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Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America
In this ambitious book, Terry Smith chronicles the modernist revolution in American art and design between the world wars—from its origins in the new industrial age of mass production, automation, and corporate culture to its powerful and transforming effects on the way Americans came to see themselves and their world. From Ford Motor's first assembly line in 1913 to the New York World's Fair of 1939, Smith traces the evolution of visual imagery in the first half of America's century of progress.
528 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1993
28 people want to read
About the author
Terry Smith
22 books19 followersAustralian art historian, art critic and artist who currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, New York and Sydney.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 31, 2014
A. Synopsis: This book explores the visual imagery during the 2nd industrial revolution, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s (mass manufacturing and consumption). A new imagery of modernity evolved from the shift from entrepreneurial to monopoly capitalism. Three images constantly occurred (1) industry and workers (River Rouge and assembly line workers), (2) Cities and crowds (the vertical city and the crowd on the pavement--normally Broadway or Wall Street), (3) Products and consumers (the stylized, shiny product and the admiring consumer--ex. Front cover).
B. The new visions of Ford: Modernity (Fordism) and Modernism (aesthetic movement) intersects (1910-20s)
1. Fordism (Highland Park and River Rouge): Revisuilazations of machines and labor were at the core of the first, full-scale system of mass production. This new vision included the spatial organization of work, surveillance, architecture, advertising, photography, and painting.
2. Albert Kahn and functionalism: Kahn’s architecture (Ford plants) dominated American architecture. His inventiveness was typical of 20th century modernity. He was committed to the functional--the firms output transforms design of the architecture. Kahn transformed the needs of mass production into the design of architecture.
3. Charles Sheller helps to make visible the Fordist modernity: His photographs and paintings represented art and industry. He was concerned with precision, materiality, and metal (engineering realism). His American Landscape paintings of the Ford plant are a view of the world in which everything has been created by man. A new natural order is proclaimed.
C. Attempts at consensus of visions of modernity in the 1930s (Opposing views emerge--Rivera)
1. The shaping of seeing: The attempts at consensus try to govern or control the social gaze. Time (modernizes information distribution) and Fortune (sells modernized business a new set of representations of itself) magazines held the power to shape (through advertisement) the way people saw modernization and the products they demanded from it.
2. Diego Rivera and Detroit Industry: These were Social Realism paintings and portrayed a different view from Modernism (unity, formality). Rivera depicts the multiplicity of life, the right for all to satisfying experiences at work and leisure, a focus on the workers rather than the machines. Humanity as victims of the machine. Thus, Sheeler and Rivera represent two opposing orders.
3. Frida Kahlo painted the marginalized world of women workers, victims of modernity. Also Mexican. Both embodied resistance from outside of the US.
4. What were the roles of dissent within America in the 1930s? Examination of the responses of artists to their new relationships with government agencies. Photographers like Lewin Hine who worked under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration. Hine focuses on the workers themselves (buildings are not built by themselves). Stryker takes detailed, personal pictures of poverty in America.
5. Official images. Government agencies called on photographers to publicize the positive effects of their reform programs. Diversity, individualism is prevalent yet it somehow shared a common thread of being American. Life magazine shows positive pictures of modernity.
D. Examination of the overtly modern imagery in the 1930s (streamlining, simplistic, futuristic)
1. The industrial designer: There was a shift to Art Deco in the 1920s (streamlined trains, autos, to home furnishings). Industrial designers were employed in the late 1920s to begin stylizing machines and products.
2. Two agencies were very influential in the generation of the visual imagery of modernity. 2 opposing views.
a) Museum of Modern Art in NY: enormous impact on architectural style and the invention of the International Style. High cultural modernism.
b) New York World’s Fair in 1939: The future is seen as a great consuming spectacle. The result of Fordism--true mass consumption. Low cultural consumption
E. Modernity becomes normal and is in place by WWII.
B. The new visions of Ford: Modernity (Fordism) and Modernism (aesthetic movement) intersects (1910-20s)
1. Fordism (Highland Park and River Rouge): Revisuilazations of machines and labor were at the core of the first, full-scale system of mass production. This new vision included the spatial organization of work, surveillance, architecture, advertising, photography, and painting.
2. Albert Kahn and functionalism: Kahn’s architecture (Ford plants) dominated American architecture. His inventiveness was typical of 20th century modernity. He was committed to the functional--the firms output transforms design of the architecture. Kahn transformed the needs of mass production into the design of architecture.
3. Charles Sheller helps to make visible the Fordist modernity: His photographs and paintings represented art and industry. He was concerned with precision, materiality, and metal (engineering realism). His American Landscape paintings of the Ford plant are a view of the world in which everything has been created by man. A new natural order is proclaimed.
C. Attempts at consensus of visions of modernity in the 1930s (Opposing views emerge--Rivera)
1. The shaping of seeing: The attempts at consensus try to govern or control the social gaze. Time (modernizes information distribution) and Fortune (sells modernized business a new set of representations of itself) magazines held the power to shape (through advertisement) the way people saw modernization and the products they demanded from it.
2. Diego Rivera and Detroit Industry: These were Social Realism paintings and portrayed a different view from Modernism (unity, formality). Rivera depicts the multiplicity of life, the right for all to satisfying experiences at work and leisure, a focus on the workers rather than the machines. Humanity as victims of the machine. Thus, Sheeler and Rivera represent two opposing orders.
3. Frida Kahlo painted the marginalized world of women workers, victims of modernity. Also Mexican. Both embodied resistance from outside of the US.
4. What were the roles of dissent within America in the 1930s? Examination of the responses of artists to their new relationships with government agencies. Photographers like Lewin Hine who worked under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration. Hine focuses on the workers themselves (buildings are not built by themselves). Stryker takes detailed, personal pictures of poverty in America.
5. Official images. Government agencies called on photographers to publicize the positive effects of their reform programs. Diversity, individualism is prevalent yet it somehow shared a common thread of being American. Life magazine shows positive pictures of modernity.
D. Examination of the overtly modern imagery in the 1930s (streamlining, simplistic, futuristic)
1. The industrial designer: There was a shift to Art Deco in the 1920s (streamlined trains, autos, to home furnishings). Industrial designers were employed in the late 1920s to begin stylizing machines and products.
2. Two agencies were very influential in the generation of the visual imagery of modernity. 2 opposing views.
a) Museum of Modern Art in NY: enormous impact on architectural style and the invention of the International Style. High cultural modernism.
b) New York World’s Fair in 1939: The future is seen as a great consuming spectacle. The result of Fordism--true mass consumption. Low cultural consumption
E. Modernity becomes normal and is in place by WWII.
September 21, 2013
In his book, Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America, Terry Smith illustrates the role of visual imagery during the 1920s and 1930s, which he claimed drastically changed the way Americans viewed the world. He substantiates this point through a variety of case studies arranged both chromatically and by subject. He claims that modernity is not a historical given but a process that occurred in the United States during the shift toward a consumer society
One of the biggest accomplishments Smith made in his broad study was to show how complicated modernity is due to influences from a variety of interconnected themes. Prior examination of modernism did not take into account the broad view of causes that Smith explores. Smith presents the developments chronologically, but also organizes them into themes, and each one builds on the previous topic weaving a complicated account. While it does present a lot of information to deal with it is interesting how all of these themes were connected.
He succeeded in illustrating the process behind the development of modernity through symbols and imagery and provided an abundance of examples supporting this claim. However, his definition of modernity on page 4 said that these images significantly altered the way people saw themselves and others, and he did not focus much on the public view of these developments. It would have been interesting if he could have provided some accounts from the general population as evidence of how this changed their views of the world.
Smith���s work is a comprehensive study that covers a variety of disciplines which shows how industry, art and design changed modern ideas. He succeeds in showing that modernity was not an inevitable historical event, but a long process that developed during the shift to a mass consumer society. While it was interesting to see how these developments interacted over a broad spectrum it makes it tedious to read.
One of the biggest accomplishments Smith made in his broad study was to show how complicated modernity is due to influences from a variety of interconnected themes. Prior examination of modernism did not take into account the broad view of causes that Smith explores. Smith presents the developments chronologically, but also organizes them into themes, and each one builds on the previous topic weaving a complicated account. While it does present a lot of information to deal with it is interesting how all of these themes were connected.
He succeeded in illustrating the process behind the development of modernity through symbols and imagery and provided an abundance of examples supporting this claim. However, his definition of modernity on page 4 said that these images significantly altered the way people saw themselves and others, and he did not focus much on the public view of these developments. It would have been interesting if he could have provided some accounts from the general population as evidence of how this changed their views of the world.
Smith���s work is a comprehensive study that covers a variety of disciplines which shows how industry, art and design changed modern ideas. He succeeds in showing that modernity was not an inevitable historical event, but a long process that developed during the shift to a mass consumer society. While it was interesting to see how these developments interacted over a broad spectrum it makes it tedious to read.
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