What is Modern?

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What is Modern?
The sensibility engendered as a response to the
technological, artistic, cultural upheaval that
is the 20th century. This class is for the period
roughly from 1800 to 1945. What is the
significance of these dates?
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What is Modern?
Definition of Modernization - In the 20th
century, the social processes that bring this
maelstrom into being, and keep it in a state of
perpetual becoming, have come to be called
"modernization". Definition of Modernism - These
processes have nourished an amazing variety of
visions and ideas that aim to make men and women
the subjects as well as the objects of
modernization, to give them the power to change
the world that is changing them, to make their
way through the maelstrom and make it their own.
Over the past century, these visions and values
have come to be loosely grouped together under
the name of MODERNISM. (from ALL THAT IS SOLD
MELTS INTO AIR. Berman)
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The Mechanical Paradise
In 1913, the French writer Charles Peguy remarked
that the world has changed less since the time
of Jesus Christ than it has in the last thirty
years. What has our culture lost that the
AVANT-GARDE had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism,
confidence, the belief that there was plenty of
territory to explore, and above all the sense
that ART could find the necessary metaphors by
which a radically changing culture could be
explained to its inhabitants.
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The Machine in 1889
The machine was thought of as good, strong,
stupid, and obedient. They thought of it as a
giant slave, controlled by REASON in a world of
infinite resources. Only very exceptional sights,
such as a rocket launch can give us anything
resembling the emotion with which our ancestors
contemplated heavy machinery. More and more
people were living in a machine-formed
environment. THE CITY. The TRAIN. Fast Travel
of a Machine on Wheels.
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Impressionism
The founders of impressionism were Claude Monet,
Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frederic
Bazille. The movement lasted from 1867 to 1886
and was thought to have started the modern period
of art. Impressionists painted outdoors (en
plein-air). This was made possible by the
invention of collapsible tin tubes of paint.
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Claude Monet. Rouen.
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Claude Monet. Houses of Parliament. 1905
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Georges Seurat. Sunday on the Grande Jatte.
(Detail) 1894
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Van Gogh. Starry Night. 1889
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Karl Marx observations
"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly
revolutionizing the instruments of production,
and with them the relations of production, and
with them all the relations of society ...
constant revolutionizing of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social
relations, everlasting uncertainty and agitation,
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier
ones." He goes on ... "All fixed, fast-frozen
relations, with their train of ancient and
venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away,
all new-formed ones become antiquated before they
can ossify. (building programs change before the
building is even designed). ALL THAT IS SOLID
MELTS INTO AIR. , all that is holy is profaned,
and men at last are forced to face ... the real
conditions of their lives and their relations
with their fellow men. "
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Henri Matisse. La Danse. 1910.
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Pablo Picasso. Les demoiselles dAvignon. 1907
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Pablo Picasso. Jeune fille a la mandoline. 1910

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Will to Change
A common thread (of texts relevant to Modernity)
is that the protagonists are all motivated by a
WILL TO CHANGE. - to TRANSFORM both themselves
and their world and by a terror of
disintegration and disorientation, of life
falling apart. They all know the thrill and the
dread of a world in which all that is solid
melts into air. - Marshall Berman.
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Authenticity
As mans control of the natural world through
technology intensifies, AUTHENTICITY becomes
more and more of an issue for modern man. It
takes on an ethical imperative. For all of us
MODERNISM IS REALISM (Berman). This is the
world we are living in, like it or not.
ZEITGEIST Spirit of the Age.
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Contradictions and Complexity
Modern life is inherently plagued by
CONTRADICTIONS Marx. Hence COMPLEXITY. One of
the impulses of early modern architecture was to
try to conceal these contradictory forces.
Robert Venturi. Complexity and Contradiction in
Architecture.
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Utopian Socialism - Charles Fourier
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Phalanstery (1808)
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Phalanstery Red Bank
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Brook Farm (1841)
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Godin Familistere (1848)
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Jeremy Bentham - Utilitarianism
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Panopticism
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From the Introduction
Paul Klee. Angelus Novus Painting.
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Some Ideas from Introduction
Definitive split between architecture and
engineering disciplines which is sometimes dated
to the foundation in Paris of the Ecole des Ponts
et Chausees, the first Engineering School in
1747. The history of modern architecture is as
much about consciousness and polemical intent as
it is about buildings themselves. Dark side of
the Enlightenment (from a Marxist perspective)
Modern man is just as alienated from his own
production (works) (the built environment) as he
is from the natural world. Bourgeois culture
has oscillated between the extremes of totally
planned and industrialized utopias on the one
hand, and, on the other, a denial of the actual
historical reality of machine production.
Increasingly subject to the imperatives of a
continuously expanding CONSUMER ECONOMY, the city
has largely lost its capacity to maintain its
significance as a whole.
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Chapter 1 Cultural Transformations NeoClassical
Architecture 1750-1900
Two different but related developments radically
TRANSFORMED the relationship between MAN and
NATURE. First, was the sudden increase in mans
capacity to exercise control over nature.
(Technology). Second, a shift in nature of
human consciousness, which gave birth to a new
culture that was equally appropriate to the life
styles of the declining aristocracy and the
rising bourgeoisie. this yielded new
categories of knowledge and a historicist mode of
thought that questioned its own identity. Led
to the emergence of humanist disciplines of the
Enlightenment, including the pioneer works of
modern SOCIOLOGY, AESTHETICS, HISTORY, and
ARCHAEOLOGY. ---- The OVER-ELABORATION of
architectural language in the ROCOCO interiors
compelled the architects of the 18th century,
aware of the EMERGENT and UNSTABLE nature of
their age to search for a TRUE STYLE through a
PRECISE reappraisal of HISTORY.
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ROCOCO
Fragonard. The Swing. Rococo Painting.
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ROCOCO
Rococo Interior.
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Interest in Archaeology. Piranesi. Sketch of
Ruins at Paestum.
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Piranesi. Carceri (Prison) drawings.
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Piranesi. Sketch
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John Soane. John Soane House. Palladianism.
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Palladio. Villa Rotunda. High Renaissance.
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Palladio. Villa Malacontenta. High Renaissance.

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Progression of Thought (Theory) leading for
formulation of Theory of Types.
Claude Perrault Abbe de Cordemoy Jacques
Francois Blondel .. All the different kinds of
production which belong to architecture should
carry the imprint of the particular intention of
each building, each should possess a character
which determines the general form and which
declares the building for what it is -
Blondel J.N.L. Durand (student of Blondel)
Durand was also a student of Boullee. Quatremere
de Quincy - first formal explication of TYPE
(1825)
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Cordemoy
Ornamentation had to be subject to propriety.
Argued that many buildings required no ornament
at all. Adolf Loos ornament is crime.
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Abbe Laugier / Soufflot
Abbe Laugier Reinterpreted Cordemoy to posit a
universal natural architecture.
(Romanticism) The primordial Primitive Hut He
asserted this primal form as the basis for a sort
of classicized Gothic architecture in which there
would be neither arches nor pilasters nor
pedestals, and where interstices between columns
would be as fully glazed as possible. Soufflot
realized this vision in his church of Ste
Genevieve in Paris (now called Pantheon).
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Primitive Hut according to Abbe Laugier.
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Soufflot Ste. Genevieve Church (Paris)
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3 Visionary Architects Ledoux, Boullee,
LequeuPalaces for the People
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Boullee. Cenotaph for Newton. 1784
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Isaac Newton
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Cenotaph for Newton (1784) Boullee. Project.
Interior.
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Cenotaph for Newton (1784) Boullee. Project.
Exterior.
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The Sublime. World Trade Center. Temporary
Monument.
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Boullee Bibliotheque Nationale Interior
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Boullee Bibliotheque Nationale Exterior
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Boullee Opera au Carousel
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Durand
Jean-nicolas-louis Durand, reduced Boullees
ideas to a system of BUILDING TYPOLOGY. Set out
in his Precis des lecons a LEcole Polytechnique
(1802-09) Napoleonic empire needed facilities to
run its government, needed them fast, cheap, and
standardized. Durand set up a system whereby
modular parts could be assembled into different
configurations to create these various building
types. That type of thought still goes on
today, for example the GAP has a prototype
design that they use for all stores, which are
then adapted to specific locations as required.
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Durand. Projet pour un Bibliotheque.
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Arc de Triomphe (1836) Paris. Chalgrin.
Student of Boullee
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Ledoux Salt Works at Chaux
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Ledoux Directors House
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Ledoux Entry Portico
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Ledoux Gardeners House
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Ledoux Waterworks Directors House
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Le Pavilion de la Villette (1785-1789)
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Brothel at Chaux
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Michael Graves influence of Ledoux
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Neo-Classicism after the Revolution
Need to accommodate new institutions of Bourgeois
Society. Need to represent emergence of new
Republican State.
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Neo-Classicism after the Revolution
Friedrich Gilly. Monument to Frederick the
Great. 1797
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Schinkel Altes Museum Berlin
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Henri Labrouste
Bibliotheque St. Genevieve. Paris.
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Henri Labrouste
Bibliotheque St. Genevieve. Paris. 1860-68.
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Henri Labrouste
Bibliotheque Nationale. Paris. 1860-68.
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Two trends of neo-classical thought
FIRST. Structural Classicism. Labrouste.
Cordemoy, Laugier, Soufflot Emphasized
structure Prisons, Hospitals, Railway
Stations. SECOND. Romantic Classicism. Schinkel
. Ledoux, Boullee, Gilly Emphasized the
physiognomic (body) character of form
itself. Representational Structures such as
Walhalla.
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Walhalla. Leo von Klenze.
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Walhalla. Leo von Klenze.
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The End