Art in Revolution 3 - newleafdesign.me.uk

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Behrens corporateidentity for AEG is avery early example ofthis by now ubiquitousconcept.Louis Sullivan’sWainright building in StLouis, built in 1890, wasthe first skyscraper andwas made possible bysteel frame constructionand new lifttechnology. Thehorizontals howevershow a traditional useof decoration.Hermann Muthesius had been attached to the German embassy in Londonduring the heyday of the Arts and Crafts Movement and took an interest inthe new forms of British architecture in particular respect to housing projects.He was, as Nicholas Pevsner put it, converted to ‘reason and simplicity inbuilding and art’. Once back in Germany he wrote Das Englische Haus andbecame involved in ‘Sachlichkeit’, a new direction in German design roughlytranslated as a combination of objectivity and matter of fact. It was an earlysign of the important role that Germany was to take in the development ofthe Modern Movement. Muthesius had noted the unfussiness and utility inBritish engineering design, evident in their stations, bridges, exhibition hallsand ships. He had these in mind when he encouraged the founding of theDeutsche Werkbund which brought together twelve artists and twelveindustrialists and retailers, including Peter Behrens and the Belgian Henry vande Velde, to further the standards of good industrial design. They made adecision to open craft schools in new and existing colleges that hadworkshops and emply ‘modern artists’ as teachers. Behrens at the DüsseldorfSchool of Applied Arts was one of these as was Van de Velde, Gropius’predecessor at Weimar. The versatile Van de Velde had been an admirer ofWilliam Morris and had followed his example by opening a decorative craftsfirm near Brussels. He began working in an Art Nouveau style seen in hiselaborate designs of 1898 for the food manufacturer Tropon. These includedposters and packaging and are a very early example of corporate identity.Behrens took charge of the design of AEG (German Electrical Company) anddesigned a remarkably forward looking factory building in Berlin with largeareas of glass supplying natural light and no ornamentation which after ahundred or so years is still in use today. In 1906 Behrens began a completecorporate design with trademark to be used on the buildings, electricalproducts, brochures and letterheads. Another offshoot of this designsensibility was the standardisation and interchangability of quality industrialparts which over the years would a universal principle. This practice had beenfirmly advocated by Muthesius although van de Velde thought that it wouldcurb individualism in the design process.Decoration was beginning to be rejected as superfluous in the context ofan affordable but well thought out ‘machine art’. The pioneer Americanarchitect Louis Sullivan had been building skyscrapers with a steel skeletonfrom 1890 when the Wainright building shot up in St Louis, Missouri. Two ofhis maxims seem to be very pertinent to the future of architecture and design,that it is the ‘essence of every problem that it contains suggests the solution’and that ‘form follows function’.Although a forerunner of the Modern Movement his architecture doesn’talways conform to its spirit as his buildings were symmetrical and vestiges ofdecoration clung to the horizontal and vertical structures. His young officedraughtsman, Frank Lloyd Wright, had an interest in Japanese art and rejectedthis symmetry and ‘irrelevant’ decorative detailing, going on to praise thepotential of the machine age in his manifesto of 1901 Art and Craft of theMachine. Wright combined a belief in modern materials and technology as hethought that the only salvation for the craftsman was to learn from themachine. Wright imagined scientists and inventors taking the place ofShakespeare and Dante, as cultural heroes and all types of engines ‘taking theplace that works of art had taken in previous history’. He devised a180 ART IN REVOLUTION
Taylorism and mass productionIn 1905 Frank Lloyd Wright built the Larkin building in Buffalo, a radically new form of office blockdesigned for a mail-order company. It was partly inspired by the principals of Frederick Taylor who hadtaught the science of industrial organisation and efficiency at his School of Scientific Management.‘Taylorism’ or the ‘American system’ as it became to be known, advocated the rationalisation ofworking methods for mass production and prompted time and motion men to use a stop watch tomeasure work rate and to cut out anything that was superfluous to minding the machine. Althoughmass production for cars had first been employed by Ransome E Olds in Detroit in 1901 it was moreeffectively used by Henry Ford for his Model ’T’ Ford, first made in 1908 but by 1914 using assemblylinetechniques. Here each identical component part wasmanufactured separately and each part of the assembly wasdone by a separate individual. At its worst this could becompletely soul destroying causing mental and physicalfatigue and is well satirised in the film ‘Modern Times’ byCharlie Chaplin’s whose little tramp is a worker on theproduction line. Nevertheless modernist designers werefascinated by mass production and Walter Gropius actuallyvisited the Ford factory on a visit to the USA in 1928. The 1908 Model T Fordrevolutionary scheme ‘Organic Architecture’ allowing him to design hisbuildings from the inside to the outside.Like many architects starting out before the outbreak of the first world warGropius had been impressed by Wright’s ‘naked’ architecture after it becamemore widely known in 1911 when a book of his work was published inGermany. His early experience of working for Peter Behrens, designinginteriors had been valuable, something that architects Le Corbusier andLudwig Mies van der Rohe would endorse as they had also worked withBehrens before becoming leading figures of the Modern Movement in theinter-war years. After three years of running his own architectural practicewith Adolf Meyer, Gropius was recommended by the Belgian architect/designer Henri van de Velde in 1914 to be his replacement as the principal ofthe Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. Van de Velde had designed the ArtNouveau styled building in 1904 and run the school from 1907. Gropius’appointment turned out to be premature as the school was closed downduring the war so it could be used as a military hospital. Gropius spent hiswar years serving as a cavalry officer but also found time to marry the famousbeauty Alma Mahler, widow of composer Gustav.The ending of the war on November 3rd 1918 was sparked off by arevolution in Germany. This had been started by a mutiny of the fleet at Kielwhen three thousand sailors and workers raised the red flag, and rebellionsoon spread to the troops and workers. As part of the peace negotiations theAmericans insisted that the Emperor Kaiser William II resigned so he fled toHolland. Prince Max of Baden resigned the Chancellorship and power washanded to the socialist leader Friedrich Ebert. Democratic elections followed inJanuary 1919 and amidst political turmoil the democratic Weimar Republicwas set up to replace the monarchy, with Weimar as capital of the newfederal state.A DESIGN FOR A BETTER WORLD 181
Page 1: 3 A design for a better world?157
Page 5 and 6: (Below) AlexanderRodchenko’sConst
Page 7 and 8: Following the Bolshevik revolution
Page 9 and 10: Vladimir Mayakovskythe former Russi
Page 11 and 12: 3.2 Going Dutch- De StijlVilmos Hus
Page 13: Mondrian’s 1917Composition in col
Page 16 and 17: Although the architectJ.J.P. Oud ha
Page 18 and 19: 3.3 Purismpaves a way toarchitectur
Page 20 and 21: Austrian architectAdolph Loos built
Page 22 and 23: 3.4 A house forbuilding? -The Bauha
Page 26 and 27: The Weimar School of Arts and Craft
Page 28 and 29: Johannes Itten showingthe mystic si
Page 30 and 31: A poster advertising aperformance o
Page 32 and 33: Klee had, of plastic means and thei
Page 34 and 35: 3.4Constructivism -Art as productWh
Page 36 and 37: Stepanova’s poster forthe ‘5 x
Page 38 and 39: One of twophotographs of thethird O
Page 40 and 41: El Lissitzky’s Beat theWhites wit
Page 42 and 43: Malevich’s teapot.More a Supremat
Page 44 and 45: dance rhythmically on the screen me
Page 46 and 47: separate images in four rows of thr
Page 48 and 49: From the back cover ofA conversatio
Page 50 and 51: dismissed as a socially orientated
Page 52 and 53: Klee’s paintingTwittering machine
Page 54 and 55: the reality of our century is techn
Page 56 and 57: The Thuringian mintcommissioned a s
Page 58 and 59: fashioned gothic black letter typef
Page 60 and 61: 3.6 Commercialdesign betweenthe war
Page 62 and 63: Cassandre was theforemost Art Deco
Page 64 and 65: 3.7 The mixedfortunes ofConsructivi
Page 66 and 67: Gerrit Rietveldt’sSchröder house
Page 68 and 69: The Bauhaus’ move toDessau was a
Page 70 and 71: Annie Albers was oneof the students
Page 72 and 73: period in charge, but his extreme l
Page 74 and 75:
to stop its funding, send the ‘fo
Page 76 and 77:
for public buildings. so a monstrou
Page 78 and 79:
Marinetti was by now advocating an
Page 80:
Depero’s book Depero Futuristawas
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