Lecture #17: A New Aesthetic: Futurism, de Stijl, Constructivism, Italian Futurism, and the celebration of technology.

Administrative Announcements and Canvas Outage

• Canvas National Outage Details:

  • A national outage affecting nearly every university in the United States using Canvas began at approximately $1:15\,p.m.$ yesterday.
  • Updates from Canvas and its parent company indicate that no data breach occurred; all materials should remain intact.
  • Functionality has been restored according to the company, but a cautious, step-by-step security check and system reboot are currently being conducted.

• Impact on Course Assignments:

  • Paper Assignment $2$, Part $1$, Part $A$ was scheduled to start at $3\,p.m.$ today.
  • If Canvas is not fully operational by $2\,p.m.$, the start time and subsequent deadlines will be pushed back incrementally.
  • Students will be guaranteed the full $48$ hours to complete the assignment once the system is live.
  • The instructor will send status updates via email.
  • Requests to email the questions directly to students have been denied; the class will wait for the official Canvas restart.

• Campus Infrastructure Issues:

  • A secondary power outage occurred last night on the west side of campus, specifically affecting Architecture Hall and Gould Hall.

The Emergence and Convergence of the Modern Movement

• Core Philosophy:

  • The Modern Movement was not a singular entity but a "cluster of ideas" formed by the coalescing of primary currents: rationalism, futurism, abstract art, and responses to new technology.

• Geopolitical Context (World War I):

  • The movement developed leading up to and during World War I ($1914$–$1918$).
  • Allied Powers: Britain, France, Russia.
  • Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire.
  • The unforeseen devastation of the war served as a catalyst for radical cultural shifts.

Italian Futurism: The Machine Aesthetic

• Historical Roots:

  • Futurism was a specific art and architectural movement in Northern Italy, responding to rapid industrialization in cities like Milan and Turin.
  • Italy unified late ($1870$), with the capital in Rome, leaving northern cities to evolve into major industrial centers.

• Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the Futurist Manifesto ($1909$):

  • Marinetti, an artist, argued that art must reflect the unprecedented experience of technology and high speed (e.g., automobiles, which were almost nonexistent $10$ years prior).
  • The Preamble Experience: Marinetti describes staying up all night under mosque lamps, alone with the "stokers who sweat before the satanic furnaces of great ships" and the "black phantoms" operating locomotives at "insensate speeds."
  • Personal Anecdote of Speed: Marinetti describes driving his car: "I flung myself like a corpse on a bier across the seat of my machine… poised like a guillotine blade against my stomach." After crashing into a ditch, he celebrated the "factory drain" and "mud."
  • Ideology: A total emotional and intellectual celebration of the mechanical and electrical; a belief that culture should be revolutionized to match technological advancements.

• Umberto Boccioni and Plastic Rhythm:

  • Aimed to represent movement and "plastic rhythm" in static forms.
  • Influenced by French Cubism but pushed toward total abstraction.
  • Works: Sculptures and paintings that utilize metal, glass, and wires rather than stone or plaster. Notable examples include a study of a soccer player and a still life of a bottle, both emphasizing fluid motion.

• Antonio Sant'Elia and Città Nuova ($1914$):

  • An architect who joined the Futurists after $1912$.
  • The New City Exhibit: Envisioned a city devoid of historical reference, characterized by massive railroad stations, viaducts, trusses, and power plants.
  • Imagery: Focused on technology, power lines, and turbines. Sant'Elia was killed in the war in $1916$, leaving his visions unrealized.

De Stijl (The Style): The Pursuit of the Universal

• Context in the Netherlands:

  • The Netherlands remained neutral during WWI, allowing artists to observe European destruction and seek a "return to fundamentals."
  • Also known as Neo-Plasticism or the Rotterdam School (contrasting with the Amsterdam Expressionists).
  • Reaction against Expressionism: Rejected the "irrational" brickwork of the Amsterdam School in favor of discipline, logic, and a step-by-step rational process.

• Piet Mondrian's Evolution Toward Abstraction:

  • $1908$: Forest representation (semi-abstract).
  • $1910$: The Red Tree (surface beginning to fragment).
  • $1911$: The Gray Tree (tree nearly dissolving into abstract patterns).
  • $1914$: Compositions with lines; interpretations of light reflecting on rippled water.
  • $1918$–$1922$: Total abstraction; works reduced to the "fundamentals": colors (primary), lines, and the canvas surface.

• Theo van Duisburg and Graphic Design:

  • A key polemicist who demonstrated the "layers of abstraction" (exemplified in his Card Players and portrait studies).
  • Innovation: The group invented sans-serif typefaces (the ancestors of Arial and Helvetica), removing the "feet" from letters to achieve rectangular purity.
  • Publication: The De Stijl magazine circulated these ideas globally.

• Gerrit Rietveld: Furniture and the Schröder House ($1924$):

  • Red Blue Chair ($1917$): The first $3$-dimensional realization of the De Stijl aesthetic. Planes (seat/back) float in space; black frame members with white ends imply that the lines could extend infinitely.
  • Space Concept: Reflects the "space of science/physics" rather than enclosed architectural rooms; elements are designed as if in a momentary snapshot of motion.
  • Schröder House (Utrecht): The canonical De Stijl building. Features include:
  • Anti-gravitational appearance using cantilevered concrete, metal, and glass.
  • Interior dynamism: All upper-floor walls are folding or sliding, creating a flexible, shifting space.
  • Craftsmanship: Despite its "machined" look, it required extraordinary precision and craft to achieve details like the corner window where two glass panes meet without a frame support.

• J.J.P. Oud and the Pragmatic Shift:

  • Associated with De Stijl (e.g., Café de Unie in Rotterdam) but never a formal member.
  • As City Architect of Rotterdam, he had to reconcile De Stijl aesthetics with mass housing budgets.
  • Housing Projects: Kiefhoek and Hook of Holland. These utilized white volumes and linear windows but dropped the intricate, expensive "planes in space" details of Rietveld for more repetitive, efficient forms.

Russian Constructivism: Art and the Revolution

• Bolshevik Context ($1917$):

  • Following the revolution, artists sought a "new start" that rejected the classical architecture of the Czars and the nobility.
  • Elementalism: The idea of "Elemental Heroism"—compositions where individual elements (planes, lines) are visible but contribute to a total, unified heroically scaled work.

• Vladimir Tatlin:

  • Counter-Reliefs ($1915$): Abstract sculptures made from industrial "detritus": rusted metal, wires, and glass.
  • Monument to the Third International ($1919$–$1920$):
  • A proposal for a non-representational modern monument.
  • Structure: A giant iron asymmetrical spiral cone (Russia lacked steel technology at the time).
  • Function: A giant clock or calendar of the revolution. It contained internal geometric volumes (cube, etc.) rotating at different speeds: once a day, once a month, and once a year.
  • It was never built due to the devastated Russian economy, but a large model wasparaded through Moscow on a wagon.

• El Lissitzky:

  • Proun Rooms: Spaces designed to explore the intersection of art and physics through abstract planes and lines.
  • Lenin Tribune: A proposal for a speaking tower for Lenin, featuring a massive concrete base and a cantilevered steel structure for haranguing crowds.

• Legacy and Synthesis:

  • After the war, these movements (Futurism, De Stijl, Constructivism) began to intersect as artists and architects like Van Duisburg, Lissitzky, and Moholy-Nagy traveled and shared journals (e.g., visits to the Bauhaus), forming the foundation of the International Modern Movement.