Modernism

Rating:
Summary: A stunning portrait of the Modern movement
Review: This is a superlative tour of Modern Architecture and Design through the 20th century. Weston, who has put together some beautiful books on Aalto, Utzon and the Modern House has really outdone himself in this remarkable book. He looks at the overlapping patterns in art and architecture and how they came together to form a movement that overtook the hand-me-down styles of the past.

Appropriately enough he begins with "Roots," a survey of 19th century precedents in Modern Architecture with the focus on the English Arts and Crafts Movement and how it spread throughout Europe and to America, influencing the Vienna Secessionists, the Deutscher Werkbund and Wright's Prairie School. From there he charts the development of a new style in "The Tradition of the New," influenced heavily by painterly movements such as Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. A new abstraction was born that inspired such architectural movements as Futurism, de Stijl and the Bauhaus, which he develops further in "Formulating the Future." He treats the Russian avant-garde separately in "Russia: The Art of Revolution," which gave modern art and architecture a revolutionary fervor and would eventually serve as the basis of the Deconstructivist camp that arose in the 1980's. He then covers the growth of the modern movement in "The International Style," effectively taking the movement up to WWII. He closes with a summary of post-war attitudes in "Triumph, Transformation and Rejection," which saw the fulfillment and eventual disillusionment of modernist ideals.

The book is handsomely illustrated and provides one of the best attempts to interweave art and architecture and its influences on commercial and industrial design. It is a must for anyone looking to gain a better understanding of the impact of Modernism on comtemporary society, illustrating how Modernism shaped so many of the current patterns in design. The narrative flows gracefully, offering a compelling overview of the movement.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning portrait of the Modern movement
Review: This is a superlative tour of Modern Architecture and Design through the 20th century. Weston, who has put together some beautiful books on Aalto, Utzon and the Modern House has really outdone himself in this remarkable book. He looks at the overlapping patterns in art and architecture and how they came together to form a movement that overtook the hand-me-down styles of the past.

Appropriately enough he begins with "Roots," a survey of 19th century precedents in Modern Architecture with the focus on the English Arts and Crafts Movement and how it spread throughout Europe and to America, influencing the Vienna Secessionists, the Deutscher Werkbund and Wright's Prairie School. From there he charts the development of a new style in "The Tradition of the New," influenced heavily by painterly movements such as Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. A new abstraction was born that inspired such architectural movements as Futurism, de Stijl and the Bauhaus, which he develops further in "Formulating the Future." He treats the Russian avant-garde separately in "Russia: The Art of Revolution," which gave modern art and architecture a revolutionary fervor and would eventually serve as the basis of the Deconstructivist camp that arose in the 1980's. He then covers the growth of the modern movement in "The International Style," effectively taking the movement up to WWII. He closes with a summary of post-war attitudes in "Triumph, Transformation and Rejection," which saw the fulfillment and eventual disillusionment of modernist ideals.

The book is handsomely illustrated and provides one of the best attempts to interweave art and architecture and its influences on commercial and industrial design. It is a must for anyone looking to gain a better understanding of the impact of Modernism on comtemporary society, illustrating how Modernism shaped so many of the current patterns in design. The narrative flows gracefully, offering a compelling overview of the movement.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!
Review: We used this book for an art history course at Yale University, on art, architecture, and design from 1890 to 1940. The book is great! Usually I find the survey sort of book - covering something so wide and expansive as MODERNISM - to get bogged down in cliches or neat little epigrams for quick consumption, but there's no cursory cute treatment here. Weston covers a lot - he's great on explaining theories and movements of design etc but also gives appropriate history, politics, and culture. And that's good, because I like to know what Ezra Pound is thinking about modernism, as it happens. It takes you through time and space nicely - painting, architecture, advertisement, furniture, etc - and you don't feel as if you missed out on anything. Plus the illustrations/photographs are beautiful - I spent so much time just in love with the book for that. Not only is it helpful, but the writing is clear and intelligent, sometimes funny, and irreverent if necesssary.