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 will-to-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

International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920

Art is deadLong live Tatlin’s new machine art

Jacques Henri Lartigue Grand Prix France, 1912

Giacomo BallaSpeed of an Automobile, 1913

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Russia 1923-30

‘Mess Mend’ book series 1924

‘Kingi’ (books)Window Poster, 1925

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

Francis Picabia,

Parade Amoureuse, 1917

‘No age, I believe, has been more imbecile than ours’

Mechanthropomorph as

Mechanoid Monster?

Jacob Epstein, Rock Drill, 1913-14

Le Corbusier

Cook House, Paris, 1926

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

lastly, a beautiful place,

bringing much needed

tranquility to the mind.

1923

Le Corbusier

Villa Savoye

1928-31

Le Corbusier Unité d’Habitation,

Marseilles, 1947-52

Utopia / DystopiaThings to Come 1936Things to Come William CameronMenzies

1936

Fritz Lang

Metropolis 1927

Fritz Lang

Metropolis 1927

Utopia / DystopiaCharlie 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