What is Modernism?
Beau Gregory Giles
Part 1: Overview
Modernism is an art movement, arguably originating from early in the 19th century, yet truly gaining momentum post WWI, which had incited a feeling of desperate need for change. This contributed to a re-examination of the role of artists and designers within society, setting the ultimate goal of improving the world, in addition to fuelling experimentation. As modernist practitioners made efforts to influence a universal audience, they sought to transcend international boundaries and education utilizing visual language and isotype. These tenants led to a creed of ‘transparency in design’, making no attempts to conceal the truth of a modernist piece’s construction, accentuated by another guiding principal; ‘truth to materials’. As such, photography largely supplanted illustration within the modernism movement, as it captured a perfectly truthful image of what modernists observed, typifying what they sought in their creations, whereas an illustration might be inclined to interpret visuals through individual styles. These twin aspects – clarity, and being intended for the public - were unified as printing came to the forefront of the movement, reproducing images unaltered from the originals for mass social absorption. This edict of ‘form follows function’, as dictated by architect Louis Sullivan ‘the Father of Modernism’, was prevalent across the body of modernist works. Additionally, the rebellion against what was seen as antiquated tradition saw an emergence of artworks representing different, less respected classes in society, imbuing a previously understated element of rawness to the movement. The movement also birthed the Bauhaus school, founded by Walter Gropius, which became one of Modernism’s most profoundly influential factions, involving itself with the exploration of modernism in all forms. In essence, Modernism represented a new frontier for art, intended for significant and far reaching effect, rebelling against the established and previously unchallenged artistic and social doctrines.
Part 2: Visual Examples
Fig. 1 Koloman Moser – Poster for the 13th Vienna Succession Exhibition (1902)
This work, created a year prior to the establishment of the Wiener Werkstätte by Moser and Josef Hoffman, anticipates many of the elements that would come to typify later modernist works.
A prevalence of primary colours, in conjunction to a highly structured, geometric aesthetic reflects the modernist ideals of clarity and honesty, distancing it from the decorative floral motifs of the contemporary Avant-Garde illustration, instead typifying the doctrines of ’exactitude and order’ advocated by Le Corbusier (Mark, T. (2003) The Impossible City). The overall effect exemplifies William Morris’s philosophy that ‘quite unornamented can look actually and positively beautiful, if it be so to say architecturally good’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 12).
Fig. 2 Otto Neurath – International Picture Language (1936)
Dismissing works whose ‘role was merely to be beautiful’ [1], Neurath’s isotypes embodied the modernist ambition for universal communication, creating pictograms unreliant upon written language to be correctly interpreted, promoting a form of ‘...common citizenship of all forms of creative work’.
Adhering to modernist principals, he did not embellish the work in any way that could potentially confuse or dilute its coherence, instead harnessing a basic template individually defined by simple details, patterns, and the application of a single (primary) colour.
Fig. 3 Alexandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko – ‘’Give us Pencils That are Good? ’’ (1923)
Constructivism, in many ways a subset of Modernism, proved very influential for the Bauhaus. It similarly served a social function, utilized by the Bolshevik Government of Russia to impact and inspire its population without an overreliance on text.
The cubist elements of Modernism are apparent in the broad, expressive shapes, while the powerful primary colour palette is typical of a modernist artwork.
Fig. 4 Herbert Matter- PKZ Poster (1928)
The cubist influence is once more apparent, as art deco became the commercial manifestation of Modernism. The movement’s preoccupation with bright, striking colours is still at the forefront, while the flatness of the forms simultaneously encapsulates Modernist clarity whilst hinting at the popularity of photomontage in other modernist works, later Matter works most notably.
Fig. 5 Cassandre – ‘Dubo–Dubon–Dubonette’ (1932)
In true illustrative fashion, this piece of commercial Modernist artwork communicates with the viewer through a sequence of images. This element of dynamism relates closely to futurist art, a subset of Modernism that glorified and attempted to depict ideas of speed and motion through the striking repetition of shapes.
Whilst the figure depicted is fixedly simple, this allows for other elements, the explosions of colour in the background and enveloping black to interplay visually, succinctly conveying its message to viewers as an advert, while the text reinforces it through a similarly striking transitional effect. Emphasis is evidently placed on the ease of the image’s interpretation and also reaffirms the expansive use of primary colours across modernist works.
Part3: Quotes and citations
In regards to the necessity for change that Modernists perceived in the post-war environment, architect Peter Behrens attested in the 1920s that ‘What is most depressing is not the scarcities we have to face....but the demoralisation of broad sections of the population...A transformation must emerge from this tragedy...a passionate moral renewal...’(Bartram, 2004, p. 13) encapsulating the war’s role as a catalyst for the formation of modernist principals and the growth of the movement’s social conscience.
In conjunction to this, the perpetual experimentation that Modernists embraced at least partly emerged from the same rhetoric; artist Gunter Grass identified later that ‘melancholy and utopia preclude one another’, an idea relating closely to the idea of what informed a ‘modernist’. Writer Elias Canetti surmised that ‘A "modern" man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with.’[2], thus adversity and purposeful departure from preceding works was thought to be integral to progress by practitioners involved in the movement.
In the artworks, there is a clear correlation between the visuals and the concept of ‘elemental presentation’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 68) extolled by typographer Jan Tschichold, the geometric forms and carefully considered designs are largely devoid of purely decorative embellishments. His elements’ importance to modernism is clarified by his testament that ‘the final and most pure form of a necessary item is always constructed of geometric shapes’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 13.) This is reinforced by Le Corbusier’s belief that ‘The modern sentiment is a spirit of geometry, a spirit of construction and synthesis’ (Mark, T. (2003) The Impossible City ‘A pack-donkey’s way’), thus a balance of bold shapes is openly apparent in the composition of each artwork.
The utilitarian aesthetic of Neurath’s work clearly defers to ’the needs of the people instead of the demands of luxury’ in line with the ideas of painter Tomas Maldonado. Furthermore Neurath’s dedication to the modernist principal of accessibility mirrors the idea Walter Gropius described as the goal of the Bauhaus, ’...to educate men and women to understand the world they lived in and to invent and create forms symbolizing the world’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 11).
Despite the strict guidelines for what qualified modernist works, they are evidently not rendered homogenised, demonstrating as the Bauhaus school was also judged ‘...a free yet controlled handling of the illustrations which in no way diminishes the concern for geometry’ (Bartram, 2004, p.58). The level of variation, whilst adhering to the movement’s strictures, shows an impressive breadth of expression considering Gropius’s own exclamation that ‘the approach to any kind of design...should be essentially identical, not only to their relationship to space but to social aspects as well’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 12). However, it is not altogether surprising that art works retained an evocative use of colour and imagery while pursuing truth and embracing new technology, as artists such as Le Corbusier ruled that their responsibility was to bring ‘to the men of our new mechanical civilisation, not just strict utility, but joy itself’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 13), reiterating their desire to not merely change the world but to improve it.
Part 4: Critical Analysis
Ironically, despite the modernist resolution to always work to escape the past, the idea of a need for drastic change emerging from a war torn world was reiterated , but to a contrary resolution. As army psychiatrist Ronald Davis Lang recognized post WWII that ‘...the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is no longer possible if it is not a lie.’[3], clearly rejecting the Modernist supposition that the truth, plainly apparent, should be strived for and was the ultimate incarnation of aesthetic beauty. This demonstrates the development of ‘postmodernism’, which abandoned the notion of a single artistic vocation to aspire to, instead entertaining belief in the significance of various doctrines and movements.
Furthermore, amidst the somewhat aseptic visuals dictated by the modernist principals, any disparate design component could arguably exclude the work as a modernist piece in its entirety, heeding Amedee Ozenfant’s declaration that ’...art must tend always to precision...’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 13). In light of this, the warped text found in Koloman Moser’s poster (Fig. 1) appears somewhat incongruous with the assertion of latter Bauhaus student Max Bill, that ‘First and foremost the demands of language and legibility must be met. Only then can one afford any aesthetic consideration’, bringing the art work’s role as a forerunner to the movement into question. This dichotomy between lucidity and experimentation is addressed by architect Tadao Ando who maintains that ‘... there is often a mismatch between the logic and the spirit of Modernism...’[4]. From this, one can extrapolate that Modernism’s quest for new forms of expression occasionally took precedence over its internal rules and mechanisms, a philosophy apparent in the words of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, that his institution ’would] only live so long as it does not congeal into a static form, as long as it seeks the essence of life in continual change’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 11). Evidently, he believed that other ideas were secondary within the movement, and less integral to its preservation overall. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that modernism could otherwise exercise such a significant and expansive influence over so many forms of expression and design, and engender the opinion that ‘Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom...’[5].
Another divide of principal, between the actuality of form, and the requisite truth in visuals can be recognized but it is more easily reconciled. Although the figure depicted in Cassandre’s Dubonette advert (Fig. 5) is seemingly a deformed representation of a person, Piet Mondrian, the creator of Neo-Plasticism, defended this approach as ‘reducing natural forms to the constant elements of form...nature’s basic structure’ (Bartram, 2004, p. 13). As such, one approach popular to certain subsets of modernism found that the purest visual essence of what they were depicting was not always that of what they observed, instead these avatars created of realistic forms allowed for ease of interpretation, a truth of superior clarity. This also relates closely to the individuals depicted in Figures 2 and 4, and the concept has evidently been applied to the solid forms of Figure 3’s buildings. In fact it could be argued that these are merely representations of the structures devoid of the ‘decoration’ that modernism’s precursors had imparted on architecture, concealing the truth of design that modernists sought to capture.
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