Dr Jon Cockburn - cacs102
Dr Jon Cockburn - cacs102
Dr Jon Cockburn - cacs102
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Vogue. May 1926. Cover design:<br />
Eduado Garcia Benito (1891-1953)<br />
Jazz as the gramophone, the<br />
mechanically reproduced<br />
sound represented in<br />
photomontage (the<br />
mechanically/technically<br />
reproduced image).<br />
Early 20th Century Modernity and Technology<br />
Spring 2011. Lecturer: <strong>Dr</strong>. <strong>Jon</strong> <strong>Cockburn</strong><br />
• Photograph<br />
• Telegraph<br />
• The Gramophone<br />
• The Typewriter<br />
• Moving film/cinema<br />
• The Automobile<br />
• The Aeroplane<br />
• Electric lights and signs<br />
• Scientific management/<br />
efficiency movement/<br />
Taylorism/Fordism/<br />
Americanism<br />
• Sound film<br />
• Cathode Ray tube – Radar<br />
Heinz Loew. Self Portrait in<br />
Record Player: Sandwich<br />
Photo. c.1928. Photograph<br />
BAUHAUS.<br />
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. 1927. Dir. Walther<br />
Ruttmann. B&W. 62min. Grab: 3min 28sec.<br />
In 1920, Richard Hülsenbeck, a German Dadaist on Jazz:<br />
“While we are speaking of music, Wagner had shown<br />
all the hypocrisy inherent in a pathetic faculty for<br />
abstraction – the screeching of a brake, on the other<br />
hand, could at least give you a toothache. In modern<br />
Europe, the same initiative which in America made<br />
ragtime a national music, led to the convulsion of<br />
bruitism” (‘En Avant Dada... 1920’ rpt. in Chipp 1968,<br />
p.379).
Technological context 19th Century to early 20th Century<br />
• 1837: Samuel Morse (1791-1872), Telegraph (Morse code) [ELECTRONIC MEDIA THAT MOVES ACROSS<br />
SPACE, VIA FIXED LINE, BETWEEN SENDER AND RECEIVER]<br />
• 1839: Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre (1789-1851), Photography [PHOTOCHEMICAL MEDIA CAPTURES LIFE]<br />
• In 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes(1819-1890) patented the first typewriter, although several others had<br />
been experimenting with such an idea since 1713. [CLERICAL & BUREAUCRATIC LONGHAND MAKES WAY<br />
FOR STANDARDIZED INSTANT RECORDING AND PRINTING, OFTEN WITH CARBON COPY DUPLICATES]<br />
• In 1873, Sholes signs a contract with the gunsmiths E. Remington and Sons to manufacture an improved version of<br />
his typewriter. [MASS PRODUCED OFFICE MACHINES CAPABLE OF STANDARDIZED INSTANT RECORDING AND<br />
PRINTING, OFTEN WITH CARBON COPY DUPLICATES]<br />
• 1871: Maddox-Eastman, Bromide print [IMPROVED PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNOLOGY]<br />
• 1876: Bell-Gray, Telephone [ELECTRONIC MEDIA THAT MOVES ACROSS SPACE, VIA FIXED LINE, BETWEEN<br />
SENDER AND RECEIVER]<br />
• 1877: Edison, Phonograph [ THE EPHEMERAL QUALITY OF SOUND IS RECORDED AND REPRODUCED IN<br />
MULTIPLE COPIES]<br />
• 1889: Kodak markets portable cameras that shoot with transparent film [PHOTOCHEMICAL MEDIA THAT IS<br />
CONVENIENTLY MOBILE]<br />
• 1897: Marconi, Wireless [ELECTRONIC MEDIA THAT MOVES ACROSS SPACE, WITHOUT NEEDING A FIXED<br />
LINE, BETWEEN SENDER AND RECEIVER]<br />
• 1895: Louis Lumière (1864-1948) and Auguste Lumière (1862-1954), cinematograph [PHOTOCHEMICAL<br />
MEDIA THAT CAPTURES MOVEMENT]<br />
• 1895: Rontgen, x - rays [LOOKING INTO THE BODY RATHER THAN SIMPLE LOOKING AT THE BODY – THAT IS<br />
NO LONGER THOUGHT OF AS NATURAL, BUT INSTEAD THOUGHT OF AS ATOMIZED AND DIVISIBLE]<br />
• 1901: Marconi, sends and receives radio signals from US East Coast across the Atlantic<br />
• 1902: Korn, Telegraphy of pictures [ELECTRONIC MEDIA THAT MOVES IMAGES ACROSS SPACE, VIA FIXED<br />
LINE, BETWEEN SENDER AND RECEIVER]<br />
• 1903: Motorised aeroplane: Wright Brothers [THE FIRST TIME HUMANS FLY IN A POWERED HEAVIER-<br />
THAN-AIR MACHINE]<br />
• 1905: Einstein, Theory of Relativity [E=MC2 ]
Mechanical and Technological Modernists<br />
contra<br />
Anti-modernists<br />
(Criteria: Modernist supported a social engagé outlook and/or experimental use of “new-media”)<br />
MODERNIST ANTI-MODERNIST<br />
• Deutscher Werkbund (early-20 th C Germany)<br />
• Italian Futurists (1909–c.1922)<br />
• Soviet Avant-Garde (1917–1934)<br />
• Bauhaus (1919–1933)<br />
• Ring neue Werbegestaler (Circle of the New<br />
Advertising Typographer)<br />
• Arts and Crafts Movement (late-19 th C England)<br />
• Die Brucke (The Bridge, early-20 th C German<br />
Expressionist group)<br />
• Soviet Socialist Realism<br />
• Fascist (NAZI) propoganda<br />
De Stijl (THE STYLE – early-20th De Stijl (THE STYLE – early-20 C Dutch art and design movement)<br />
thC Dutch art and design movement)<br />
Dadaism<br />
Surrealism
Guglielmo Marconi<br />
(1874-1937),<br />
Photograph 1908,<br />
Library of Congress,<br />
Washington DC, USA<br />
Marconi and assistant in his North<br />
American radio building 1901<br />
Advertisement for Grebe Radio, in<br />
Radio News, April 1921, USA<br />
RADIO<br />
Ninotchka (1939).<br />
Dir. Ernst Lubitsch,<br />
1hr 46min., MGM, B/<br />
W, Sound, Writ:<br />
Charles Brackett,<br />
Billy Wilder, Walter<br />
Reisch. Perf: Greta<br />
Gardo (Nina<br />
Yakushova<br />
"Ninotchka"),<br />
Melvyn Douglas<br />
(Count Leon Dolga).<br />
Grab: 2min 10sec<br />
Cover: Radio News,<br />
June 1923, USA<br />
Cover: Radio News,<br />
April 1924, USA<br />
• In 1901, Gulielmo Marconi on the US East Coast sends and receives a radio messages from across the Atlantic<br />
• In 1922, in the UK, BBC Radio commences broadcasting<br />
• First commercial Australian Radio station broadcast from November 1923<br />
• Australian Broadcasting Commission established in 1932
Lucien Faure (French graphic designer, 1872-1943),<br />
The Empire Typewriter, 1897, Colour Lithograph<br />
(poster), nd. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.<br />
The Oliver (Typewriter<br />
Booklet), ca.1898, Oliver<br />
Typewriter Co. St. Louis,<br />
MO, USA (Located at: Duke<br />
University Libraries, Digital<br />
Collections, Emergence of<br />
Advertising in America,<br />
Database of over 9,000<br />
items dating from 1850 to<br />
1920.)<br />
The Oliver (Typewriter Booklet), ca.1898, Oliver Typewriter<br />
Co. St. Louis, MO, USA ( Duke University Libraries, Digital<br />
Collections)
Stenographers and Typists in the United States by Sex, 1870–1930<br />
Year Total Men Women Women as a<br />
percentage of<br />
total<br />
1870 154 147 7 4.5%<br />
1880 5,000 3,000 2,000 40.0<br />
1890 33,400 12,100 21,300 63.8<br />
1900 112,600 26,200 86,400 76.7<br />
1910 326,700 53,400 263,300 80.6<br />
1920 615,100 50,400 564,700 91.8<br />
1930 811,200 36,100 775,100 95.6<br />
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940: Population (1943), as<br />
cited in Davies 1974, p.10. (rpt. Kittler 1999, p.184).
Processing hogs in a slaughter-house – origin of the<br />
modern assembly line, Cincinnati. c.1870.<br />
Standardised and exchangeable components<br />
becomes the model for mass-production<br />
• Mass produced components imply reliable and<br />
tested quality (reducing product variation found in<br />
bespoke manufacturing).<br />
• Interchangeable parts (spares) allows for extended<br />
and cost effective life of capital equipment<br />
• Simplification of design for mass production<br />
enhances items functional use-value.<br />
In-line processing becomes the model for the<br />
Fordist conveyer belt assembly line<br />
manufacturing<br />
• Systemized processing<br />
• Regular patterns of movement<br />
• Standardized methods<br />
• Planned and predictable output<br />
• Manageable quality and health control<br />
In USA, Manufacturers Catalogue (1867) showing the<br />
early use of interchangeable parts for a reaper – large<br />
agricultural machine.
Frederick Winslow Taylor<br />
(1856-1915) c.1907.<br />
“In the past the man has<br />
been first; in the future<br />
the system must be<br />
first”(Taylor F. W 1911, The<br />
Principles and Methods of<br />
Scientific Management, p.7)<br />
Scientific Management and the Efficiency Movement<br />
Frank B. Gilbreth (1868-1924) and Lillian M.<br />
Gilbreth (1878-1972) c.1920.<br />
Frank Gilbreth motion studies for his<br />
Bricklaying System c.1909-10. Grab: 2 min.<br />
“Scientific management is<br />
simply management that is<br />
based upon actual<br />
measurement. Its skilful<br />
application is an art that must be<br />
acquired, but its fundamental<br />
principles have the exactness of<br />
scientific laws which are open to<br />
study by every one.” (Gilbreth F. B<br />
& L. M 1917, Applied Motion Study, pp.<br />
211-212)<br />
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth in their Motion<br />
Studies studio c.1916
Gilbreth uses<br />
spare moving<br />
film stock to<br />
capture a Wright<br />
Brothers type<br />
aircraft<br />
overhead. c.1910<br />
Modernity as motion study<br />
c.1910<br />
Horse and wagon<br />
Horse-less<br />
wagon<br />
(automobile)<br />
Gilbreth’s specially built chronometer measuring the comparative efficiency of horse<br />
drawn and horse-less carriages (crossing far distance and moving toward the horizon)<br />
Gilbreth Studies c.1910. Grab: 1 min. 28 sec.
Motion study<br />
studio, with<br />
champion<br />
typist at<br />
typewriter and<br />
Lillian M.<br />
Gilbreth,<br />
centre of<br />
picture,<br />
toward the<br />
back<br />
observing<br />
proceedings.<br />
c.1916.<br />
Proof sheets documenting comparative study<br />
of two different typists hands as they type and<br />
change paper. Box 12. File: N File 14. 0031-30<br />
NAFDR. n.d. (c.1913-1919). Gilbreth Library of<br />
Management.<br />
Motion Studies: Typing<br />
“Motion study consists of dividing work into the most<br />
fundamental elements possible; studying these elements<br />
separately and in relation to one another; and from these<br />
studied elements, when timed, building methods of least<br />
waste.” (Frank B. and Lillian M. Gilbreth, Applied Motion Study 1917, p.<br />
220)<br />
The Gilbreths, Remington and the efficiency of champion typist. c.1916.<br />
Grab Length: 1min. 18sec.
The automobile – being in control of machine, space and time<br />
The Mercedes advertisement, from 1888<br />
or 1889, ... extols the virtues of the Benz threewheeler,<br />
invented in 1885. Due to its perfect<br />
integration of engine and chassis, it is<br />
considered by many to be the world's first true<br />
automobile. Only a few cars were made during<br />
this period; volume production was still years in<br />
the future.<br />
25 years later the motorvehicle<br />
has moved from<br />
bespoke and exclusive to<br />
mail-order and<br />
straightforward it its<br />
utility.<br />
Sears, Roebuck & Co., Motor Buggy<br />
Catalogue. 1910 'Changing<br />
Speeds' (Schroeder, jnr & Factor 1973,<br />
p.14)
Leopoldo Metlicovitz (no dates),<br />
Poster for an internal combustion<br />
engine 1905, Treviso, Italy, Museo<br />
Civico Luigi Bailo, Salace Collection.<br />
1909 Ford Model T New York to Seattle Racer<br />
Cover by Clarence F.<br />
Underwood. Saturday<br />
Evening Post, 15 June 1912.<br />
Marcello Dudovich (1878-1962),<br />
C’e’ una Bugatti, non si passa,<br />
1922, Colour Lithograph, 195 x<br />
140 cm.<br />
From the pages of<br />
Vogue: ‘… dressed<br />
for the open road;<br />
the Comtesse<br />
Bernard de<br />
Pourtales wears a<br />
checked helmet,<br />
goggles, and long<br />
gauntlets of<br />
washable buckskin,<br />
1922’ (Hall, p.111)
Powered flight and principles of rational<br />
construction<br />
Wilbur (1867-1912) & Orville Wright (1871-1948) First heavier than air powered<br />
flight at Kittyhawk, North Carolina, USA. 17 December 1903 – Wright Brothers<br />
flight lasts 3 minutes.<br />
• 17 December 1903 – Wright Brothers flight lasts 3 minutes<br />
• 25 July 1909, Frenchman Louis Bleriot – flew across the<br />
English channel (Calais, France to Dover, England) in 43 minutes<br />
at 64 kmph<br />
• 1919, first aircraft are produced capable of flying at 192 km per<br />
hour with an all-metal construction and an enclosed<br />
compartment for pilots and crew.<br />
25 July 1909,<br />
Frenchman Louis<br />
Bleriot – across<br />
the English<br />
Channel<br />
Vogue's suggestion for travel in a small<br />
plane was a knitted chiné woollen suit by<br />
J. Suzanne Talbot. The attached helmet<br />
suggested a sailor collar when it was<br />
slipped off, 1926. Photograph: Edward<br />
Steichen (Hall, p.113)
Marcello Dudovich (1878-1962),<br />
Touring Club Milano, 1912, Colour<br />
Lithograph, n.di.<br />
Anonymous, International<br />
Aviation Tournament Belmont<br />
Park, USA, 1910, Lithograph,<br />
210 x 99 cm, American<br />
Lithograph Co.<br />
Anonymous, for the Automobile Club of France,<br />
Manufacturer: Affiches F. Lochard, 24-30<br />
December 1908, 155 x 117cm, Lithograph
• In 1910, USA, the Sears, Roebuck & Co., Motor Buggy Catalogue features a<br />
car for women.<br />
• In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) published his lecture, “The<br />
Principles of Scientific Management”<br />
• In 1913, Henry Ford (1863-1947) introduces the conveyor belt manufacturing<br />
system at his Detroit car plant and ushers in Fordism.<br />
• In 1913, in the USA, the zipper is patented.<br />
• In 1914, in the USA, Mary Phelps Jacob patents the Bra.<br />
• Between 1915-17, Frank B. Gilbreth (1868-1924) and Lillian M. Gilbreth<br />
(1911-1917 “Motion Studies”).<br />
• In 1920, Christine Frederick (1883-1970) publishes, Scientific Management in<br />
the Home: Household Engineering.<br />
• In 1922, in the UK, BBC Radio commences broadcasting.
Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) c.<br />
1907. Photographer unknown.<br />
Taylorism<br />
The three fundamental principles of Taylorism are:<br />
1) Dissociation of the labour process from the skill of workers<br />
2) Separation of conception from execution<br />
The Principles and Methods of Scientific Management (NY, 1911)<br />
“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be<br />
first”(p.7)<br />
“The principal object of management should be to secure the<br />
maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum<br />
prosperity for each employee.” (p.9)<br />
“One of the important objects of this paper is to convince its readers<br />
that every single act of every workman can be reduced to a<br />
science” (p.64)<br />
“It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced<br />
adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and<br />
enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the<br />
duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this<br />
cooperation rests with management alone” (p.83)<br />
3) Use of this monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labour process and its mode of execution.
Henry Ford – Ford Motor Co.,<br />
Highland Park 1913. 'Assembling<br />
the flywheel magneto'<br />
FORDISM<br />
YEAR PRICE PRODUCTION<br />
1909-10 $950 18,664 cars<br />
1912-13 $600 168,220 cars<br />
1916-17 $360 785,432 cars<br />
1920-21 $440 to $355 1,250,000 cars<br />
“Henry Ford (1863-1947): American Automobile manufacturer and<br />
innovator. By developing the assembly line for building cars, he<br />
pioneered mass production, achieving levels of output unheard of in the<br />
days of craftsman built vehicles. At the same time he contributed to the<br />
high-wage, high-consumption society. By aggressive marketing<br />
(increasing volume and decreasing unit cost brought significant price<br />
reductions) he provided motoring for millions. Over 15 million model-T<br />
Fords were sold between 1908 and 1927. But mass production and mass<br />
consumption also led to deskilled workers and changing expectations.<br />
The Ford Motor Company was formed in 1903. Although Ford had no<br />
formal title on the company, he dominated its management. Henry's<br />
grandson, Henry Ford II, is still at the head of the Ford Company.” (The<br />
Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thinkers. Eds. Alan Bullock & R.B.<br />
Woodings. 1992. 233-234)<br />
Ford Model T 1913 Runabout,<br />
Anonymous photographer, USA, c.2010
Time and Motion Studies after 1917-18: The Post WW1 impact of the Efficiency Movement<br />
FRANK AND LILLIAN GILBRETH – MOTION STUDIES<br />
Frank B. Gilbreth (1868-1924) Untitled<br />
(Motion study-sorting buttons) 1917.<br />
FROM ‘APPLIED MOTION STUDY’ 1917 – Frank & Lillian<br />
Gilbreth. Published by Sturgis & Walton Co., New York, in<br />
1917. Rpt. The Writings of the Gilbreths. Eds. William R.<br />
Spriegel and Clark E. Myers. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D.<br />
Irwin Inc, 1953<br />
“Motion study consists of dividing work into the most<br />
fundamental elements possible; studying these elements<br />
separately and in relation to one another; and from these<br />
studied elements, when timed, building methods of least<br />
waste.” (p.220)<br />
“The micro-motion method of making motion studies consists of recording motions by means of a motion<br />
picture camera, a clock that will record different times of day in each picture of a motion picture film, a cross-<br />
sectioned background, and other devices for assisting in measuring the relative efficiency and wastefulness of<br />
motions.” (p.221)
Christine Frederick (1883-1970)<br />
Scientific Management in the Home:<br />
Household Engineering, (Preface by:<br />
Frank Gilbreth) 1920.<br />
Christine Frederick’s method:<br />
I kept on studying, visiting plants and factories, and getting in<br />
touch more widely with the movement. Besides studying<br />
myself, I got friends to watch themselves at work and tell me<br />
the results. I began to test equipment and household apparatus<br />
in my own home so that I could tell other women what I found<br />
out. I remodelled my own kitchen and then the kitchens of<br />
friends. Before I knew it, I became a “household engineer,” and<br />
was called in as “competent counsel” by other homemakers!<br />
I was so enthusiastic over the results of my experiments that I<br />
wrote four articles called “The New Housekeeping” which<br />
appeared in The Ladies’ Home Journal of 1912. The interest was<br />
so great that I later brought out the same material in book form.<br />
(p.15-16)
Villa Jeanneret-Perret, La Chaux-de-Fonds. Amédée<br />
Ozenfant, Albert Jeanneret et Charles-Édouard<br />
Jeanneret dans l'atelier, c.1918 – (Left. to right)<br />
Amédée Ozenfant, Albert Jeanneret and Charles-<br />
Édouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) collaborated at the<br />
magazine L’Esprit Nouveau launched by, Paul Dermée<br />
and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret. (Accessed 07 August<br />
2011 @ www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/)<br />
L'Esprit Nouveau, founded in 1919 by Le Corbusier, Ozenfant, and the poet Paul<br />
Dermee, and published until 1925.<br />
Cover, L’Esprit Nouveau, No.<br />
24, June 1924, accessed 07<br />
August 2011 @<br />
www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/<br />
L’Esprit Nouveau, No. 24,<br />
June 1924, ‘The Modern<br />
Office’<br />
PURISM<br />
‘everything that matters<br />
is to be found in the<br />
card box of the<br />
researcher who wrote<br />
it, and the scholar<br />
studying it assimilates<br />
it into his own card<br />
index.’ (Benjamin<br />
[1921] 1979, p.62)<br />
Cover: L'Esprit Nouveau, No.<br />
1, October, 1920, accessed<br />
07 August 2011 @<br />
www.fondationlecorbusier.fr/<br />
‘Card Index File’ reproduced in L’Esprit<br />
Nouveau, No. 24, June, 1924
Petit bourgeois anachronisms<br />
Chesterfield (18th Century<br />
English – c.1773: Earl of<br />
Chesterfield) style button leather<br />
arm chair.<br />
Chesterfield style lounge setting<br />
Le Corbusier (LC2 – 1929<br />
modernist). The style of chair placed<br />
in his office by Prime Minister Paul<br />
Keating and replaced by John Howard<br />
who preferred Chesterfield (both<br />
anachronistic?)<br />
Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris<br />
1887-1965) Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, 1929-30<br />
(a house is a "machine a habiter," a machine for living,<br />
1923).<br />
Modernism for modernity<br />
Le Corbusier et Joséphine Baker à<br />
bord du Lutétia [sailing from Rio de<br />
Janeiro to Bordeaux], 1929, © FLC/ADAGP,<br />
accessed 07 August 2011 @
Early 20th Century Modernity in Graphic Design as Reductive Semiological Tautology<br />
GERMANY<br />
Photograph of Lucian<br />
Bernhard (1883-1972)<br />
Sachplakat<br />
(“object-poster”)<br />
Lucian Bernhard. Poster for Preister<br />
Matches. 1905.<br />
Tautology: the saying of the same thing twice in different words,<br />
generally considered to be a fault of style (e.g., they arrived one after<br />
the other in succession). (Oxford Dictionary. Mac OSX 2006)<br />
Pierce’s Symbol and Icon<br />
Saussure’s Signifier and Signified<br />
Barthes’ denoted linguistic sign (anchorage) –<br />
and non-coded iconic sign<br />
Lucian Bernhard. BOSCH 1914. Lithograph, Automotive<br />
Spark Plug Advertisement for a German Lighting<br />
Company (The Modern Poster p.91)<br />
• Pierce, Charles S (1895-1902), “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs” in Innis R.E (ed) 1985, Semiotics: An Introductory<br />
Anthology, Indiana UP, Bloomington, pp.4-23.<br />
• Saussure, Ferdinand de (1913), “From Course in General Linguistics Part One: Chapter I, Chapter IV & Chapter V” rpt. in Adams H<br />
(ed) 1992, Critical Theory Since Plato, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, pp.717-726<br />
• Barthes, Roland (1957), “Myth Today” in Mythologies, Hill & Wang, New York, rpt. 1987, pp.109-158 (Please read the whole essay or at<br />
least pp.109-117)<br />
• Barthes, Roland (1964), “Rhetoric of the Image” in Image Music Text, Fontana Press, London, rpt. 1977, pp.32-51
Luchian Bernhard (1883-1972),<br />
Bosch-Licht, 1913, Colour<br />
Lithograph, 92.1 x 67 cm.<br />
Sachplakat (“object-poster”) – German graphic design<br />
Ludwig Hohlwein (1874-1949), Marque<br />
PKZ, (Poster for men’s clothier), 1908,<br />
Colour Lithograph, 127 x 96.5cm.<br />
MOMA, NY.<br />
Hans Rudi Erdt (1883-1918) Opel, 1911,<br />
Poster, Deutsches Historisches Museum,<br />
Berlin.<br />
Sachplakat design implied modernity and<br />
pointed toward future trends in advertising<br />
with the use of:<br />
• Radical simplification<br />
• Blunt messages (Eskilson 2007, p.110)
Photograph of Peter Behrens<br />
(German, 1868-1940)<br />
Peter Behrens (1868-1940)<br />
Logo for AEG (Allgemeine<br />
Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft).<br />
1907. Collection of Philip<br />
B. Meggs.<br />
Peter Behrens. (1868-1940).<br />
Behrens-Antiqua font set c.1909<br />
Peter Behrens. (1868-1940). Electric Kettle.<br />
1909. Nickel-plated brass and rattan, 22.9<br />
x 22.2 x 15.9 cm. Manufactured by<br />
Allegemeine Elektricitæts-Gesellschaft<br />
(AEG), Germany. Gift of Manfred Ludewig.<br />
MOMA
Peter Behrens (1868-1940). 1912 Brochure<br />
advertising nickel-plated and brass-plated<br />
AEG Kettles, first designed in 1909.<br />
Deutsche Werkbund 1907<br />
Peter Behrens (1868-1940).<br />
Advertisement for AEG<br />
(Allgemeine Elektrizitats<br />
Gesellschaft) of Berlin light<br />
bulbs, 1908. Poster. (rpt. Aynsley,<br />
p.17)<br />
Peter Behrens (1868-1940).<br />
Withrawn Deutsche Werkbund<br />
Exhibition poster 1914.<br />
"The Deutsche Werkbund's<br />
exhbition in Cologne in 1914 was an<br />
important climax to the<br />
organization's initiatives to display<br />
the outstanding aesthetic qualities<br />
of German industrial goods. On the<br />
eve of World War I, however,<br />
Behren's design was considered too<br />
aggressive and withdrawn, to be<br />
replaced by a more moderate design<br />
by Fritz Ehmcke." (Aynsley, p.17)
Adolf Meyer (1818-1929)<br />
Architect.<br />
Deutsche Werkbund 1907 to bauhaus<br />
Walter Gropius (1883-1969) and Adolf Meyer<br />
(1818-1929). Fagus Factory, Alfeld an der<br />
Leine. 1911.<br />
Photograph (Atelier Schneider):<br />
Portrait of Walter Gropius. 1920.<br />
(Rpt. <strong>Dr</strong>oste 23)
1919 – BAUHAUS CORE SLOGAN: 'COMMUNITY-HANDICRAFT-ARCHITECTURE'<br />
Director: Walter Gropius.<br />
Walter Gropius (1883-1969). Bauhaus Manifesto. 1919. With a woodcut by the artist Lyonel Feininger (rpt. <strong>Dr</strong>oste 1990, p.18)<br />
• Merging of Art and Craft (including architects, painters and sculptors).<br />
• To form a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that will desire, conceive and create the new<br />
structure of the future – which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the<br />
crystal symbol of a new faith<br />
• Organised around: Masters, journeymen and apprentices, with teaching arising from the character of the<br />
workshop
Theo van Doesburg and the influence of De Stijl on the Bauhaus<br />
1922 – BAUHAUS CORE SLOGAN: 'ART AND TECHNOLOGY - A NEW UNITY'<br />
Director: Walter Gropius.<br />
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931). The Bauhaus<br />
conquered by De Stijl – Theo van Doesburg sent<br />
this postcard of Weimar Bauhuas to Antony Kok<br />
on 12 September 1921. BAUHAUS. (rpt. <strong>Dr</strong>oste<br />
1990, p.56)<br />
Theo van Doesburg<br />
(1883-1931).<br />
Composition (The<br />
Cow). c.1917. Oil on<br />
canvas. 38 x 64 cm.<br />
MOMA. New York.<br />
Theo van Doesburg<br />
(1883-1931).<br />
Photograph by Lucia<br />
Moholy, 1924 (rpt.<br />
<strong>Dr</strong>oste 1990, p.57)<br />
"The aim of the formative artist is simply this: to give form to his aesthetic<br />
experience of reality or, one might also say, his creative experience of the<br />
fundamental essence of things. ... The only way in which visual art can be<br />
developed and deployed is by revaluing and purifying the formative<br />
means. Arms, legs, trees, and landscape are not unequivocally painterly<br />
means. Painterly means are: colours, forms, lines, and planes. (Theo van<br />
Doesburg (1883-1931). "from Principles of Neo-Plastic Arte 1917-25" in<br />
Art in Theory, p.280)<br />
Bauhaus Seals:<br />
• Left: The First Seal for the Staatliche Bauhaus,<br />
Weimar.1919. Design by Karl Peter Rohl.<br />
• Right: Seal for the Staatliche Bauhaus,<br />
Weimar.1923: Design by Oscar Schlemmer.
1927 bauhaus CORE SLOGAN: 'FUNCTIONAL-COLLECTIVIST-CONSTRUCTIVE'<br />
Director: Hannes Meyer (1889-1954)<br />
Marcel Breuer (1901-1981) Nest of Tables B9. 1925-26.<br />
BAUHAUS.<br />
Hannes Meyer on the workshops:<br />
• 'Greatest possible cost-efficiency'<br />
• 'Self-administration of each cell'<br />
• 'Productive teaching principles'<br />
• Calls for Bauhaus models which suit the 'needs of the<br />
people – the proletariat'<br />
• 'Popular necessities before elitist luxuries'<br />
• 'Standard production' not the personalities or natures.<br />
• Created a Workshop to address the subject of 'Advertising'<br />
Hannes Meyer and two students at Bauhaus. c.1928.<br />
BAUHAUS.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti<br />
(1876-1944) in Straw Hat<br />
and Gloves. c.1909, B&W<br />
14.5 x 10.5cm, Yale<br />
University Archives,<br />
Beinecke Library<br />
Italian Futurism & the Russian Avant Garde<br />
Futurist in Paris in 1912. Left to Right,<br />
Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carra, F.T. Marinetti,<br />
Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini.<br />
On the 20th of February 1909, Poet Filippo<br />
Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) announced<br />
the new tendency 'FUTURISM' in “The<br />
Foundation and Manifesto of<br />
Futurism” (1908), published concurrently, in<br />
France and Italy, in Le Figaro Paris and the<br />
literary magazine POESIA Milano, Editor F.T.<br />
Marinetti. (“The Foundation and Manifesto of<br />
Futurism” 1908, originally published in Le<br />
Figaro Paris, 20 February 1909, rpt. Art in<br />
Theory 1992, pp.145-149)<br />
• Later in 1909, Marinetti’s manifesto was also published in Russia.<br />
• Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) "Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto" 11 April 1910. Originally published in a pamphlet in Milano, 11<br />
April 1910 (rpt. Chipp p.284; pp.289-293)<br />
• In his manifestos, Marinetti insisted that artists turn their backs on the art of the PAST and REJECT CONVENTIONAL STUDIO PROCEDURES,<br />
in favour of NEW Concerns with the VITAL, NOISY life of the industrial city and the modern machine, such as automobiles and aircraft.<br />
• The TOTAL EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY promoted by Futurism was, as ideology if nothing else, VITAL, MOVING AND FRACTURED INTO<br />
INTERCHANGEABLE COMPONENTS.<br />
IN RUSSIA<br />
• By 1912 the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky is referring to himself as a Russian Futurist and after the 1917 communist revolution he will<br />
refer to himself as a ComFut (Communist-Futurist) poet.<br />
• In December 1913, the poets Aleksei Khruchenykh, Vladimir Khlebnikov and the painter Kasmir Malevich issue a manifesto as well<br />
as write and produce an chaotic futurist opera about an aviator entitled Victory over the Sun.<br />
• In 1914, Marinetti visits Russia for the first time.
MARX, LENIN, THE OCTOBER 1917 REVOLUTION, TAYLORISM AND THE SOVIET AVANT-GARDE<br />
Lenin in 1918 on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet government and Taylorism:<br />
“The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in the field. The<br />
possibility of building Socialism is conditioned precisely upon our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet<br />
organization of administration with the up-to-date achievements of capitalism. We must organise in Russia the study and<br />
teaching of the Taylor system and systematically try it out and adapt it to our purposes. At the same time, in working to raise<br />
the productivity of labour, we must take into account the specific features of the transition period from capitalism to Socialism,<br />
which, on the one hand, require that the foundations be laid of the socialist organization of competition, and on the other hand<br />
the use of compulsion, so that the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat shall not be desecrated by the practice of a<br />
jellyfish proletarian government.” (p.471)<br />
Ref: Lenin, V I (Ulyanov) 1918, ‘The immediate tasks of the Soviet Government’ (Pravda No. 83, and Izvestia of the All-Russian<br />
Central Executive Committee No.85, April 28, 1918) Rpt. 1951, Selected Works in Two Volumes. Vol II., Part 1. Trans. Marx-Engels-<br />
Lenin Institute, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, pp.470-471.<br />
Aleksei Gastev (1895-1938), an<br />
experiment in ‘psychotechnics’ in a<br />
laboratory of the Central Institute of<br />
Labour<br />
Vsevolod Meierkhold<br />
(1874-1940), ‘biomechanic’ for<br />
actors – obligatory daily onehour<br />
long exercise –<br />
presented as ‘theatrical<br />
equivalent of industrial timeand-motion<br />
study’ –<br />
Taylorized actor-training<br />
(Braun 1998, pp.174-176)
Dziga Vertov in early 1921<br />
Dziga Vertov (1896-1954)<br />
Born Denis Arkadievitch Kauffman in Byalistok, Poland. Educated at the Music<br />
Academy Byalistok, Poland 1912-15. Attended medical school in St.Petersburg/<br />
Petrograd, 1916-17.<br />
• 1916 becomes involved with Futurists and other avant-garde groups.<br />
• 1917 adopts pseudonym "Dziga Vertov" (Spinning Top), becomes editor and<br />
writer for newsreel section of Moscow Cinema Committee.<br />
• 1919 Kinoks-Revolution Manifesto (published in LEF c. 1922-23): takes a<br />
position against fiction films and for reportage-type films.<br />
• 1921 organises film activities on agit-steamboats and agit-trains.<br />
• 1922 begins developing theory of "Kino-Glaz".<br />
• 1922-25 works on Kino-pravda and Goskinokalender newsreel series.<br />
• 1924 Elizoveta Svilova (wife) begins collaboration with Vertov.<br />
“…I am the Cine-Eye. I am the mechanical eye. I the machine show you the<br />
world as only I can see it.” Dziga Vertov 1923.<br />
Ref: D. Vertov. 'Kinoki. Perevorot', Lef, No. 3. June/July, 1923: 135-43. Rpt. as “Dziga Vertov: The Cine-Eyes. A<br />
Revolution” Document 31, in Taylor, R and Christie, I (ed. & trans) 1994, The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in<br />
Documents 1896-1939, Routledge, London, pp.89-94.
Vertov’s Kino-Eye Group<br />
Members of the Cine-Eye group c.1923. From left to<br />
right: Elizaveta Svilova, Ilya Kopalin, Boris Kudinov,<br />
P. Zotov, I. Bushkin and Mikhail Kaufman, Vertov’s<br />
brother.<br />
Alexander Rodchenko Film Eye (Cine-Eye or<br />
Kino-Eye) Poster for six films by the Dziga<br />
Vertov group. 1924. Lithograph. 92.7 x 69.9<br />
cm. Study Collection - Museum of Modern<br />
Art, New York.
Vertov's manifesto, 'We', extolled the American film for its example of 'ostentatious dynamism', 'rapid shot<br />
changes and close-ups' (69), and he also launched into his celebrated theme on the need to become a machine.<br />
His pronouncement is worth quoting at length:<br />
In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man's (sic) inability to control himself, but what are we to do<br />
if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people and the<br />
demoralising inertia of the passive.<br />
For us the joy of dancing saws in a sawmill is more familiar and easier to understand than the joy of<br />
human beings.<br />
WE exclude for the time being man as an object of filming because of his inability to control his own<br />
movements.<br />
Our path – from a bumbling citizen through the poetry of the machine to the perfect electric man.<br />
By revealing the souls of machines, by making the worker love his lathe, the peasant his tractor, the<br />
driver his engine –<br />
We bring creative joy to all mechanical labour,<br />
We bring men closer to machines,<br />
We train the new men.<br />
The new man, liberated from unwieldiness and awkwardness, with the precise, light movements of the<br />
machine, will be the grateful object of the filming<br />
(Vertov, Dziga. "My Variant Manifesta" in Kino-Fot. No. 1. 25-31 August 1922. 11-12. rpt. as "Dziga Vertov: We. A<br />
Version of a Manifesto" Document 21 in Taylor R and Christie I (ed. & Trans.) 1994, The Film Factory: Russian<br />
and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939, Routledge, London, pp.69-71).
Vladimir & Georgii Stenberg The Man with the<br />
Movie Camera 1929. Offset lithograph. 100.5<br />
x 69.2cm. MOMA. NY<br />
Vladimir & Georgii Stenberg The Man with the<br />
Movie Camera 1929. Offset lithograph. 104.5 x<br />
66.4cm. Batsu Art Gallery. Tokyo
The Man with the Movie Camera. 1929. Dir. Dziga Vertov. Silent. B&W.<br />
67 min. Grab: 1min 37sec “Cinema camera = Kino Eye & Kino<br />
Machine. Kino Machine + Film Editor = Assemblage”
TYPOGRAPHER AND ART DIRECTOR AS EFFICIENCY ENGINEER/CONSTRUCTOR<br />
Modernist special editions (avant-garde self promotion material), posters and other print based publicity:<br />
• Reductionist – clarity<br />
• Functionalist – readability (or at the very least legible rather than cluttered)<br />
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) Merz Werbezentrale.<br />
Envelope. 1924. Hannover, Germany. . Letterpress<br />
(Lupton & Cohen p.54)<br />
“This envelope for Schwitter’s advertising agency uses a<br />
framework of heavy rules inspired by Constructivism. The<br />
word “<strong>Dr</strong>ucksache” (stationary) is set in a delicate script<br />
that contrasts with the rest of the design.<br />
The text that edges the thick red rule announces the firm’s<br />
services: modern posters, pictorial publicity, typo-logos,<br />
logos, packages, catalogues, prices lists, advertisements,<br />
lighted signs, texts. E.C.K” (Lupton and Cohen p.54)<br />
In 1927, Kurt Schwitters with Jan Tschichold and others formed the Ring neue Werbegestaler (Circle of the<br />
New Advertising Typographer).
1927: Ring neuer<br />
Werbegestalter (Circle of New<br />
Advertising Designers)<br />
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948). Title page of<br />
Merz, No. 11, 1924. Letterpress. June and<br />
Robert Leibowits Collection, New York. (rpt.<br />
Andel 2002, p.203)<br />
Gefesselter Blick [The Captured Glance],<br />
edited by Heinz and Bodo Rasch in 1931,<br />
promoted the ideas of the Ring by<br />
presenting 25 short monographs on<br />
designers, accompanied by examples of<br />
their work. The cover shows a photocollage<br />
by Will Baumeister and a photogram by El<br />
Lissitzky. (rpt. Aynsley 2001, p.71)<br />
Graphic Designers listed on the<br />
cover of Gefesselter Blick are:<br />
• Otto Baumberger<br />
• Willi Baumeister<br />
• Bill<br />
• Max Burchartz<br />
• Johannes Canis<br />
• Cyliax<br />
• Walter Dexel<br />
• Cesar Domeia<br />
• Herman Elias<br />
• Werner Gräff<br />
• John Heartfield<br />
• Franz Krauss<br />
• Geschwister Leistikow<br />
• El Lissitzky<br />
• Robert Michel<br />
• Moholy-Nagy<br />
• Brüder Rasch<br />
• Hans Richter<br />
• Paul Schuitema<br />
• Kurt Schwitters<br />
• Mart Stam<br />
• Karel Teige<br />
• G. Trump<br />
• Jan Tschichold<br />
• Vordemberge-Gildewart<br />
• Piet Zwart
In Germany, beyond the bauhaus: independent graphic design initiatives.<br />
Jan Tschichold (1902-1974)<br />
Head of design, Penguin Books,<br />
1946-1949<br />
Typographiche Mitteilungen,<br />
1915<br />
Contributors listed on the cover of the Typographische Mitteilungen are:<br />
• Natan Altman • Otto Baumberger • Herbert Bayer • Max Burchartz<br />
• El Lissitzky • Ladislaus Moholy-Nagy • Molnár F. Farkas<br />
• Johannes Molzahn • Kurt Schwitters • Mart Stam • Jan Tschichold<br />
Jan Tschichold (1902-1974). Cover of<br />
Typographische Mitteilungen;<br />
Sonderheft; Elementare Typogrphie<br />
[Typographical Newsletter; Special<br />
Issue; Elementary Typography], 1925.
Jan Tschichold (1902-1974). Title page and frontpiece of Die Neue<br />
Typographie [The New Typography], 1928.<br />
In Tschichold’s definition of New Typography the organising elements have in common:<br />
• Asymmetrical layout<br />
• Preference for recently foundered san serif fonts<br />
• Incorporation of photography, photomontage and/or photograms<br />
• Elimination of non-essential or illustrative decorative elements<br />
• Reduction of colour and form<br />
• Use of standard DIN sizes and weights of paper: such as A5; A4; A3, etc.<br />
Tschichold commences his text by<br />
emphatically stating that the New Typography<br />
must embrace modernity and introduce into its<br />
procedure and outcomes:<br />
• The laws of machine production<br />
• Primary shapes –geometric forms<br />
• Economy, Precision and function<br />
• Construction – the typographer and graphic<br />
designer as engineer (not artist)
Beatrice L. Warde (1900-1969)<br />
Portrait of Beatrice L. Warde, by<br />
Bernard Brussel-Smith. 1950.<br />
Wood engraving on Basingwerk<br />
Parchment.<br />
Beatrice Warde being<br />
introduced before giving a<br />
lecture in the Heritage of the<br />
Graphic Arts lecture series at<br />
Gallery 303. New York. 1967.<br />
‘Talking, broadcasting, writing, and printing are all quite literally forms of thought transference, and it is this<br />
ability and eagerness to transfer and receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for<br />
human civilisation.<br />
[...]<br />
Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the<br />
transmission of words, ideas.’ (Warde 1932 rpt. Swanson 2000, p.92)
Penguin cover, 1935.<br />
“...the mental eye focuses through type and<br />
not upon it. The type which, through any<br />
arbitrary warping of design or excess of<br />
‘colour,’ gets in the way of the mental pictures<br />
to be conveyed, is bad type.” (Warde 1932 rpt.<br />
Swanson 2000, p.94)<br />
A mixture of fonts appear on the cover, but in the form of a grid<br />
structured banner or poster in a reductivist layout.<br />
The font used for the text of the book would invariably be a serif<br />
font, such as Times or Times New Roman.
R.U.R. (ROSSUM’S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS) . Photograph of the<br />
1923 New York Production<br />
TAYLORISM<br />
Modernity = Taylorism + Fordism = Dystopia<br />
Fredrick Winston Taylor (1856-1915).The Principles and Methods of Scientific Management. 1911<br />
The three fundamental principles of Taylorism are:<br />
1) Dissociation of the labour process from the skill of workers<br />
2) Separation of conception from execution<br />
3) Use of this monopoly over knowledge to control each step of the labour process and its mode of execution.<br />
Karel Capek<br />
(1890-1938)<br />
“Robot, a word coined from the Czech 'robota' (meaning drudgery). A play by the Czech novelist Karel Capek<br />
(1890-1938) entitled R.U.R. (1920), which stands for 'Rossum's Univeral Robots', was first performed in<br />
England in 1923, and the concept of the mechanical robot has opened up a whole new vein of Science Fiction<br />
as well as adding a word to the English language.” (Oxford Concise Companion to English Literature, <strong>Dr</strong>abble<br />
M and Stringer J (eds) 1996, Oxford UP, Oxford, p.497)<br />
“dystopia |disˈtōpēә|<br />
noun<br />
an imagined place or state in which<br />
everything is unpleasant or bad,<br />
typically a totalitarian or<br />
environmentally degraded one. The<br />
opposite of Utopia.” (Oxford<br />
Dictionary, Mac OSX 2009)
Metropolis Dir: Fritz Lang (1890–1976)<br />
(1925-1926: released 1927) Film poster.<br />
METROPOLIS 1927 Dir. Fritz Lang. Writ. Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou<br />
Paul M. Jensen’s synopsis of the film:<br />
Film Still: Metropolis (1926).<br />
Showing: <strong>Jon</strong> Fredersen<br />
(Industrialist/Capitalist),<br />
Rotwang (Mad Scientist) and<br />
Robot (Evil Cyborg) Maria<br />
In the year 2000, Freder, the son of the Master of Metropolis, rebels against the<br />
way his half of the city—the idle "aristocracy"—has dehumanized the labourers.<br />
Limited to lives of hard and lengthy work, the latter live underground, below the<br />
halls where the machines are located. Potential rebellion has been prevented by<br />
Maria, who urges her companions to await the arrival of a mediator who will<br />
unite the city. Freder is that saviour, but he is hindered by his father, who orders<br />
a robot that exactly duplicates Maria to spread dissatisfaction among the<br />
workers. The plan succeeds and a mob smashes the machines, thus causing<br />
their own homes to be flooded. Thinking that they have drowned their children,<br />
the workers attack the robot and burn "her". Meanwhile, Freder and the real<br />
Maria have rescued the children. Suddenly Rotwang, a scientist who built the<br />
robot, chases the girl on to the cathedral roof. Freder follows, and in the ensuing<br />
struggle Rotwang loses his balance and falls to his death. Seeing his son's<br />
danger, Joh Fredersen relents and agrees to shake hands with a representative<br />
of the workers. (p.6)
“Metropolis - vertical city” Metropolis 1927. Black & White. Silent. Dir: Fritz<br />
Lang. Writ: Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou. Novel: Thea von Harbou. Perf:<br />
Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Grab<br />
Length: 1min 05 sec.<br />
"The imagery of the tower of Babel (the machine centre of Metropolis is actually called the<br />
New Tower of Babel) relates technology to myth and legend. The biblical myth is used to<br />
construct the ideological message about the division of labour into the hands that build and<br />
the brains that plan and conceive, a division of which, as the film suggests, must be<br />
overcome" (p.200)
Siegfried Kracauer<br />
(1889-1966)<br />
MASS<br />
ORNAMENT<br />
“The underlying meaning of an epoch and its<br />
less obvious pulsations illuminate one<br />
another reciprocally.” (p.462)<br />
“The structure of the mass ornament reflects<br />
that of the general contemporary<br />
situation.” (p.464)<br />
Laurence Tiller Troupe, from Folies Bergère at London Palladium, 1925.<br />
Mander and Mitchenson Collection, Beckenham. Photograph by Eddie<br />
Richardson<br />
FEMALE BODY AND TAYLORISM BECOMES MACHINE LIKE<br />
“The production process runs its course publicly in secret. Everyone goes through the necessary motions at the conveyor belt,<br />
performs a partial function without knowing the entirety. Similar to the pattern in the stadium, the organization hovers above the<br />
masses as a monstrous figure whose originator withdraws it from the eyes of its bearers, and who himself hardly reflects upon it. –<br />
It is conceived according to rational principles which the Taylor system only takes to its final conclusion. The hands in the factory<br />
correspond to the legs of the Tiller Girls. Psycho-technical aptitude tests seek to compute emotional dispositions above and<br />
beyond manual abilities. The mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex of the rationality aspired to by the prevailing economic<br />
system.” (464)<br />
“No matter how low one rates the value of the mass ornament, its level of reality is still above that of artistic productions which<br />
cultivate obsolete noble sentiments in withered forms – even when they have no further significance.” (465)<br />
Kracauer S, "The Mass Ornament" Frankfurter Zeitung, 9-10 June 1927, rpt. Harrison C & Wood P (eds) 1992, Art in Theory. 1900-1990: An Anthology of<br />
Changing Ideas, Blackwell, Oxford, UK:, pp.462-465.
Female golfing: ready-to-wear<br />
sports clothes. c.1910 (Mendes<br />
& de la Haye 1999, p.30)<br />
CLOTHING MODERNITY<br />
FASHION & MODERNITY<br />
USA-Female cyclists, popular<br />
pastime requiring<br />
appropriate modifications to<br />
fashion. 1902. (Mendes & de<br />
la Haye. 20th C Fashion 1999,<br />
p.28)<br />
French poster by de Passe for Ford<br />
Automobiles, c.1905. Musée des Arts<br />
Décoratifs (Gallo, p.173)<br />
‘The new craze for motoring called for<br />
protective clothing suitable for travel in<br />
open cars, though in April 1905 the<br />
Duchess of Sutherland (President of<br />
the Ladies Automobile Club, London)<br />
dispensed with the usual gauntlet<br />
gloves, veils and goggles. She guarded<br />
her hair with a large, flat-crowned hat<br />
(its streamers firmly tied under the<br />
chin) and wore a roomy dustcoat over<br />
her daytime ensemble.’ (Mendes & de la<br />
Haye 1999, p.31)
NEW EFFICIENCY IN DRESS AND WORK – WORLD WAR I (1914-1918) AND ITS LEGACY<br />
Casualties of World War One (1914-1918)<br />
• United Kingdom: 745,000 dead and approximately<br />
160,000 men wounded or gassed.<br />
• Australia: approximately 60,000 dead (Total population<br />
about 5 million in 1918).<br />
<strong>Jon</strong>as Lucien (1880-1947), Emprunt<br />
de la Liberation – Souscrivez<br />
[Liberation Loan – Subscribe],<br />
1918, Lithograph, 119.4cm x<br />
78.7cm, for Crédit Industriel et<br />
Commercial, Paris, France.<br />
(Imperial War Museum, UK)<br />
Manufacturing and filling<br />
shells. U.K. munitions<br />
Factory. c.1915.<br />
Women's Royal Air Force Motorcycle Dispatch Rider. c.<br />
1917. Imperial war Museum, London. (Mendes & de la<br />
Haye 54)<br />
1916 (1914-1918 World War) German dead<br />
lie round a machine gun post at<br />
Guillemont.
Ernst Deutsch. Detail of a poster for:<br />
Mercedes Typewriters. c.1911. Stuttgart,<br />
Staatsgalerie. (Gallo, p.159)<br />
NEW EFFICIENCY IN DRESS AND WORK<br />
The First Bra: The original patent<br />
granted to Mary Phelps Jacob in 1914.<br />
(O'Hara, p.50)
Beginnings of the ‘flapper’<br />
Cover of the popular French<br />
novel: La Garçonne 1922, by<br />
Victor Margueritte. (Mendes & de<br />
la Haye p.59)<br />
Fashionable young garçonne<br />
wearing an afternoon dress in<br />
pale mauve crepe-de-chine by<br />
Welly Sœurs. c.1926. (Mendes<br />
& de la Haye p.59).<br />
Cloche<br />
“Woman’s hat worn from c.1915 until the<br />
mid-1930s, achieving greatest popularity<br />
during the 1920s. The cloche is tightfitting,<br />
covering the head from the neck<br />
and worn pulled down low over the<br />
forehead. It can be brimmed or brimless. In<br />
the 1920s cloches were often decorated<br />
with grosgrain ribbon.” (Callan 1998 p66)<br />
The broad appeal of the garçonne<br />
The transition from Romantic to Modern<br />
Style–1924. Left and centre by Jean<br />
Patou, Right (red) by Jacques Doucet.<br />
(Mendes & de la Haye p.56)<br />
Lyrics & Music: Noël Coward Dance<br />
Little Lady, 1928, 2min 48sec
“Louise Brooks was one of the many<br />
actresses to wear Patou’s gowns in the<br />
1920s” (O’Hara Callan 178)<br />
French fashion designer Jean Patou and the flapper<br />
Louise Brooks Bob - “The<br />
Hollywood actress Louise<br />
Brooks, whose vivid beauty,<br />
chic, bobbed hair and<br />
vitality personify the 1920s<br />
goddess” (Mendes & de la<br />
Haye 61)<br />
Jean Patou (1880-1936) French Fashion Designer -<br />
“Jean Patou in 1924, with the six American models<br />
he brought over to Paris to show his new<br />
collection” (O’Hara Callan 179)
Louise Brooks (1906-1985) – the American flapper (garçonne)<br />
Documentary: Looking For Lulu (On the life of Louise Brooks).<br />
Keffner & Turner Production. Color & B/W. Sound. 60 minutes.<br />
Grab: 3min35sec<br />
Shots from early films (c.1926-27) starring Louise Brooks<br />
Shots of flappers doing the charleston (jazz dance).
Josephine Baker. c.1925, Paris. ”In the<br />
1920s Josephine Baker [USA]<br />
captivated the whole of Europe with<br />
her completely new, rather absurd<br />
dancing style to the accompaniment of<br />
jazz music. <strong>Dr</strong>essed only in s costume<br />
of feathers or bananas, she introduced<br />
many of the Charleston-style<br />
movements” (Lehnert p.19)<br />
• Jazz and mass culture (Chinitz 1997, pp.320-321)<br />
• Gendering of jazz and “the relation of both jazz and the feminine to the primitive” (p.321)<br />
Thor Bogelund. Poster for Tivoli<br />
Amusement Park, Copenhagen. 1930.<br />
(Gallo p.225)<br />
“In 1920s criticism, jazz was perceived to be so deeply implicated in avant-garde aesthetics that what we now call modernism<br />
could usefully be termed jazz art.” (p.322)<br />
Josephine Baker C’est lui,<br />
c.1924, 3min 3sec<br />
Paul Colin. Poster for the Revue<br />
Nègre at the Champs-Elysées<br />
Music Hall, 1925. Paris,<br />
Bibliotheque Nationale.
Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) Advertisement<br />
appeared on 4 September 1935, before the word<br />
'Zipper' was in general use.<br />
Marcello Dudovich (1878-1962) FIAT<br />
BALILLA per tutti – eleganza della Signora.<br />
1934. Colour Lithograph. 30x22 cm. FIAT<br />
Collection. Turin, Italy.
“The Kestos bra, from a 1935 advertisement,<br />
described as a ‘cunning wisp of<br />
loveliness’” (O’Hara Callan, p.44)<br />
“… widely adopted during the 1920s when fashionable<br />
at-home dresses and, later, cocktail dresses were<br />
often made of revealing, semi-transparent fabrics. By<br />
1925, brassieres had adjustable front straps and a<br />
division between the breasts in the Bandeau front.<br />
During the late 1920s the Kestos Company of America<br />
produced a brassiere made of two triangular pieces of<br />
fabric secured to elastic that pulled over the<br />
shoulders, crossed at the back, and buttoned at the<br />
front under a darted "cup." During the late 1920s and<br />
1930s corsetry companies began manufacturing<br />
brassieres which were boned and stitched into<br />
different cup sizes. A boned strapless brassiere<br />
appeared in the late 1930s and it was during this<br />
decade that the word bra came into popular<br />
usage.” (O’Hara Callan, p.43)
READING THE IMAGE<br />
Kanti Schawinsky (1904-1979) Olivetti.<br />
1934. Lithograph. 51 x 34.5cm.<br />
“The graphic artist responsible for the Olivetti poster was Xanti<br />
(Alexander) Schawinsky (1904-1979), born in Switzerland but died<br />
an American. Schawinsky trained at the Dessau Bauhaus in the<br />
late 1920s, producing student works noted for their clarity of<br />
composition in a Surrealist inspired manner (<strong>Dr</strong>oste 188). At the<br />
time Schawinsky was completing his training, Adriano Olivetti, in<br />
an effort to modernise the company's systems of production,<br />
toured the United States. Subsequent to this trip, the Olivetti<br />
Company established its advertising section and employed<br />
Schawinsky between 1933 to 1936” (Woodham 1997, p.149)<br />
The poster was the result of Olivetti's advertising initiative<br />
stimulated by the study of American commerce. Paradoxically,<br />
Olivetti's interest in American efficiency, in contrast to Soviet<br />
Americanism, was on behalf of a company operating in a Fascist<br />
country, while the poster was the product of a graphic artist who<br />
graduated from a German design school closed by the Nazis in<br />
the year prior to the poster's publication. In short, the political and<br />
ideological background to the image is informed by the<br />
substantial differences that existed between the USSR, Nazi<br />
Germany, Fascist Italy and the capitalist democracy of the USA.<br />
However, the image carries representations that ride above these<br />
differences, namely the appeal of managerial efficiency,<br />
represented as the type of modern woman.
Bibliography: Technology and Early 20th Century Modernism [MLA FORMAT]<br />
Primary Text –Required Readings (Chronological)<br />
• Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. “The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism” (1909). Trans. R. W. Flint Rpt. Art in Theory 1900-1990: An<br />
Anthology of Changing Ideas. Eds. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. 1992. 145-149.<br />
• Taylor, Frederick Winslow. “The Principles of Scientific Management” (1911) Rpt. F. W. Taylor. Scientific Management, New York:<br />
Harper and Row, 1964. 5-144.<br />
• Lenin, Vladimir Ilich (Ulyanov). “The immediate tasks of the Soviet Government” (Pravda No. 83, and Izvestia of the All-Russian<br />
Central Executive Committee No.85, April 28, 1918) Rpt. Selected Works in Two Volumes. Vol II., Part 1. Trans. Marx-Engels-Lenin<br />
Institute. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951. 470-471.<br />
• Vertov, Dziga. “My Variant Manifesta” Kino-Fot. No. 1, 25-31 August 1922: 11-12. Rpt. as “Dziga Vertov: We. A Version of a Manifesto”<br />
Document 21, in The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939. Ed. & Trans. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie.<br />
London: Routledge, 1994. 69-71.<br />
• Capek, Karel. R.U.R. [ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS] (1920). Trans. Paul Selver, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page &<br />
Company, 1923. (Fiction/play)<br />
• Kracauer, Siegfried. “The Mass Ornament” (first published in the FrankfurterZeitung, 9-10 June 1927) Rpt. The Mass Ornament –<br />
Weimar Essays, (1926-1933). Ed. & Trans. Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1995. 75-86.<br />
• Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936) Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry<br />
Zohn. London: Fontana, 1992. 211-244<br />
Secondary Texts – Required Readings (By Author)<br />
• Gunning, Tom. “Ch. 2. ‘Now You see It, Now You don't’: The Temporality of the Cinema of Attractions” The Silent Cinema Reader. Ed.<br />
Lee Grieveson and Peter Krämer. London: Routledge, 2004. 41-50.<br />
• Staller, Natasha. “Melies ‘Fantastic’ Cinema and the Origins of Cubism” Art History. Vol 12. No 2. June 1989: 202-232.<br />
• Wollen, Peter. “Modern Times: Cinema/Americanism/The Robot” Raiding the Icebox. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University<br />
Press, 1993. 35-71<br />
Secondary Texts – Additional Readings (By Author)<br />
• Lavin, Maud. “Photomontage, Mass Culture, and Modernity: Utopianism in the circle of new advertising designers” Montage and<br />
Modern Life 1919-1942. Ed. Matthew Teitelbaum. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992. 36-59<br />
• Fritz Lang's Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear. Ed. Michael Minden and Holger Bachmann. New York: Camden<br />
House, 2000.<br />
Cinema<br />
• Metropolis. Dir. Fritz Lang. 120 mins. B/W. Silent. 1926. (Restored DVD edition. Kino. 2002)<br />
• Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. 1927. Dir. Walther Ruttmann. B&W. 62min.<br />
• The Man with a Movie Camera Dir. Dziga Vertov. 67 min. B/W. Silent. (Chelovek S Kino Apparatom) Production: Vufku (Ukraine). 1929.<br />
Background Reading & References<br />
• Crary, <strong>Jon</strong>athan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990.<br />
• Ehrenburg, Ilya. The Life of the Automobile (1929). Trans. Joachim Neugroschell, London: Serpent's Tail, 1999.<br />
• Ford, Henry. My Life and Work: in collaboration with Samuel Crowther (1922), Arnold Place, Sydney: Cornstalk Publishing Company,<br />
1924.<br />
• Gilbreth, Frank B. and Lillian M. Writings of the Gilbreths. Eds. William R. Spriegel and Clark E. Meyers. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D.<br />
Irwin, 1953<br />
• Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870-1970, New York: Viking, 1989.<br />
• Kittler, Friedrich A. “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter” Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young & Michael Wutz. Stanford,<br />
California: Stanford University Press, 1999.
END OF<br />
LECTURE