Lecture Questions B

What technological developments happen at the start of the ‘modern age’?
There were a considerable amount of developments technologically at the start of the modern age, one of which could be viewed at The Universal Exposition of 1889 in Paris. This was a highly successful international exhibition whose central attraction was the Eiffel Tower, a 300 meter high tower made of iron constructed by Gustave Eifel (Fig.1). It was a colossal statement, never seen before and the journey itself up the tower was captured on film by Thomas Edison an American who was responsible for the development of the motion picture camera.
Also at the start of this era the internal combustion engine was developed and the world witnessed the first powered flight in 1903, piloted by Orville Wright of The Wright Brothers.
We saw the light bulb introduced, again Thomas Edison was responsible for this occurrence.
The invention and manufacture of cars provided an extreme change in which the way we travelled in society and in 1858 Queen Victoria sent the first transatlantic message to the United States.

Fig.1

How did these developments impact art and design?
Artists of the era were inspired by these new occurings and visions. Thoughts, practices and the use of perspective were represented differently based on these new industrial notions. Art, who was previously constricted, was now due for a change in this modern era.
Pablo Picasso experimented with arrange of styles and was influenced by a change in the times. He pioneered the Cubism movement and his paintings, using this method, portrayed distorted three dimensional views. They were said to have multiple meanings with many connections to real life things.
Considered to be the father of motion picture, Eadweard Muybridge produced a sequence of photographs showing movement. In 1879, Muybridge used multiple cameras to snap a passing horse (Fig.2).The methods he used were unheard of and were said to be a huge development in photography.

Fig.2

Why did artists want to rebel?
The new modernist movement was apparent rejecting tradition in light of new economic, social and political advancement (created by breakthroughs in the industrial world). Artists were rebelling by practising their new methods and they went against what was done before showing they did not want to be restrained in the way they expressed themselves, which previously had occurred.
An example of this was Marcel Du Champs ‘Fountain’ (Fig.3) in 1917 displayed at The Exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists. Under the pseudonym of R.Mutt, Duchamp quite literally had a men’s urinal placed in the exhibition. It was said he ‘ took an article of life, placed it where it’s useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view and created a new thought for that object’.
Artists were all for these new visions and ways of thinking opposing traditional ways of thinking.

Fig.3

In 1919, Walter Gropious created the Bauhaus, which was an Arts and Crafts School in Germany which only practiced modern styles of teaching. The fact that it didn’t teach history was in itself a form of rebellion. It was later closed in 1933 due to political pressure from the Nazi Regime.

Find one Bauhaus artist/designer/maker, include an example of their work and describe how it is ‘modern’.

Herbert Bayer was an artist who worked at the Bauhaus as the head of the printing and advertising workshops. Bayer was recognised for creating ‘Universal’ (Fig.4), which was a geometric sans – serif font. To accompany this he instituted the lower case alphabet as the style for all Bauhaus printing.

Fig.4

In 1926, Bayer designed a poster (Fig.5) to celebrate Russian artist Kandinsky’s birthday and exhibition. It is very modern in its style with the construction and positioning of the sans-serif font. All the type is perfectly spaced next to each other and around a photo of Kandinsky. Methods used today with computer software were already apparent in Bayer’s work almost ninety years ago.

Fig.5

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/250_paris.html
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/wright.htm
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=50-100-150-first-transatlantic-telegraph http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventors/a/Muybridge.htm
http://www.type.nu/bayer/index.html
http://llyssakadour.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/typography-poster-and-magazine-design_23.html