the turn of the century and after ten years of creating and repeating classes Fundamentals of Design, I thought about putting some of them in writing. I started this that I bring today on its fanciful origins, and I did not write more. It is seen that I wrote in one sitting (like who gives a class) and that poverty re-read and view literary or pedagogical tone, I was wanting to continue. The class is a different genre of writing. Closer to the oratory, comedy and performing arts to the test. And although they may be useful to those who want to review what I like to have in class or who can not attend them, serve as the fact hang on this blog as a witness difference.
Important dates
There are some dates in the history of mankind that are associated with major events or major changes in life history of men. Those dates are significant as major milestones of the history or even a road curves identified in which it changes direction. For example, the date of 1453, the year Constantinople fell to the Turks, or 1492, just as the English reconquest of the peninsula and discovered America. One of the most significant dates in history, as we shall see in this course-is 1914 , When it began the First World War. Of course, not all dates are equally significant for all men: the year in which Mohammed was born almost indifferent to us Christians (who mostly do not even know), or the year when Italy was unified as a single state we tend to ignore the English, while the Italians would be indifferent to the very marked 1898 date that the loss of Cuba and the Philippines ended English colonial rule began in 1492. 1851 could be a date not significant for other professionals, but certainly not for designers, as most historians The modern design are often chosen as the starting point of his books (1). 1851 is our date of origin and agree that we learn the first lesson, so I have put as a title.
The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations
Indeed, 1851 is the year of the First World Objects Exhibition Industry held in Hyde Park in London (the exact title of the first "expo" was Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations) whose promoter was Prince Albert. Carefully weighed the words of its title: the first, " Exhibition", invokes market, fair exchange. In the system of craft production for sale of objects is linked to its production: the objects are usually purchased from the producer himself in the same place in which they occur, this is, in his workshop. The fair, however, both the object away from its producer: the objects roaming the world looking for a buyer outside the place where born, or at least only tied to the nation they were made, as reads the last word in the title of the first expo. The nineteenth century is the century of nationalism, and objects, in addition to carrying inserts the name of the craftsman who made them or the particular city where they saw the light, bear the stamp of a nation, famous "made in ..." in which the consumer was set more than anything else.
man objects
Exhibition and nation are two important words in that title, but the word more weight is without a doubt, Industry. Not only for designers, but in this case for all humanity, the nineteenth century has been defined as the century of industrialization of the world, that is, the century in which the world has changed permanently the way to make objects that men live with. Think for a moment the role of objects in our lives: men are animals who live with objects and the history of humanity, a After missing men of succeeding generations is the history of the objects with which we lived, from the Neolithic to the scooter ax latest model (2). The vast majority of animals that inhabit the earth live without objects (that are happy and free them) and only a few, like birds or their homes are Abkhaz: nests or hives of objects whose character we have always been fascinated men (3). The case of the snail is even more surprising because it is sheltered home and carrying it around is like a discharge from his body. The idea that an object is as a discharge characteristic of the animal or man is very poetic (4) and may include not only objects that you do but also to those that you buy. The famous words of Ortega y Gasset "I am myself and my circumstances", could well be understood ocmo "I am myself and my objects" as extensions of my body.
objects, the personal and the clone
make objects or people are people, that is, they are always "personal" bear the stamp of the personal. The industrial production of objects change this perception, however: the power industry is to do exactly the same infinite number of objects from each other. The industry is a human invention to lower the cost of objects and allow all men can have objects that create necessary for its ease or company, but what is all this is that objects, when multiplied indefinitely (the clone) are independent and unrelated to us (depersonalized). I have no idea who made the shirt I'm wearing, so that it bears not only connects me with his producer, if it also discovered that the same shirt I'm wearing the other person also has this very room , then I can hardly see it as a personal item. Only when you have very worn, very well off my body (even distorted), perhaps marked by initials sewn by hand, etc., Then this shirt do not know who did that was equal to other shirts will begin to be "my" shirt and live in harmony with it, be part of me. This is very important to understand.
After reading the novel Brave New World of Aldous Huxley, and the cloning of Dolly the sheep in the last decade of the twentieth century, we are better able to understand what the more sensitive visitors to the Expo in London in 1851 could feel there.
The Crystal Palace
But to secure and retain ideas better in our memory the events and feelings of that time we will recreate some images and characters that historic moment. Exhibition to host the thought in a single large building was entrusted to a gardener named Joseph Paxton ...
... who had specialized in the construction of greenhouses (5). The building was designed and built in nine days in five months as a very modern and industrial process ...,
... based on thousands of prefabricated parts and serials, the building itself became the best symbol or representation of the spirit of the Expo.
As if that were not enough, advances in over a hundred years to ecological spirit of our time in respect to trees, the building's design allowed the inclusion of some trees in the park without having to cut them down.
an anecdote. We started to see images of the outside through engravings and photographs (photography was invented by Niepce and Daguerre between 1827 and 1830, also these are historical dates for the world of images and accurate and clonal reproduction of the images. ..- but in 1851 was not yet widespread the invention so that there are a few photos of the building are valuable).
see two images inside the vacuum once removed Expo:
And before going to the Expo itself with all the contents and suggestions that implies, we track the life of the building itself, which, as was planned at the time of its construction, was dismantled in 1852 a few months after I finished the show in the fall of 1851.
prefabricated Given the same reconstructed in the same year in Sydenham Hill with some variations pretty criticized and greenhouse use
Finally, 1 December 1936, a fire started in a dry reeds finally ended with the building
Right in Nazi Germany and regression to modernity was widespread throughout Europe, the disappearance of the building that had been source and symbol of the same date was taken as another significant (6).
The Museum of London located in the Barbican district, near the church of San Pablo, can be a model of Crystal Palace and South London area still remains a district called Crystal Palace to commemorate the famous building.
The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition: A stark contrast
But after seeing how modern the building was designed by gardener Joseph Paxton, accommodating even for industrial assembly and disassembly, we already have images of the Great Exhibition, but not without warning before the great contrast that we appreciate entered the modern and the archaic building assemblies decorative and environmental.
colored engravings are Owen Jones (who had participated in the very interior of the Crystal Palace including metal painting thereof) that carry more weight than black and white photo ...
... the tremendous clash between two worlds so radically different: the industrial building and the traditional decor.
However, apart from the presentation more or less decorative and archaic, it must be remembered that the purpose of the exhibition was to show the world the new items produced by the industry. " The Victoria & Albert Museum in London still characterizes many of the objects there exhibited,
... and as to the images of the building and the atmosphere of the exhibition was clear the two different worlds to which they belonged, to objects we are assailed by some fundamental confusion or doubt: such bill as archaic objects "are made however in series by industrial processes to lower costs and extend its use to wider social strata?
The answer is yes, and awareness of this contradiction is precisely the origin of modern design history.
responses Ruskin and Cole
One of the people who were aware of this contradiction and that the said with a deep sense of unease was the writer, thinker and humanist, John Ruskin, whom we see in the image below to scowl (7)
Ruskin's personality and his career IP is quite complex. As an introduction to knowledge can be said that Ruskin was a sworn enemy of the industry and social consequences that the industry had brought his country, and that the products of the Exhibition of 1851 sees nothing but falsehood in that whole series of ornaments machine-made and dehumanized all those objects which he calls the derogatory label of "hardware."
A character who is also aware that things are not going well or are mismatched is Henry Cole (1808-1882). Cole is a far less influential than Ruskin (I can not even provide a picture of him) but then says things seem much clearer in relation to the design theme. "Cole is firmly convinced that the low level of current production is due to the separation between art and industry, hence they can improve things by channeling the work of artists to the" industrial design "(8). In the words of Cole: "In the statement makes clear the absence of any ornamental design principle: it is as if the applied arts from across Europe were deeply demoralized. " Let us again
keywords: art, industry, decoration and applied arts. Are the key words in the history of modern design, the words you have to understand it to become a full designer of our time. Do not come to understand fully in this first lesson, much less, but it's time to make a brief presentation.
The word art
First, it is necessary to know all the meanings of the word art have, not only now but throughout history. Nothing better than going to a good dictionary use of English as the Maria Moliner to realize how wide is this concept and how confusing it can be said to dry the word art. To guide us in the vast world of art is almost always necessary to give surnames: gear, major arts, magic, abstract art, arts birlibirloque, etc. etc. the word art usually refers to the human ability to do things and do them well, so that the products are finally understood art as opposed to the things of nature. But from the beginning not only doing things art but also to concepts or ideas. So the arts can be divided roughly into liberal arts, which are working with ideas and concepts and visual arts, in which things are done, but other hard to classify in one or another as "martial arts" ("body art? sport?). The Sophist
Hippasus Elis, a contemporary of Socrates, made it clear that the were seven liberal arts: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy (9). He let his art best practiced and is considered the founder, "The Art of Memory", and of course, also left the Poetics and Literature and all the performing arts (forgive him that the call for us to leave "Seventh art" because it had not been invented yet.)
The historical development of the arts Nor has never been entirely clear. In principle applies, as does Felix de Azua (10), the ancient name of the arts is to crafts or crafts, which were grouped in guilds according to their objects or materials production, and thus unions of jewelry, sculpture, wax, tailoring and a hundred other uses. It is from the Renaissance (s. XIV-XV) when three of these arts, architecture, painting and sculpture seem to rise above the others claim the status liberal arts with the specific title of "major arts ", condemning the other to contempt called "minor arts " or simply, crafts. As our interest is clear that in the nineteenth century architects, painters and sculptors were the "artists", while other artists were artists and craftsmen under (11). We now understand better the proposal of Henry Cole in the sense that out of the demoralization which was the industrial production of objects, as could be seen at the Exhibition of 1851 - the artists (ie, architects, painters and sculptors) should deal with the production of everyday items produced in the industry chain.
However, the attempt or the suggestion that artists fall from the clouds where they installed art for art, and dealing with the beauty of my work table or the cup that I drink water, it is precisely the origin modern history of design. The merger of the artists with "crafts" will result in a pedagogical movement that will spread through Europe with the name of Arts & Crafts or, translated into English, Arts and Crafts . In countries where the Royal Academy of Fine Arts were strong, like France or Spain School of Arts and Crafts will have a secondary role in respect to them, but in Anglo-Saxon countries and Central European School of Arts and Trades (as we shall see especially in Vienna and in the case of Weimar) are of vital importance.
The Arts and Crafts
The first artist to implement the idea of \u200b\u200breuniting the arts with crafts was a disciple of John Ruskin called William Morris (1834-1896)
In the famous house built in 1859, Red House (12) ...
... founded a company together with other artists to produce artistic partners, handmade carpets, fabrics, wallpaper to paper, furniture, stained glass, bookbinding, etc.. In 1865 the company moved to London at the store that you see in the image.
handmade products not surprise us too much although they announced the two major phases of modern design: an initial advertising creative freedom and the art nouveau and modernism, and a trend of simplification in forms that is underway in more than fifty years it will be understood modernity as a radical simplification and geometric forms.
Morris's work was not limited to the production of art objects more or less craft manufacturing interesting but reached the theoretical yield (13 and social work. In line with the thinking of Ruskin, Morris defined art "as the way in which man expresses the joy of his work" (defined we can add to those already pointed) and architecture as "the set of modifications and alterations made in the earth's surface in order to meet human needs, excepting only the pure wilderness." The first is no less a definition somewhat naive or willful, but the second, however, does have a wide impact: the whole environment is man-made architecture and not only those notable buildings of the city as previously thought then. All the human environment is likely therefore to be designed and be designed to improve human life on earth. And that is the great challenge of the new designers, new craftsmen-artists.
A beautiful road but end
But the proposal for Cole, Riskin and Morris does not resolve the contradiction in the Exhibition of 1851, or if you will, the resolve in a crude and unrealistic, that is, denying industry. Artisans artists remade the world of shapes of objects because a manual skill will join imaginative and thoughtful creativity, but their products can hardly compete on price with the industry. With the movement of the Arts and Crafts began a period of sixty years (until the other significant date we have noted, 1914) in which, on the one hand, creativity in the world of objects is multiplied and richer than ever, while the other, we have the guilty conscience that the solution to the problem is incomplete because the progress of the industry is unstoppable and eventually will have to agree with her.
We have said and repeat that the story of contemporary design starts in 1851, but now we can understand what makes a somewhat eccentric: turning the imagination and enthusiasm in the production of beautiful objects, but from a craft process, and denying Cloning (we would say now), or, re-creating a link between the man and his objects.
The great merit of the Arts and Crafts was clearing a lack of creativity in the objects useful and creative interests extend to each and every one of the objects that surround human life (definition of Morris). This was a splendid time in the decorative arts to be studied in the following lessons (Art Nouveau, Jugendstilj, Secession, Modernism, etc.), But a time as contradictory as that of the exhibition from which it arose and that his days while the industry's progress was unstoppable socially and economically.
Notes (1) The first book to be recommended on the origins of modern design is written by Nikolaus Pevsner in the thirties with the title Pioneers of Modern Design , published in Castilian by Ediciones Infinito.
(2) The System of Objects, Jean Baudrillard was my first introductory book to reflect on the relationship of men with their objects. We recommended it in the course of Aesthetics at the School of Architecture of Barcelona, \u200b\u200baround 1972.
(3) Gerald Durrell, author of Encounters with Animals published in Alianza Editorial, devotes a chapter to "Animal Architects". In most studies of ethology that I have in my library, Lorenz, Tinbergen and Barnett, chapter I have not found any to speak of the relationship between animals and objects, but surely someone will have studied, I say.
(4) My uncle Luis Diez del Corral once told me that his writings were just as their secretions. Be Wise See my article in The Altarpiece Ambasaguas of La Rioja, Logroño 2000.
(5) The Life of Joseph Paxton and the vicissitudes of the construction of the Crystal Palace I have been always at hand thanks to a student trip to London in 1975 bought the cute little book casually Joseph Paxton and the Crystal Palace, biografy story by Josephine Kamm , ed. Methuen & CO. LTD. Anyway, the editorial in its collection Phaidon Architecture in Detail published in 1994, the Crystal Palace, with texts by John McKean, who is the source of most of the illustrations in this lesson
(6) The day after the fire, the famous art and architecture critic Siegfried Giedion wrote: "The Possibilities dormant in the modern civilization created We Have Have Never Been So Since Clearly express. If STI Reached Our cultur romantic apotheosis as modernism in 1851, STI obituary, as Modernism, WAS cry in 1936).
(7) is a fragment of a photo that appears by the arm of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, p. 105, Fifty Years of Victorian London, Stella Margetson , ed Macdonald, London.
(8) History of Modern Architecture, Leonardo Benevolent , Chapter VI, 2
(9) See The Art of Memory of Frances A. Yates, ed Taurus, Madrid 1974, p. 71.
(10) Dictionary of Arts, Felix de Azua , Metro ed. Barcelona 1995, p. 48
(11) On the word "artist" I can not recommend reading the amazing story of Felix de Azua he does in that Dictionary of Art. Although the student does not understand at all, do not put it down.
(12) In the series Architecture in Detail is also edited a volume on the Red House with all details of decoration made by Morris and his migos.
(13) In Castilian know the anthology of writings by William Morris, collected under the title Industrial Art and Society, published by Fernando Torres, editor , Valencia 1977.
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