# killerstyle How to discuss style in the style essay - PowerPoint Presentation

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#killerstyle

How to discuss style in the style essay

Modernist design and Architecture 1900 – 1960

Modernism

Constructivism

De

Stij

l

Bauhaus

Art Deco

International

Functional

Brutalist

Modernism

Modernism

is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in

Western society

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped Modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of

World War I

.

For

all its complexities, Modernism is a term applied to late-nineteenth century and twentieth-century movements - including art, literature, architecture, philosophy, etc. - that promote and postulate the new, free from derivation and historical references. And for the new to be possible, old movements must be altogether adandoned, or in the case of Picasso's Cubism, deconstructed. In these paintings, for example, familair subject matter is taken apart, laid out, and thus seen from an entirely new perspective. A notable characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness, which often led to experiments with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating a painting, poem, building.

Constructivism

1915-late 1930’s

Constructivists proposed to replace art's traditional concern with composition with a focus on construction. Objects were to be created not in order to express beauty, or the artist's outlook, or to represent the world, but to carry out a fundamental analysis of the materials and forms of art, one which might lead to the design of functional objects. For many Constructivists, this entailed an ethic of "truth to materials," the belief that materials should be employed only in accordance with their capacities, and in such a way that demonstrated the uses to which they could be put.

Constructivist art often aimed to demonstrate how materials behaved - to ask, for instance, what different properties had materials such as wood, glass, and metal. The form an artwork would take would be dictated by its materials (not the other way around, as is the case in traditional art forms, in which the artist 'transforms' base materials into something very different and beautiful). For some, these inquiries were a means to an end, the goal being the translation of ideas and designs into mass production; for others it was an end in itself, a new and archetypal modern style expressing the dynamism of modern life.

The seed of Constructivism was a desire to express the experience of modern life - its dynamism, its new and disorientating qualities of space and time. But also crucial was the desire to develop a new form of art more appropriate to the democratic and modernizing goals of the Russian Revolution. Constructivists were to be constructors of a new society - cultural workers on par with scientists in their search for solutions to modern problems.

De

Stijl

1917-1931

Like other avant-garde movements of the time, De

Stijl

, which means simply "the style" in Dutch, emerged largely in response to the horrors of World War I and the wish to remake society in its aftermath. Viewing art as a means of social and spiritual redemption, the members of De

Stijl

embraced a utopian vision of art and its transformative potential.

Among the pioneering exponents of abstract art, De Stijl artists espoused a visual language consisting of precisely rendered geometric forms - usually straight lines, squares, and rectangles--and primary colors. Expressing the artists' search "for the universal, as the individual was losing its significance," this austere language was meant to reveal the laws governing the harmony of the world.Even though De Stijl artists created work embodying the movement's utopian vision, their realization that this vision was unattainable in the real world essentially brought about the group's demise. Ultimately, De Stijl's continuing fame is largely the result of the enduring achievement of its best-known member and true modern master, Piet Mondrian.

The Bauhaus 1919-1933

The

motivations behind the creation of the Bauhaus lay in the 19th century, in anxieties about the soullessness of manufacturing and its products, and in fears about art's loss of purpose in society. Creativity and manufacturing were drifting apart, and the Bauhaus aimed to unite them once again, rejuvenating design for everyday life.

Although the Bauhaus abandoned much of the ethos of the old academic tradition of fine art education, it maintained a stress on intellectual and theoretical pursuits, and linked these to an emphasis on practical skills, crafts and techniques that was more reminiscent of the medieval guild system. Fine art and craft were brought together with the goal of problem solving for a modern industrial society. In so doing, the Bauhaus effectively

levelled

the old hierarchy of the arts, placing crafts on par with fine arts such as sculpture and painting, and paving the way for many of the ideas that have inspired artists in the late 20th century.

The stress on experiment and problem solving at the Bauhaus has proved enormously influential for the approaches to education in the arts. It has led to the 'fine arts' being rethought as the 'visual arts', and art considered less as an adjunct of the humanities, like literature or history, and more as a kind of research science.

Art deco

Art Deco was an eclectic style that flourished in the 1920s and '30s and influenced art, architecture and design. It blended a love of modernity - expressed through geometric shapes and streamlined forms - with references to the classical past and to exotic locations. Its elegant sophistication made it the fashionable style of the wealthy during its heyday

.

The distinguishing features of the style are simple, clean shapes, often with a “streamlined” look; ornament that is geometric or stylized from representational forms; and unusually varied, often expensive materials, which frequently include man-made substances (plastics, especially Bakelite; vita-glass; and

ferroconcrete

) in addition to natural ones (jade, silver, ivory, obsidian, chrome, and rock crystal). Though Art Deco objects were rarely mass-produced, the characteristic features of the style reflected admiration for the modernity of the machine and for the inherent design qualities of machine-made objects (e.g., relative simplicity, planarity,

symmetry

, and unvaried repetition of elements).

International style

The International style was born in western Europe in the 1920s from the precedent breaking work of noted architects Le Corbusier in France, and Walter Gropius and

Mies

van der

Rohe

in Germany. 

Striving

to create a new modern form and functional theory of architecture, these architects abandoned tradition to create a pared down, unornamented style that emphasized geometric shapes, viewing it as architecture for the modern age.   

Utilizing new construction techniques and materials, buildings of the International style were starkly different than those of previous eras in not just appearance.  Flat roofed, asymmetrical and with bands of windows set into a rectangular form, International style buildings were a dramatic departure from past eras.  Many European architects came to the United States in the period preceding World War II, bringing their new ideas about modern design with them.  In the 1930s American architects began experimenting with the International style, building upon the early 20th century American trends like the Commercial, Bungalow and Prairie styles, and the development of skyscrapers.

Identifiable Features

1.  Rectangular forms, often with round projections

2.  Flat roof

3.  Lack of ornamentation or decorative details

4.  Ribbon windows

5.  Curtain walls of glass

6.  Cantilevered projections

7.  Smooth wall surfaces

8.  Asymmetrical facade

functional

Functionalism

,

  in architecture, the doctrine that the form of a building should be determined by practical considerations such as use, material, and structure, as distinct from the attitude that plan and structure must conform to a preconceived picture in the designer’s mind.

The

Functionalist creed, however, is especially associated with the modern style of architecture, which developed during the second quarter of the 20th century as a result of changes in building technique, new types of buildings required, and changing cultural and aesthetic ideals. In fact, as architects began to show discontent with the historical revivalism that had been paramount in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a type of architecture based on the clear outward expression of the function of the building was bound to develop.

The

slogan “form follows function,” coined in the 1880s by one of the pioneers of modern architectural design, Louis Sullivan, and the dictum of the architect Le Corbusier “a house is a machine for living,” which dates from 1920, both state the idea uncompromisingly.

Le Corbusier’s and similar statements do, nevertheless, reflect the insistence of the modern architect that the process of design begins with an analysis of the building’s function and of the best technical means of meeting it and that aesthetic character, instead of being superimposed, emerges as a part of the same process. For this reason, the emphasis on Functionalism in modern architecture implies a reunion of architecture and engineering, which had become separated in the 19th century.

brutalist

Brutalism is a style with an emphasis on materials, textures and construction, producing highly expressive

forms.

Consider

Brutalism as architecture in the raw, with an emphasis on materials, textures and construction, producing highly expressive forms. Seen in the work of Le Corbusier from the late 1940s with the Unite

d’Habitation

in Marseilles, the term Brutalism was first used in England by the architectural historian

Reyner

Banham in 1954.It referred to the work of Alison and Peter Smithson’s school at Hunstanton in Norfolk because of its uncompromising approach to the display of structure and services, albeit in a steel building rather than reinforced concrete.Also called New Brutalism, it encouraged the use of beton brut (raw concrete), in which patterns created by wooden shuttering are replicated through boardmarking, as can be seen in the work of Denys Lasdun, or where the aggregate is bush or pick-hammered, as at the Barbican Estate in London. Scale was important and the style is characterised by massive concrete shapes colliding abruptly, while service ducts and ventilation towers are overtly displayed

.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A BRUTALIST BUILDING:

Rough unfinished surfaces

Unusual shapes

Heavy-looking materials

Massive forms

Small windows in relation to the other parts