modernism

[David Morris]

Reply CC'd to P-list  'cause I don't think you'll mind...

On Nov 15, 2007 6:06 PM, Cometman <cometman_98 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I will let the idea of a radical break from the past sink in [SNIP]
>That could work on an ongoing basis, couldn't it?
> (still, it doesn't give any flavor or idea of the particulars)


I purposely left out the particular characteristics of this radical
break, but here are its two most prominent aspects:


1.  Machine (and Industrial) Aesthetic - The Industrial Revolution &
mass production  thrust the dominance of the machine over hand (man)
made into the world's consciousness.  Buildings were likened to
machines and were increasingly assembled from mass-produced parts (or
at least that was the idea).

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Lisle/30home/modern/modern.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=r_nKk_XfclUC&pg=RA8-PA135&lpg=RA8-PA135&dq=machine+aesthetic&source=web&ots=BOIHSa_cxR&sig=hjioRBhhsCLN3o4Ux9EKeTzibXA#PRA8-PA136,M1

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1526-3819%28200124%292%3C78%3AEAAOTO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B&size=SMALL&origin=JSTOR-reducePage

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_n3_v64/ai_19952033/pg_8

http://www.open2.net/modernity/4_1.htm

Le Corbusier is without doubt the most influential, most admired, and
most maligned architect of the twentieth century. Through his writing
and his buildings, he is the main player in the Modernist story, his
visions of homes and cities as innovative as they are influential.
Many of his ideas on urban living became the blueprint for post-war
reconstruction, and the many failures of his would-be imitators led to
Le Corbusier being blamed for the problems of western cities in the
1960s and 1970s.

By 1918, Corbusier's ideas on how architecture should meet the demands
of the machine age led him to develop, in collaboration with the
artist Amédée Ozenfant, a new theory: Purism. Purist rules would lead
the architect always to refine and simplify design, dispensing with
ornamentation. Architecture would be as efficient as a factory
assembly line. Soon, Le Corbusier was developing standardised housing
'types' like the 'Immeuble-villa' (made real with the Pavilion de
l'Esprit Nouveau of 1925), and the Maison Citrohan (a play on words
suggesting the building industry should adopt the methods of the mass
production automobile industry), which he hoped would solve the
chronic housing problems of industrialised countries.

His radical ideas were given full expression in his 1923 book Vers Une
Architecture ("Towards a New Architecture"), an impassioned manifesto
which is still the best-selling architecture book of all time. "A
house", Le Corbusier intoned from its pages, "is a machine for living
in."

http://www.open2.net/modernity/

Last century, many architects believed that advances in technology
could be harnessed to produce a better quality of life for all.

This is the story of the Modern Movement: the story of the men and
women who wanted to create a new architecture. For better or worse,
these Modernists have changed the British landscape forever. This is
how they did it.


2.  Avant Garde - a strategy for continous radical breaking away from the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avant-garde

"Avant-garde represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is
accepted as the norm, or the status quo, primarily in the cultural
realm. The notion of the existence of the avant-garde is considered by
some to be a hallmark of modernism"