Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.

12

Nikolaus Pevsner Pioneers of modern design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius
First published in 1936 by Faber & Faber, London. Original title: Pioneers of the modern movement: From William Morris to Walter Gropius. This paper is based on the second edition published in 1949 by The Museum of Modern Art and renamed: Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius.

This book written by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner is retrospective observation and reflection on how events and design-ideological trends from 1851 to 1914 in Europe and Northern America led to the birth of modern design or modern movement. It consists of seven chapters: 1. Theories of Art from Morris to Gropius 2. From Eighteen-fifty-one to Morris and the Arts and Crafts 3. Eighteen-ninety in Painting 4. Art Nouveau 5. Engineering and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century 6. England, Eighteen-ninety to Nineteen-fourteen 7. The Modern Movement before Nineteen-fourteen

The book starts with a short summary on the theoretic foundation of the time it is portraying. Here we are quickly presented with the agenda of the book: Pevsner establishes the image of the artist and art of the time as removed from the people, not paying attention to the developments occurring in the society. The artist had since the time of the renaissance positioned himself as ...the high priest in a secularized society(Schiller). Art was no longer a matter of handicrafts and serving a divine purpose, but ...now humanity may be his gospel, or beauty, a beauty "identical with truth" (Keats) and finally Pevsner says The artist began to despise utility and the public (Keats: Oh sweet fancy! let her loose; Everything is spoilt by use). He shut himself of from the real life of his time, withdrawing into his sacred circle and creating art for arts, art for the artists sake. Concurrently the public lost understanding of his personal, outwardly useless utterances. The

Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.12

problem of the architecture is manifested by the story of how the British Government offices in Whitehall, London, were a simple copy of Italian renaissance architecture.

Here he launches William Morris as the artistic genius of this time, revolting against this ...complete lack of feeling for the essential unity of architecture. Morris points to the problem of the artist being out of touch with everyday life, and he asks the question which Pevsner describes as the fate of art in the 20th century: What business do we have with art unless we all can share it? The other part of Morris philosophy is art as a result of the pleasure of labour. Real art must be
"made

by the people and for the people, as a happiness for the maker and the user.'' Here he

pinpoints the other problem of art and aesthetics of his century: The inseparability of art from politics, morality and religion. The politics of the industrial age had degraded the meaning and value of labour and therefore degraded the quality of art. Morris however, found no solution to this problem but denying the abilities of the machine, thus resulting in his own production to be limited and exclusive.

Now Pevsner has prepared the scene for the puzzle he is going to solve for us. When and how did the industry and the artist become a harmonic team, taking art and aesthetics from being either meaningless reproduction or a privilege for the wealthy to becoming a benefit for the regular person? In the rest of the chapter he displays his main characters through the acts of expressionist painting, Art Noveau and the development of steel, ready to take on this puzzle.

The following six chapters are first explaining why the result of mechanical produced art and aesthetics of the 19th centure where abominable, climaxing at the The great exhibition in 1851. With its display of art, exhibited in the very symbol of failure of aesthetics and architecture: The Crystal Palace. Pevsner explains this wrongdoing so: That the evolvement of the industrial age and the increasing population had happened at a furious pace. It happened so fast that the knowledges of art were not able to keep up and therefor vanished. Morris shows a return to appreciation of art as a skill. A key observation Pevsner makes is that the industrial arts answer to its new powers was to overdo everything, whilst Morris answer was to simplify, proposing that by stripping down a piece of art to its essence of purpose you could really make it beautiful.

Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.12

Further on Pevsner describes how painters were the first to search for a new meaning in art. Painters were also the first ones who were directly challenged by technology and the invention of the camera. Through a short period in the 1890s we see how a certain group of painters like Cezanne, Gaugin, Van Gogh and Munch discards the superficial aesthetics of impressionism and develops the style of expressionism. Pevsner describes a transformation process where the complexity in the paintings are reduced to a more simple and primitive approach where leaving out the unnecessary details in their paintings enables them to tell a deeper story. We can already see the contours of the Modernist argument Less is more coming in to focus.

Having showed how Morris and the painters pointed out the way to go for art, Pevsner now has to tell how these principles became valid for modern design. This is done through a little detour in the style of Art Noveau, the teenage face of modern style. Here we move to the continent and America. Henry van de Velda, Horta and Louis Sullivan are the main characters in this chapter. Pevsner describes Art Noveau as the continents answer to Arts and Crafts. Once more the artists devotion and passion was focused in the work of decorating, but Pevsner sees Art Noveau as a blind alley. In opposition to Arts and Crafts the style has no social and political agenda, so it is essentially art for arts sake: It feeds on nothing else but itself. This causes the style to disappear. However, Art Noveau did what Arts and Crafts did not, by declining any form of imitation and inspiration, forcing its followers to look forward. In addition it showed a clear admiration for iron as a decorative material, and giving new possibilities of intricacy in its decoration frenzy. This makes way for the structural part of the book.

In this chapter the engineers make their entry, and France plays its role as structural innovators. The evolution from cast-iron to steel gave new structural opportunities. The engineers are the first ones who see the potential of steel in the evolution of making bridges. It culminates in the Eiffel tower showing the superior construction qualities of steel, and then steel joins forces with concrete to become ferro concrete. The ultimate material for the modern design is conceived.

Now we head back to England which, as Pevsner says, ...due to reasons of national character has refrained from Art Noveau but had their own small development to modern design through the architecture of Voysey and at last in Mackintosh. Pevsner hails Mackintosh as the architect shifting focus from ornamentation and composition to the be more concerned with space. When the works
3

Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.12

of Mackintosh are displayed in Europe, stones begin to roll. The continent shakes off the Art Noveau decadence and gets real. First Auguste Perret follows up the spatial qualities Mackintosh had demonstrated in his buildings, then Tony Garnier comes along with his drawings of the Industrial City. Frank Lloyd Wright brings a whole new level to the sense of three-dimensional composition. Then Adolf Loos gives ornament the final blow and demonstrates the importance of function in the glorification of the plumber. Then we come to the end: Where Germany, first with Peter Behrens and finally, the artistic genius of modern design, Walter Gropius, manages to unite industry with good design and aesthetics. Through their ...care and thought on improvements in the design of machine-made industrial products they create architecture that Pevsner sums up like this:

While in the thirteenth century all lines, functional though they were, served the one artistic purpose of pointing heavenwards to a goal beyond this world, and walls were made translucent to carry the transcendental magic of saintly figures rendered in colored glass, the glass walls are now clear and without mystery, the steel frame is hard, and its expression discourages all other-worldly speculation. It is the creative energy of this world in which we live and work and which we want to master, a world of science and technique, of speed and-danger, of hard struggles and no personal security, that is glorified in Gropius' architecture.

This grand finale tells us how modern design was how art and architecture managed to respond to the possibilites and the challenges of the 20th century. The pragmatic language, nesting of arguments and well composed selection of characters and examples makes the book seemingly easy to agree with. It feels like an story that is objectively told, where everything fits remarkably well together. But this is also what raises some questions: What was Pevsners purpose of this neat history lesson? Is history so logical and straightforward as Pevsner presents it? What about the connections between the eras in the books? How much did they influence each other? What about the conclusions? Is Morris the father of the modern movement? Why does the book stop in 1914?

The first help to understand and to get a critical glanze at this book is to look at who Pevsner himself was within the history of architecture.

Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.12

Nikolaus Pevsner was born in 1902 in Leipzig. His parents were both Jewish-Russian, but Pevsner converted to Christianity already in 1920. He learned the subject of art history at several universities in German cities including Munich, Berlin and Frankfurt. Pevsner wrote his final dissertation in 1924 with Wilhelm Pinder as a mentor. Being of Jewish descent, Pevsner was forced to leave Germany for Britain in 1933 as Hitler rose to power. Pevsner, having visited Britain several times, used his contacts to get a job at Birmingham University. He released Pioneers of the modern movement based on research he had done before moving to Britain. After first having a hard time settling down in Britain, he gained success as a contributor in arts and architectural theory, especially after WWII. He wrote for Architectural Review and released several critically acclaimed books and from 1946 to 1977 gave 78 talks on art and architecture for the BBC. His Buildings of England-series, the first volume published in 1951, made him a known person for the critical masses in England.

As already mentioned, Pevsner had trouble fitting in when he came to Britain in 1933. He early discovered that art history, and especially architectural history, was not a highly regarded profession there. Being a faithful modernist also gave him a hard time in a traditionally oriented nation. Modernism was seen as some ill-tempered stuff happening on the continent. Pevsners ambition of connecting William Morris to Walter Gropius and giving Britain the profile as one of the founding nations of the modern movement could certainly be a personal motive.

Pevsner was also in many aspects a romantic nationalist, probably influenced by his early mentor Pinder. Pevsners German colleagues disliked Pevsner dedicating his Academies of Art (1940) to Pinder, as Pinder was a man sympathetic to parts of the Nazi movement and had even advised the Nazis on what pieces of art they should loot during the war. Pinder had some theories of the generational idea of art. This methodology suggested that art could be understood as the interaction between older and younger generations of artists within a region. Pinder saw these regional styles as driven by the artistic genius. These regions again could influence other regions pursuing new ways of art. A similar methodology is used in Pioneers of modern design, though in a more international perspective (Pinder focused almost exclusively on German art). One can say that Pevsner gives nations different roles of developing different areas of art and architecture in the book, taking the relay baton from each other and pushing forward to the development of the modern design. That the starting nation is Britain and the final nation is Germany is probably no
5

Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.12

coincidence. In addition, Pevsner expressed socially oriented thoughts on politics, and was maybe just as much a proclaimer of art for the people, by the people as Morris was. And Pevsner probably saw modernism as the answer to giving people access to aesthetically pleasing art and architecture.

Now that we have Pevsners personal angle on the subject matter, it could also be interesting to take a look at some characters not portrayed in the book. Ebenezer Howard, for example, was a man focusing on the same social problems as Morris, but was approaching the problem as a city-planner and structurizer of the society. His proposal in Garden cities of tomorrow (1898) had influence in both America and continental Europe. Howard however, was no artist. This is probably why he is not mentioned in Pioneers, as Pevsners focus was more on the form of modern design. Still, I would argue that Howard dealt just as much with an architectural response to the problems of the industrial age. This is something that strikes me as puzzling in Pioneers: The book only limits itself to stimulation from arts, architecture and writing of this period. Personally, I think that aspects like politics, economy and guys like Howard had just as much an influence on modern design as the people dealing with just aesthetics.

One of the other issues of the book, is Pevsner conveniently starting and stopping the different style-periods in his book at dates that make his story seem more flawless. This is most evident in the chapter on paintings. Here he only focuses on the 1890s. Meanwhile, at the start of the 20th century new potent painters emerged. Artists like Picasso and Braque challenged the contemporary painting scene. By starting to paint in the style we today define as cubist painting, a more complex way of rendering objects and a radical new expression was seen. Just as much as expressionism was the perfect comparison to the clear and not to conflicted stage modern design had arrived at before WWI, cubism in paintings was a good pointer on how modern design evolved in to a more complex web of different styles, philosophies and formal discussions. Pevsner has chosen to leave this out.

Cubism leads to another interesting aspect of historical events at this time; The futurist movement in Russia and Italy. In Italy, futurism emerged in 1909 proclaimed in Futurist Manifesto by the writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. In architecture, Antonio Sant'Elia drew La Citt Nuova (The New City) from 1912 to 1914. This project was never built, but as architecture I would say it is just as modern as the works displayed in the book by Gropius, not least in comparison to the British
6

Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.12

architects Voysey and Mackintosh who are given a lot of credit for preparing the scene for Gropius. In terms of radicalism and boldness it went even further than Gropius. The project was just as much focusing on how the future generation could live with the new pace and energy in the modern society, as it was an aesthetic approach to architecture, which is Pevsners main focus. In Russia futurism was just as much embraced and started around 1912. Here it mainly limited itself to art and literature, focusing on the thought of how modern society should be, not contributing in a direct sense to the formal aspects of Modernist architecture. This might be the reason why Pevsner does not include them in his book, but this is also the critique Pevnser receives from his protege Banham in the book Theory and design in the first machine age (1960). Focusing just on the formal aspects excludes very significant material contributing to the start of modern design. This leads me to question the portrait of Morris as the father of the modern movement. I think Pevsner is right about Morris being a turning point for the aesthetic thinking of the 19th century, but to say he was the only influence to the modernists is a bold statement.

Just as the painting period, how Pevsner describes the time-period of the book is also something to question. It stops in 1914, having gone from Morris to Gropius as the two artistic geniuses of their respective times. But just as painting in the start of the 20th century gets more complex and breaks off in to different directions, modern design and architecture also starts to break into several directions and meanings, for example De Stijl in Holland and the already mentioned Futurism evolving into constructivism in Russia. One can understand that for the formal language of modernism, perhaps the time of the pioneers was ended by 1914. But I would argue, that in the whole equation of modern design, the pioneering time was far from over.

Pevsner writes an compelling and concise book on some of the reasons modern designs emerges and why this is a valid aesthetical answer to the 20th century. The book is enjoyably well written and displays a well edited and broad specter, describing many important characters that shaped modern design. The book has a clear agenda, but still makes for an impressive reading experience. Pevsners take on historical events is interesting but, as always with history: If you want the whole picture, read more books.

Tomas Aassved Hjort - 20110803 09.01.12

References: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/0747936053102995 http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/pevsnern.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaus_Pevsner http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/pinderw.html http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/3/268.full http://newhumanist.org.uk/962/design-for-living http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Stijl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism