CTS LECTURE 1- Modernity and Modernism

• William Hilman Hunt (1851) The Hirding Shepard
• connotations of progress and prosperity
• people think the modern is better than the old
• URBANISATION Trottoir Roullant (electric moving walkway Paris good example)
• Urban and the rural based on a different foundation
• world time was standardised
• life was regulated by this established agreement of time
• process of rationality and reason 
• enlightenment = period in late 18th century when scientific/philosophy
• SECULARISM
• Caillebotte 'Paris on a Rainy Day'
• Paris 1850's onwards = new Paris
• old architecture of narrow streets and run down housing is ripped out
• Haussan, (city architect) redesigns Paris
• large boulevards instead of the narrow streets
• working class pushed outwards
• higher class citizens brought inwards making it more socially desirable
• PSYCHOLOGY comes into it as a discipline - people were worried about the affects of life on a human modernism making them mad or distracting them
• Degas (1876) L'absinthe
• things can be fundamentally modern
• KAISERPANORAMA 1883 - people preferred to see the world through new technologies apposed the experiencing it - allowing new ways to see the world
• subjective experience - experience of modernity
• Modernism - emerges out of the subjective responses of artists/designers to; MODERNITY
• Monnet Garsan La'sar - Impressionist - influenced by the photography of the period as in the fuzziness - not the case today - photographs are crisp and clean so we don't need painting to capture the image properly
• Modernism in design
• anti-historicism
• truth materials - shouldn't disguise materials, no need
• form should follow function - old architecture built to express (about beauty) - new architecture built to work and function (the beauty is the functionality and simplicity)
• Technology - new materials - concrete, leather, metals, woods
• Harry beck London Underground Map (1933)
• Hernert Bayer's San-serif typeface argued that we should ditch capitol letters
• Anti-historicism - no need to look backward to older styles
• "Ornament is evidence" - Adolf Loos (1908)
• The BAUHAUS - most influential art school of the 20th century
• very modern building - teaches modern art - lives modernist design
• all modern items became almost as elitist as old designs
• "Feeling using the new denies the human" (Richard Miles)
• Internationalism
• A language of design that could be recognised and understood on an international basis
• CONCLUSION
• the term modernism is not a neutral term - it suggests and conotes novelty and improvement
• (1750 - 1960) social and cultural experience
• importance of modernity 1. vocabulary of styles 2. art and design education 3. idea of form follows function.