Desma 10 Design Culture - an Introduction Meeting 5 (Oct 24,2008) Design for Public Spaces ***** The Challenge of the Modern Around 1900 the world was changing: speed, new technology, urbanization, new communications, new media, changing social formations and gender roles. How will design be able to reflect these changes and contribute to them? Art Nouveau tried to be the first truly modern and international design trend, a total aesthetic encompassing all forms of creativity, and - most importantly - bridging art and design. Claimed to be free from the stylistic trends of the past, but in fact was very eclectic. Interested in simulating natural phenomena and ornaments (for some this seemd paradoxical in the dawning machine age). ***** Art Nouveau - As a design movement the heyday was from the 1890s to c. 1910 - Name from ”L’Art Nouveau” design shop in Paris (S. Bing, 1895-); a ”Pavillion de l’Art Nouveau” was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair), Paris, 1900. Many names in different places: Art Nouveau (France), Jugendstil (Germany), ”Stile Liberty” (Italy), ”Modernisme” (Spain)... -Attempt to create an universal style, covering all forms of expression (”an umbrella style”) -Abandoned the ”historicism” of the past; the goal was to create a modern form of expression. -Influences: Ruskin (”turn to nature for inspiration”), Arts and Crafts, folk art, Rococo and Baroque, non-Western sources: Japanese design, Islamic ornaments… ***** Many backgrounds: -Political (young states asserting themselves internationally – countries like Finland created significant Ars Nouveau traditions)-Social (permeated modern environment from underground to department store) - Cultural (new unity of visual arts, embracing both art and design) -Technological (use of industrial material, wrought iron, glass; use of industrial production methods) ***** Against Historicism - "We want it to be modern so that any reminiscence of the past is ruthlessly excluded.” (critic Roger Marx about a planned exhibition, 1907) - In spite of modern tendencies Art Nouveau was often accused to be a decadent ”fin de siècle” phenomenon; rejected by ‘modernists.’ - A strong influence on Art Deco, 1920-30s, and later on Psychedelia in the 1960s. ***** Art Nouveau: important figures - Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98), drawings - Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), glassware - Louis Majorelle (1859-1926), furniture - Hector Guimard (1867-1942), ironwork (Paris metro) - Emile Gallé (1846-1904), glassware - Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), posters - Victor Horta (1861-1947), architecture - Antonio Gaudí y Cornet (1852-1926), architecture - Henry van de Velde 1863-1957), tableware, interiors - Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), architecture, furniture, interiors; pioneer of the rectilinear style ***** Audrey Beardsley, a graphic artist, in particular was a huge influence on Art Nouveau, defining its irregular organic lines as a style. ***** Henri Van de Velde about reconciling art, design, industry:”Artist, producer and salesman don’t coincide anymore with the collapse of the crafts system. A new unity must be found by collaboration. Machine must be spiritualized.” - Henri Van de Velde became the leader of the new Deutsche Werkbund in 1907, an attempt to achieve this goal. This development ultimately led to the founding of the Bauhaus. ***** Modernism in Design - The need to harmonize design with the modern world: the world of technology, urbanism, speed - The machine as a central element of modern life and design - ”Form follows function” (Louis Sullivan) as a guideline - Ornamentation should be at least controlled, or eliminated as unnecessary - Barriers between art, engineering, design, science should be removed. ***** Defending the machine: young Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1956) The most famous American architect. As a young man worked in the office of Louis Sullivan who popularized the most famous slogan in design history: “Form Follows Function” (1890s). ”The machine has potential to emancipate the modern mind. By simplifying, it can reveal the true nature of materials.” (Frank Lloyd Wright) "My god is machinery, and the art of the future will be the expression of the individual artist through the thousand powers of the machine." (Frank Lloyd Wright) ***** A Modernist Credo "As long as our cities, our houses, our rooms, our cupboards, our utensils, our jewellery, as long as our speech and sentiments fail to express in an elegant, beautiful and simple fashion the spirit of our own times, we will continue to be immeasurably far behind our forefathers, and no amount of lies can deceive us about all these weaknesses."Josef Hoffmann ***** Constructivism as a model for modernist design Born in the Soviet Union after the October revolution (1917), but influenced by Futurism and Suprematism An effort to harmonize art with industrial production; to bring intellectuals and workers together; remove the barriers between art and design Art and design as “production”, artist as a kind of engineer or mechanic (compare: Heartfield as “monteurdada”). "modern factory at work is the culminating manifestation of our times, surpassing the opera or ballet." (Tatlin) Eventually turned into an international trend and style (mostly in graphic design) which was adopted elsewhere without any reference to the original ideological position ***** Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) Embodiment of the idea of the artist-designer-engineer “Soviet Leonardo da Vinci”: stage-sets, a flying-machine (letatlin), clothes, stove, chairs for mass production, décors for cafés, magazine layouts, paintings, sculptures... Most famous work: Monument to the Third International. A huge tower, that was also a rotating machine. Never built, considered a symbol of constructivism and the Soviet culture of the 1920s. ***** Important Constructivists -Vladimir Tatlin: workers’ clothing, ”Monument to the Third International” - Aleksandr Rodchenko:photographs, poster designs, multi-functional furniture for workers’ clubs -Varvara Stepanova: radical clothing and textile designs designs -El Lissitsky: ”the new typography” - Liubov Popova: stage design for Meyerhold, ”The Magnificent Cuckold” (1922): stage set as an ”acting machine”; also textile designs***** Bauhaus, 1919-1933 Radical art and design school, first in