Art Movements of the Early 20th Century

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja, Assistant

Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Contents
• Arts & Crafts Movement
• Fauvism
• The Machine Aesthetic
• Art Nouveau

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 The Great Exhibition
• The Great Exhibition of the
Works of Industry of all Nations
or The Great Exhibition,
sometimes referred to as the
Crystal Palace Exhibition in
reference to the temporary
structure in which it was held,
was an international exhibition
that took place in Hyde Park,
London, from 1 May to 15
It was the first in a series of World’s Fair
October 1851.
exhibitions of culture and industry that were
to become a popular 19th-century feature.
The Great Exhibition was organized by Henry
Cole and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and
Gotha, the spouse of the reigning monarch,
Queen Victoria.
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 The Crystal Palace
• A special building, nicknamed The Crystal Palace, or "The Great Shalimar” was
built to house the show.
• It was designed by Joseph Paxton with support from structural engineer Charles
Fox, and went from its initial plans of organisation to its grand opening in just nine
months.
• It took the form of a massive glass house 1848 feet (about 563 metres) long by
454 feet (about 138 metres) wide and was constructed from cast-iron-frame
components and glass.
• From the interior, the building's large size was emphasized with the inclusion of
trees and statues, which served to not only add beauty to the spectacle but also to
emphasize man's triumph over nature.
• The Crystal Palace was an enormous success, being considered not only an
architectural marvel, but also an engineering triumph that emphasized the
importance of the Exhibition.
• The building was later moved and re-erected in an enlarged form at Sydenham in
south London, an area that was renamed Crystal Palace. It was eventually
destroyed by fire on 30 November 1936.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
The Arts & Crafts Movement (1850 – 1900)
• An international design movement that originated in
England and flourished between 1880 and 1910, continuing
its influence up to the 1930s. Instigated by the artist and
writer William in the 1860s and inspired by the writings of
John Ruskin, it had its earliest and fullest development in
the British Isles but spread to Europe and North America as
a reaction against the impoverished state of the decorative
arts and the conditions under which they were produced.
• The movement advocated truth to materials and traditional
craftsmanship using simple forms and often medieval,
romantic or folk styles of decoration.
• It also proposed economic and social reform and has been
seen as essentially anti-industrial.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 William Morris
• He was an English textile designer, artist,
writer, and socialist associated with the
English Arts and Crafts Movement.
• In 1856, he became an apprentice to Gothic
revival architect G.E. Street. That same year
he founded the Oxford and Cambridge
Magazine, an outlet for his poetry and a
forum for development of his theories of
hand-craftsmanship in the decorative arts.
• His chief contribution to the arts was as a
designer of repeating patterns for
wallpapers and textiles, many based on a
close observation of nature.
• He was also a major contributor to the
resurgence of traditional textile arts and
methods of production.
William Morris

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Textile designs for furnishings
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Textile designs for furnishings
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Textile designs Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 William de Morgan
• He was an English potter and tile designer.
• A life-long friend of William Morris, he designed tiles,
stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863
to 1872.
• His tiles are often based on medieval designs or Persian
patterns, and he experimented with innovative glazes
and firing techniques.
• Galleons and fish were popular motifs, as were
"fantastical" birds and other animals.
• Many of De Morgan's tile designs were planned to
create intricate patterns when several tiles were laid
together.
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Greene and Greene
• Greene and Greene was an architectural firm established by
brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene.
• Active primarily in California, their bungalow houses and larger-
scale ultimate bungalows are prime exemplars of the American Arts
& Crafts Movement.
• Ultimate bungalow is a term most commonly used to describe very
large and detailed Craftsmen style homes, taking the bungalow
style and interpreting it on a large scale.
• Some of the hallmarks of Greene and Greene's ultimate bungalows
include the use of rich tropical woods such as mahogany, ebony and
teak, and generous use of inlays of wood, metal and mother-of-
pearl.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Thorsen House

Greene & Greene Architecture

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Gamble House
 Greene and Greene
• The structure of the Greene & Greene house is essential not only to
the immense feeling of security that such an overly-supported
structure brings, but also accentuates the importance of the Arts &
Crafts fundamentals in the Greene & Greene style.
• The visual importance of the aesthetic nature of the joints, pegs,
and complex wood-work symbolizes the structure of the house, and
coincides with the principles taught in the Manual Training School
of their youth.
• The structure of the house is externalized, or exploded, rather than
hidden in decoration. Each element of the structure asserts itself.
• This extravagance of support takes its origins from the elaborate
joinery and framing of traditional Japanese architecture.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Greene & Greene Furniture
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 The Crafts Guild & the Aftermath
• The Arts & Crafts movements came of age with the formation of
the guilds and craft societies.
• Commercial concerns in Britain at the turn of the century were
capable of mass-producing the handcrafted country look widely
associated with the movement.
• On an industrial level the main thrust of the Arts and Crafts
movement was formally reorganized in 1915 into the Design and
Industries Association.
• This was established once again to promote co-operation between
public, designers and workmen and under its aegis fine
craftsmanship returned to established commercial firms.
• The ideals and ambitions of Arts & Crafts movement were never
fully realized but have been of immense influence on design in the
twentieth century.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Art Nouveau
• Inspired by the arts and crafts of Japan.
• The hedonists of the Aesthetic Movement worshiping art as a cult
fell eagerly upon Japanese woodcuts , with their simple patterns
and asymmetric outlines, the minimalist grid patterns of room
partitions, the refined detail craftwork and elegant accessories such
as fans and kimonos.
• This new art flourished in the hot-house atmosphere that fostered
Symbolism, a contemporary art movement that hinted Freudian
obsessions through vivid sensuous images.
• In the “new art” the organic curves of nature and erotic female
forms were invoked to avoid back-reference to classical proportion.
• Roses, sunflowers, lilies and peacocks carried iconographic weight,
while calligraphic motifs from Celtic and Arabian patterns suited
allusive, mystical purpose. It was the exotic creatures – dragonflies,
scarab beetles, locusts, lizards – that survived best.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Exotic insects as inspiration

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Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Celtic inspirations
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Ceramic & glassware

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Architecture & furniture

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja, Architecture & interiors
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja, Graphics & posters
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja, Sculpture
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Fauvism
• Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for
"the wild beasts"), a short-lived and loose
group of early twentieth-century Modern
artists whose works emphasized painterly
qualities and strong colour over the
representational or realistic values retained by
Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style
began around 1900 and continued beyond
1910, the movement as such lasted only a few
years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions.
The leaders of the movement were Henri
Matisse and Andre Derain.

Henri Matisse, Portrait of

Madame Matisse Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Fauvism
• The paintings of the Fauves were
characterised by seemingly wild brush work
and strident colours, while their subject
matter had a high degree of simplification
and abstraction.
• Fauvism can be classified as an extreme
development of Van Gogh’s Post
Impressionism fused with the pointillism of
Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters,
in particular Paul Signac.
• Other key influences were Paul Cezanne and
Paul Gauguin, whose employment of areas of
saturated colour—notably in paintings from
Tahiti—strongly influenced Derain's work at
Collioure in 1905.

Henri Matisse, Woman with hat

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Henri Matisse, Les toits de Collioure

Compiled
Self-portrait in studio by André Derain & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 The Machine Aesthetic
• A strong feeling shared by designers, design critics
and manufacturers alike emerged during the initial
years of the 20th century, that the traditional
concept of applying “art” to the surfaces of
manufactured goods had lost its relevance now that
the machine, rather than the hand dominated
production processes.
• The logical alternative explained at the time was to
evolve a simple, rational style which echoed the
values and processes of machine production and
thereby symbolized the new century in all its
technological glory.
• The curves of Art Nouveau gradually faded giving
way to a much simpler, more geometric ‘machine
aesthetic’.
• Functionalism was a great source of inspiration the
Machine Aesthetes. Marcel Breuer’s
cantilevered chair
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Machine Aesthetic Inspirations
• Modernists were stimulated by contemporary painting of the
Cubists Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris, who were seeking out the
essence of objects by breaking them down to their geometric part
and juxtaposing images from several viewpoints on monochrome
canvases.
• The result was architecture with interlocking planes.
• The angular geometric motifs gave designers a dynamic
iconography through which they could proselytize the cult of the
machine.
• The impulse to reduce things to their essentials of standard parts to
permit rapid serial production goods had long been appreciated.
• The new consumerism and developing business life brought an
implicit aesthetic challenge: to create an uncluttered environment
in keeping with modern living.
• The quest for pure, rational form.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Gerrit Rietveld’s
Red-Blue chair

Piet Mondrian’s
Machine Age grid painting
architecture
Le Corbusier’s building
Picasso’s Guitar Player

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Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building in Dessau was a prime
example of the new modern architectural style with its emphatic
grid motif. The glass wall let light into the studios behind it.

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
 Bauhaus, School of Design
• The basic principles behind Bauhaus design focused on
the idea of ‘learning from scratch’.
• This was inspired by the idea – derived from the
principles of interchangeability and standardization in
mass production – that design for industry means
fabrication from basic unit.
• This was combined with Morris-inspired notion ‘truth
to materials’.
• In theory at least Bauhaus design bridged the gap
between craft and industry.
• This was achieved by educating students both in the
principles of basic design and in workshop practice.
Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,
Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012
References
• Costume & Fashion – James Laver
• Survey of Historic Costume, A History of Western Dress –
Phyllis G. Tortora & Keith Eubank
• Fashion in the Western World – Doreen Yarwood
• Design Sourcebook – Penny Sparkle, Felice Hodges, Anne
Stone, Emma Dent.
• Twentieth Century Design – J.M. Woodham
• Objects of Design: Design & Society since 1750 – Adrian
Forty
• Design History: A students’ handbook – H. Conway

Compiled & Prepared by Ms. Jasti Pooja,

Assistant Professor, NIFT, 2012