasis on product consumption and a hegemonic notion of the ideal American citizen

Ideological promotion of hope, peace and prosperity via technology and consumption

Trylon and Perisphere

Science and technology as a means to economic prosperity and personal freedom

Emphasis on product consumption and a hegemonic notion of the ideal American citizen

Ideological promotion of hope, peace and prosperity via technology and consumption

Building the World of Tomorrow

Einstein Speech

"If science, like art, is to perform its mission truly and fully, its achievements must enter not only superficially but with their inner meaning: into the consciousness of people"

Contained a diorama “Democracity” - a planned urban and exurban complex of the future

The Shape of the Future: colour coded, clean and rational

Democratic Representation of the Future

A new and prosperous future for the American People

Industrial Design

The belief by designers that clean rational design will offer the means for a better and more enjoyable future.

“Industrial design offers the only hope that this mechanized world will be a fit place to live in.” (Walter Teague)

The Communications Zone

Telephone, Radio and Television

RCA televisions

Commerce and Industry: the transportation zone

Various structures surrounded the Theme Center and rested on streets with names such as the Court of Communications, the Avenue of Patriots, the Avenue of Pioneers, the Avenue of Labor, and the Court of Power

General Motors Building

Commerce and Industry: the Futurama

A moving exhibit of corporate America’s vision of the future

Emphasis of progress, prosperity and technology for all

Inside the Futurama

Commerce and Industry: the Futurama

Commerce and Industry: the Futurama

Futurama contributed to America’s obsession with the automobile’

"General Motors has spent a small fortune to convince the American public that if it wishes to enjoy the full benefit of private enterprise in motor manufacturing, it will have to rebuild its cities and its highways by public enterprise.” (Walter Lippman)

Inside the Futurama

Commerce and Industry: Ford’s Road of Tomorrow

Ford’s vision of future travel was a vision of efficiency; a movie which they produced to accompany the fair describes the road's "spiral ramps which demonstrated how traffic can be lifted to the express level, without wasting space."

Ford Building

The Production and Distribution Zone

Better Living Through Science

City of Light Diorama

The Production and Distribution Zone

Aggressive marketing of new products

Mrs. Modern vs Mrs. Drudge

The Production and Distribution Zone

Better Living Through Science

Westinghouse’s Robot Electro

The Food Zone

Food as Technology

The Continental Baking Company Building

Bordon’s Rotolactor

The Amusement Zone

Society of the Spectacle

Frozen Alive Girl Show

Little Miracle Town

The Government Zone

Embodiments of Nationalism

Most pavilions emphasize national traditions, foods, customs, etc. rather than the future

Context: WWII

Required as a means to provide the fair with its “international” meaning

The Court of Peace

The Middletons

Construction of a “new” type of American: the average consumer who believes that corporations can provide security, efficiency and quality of life

The Middletons

The middletons with their friendly

robot “Electro”

The Middletons

In products we trust

Modern Life