Modernity & modernism lecture.

- Modernity; industrialisation , urbanisation, the city. 
- The Hireling Shepard.
- The New Woman - Paris 1937.
- (1750-1960) time period for modernity. 
- Urbanisation; electric moving walk way. 
- Life moves into towns and away from rural areas.
- Enlightenment = period in the late 19th century when scientific thinking made leaps and bounds.
- 1877: Caillebotte "Paris on a rainy day". 
- Clothes in modernity show who you are (class etc.)
- Strolling becomes a leisure activity. 
- 1850's = a new Paris (re-design to accommodate modern life)
- More socially desirable city. 
- Paintings included the city to highlight modernity.
- Modernity distracts us as well as speeding everything up. 
- Makes people more competitive to show off their status. 
- Paintings show class division (new social space)
- Bordem, distraction, alienation - symptoms of a modern world. 
- Kaiserpanorama 1883 - experiencing modern world less literally. 
- Cinema was invented. 
- Modernism is an artists response to modernity. 
- Impressionists got inspiration from photographers work. 
- Flaturon building 1903 - towering over nature, superior modernity! 
- Photomontage becomes a technique. 
- Use technology to understand ourselves. 


Modernism in design.
- Not looking back, looking forward.
- Truth to materials. 
- Form follows function.
- Things are designed to be functional, not to be beautiful. 
- "Ornament is crime" - Adolf Loos (1908)
- The Bauhaus: most influential art school of the 19th century. It re-wrote the rules of how art was taught, modernising education. The Nazis shut it down for being too progressive. 
- Design available to all - but it actually never was because it was made too expensive. 
- Democratic, doesn't discriminate. 
- Internationalism: a language of design that can be understood by everyone. 
- Herbert Bayers design the sans-serif font.
- Times New Roman was also designed in 1932. Suited "classical culture". Conservative. 
- Nazis used fonts like Fraktur on their posters to show their historical side. 


The term modern is not a neutral term - it suggests novelty and improvement. 
"Modernism" - A range of ideas and styles that sprang from modernity.