Browsing by Subject "Modernist architecture"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Beyond the easel : the dissolution of abstract expressionist painting into the realm of architecture(2010-08) Costello, Eileen Elizabeth; Shiff, Richard; Clarke, John R; Cleary, Richard L; Henderson, Linda D; Reynolds, Ann M; Smith, Jeffrey CA defining feature of American abstract expressionist painting is its enormous size and scale. Heroic ambition, the vast American landscape, and the sense of "something big" happening in American painting are often cited as determining factors in this phenomenon. This dissertation examines how Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko not only painted large-scale canvases but, following trends in modern architecture, shifted their painting towards the construction of architectural environments, thus promoting the transformation of painting from a window in the wall to a wall without a window. The artist and architect Tony Smith, a close friend and colleague of these painters, played an active role in encouraging their interest in modern architecture. As a result of their investigations into the physical, as well as conceptual, limits of the canvas, these artists shifted the viewer’s experience from a perceptual experience of pictorial space to a physical encounter with actual space. In contradiction to the notion of the purely optical, one could describe this as a somatic viewing experience, tactile and active, which anticipated specific concerns of 1960s minimalism. This achievement redefines Pollock's, Newman's, and Rothko's legacy to the subsequent generation of artists and places their production into a broader historical framework.Item Moscow as montage and the experience of the Soviet Modern from 1918 to 1938(2017-05) Rees, Anastasia S.; Shiff, Richard; Udovichki-Selb, Danilo; Henderson, Linda D; Reynolds, Ann; Neuberger, JoanIn order to reinvent Moscow into a site of revolutionary spectacle, the Bolsheviks undertook a deeply contested ideological, imaginary, and physical refashioning of Moscow over a period of two decades. El Lissitzky described the transformation in 1929, noting that streets and squares have had to adjust to the entirely new traffic rhythms and to new possibilities of function and use. In addition he recognized, “The introduction of new building types into the old fabric of the city affects the whole by transforming it.” 1 I examine how streets and squares changed to reflect a new psychology of Moscow. My project considers how modernist architecture was incorporated into the existing dynamic of the city street and how it affected the nature and function of the street. I propose that modernist structures functioned as cues within the city, confronting the passerby with a dialectical engagement between both architectural forms and urban function in order to awaken the slumbering masses, similar to the desire of filmmakers who used montage for the same purpose. Given the fact that architects were aware of and engaged with the surrounding architecture, and understood that the environment had the potential to determine behavior and psychology, it is surprising that studies of Moscow have not analyzed the relationships between the buildings and the city streets as a whole, nor the perception of the inhabitants. I hope to correct this oversight by offering a comprehensive urban framework. Important to my study is the interpretation of the city streets and how the modernist structures were perceived. Responses varied widely within the public and intellectual communities; the fact that these modernist structures were classified as “individualistic” sometimes “proletarian” and even “utopian” points to competing definitions of what constitutes Soviet modernist architecture. The debates between the numerous architectural organizations suggest a complex approach to the challenges of reinventing the social and physical space of the socialist city. I argue that underlying all of these competing interpretations is a desire for a dialectical engagement not just with theory but also with the material presence of space.Item Polish modernism's essentialist claim : the Hansens and Open Form architecture(2021-07-16) Bala, Alexander; Long, Christopher (Christopher Alan), 1957-This thesis presents the Polish architect duo Oskar and Zofia Hansen’s (1922-2005; 1924-2013) theory of Open Form (1959) as an essentialist interpretation and revision of mainstream European modernist architecture from the early twentieth century. It identifies theoretical continuities between the Hansens and their interwar predecessors from the Polish artistic avant-garde, namely, the painter Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952) and sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (1898-1951). Strzemiński and Kobro’s theory of Unism (1924) provided an essentialist definition for modern art, i.e., it articulated an artwork’s core concerns by addressing its medium-specific properties. The Hansens expanded Unism’s essentializing approach to the spatiotemporal and social domain of architecture. By relegating the formal and object-based qualities of their designs in order to promote social effects, the Hansens articulated architecture’s core concern: the individual in space, a fundamental reality which they had believed was obscured from mainstream modernist architecture’s standardizing tendencies. The Hansens exercised their Open Form approach in the latter half of the twentieth century through teaching, design, and theoretical writing. Their work revealed their Unist influences, and, thereby, the continuity of the interwar Polish artistic avant-garde into post-war architectural debates.