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August 29, 2008
Modernism's usual commitment is to progress, competition, creativity, technological liberty and the romantic urge to overcome the traditions and styles of the previous generation. In design the technical and social progressivism of those practicing the International Style; in the arts the isms stem from Baudelaire and include Dada and Surrealism. This pace, change, risk, and constant revision of knowledge results in a curious continuity and break, the swerve and the concealed repetition. Modernism attempted to build a better world with the aid of science and technology through rational mastery:
Late Modernism, which is the modernism in Adelaide, is tied to Late Capitalism. It refers to the proliferation of formalist movements, such as Op and Conceptual Art, and the exaggeration of abstract experiments in a Minimalist direction eschewing content. John Cage in music, Norman Foster in architecture, Frank Stella in painting, Clement Greenberg in art theory, Samuel Beckett in literature, and the Pax Americana in politics.
The most pervasive meta-narrative of the modernist is the teleological notion of progress. Art is healthy so long as it advances, so long as it conquers new territory, refines its technique, and breaks through barriers while never capitulating to the base tastes of the philistine masses.
Modernist architects and designers believed that new technology rendered old styles of building obsolete. Le Corbusier, for instance, thought that buildings should function as "machines for living in", analogous to cars, which he saw as machines for traveling in. Just as cars had replaced the horse, so modernist design should reject the old styles and structures inherited from the 19th century. Modernist design of houses, offices and furniture emphasized simplicity and clarity of form, open-plan interiors, and the absence of clutter.
Urban planning's well-documented progressive potential should be understood as being structurally accompanied by a more sinister dark side. The dark side of modernism is the freeway, the brutal architecture and the bleak, windswept public spaces in our cities. The unintended consequences of the modernist ethos of progress (modernization) are the destruction of our cities, death camps, nuclear war and global warming.
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Gary,
JG Ballard's piece in The Guardian, that you linked to above, describes modernism well.
Function defined form, expressed in a pure geometry that the eye could easily grasp in its entirety. Above all, there should be no ornamentation.
It was. But it is hard to live with the concrete brutalism that looks so totalitarian.