Modernism - Chris Halliwell

Modernism – Chris Halliwell

Monday evening consisted of an art history lecture by Chris Halliwell. This was the beginning of a series of lectures he would be giving to us over the next few weeks. Today’s topic was Modernism. Modernism which began in the mid nineteenth century due to the industrial revolution was a movement that focused on the machine age and man’s relationship with technology, along with mass production which thrived because of how accessible materials had become. Its aim was to move totally away from the past and to look to the future. The rate of change in the upcoming years was accelerated. Modernism followed ideas such as form follows function and how it was a reaction against the decorative arts. It wanted to draw in on abstraction over figurative. They looked for simple and minimal geometric forms and liked order instead of chaos. The Industrial revolution had moved a vast amount of people from the countryside to the city in order to find work with these ‘great’ new machines.They not only brought about new materials and techniques, but used traditional ones and made them new. For example the glass jug in 1882 where they simple reshaped the jug as they knew it then. However, the industrial revolution did bring about slums and the health of people went downhill.

Mass production was a, and still is, a key point to consider. Ordinary people, instead of just the rich, were interested in luxury goods which meant a rise in people wanting to buy. There was a grate demand in manufacturing as the world was slowly rebuilding again. People were becoming richer and liking the idea of luxury goods. Conveyor belts were created enabling goods to be made quicker and more efficiently. World trade was also improving meaning products were often shipped around and because of how the products were made it enabled the transportation to become easier. The future was evidently improving, and this was shown immensely by the development of automobiles. They turned to internal combustion engines instead of electricity of steam. This caused a greater demand on the fuel industry – everything seems to have a knock-on effect.

The Deutscher Werkbund association was founded in 1907 and included artists, architects, designers and industrialists which focused on the future – mass production. Their main principle was he avoidance of ornament which was a reaction agains the decorative excesses of Art Nouveau. They also held the other characteristics of modernism – the supremacy of reason/logic/truth, the importance of human achievement where there was a belief in the perfectibility of humans and others that I referred to in the first paragraph.

I find the work of a A Swiss-French architect named Le Corbusier very interesting. He was a large influence to the development of architecture during (and now) the modernist movement and was a founding member of the CIAM (Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne) which focused on the principles of modernism. During his career he came up with a set of architectural principles which expressed his techniques. He called them ‘the Five Points of a New Architecture’. These were;

  • Pilotis – Replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears the structural load is the basis of the new aesthetic.
  • The free designing of the ground plan—the absence of supporting walls—means the house is unrestrained in its internal use.
  • The free design of the façade—separating the exterior of the building from its structural function—sets the façade free from structural constraints.
  • The horizontal window, which cuts the façade along its entire length, lights rooms equally.
  • Roof gardens on a flat can serve a domestic purpose while providing essential protection to the concrete roof.

One of his most famous designs is Villa Savoye which was built from 1929-30. I chose this building to write about in my History of Art exam. The house is a good example example of his five points and of his goal to create a house which would be a “machine a habiter,” a machine for living in.

savoye1

Villa Savoye

Out of modernism came other movements, such as Suprematism (focusing on reason, logic and truth) and Futurism (focusing on speed, noise and power). These ended however due to the effects of the Great War. This war demonstrated how machines could easily destroy human life and its surroundings. Quite ironic on the fact that they favoured order.

 

References

Le Corbusier’s Five points of architecture (2015) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier’s_Five_Points_of_Architecture (Accessed: 18 November 2015).