Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T20:27:16.535Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Avant-Garde and Technology: Toward Technological Fundamentalism in Turn-of-the-Century Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Frank Trommler
Frank Trommler
Affiliation:
Department of GermanUniversity of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The avant-garde's fascination with technology around 1900 grew out of several motivations: to shock the antitechnological bourgeois public; to experience a sense of mastery toward the material world, especially with cars, airplanes, and other machines; and to overcome the nineteenth-century separation of art and technology. The article highlights the radical shifts in the perception of technology that correspond with the emerging hands-on encounter with technological objects in homes, cities and at the workplace at the turn of the century. This technological fundamentalism differed sharply from the anxious and symbolically mediated approach to the “materialism” of the machine in the nineteenth century. It was accompanied by a concept of liberation through technological purity which is reflected by the fact that Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Corbusier did not just design functional objects but also made special efforts to accentuate their functionalism as part of the aesthetic experience of modernity. As French and Italian artists, especially the Futurists, incorporated speed, virility, and the experience of the elementary in the metaphoric construction of technology, they even expressed a kinship with those painters and sculptors who shifted their focus to the rediscovery of the “primitive” magic in the art works from Africa and Polynesia

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 397 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Absolut modern sein: zwischen Fahrrad und Fliessband — culture technique in Frankreich, 1889–1937. 1986. Catalogue for the Exhibition of 20.3.–15.5.1986, in Berlin. Berlin: Elefanten Press.Google Scholar
Banham, Reyner. 1960. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1979. The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Baudelaire, Charles Pierre. 1981. “The Modern Public and Photography.” In Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists, edited by Charvet, P. E., 291–98;. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benton, Tim. 1983. “Futurism and the Machine.” In Avant Garde und Industrie, edited by Moss, Stanislaus von and Smeenk, Chris. Delft: Delft University Press.Google Scholar
Briosi, Sandro, and Henk, Hillenaar, eds. 1988. Vitalitè et Contradictions de l'avant-garde: Italie-France, 1909–1924. Paris: Libraireie Josè Corti.Google Scholar
Buddensieg, Tilmann, ed. 1979. Industriekultur: Peter Behrens und die AEG, 1907–1914. Berlin: Mann.Google Scholar
Burke, Edmund. 1958. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. Edited by Boulton, J. T.. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döblin, Alfred. 1963. “Futuristische Worttechnik: Offener Brief an F.T. Marinetti.” In Aufsätze zur Literatur, edited by Muschg, Walter, 9–15. Olten-Freiburg: Walter.Google Scholar
Fijalkowski, Krzysztof. 1987. “Dada and the Machine.” Journal of European Studies 233–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flint, R. W., ed. 1971. Marinetti: Selected Writings. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Fülöp-Miller, René. 1965. The Mind and Face of Bolshevism. New York: Harper Torchbook.Google Scholar
Giedion, Sigfried. 1928. Bauen in Frankreich: Eisen, Eisenbeton. Leipzig: Klink-hardt & Biermann.Google Scholar
Giedion, Sigfried, 1941. Space, Time and Architecture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Giedion, Sigfried, 1948. Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Haltern, Utz. 1971. Die Londoner Weltausstellung von 1851: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der bürgerlich-industriellen Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert. Münster: Aschendorff.Google Scholar
Hiltchcock, Henry-Russel, and Philip Johnson, . 1932. The International Style: Architecture since 1922. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Hofmann, Werner. 1961. The Earthen Paradise: Art in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Braziller.Google Scholar
Hughes, Thomas P. 1989. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Jordy, William H., 1986. “The Return of Mies van der Rohe.” The New Criterion 4 (9):45–56.Google Scholar
Kasson, John F. 1976. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776–1900. New York: Grossman.Google Scholar
Klingender, Francis. 1970. Art and the Industrial Revolution. New York: Schocken.Google Scholar
Kohn, Hans. 1969. “A Turning Point.” Journal of the History of Ideas 30: 283–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunnas, Tarmo. 1985. “Nietzsche und die Technologie.” Text und Kontext 13(2):315–19.Google Scholar
Leed, Eric. 1890 “‘Voice’ and ‘Print’: Master Symbols in the History of Communication.” In The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture, edited by Wooeward, Kathleen, 41–61. Madison, Wis.: Coda.Google Scholar
Loyrette, Henri. 1985. Gustave Eiffel. New York: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Maag, Georg. 1982. Kunst und Industrie im Zeitalter der ersten Weltausstellungen: Synchrone Analyse einer Epochenschwelle. Ph.D.diss., University of Konstanz.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1966. Werke in deri Bänden, 3., edited by Schlechta, Karl. Munich: Hanser.Google Scholar
Olin, Margaret. 1986. “Self-Representation: Resemblance and Convention in Two Nineteenth-Century Theories of Architecture and the Decorative Arts.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 49:376–97f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pevsner, Nikolaus. 1960. Pioneers of Modern Design. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, Helmut, Hans Robert, Jauss and Françoise, Gaillard, eds. 1987. Art social und art industriel: Funktionen der Kunst im Zeitalter des Imperialismus. Munich: Fink.Google Scholar
Rolleston, James. 1989. “The Politics of Quotation: Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project.” PMLA 104: 21.Google Scholar
Saint-Simon, Henry de., and Léon, Halevy. 1975. “The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrial: Dialogue.” In Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825): Selected Writings on Science, Industry and Social Organisation, edited by Taylor, Keith, 179–88. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
The Second Empire: Art in France under Napoleon III. 1978. Philadelphia Museum of Art.Google Scholar
Shattuck, Roger. 1986. “Catching Up with the Avant-Garde.” New York Review of Books, 18 December, 66–74.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1968. “On the Concept and Tragedy of Culture.” In The Conflict in Modern Culture and Other Essays, edited by Peter Etzkorn, K.. New York: Teachers College Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Cyril Stanley. 1970. “Art, Technology, and Science: Notes on Their Historical Interaction.” Technology and Culture 11:493–549;.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sussman, Herbert L. 1968. Victorians and the Machine: The Literary Response to Technology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Joshua. 1968. “Futurism: The Avant-Garde as a Way of Life.” Art News Annual 34:80–87.Google Scholar
Tichi, Cecilia. 1987. Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Trommler, Frank. 1989. “Technik, Avantgarde, Sachlichkeit: Versuch einer historischen Zuordnung.” In Literatur in einer industriellen Kultur, edited by Grossklaus, Götz, and Lämmert, Eberhard 46–71. Stuttgari: Cotta.Google Scholar
Vitz, Paul C., and Arnold B., Glimcher. 1984. Modern Art and Modern Science: The Parallel Analysis of vision. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Weisgerber, Jean, ed. 1984. Les Avant-Gardes Littéraires au XXe Siécle. 2 vols. Budapest: Akademiai.Google Scholar