Saturday, December 4, 2010

World War II and After

Cover for the guidebook to the "Degenerate Art" exhibition featuring a sculpture by Otto Freundlich who died at Majdanek concentration camp in 1943




Hitler (far right) with Goebbels visiting the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich in 1937




Albert Speer with Adolf Hitler, model for the unbuilt Volkshalle (Berlin Dome)




Alberto Giacommetti, Tall Figure





Francis Bacon, Study for a Crucifixion





Le Corbusier, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France




Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Wallace Harrison, and others, The United Nations Headquarters, New York




Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, The Seagram Building, New York


ART & WORLD WAR II

Degenerate Art Exhibition
Albert Speer
existentialism
Le Corbusier
--The United Nations
Mies Van Der Rohe
--curtain wall



The Opening of the Great German Art Exhibit on film.
This is a soundless amateur color film of the pageantry that accompanied the opening of Hitler's official show of approved German art in 1937.






Friday, November 26, 2010

Expressionist Architecture, The Bauhaus, and International Modernism



Bruno Taut, Glass Pavillion, Cologne, destroyed, Expressionist Architecture





Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, Expressionist Architecture





Walter Gropius, The Fagus Shoe Factory





Lionel Feininger, Cathedral, woodcut from the Bauhaus Manifesto





The Bauhaus Basic Course, Josef Albers with students, 1928






Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Photogram, Bauhaus







Herbert Bayer, design for a news kiosk, Bauhaus






Marcel Breuer, Wassily Chair, Bauhaus









Marianne Brandt, tea set, Bauhaus







Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Electric Table Lamp, Bauhaus





Gunta Stözl, Wall Hanging, Bauhaus







Faculty Apartment for Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus campus, Dessau, photographed in 1927






Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus faculty, Bauhaus Campus, Dessau, Bauhaus






Paul Klee, Ad Parnassum, Bauhaus







Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, proposed glass office building for the Friedrichstrasse, Berlin, International Modernism.






Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, German Pavillion at the 1929 Barcelona Exhibition






Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, International Modernism







Le Corbusier, Unite d'Habitation, Marseilles, International Modernism








Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, Bear Run, PA





ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN BETWEEN THE WARS

Expressionist Architecture
--glass
--Bruno Taut
--Erich Mendelsohn
The Bauhaus
--Walter Gropius
--Johannes Itten
--Lazlo Moholy-Nagy
--Bauhaus Basic Course
International Modernism
--Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
--Le Corbusier
-----The Radiant City
Frank Lloyd Wright


The Original Futurama









Before it became the namesake of a show on Comedy Central, the Futurama was an enormous series of dioramas in the General Motors pavilion at the 1939 - 1940 World's Fair in New York City (Corona Park in Queens).  Designed by Norman Bel Geddes, this huge diorama series was built to be a glimpse 20 years into the future as imagined by General Motors.  This was the most popular exhibit at the fair.  Visitors stood in line for hours to ride the moving chairs with the speakers telling them all about the wonders of things to come in 1960.

The General Motors Pavilion at the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair; note the long lines waiting to get in.




People riding the mobile chairs looking at the dioramas designed by Norman Bel Geddes




Part of Norman Bel Geddes' diorama showing a huge highway intersection flanked by 4 quarter of a mile high skyscrapers in the future, in 1960.


Here is a film about the Futurama produced by General Motors in 1940, To New Horizons. It starts out in black and white, but the Futurama itself is all filmed in Technicolor.






The USA was still going through the Great Depression during the 1939 - 1940 Fair. This vision of a brighter, more spacious, and more hopeful future filled with opportunity thrilled audiences living in the bleak and cramped world of the 1930s. This is the future as imagined by a major car manufacturer with lots of emphasis on roads and transportation. After World War II, the United States and almost all of its major cities would be completely rebuilt to accommodate the automobile. Some of Bel Geddes' design is still praised for being so far-sighted, especially in his extensive use of continuous park space in cities and along river fronts. Other aspects might have been just a little too sweeping. There's no room in any of it for historical preservation or for mass transit.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Architecture and Design Between the Wars: Russia and The Netherlands

Russia: Suprematism and Constructivism



"Then and Now!" anonymous poster




Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, Suprematism





First Suprematist Exhibition in Saint Petersburg, 1915, featuring Malevich's Black Square hanging in the corner.






Kazimir Malevich, White on White, Suprematism





Vladimir Tatlin, Wall Relief, Constructivism (destroyed, photographed in 1921)





Vladimir Tatlin, Proposed Monument to the Third International, model photographed in 1920 (destroyed), Constructivism



A model of Tatlin's proposed Monument on parade for May Day in Saint Petersburg, 1920






Aleksandr Rodchenko, Books!, poster, Constructivism




Aleksandr Rodchenko, cover for LEF magazine, Constructivism





El Lissitzky, PROUN Composition, Constructivism




El Lissitzky, "Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge!" poster, Constructivism




El Lissitzky, proposed speaker's tribune for Lenin, Constructivism






The Netherlands: De Stijl

Theo Van Doesburg, Color Construction, De Stijl





Gerrit Rietveld, Schroder House, Utrecht, The Netherlands, De Stijl





Gerrit Rietveld, Schroder House, interior




Gerrit Rietveld, table and chair for the Schroder House, De Stijl




Piet Mondrian, Red Tree, De Stijl




Piet Mondrian, Pier and Ocean, De Stijl




Piet Mondrian, Red, Yellow, and Blue, De Stijl




Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, DeStijl




ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN BETWEEN THE WARS

Russia

The Russian Revolution
--Lenin
--Anatoly Lunacharsky
Suprematism
--Kazimir Malevich
Constuctivism
--Vladimir Tatlin
--Aleksandr Rodchenko
--El Lissitzky

The Netherlands

De Stijl
--Theo Van Doesburg
--Gerrit Rietveld
--Piet Mondrian


Metropolis
Metropolis was the very first science fiction blockbuster, the direct ancestor of the big budget sci fi epics released almost every summer in the mall cineplexes these days. Directed by Fritz Lang and based on a novel written by his wife, Thea von Harbou, it was released in 1927. The movie shows a huge city in the year 2026. It is a very ambivalent vision of a future where technology creates enormous powers to do great good and great evil, where the elite live in splendid palaces in the sky, while the toiling masses live underground. The machines and the architecture can be amazing to look at, inspired by Sant'Elia's visions of a Futurist city. Those same machines can devour the very people who service them.

Below is Kino Video's trailer for their latest restoration of Metropolis. They now own the rights to it and have been cracking down on YouTube posts from the movie (which continues to have a huge and enthusiastic international cult following). That's alright because you get a good glimpse at most of the really cool parts.




Metropolis was a huge hit with the public across Europe, but it was so expensive to make with its colossal sets, dazzling special effects (all before computer animation and still amazing after 80 years), and casts of thousands, that there was no way to break even let alone make a profit on ticket sales. The movie proved to be so costly that it bankrupted the production company.
It is interesting to see what it does and does not predict. It does predict television (just invented that year in the USA), but it does not predict computers or anything like the internet.
Science fiction writers of the day hated this movie, especially HG Wells, author of War of the Worlds. But some architects loved it. Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, was a fan of this movie. A veteran of the First World War, he shared the movie's ambivalent view of technology.