The Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts and Crafts movement initially developed in England during the latter half of the 19th century. Subsequently this style was taken up by American designers, with somewhat different results. In the United States,

the Arts and Crafts style was also known as Mission style.

This movement, which challenged the tastes of the Victorian era, was inspired by the social reform concerns of thinkers such as Walter Crane and John Ruskin, together with the ideals of reformer and designer, William Morris.   (This link will take you to a less visual site that provides William Morris historical background).

Their notions of good design were linked to their notions of a good society. This was a vision of a society in which the worker was not brutalized by the working conditions found in factories, but rather could take pride in his craftsmanship and skill. The rise of a consumer

class coincided with the rise of manufactured consumer goods. In this period, manufactured goods were often poor in design and quality. Ruskin, Morris, and others proposed that it would

be better for all if individual craftsmanship could be revived-- the worker could then produce beautiful objects that exhibited the result of fine craftsmanship, as opposed to the shoddy products of mass production. Thus the goal was to create design that was... " for the people and by the people, and a source of pleasure to the maker and the user." Workers could produce beautiful objects that would enhance the lives of ordinary people, and at the same time provide decent employment for the craftsman.

Medieval Guilds provided a model for the ideal craft production system. Aesthetic ideas were also borrowed from Medieval European and Islamic sources. Japanese ideas were also incorporated early Arts and Crafts forms. The forms of Arts and Crafts style   were typically rectilinear and angular, with stylized decorative motifs remeniscent of medieval and Islamic design. In addition to William Morris,   Charles Voysey   was another important innovator in this style. One designer of this period, Owen Jones, published a book entitled The Grammar of Ornament, which was a sourcebook of historic decorative design elements, largely taken from medieval and Islamic sources. This work in turn inspired the use of such historic sources by other designers.

However,in time the English Arts and Crafts movement came to stress craftsmanship at the expense of mass market pricing. The result was exquisitely made and decorated pieces that could only be afforded by the very wealthy. Thus the idea of art for the people was lost, and only relatively few craftsman could be employed making these fine pieces. This evolved English Arts and Crafts style came to be known as "Aesthetic Style." It shared some characteristics with the French/Belgian Art Nouveau movement, to be discussed below.

However  in the United States, the Arts and Crafts ideal   of design for the masses was more fully realized, though at the expense of the fine individualized craftsmanship typical of the English style. In New York, Gustav Stickley   was trying to serve a burgeoning market of middle class consumers who wanted affordable, decent looking furniture. By using factory methods to produce basic components, and utilizing craftsmen to finish and assemble, he was able to produce sturdy, serviceable furniture which was sold in vast quantities, and still survives. The rectilinear, simpler American Art

Red House, kent Glassglow school of art Postal savings bank, Vienna

and Crafts forms   came to dominate American architecture, interiors, and furnishings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Today Stickley's furniture is prized by collectors, and the Stickley Company   still exists, producing reproductions of the original Stickley designs.

The term Mission style was also used to describe Arts and Crafts Furniture and design in the United States. The use of this term reflects the influence of traditional furnishings and interiors from the American Southwest, which had many features in common with the earlier British Arts and Crafts forms. Charles and Henry Greene   were important Mission style architects working in California. Southwestern style also incorporated Hispanic elements associated with the early Mission and Spanish architecture, and Native American design. The result was a blending of the arts and crafts rectilinear forms with traditional Spanish colonial architecture and furnishings. Mission Style interiors were often embellished with Native American patterns, or actual Southwestern Native American artifacts such as rugs, pottery, and baskets. The collecting of Southwestern artifacts became very popular in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Art Nouveau

This style, which was more or less concurrent with the Arts and Crafts style, was not at all concerned with the social reform movements of the day. Instead, it addressed the clutter and eclecticism of mid-19th century European taste. Originating in Belgium and France, this movement advocated nature as the true source of all good design. Art Nouveau designers objected to the borrowing of design ideas from the past, and even from other cultures, although the Japanese approach to nature was much admired and emulated.

The characteristics of the style included above all the use of the sinuous curved line, together with asymmetrical arrangement of forms and patterns. The forms from nature most popular with Art Nouveau designers were characterized

by flowing curves-- grasses, lilies, vines, and the like. Other, more unusual natural forms were also used, such as peacock feathers, butterflies, and insects.

Architects and designers who contributed to the development of this style included Victor Horta   , Hector Guimard (Click on Buildings and Subway in TOC on left), and Henry van de Velde. The glass   andjewelry design of Lalique, as well as the stained glass and other designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany   and Emile Galle   (nice video at bottom of page) were important examples of Art Nouveau style.

A distinctive graphic design style developed, which included typography styles as well as a distinctive manner of drawing the female figure. The prints of Aubrey Beardsley   and Alphonse Mucha   are typical of this style.

BAUHAUS MOVEMENT

 Staatliches Bauhaus (help·info), commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term Bauhaus, literally "house of construction"    stood for "School of Building".

The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a 'total' work of art in which all arts, including architecture would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Bauhaus is a German expression meaning house for building. In 1919, the economy in Germany was collapsing after a crushing war. Architect Walter Gropius was appointed to head a new institution that would help rebuild the country and form a new social order. Called the Bauhaus, the Institution called for a new "rational" social housing for the workers. Bauhaus architects rejected "bourgeois" details such as cornices, eaves, and decorative details. They wanted to use principles of Classical architecture in their most pure form: without ornamentation of any kind.

Bauhaus buildings have flat roofs, smooth facades, and cubic shapes. Colors are white, gray, beige, or black. Floor plans are open and furniture is functional. The Bauhaus school disbanded when the Nazis rose to power. Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and other Bauhaus leaders migrated to the United States. The termInternational Style was applied to the American form of Bauhaus architecture.

The Bauhaus Dessau

THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE:

International Style is a term often used to describe Bauhaus architecture in the United States. The name came from the book The International Style by historian and critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson. The book was published in 1932 in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The term is again used in a later book,International Architecture, by Walter Gropius.While German Bauhaus architecture had been concerned with the social aspects of design, America's International Style became a symbolism of Capitalism: The International Style is the favored architecture for office buildings, and is also found in upscale homes built for the rich.

By the mid-twentieth century, many variations of the International Style had evolved. In southern California and the American Southwest, architects adapted the International Style to the warm climate and arid terrain, creating an elegant yet informal style known as Desert Modernism. One of the most famous examples of the International Style is the United Nations Secretariat building, designed by Le Corbusier. The smooth glass-sided slab dominates New York's skyline along the East River. The United Nations Secretariat building was completed in 1952.

3 PRINCIPLES INVOLVED:

- The expression of volume rather than mass.- The emphasis on balance rather than preconceived symmetry.- The expulsion of applied ornament.

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS:

- A radical simplification of form- Rejection of ornament- Adoption of glass, steel, and concrete as preferred materials- Ribbon windows- Flat roofs- Open interior spaces- Acceptance of industrialized mass production.

Le Corbusier's United Nations Secretariat building in New York is a famous example of the International Style.

POST MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Postmodern architecture began as an international style the first examples of which are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture. Postmodernity in architecture is said to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of modernism.

Postmodern architecture has also been described as "neo-eclectic", where reference and ornament have returned to the facade, replacing the aggressively unornamented modern styles. This eclecticism is often combined with the use of non-orthogonal angles and unusual surfaces, most famously in the State Gallery of Stuttgart by James Stirling and the Piazza d'Italia by Charles Moore. The Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh have also been cited as being of postmodern vogue.

The aims of Postmodernism, including solving the problems of Modernism, communicating meanings with ambiguity, and sensitivity for the building’s context, are surprisingly unified for a period of buildings designed by architects who largely never collaborated with each other. The aims do, however, leave room for various implementations as can be illustrated by the diverse buildings created during the movement. The characteristics of postmodernism allow its aim to be expressed in diverse ways. These characteristics include the use of sculptural forms, ornaments,anthropomorphism and materials which perform trompe l'oeil. These physical characteristics are combined with conceptual characteristics of meaning. These characteristics of meaning include pluralism, double coding, flying buttresses and high ceilings, irony and paradox, and contextualism.

Vanna Venturi House - Robert Venturi Portland building, Oregon- Michael Graves, Emery Roth & Sons

Abteiberg Museum- Hans Hollein