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Arts and the Crafts Movement , De Stijl and Cubism

Term Paper History of Architecture

Samridhi Sharma

3-B

Roll Number: 15

Sushant School of Art and Architecture

Art is no recreation , it can not be learned at spare moments , nor pursued when

we have nothing better to do. It is no handiwork for drawing room tables , no

relief for the ennui , it must be understood and undertaken seriously or not at all.

To advance it mens lives must be given , and to receive it , their hearts. John

Ruskin, Modern Painters , 1843.

ABSTRACT

The primary motive of the arts and crafts movement was , as the name implies,

the association of art and labour. Initially an English movement , it slowly

emerged from the general industrial field for over about forty years, though its

differentiation into a distinct phase of industrialism belonged to last 10 years. The

year 1860 was counted as the approximate year of its beginning, when William

Morris built his famous Red House on the outskirts of London, and served his

apprenticeship to the industrial arts by designing and executing the decoration

and furniture of his home.

The paper will compare the works of the three architects, who initiated

the arts and crafts movement, i.e.William Morris, C.R. Ashbee and

W.R.Lethaby.

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THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT

The arts and crafts theory appeared in 1860 though , through the writings of

Ruskin and Morris.

Architects, designers and artists began to find new approaches to design and the

decorative arts. Theatres and crafts movement was predominantly initiated by a

group of architects, namely William Morris, C.R. Ashbee and W. R. Lethaby . These

architects and the movement, in general, placed great value on handwork,

the joy of craftsmanship and the natural beauty of materials. The

movement aimed to create affordable art and architecture for the

common man of the times. One of the important principles of the arts

and crafts movement was to revive traditional forms, which were seen

to be lost due to industrialization. It is important to note that the

architects, who were a part of the movement, viewed the interior and

the exterior of buildings as a whole. They worked along with artists, as

a result of which the buildings included a lot of sculpted elements and

symbolic imagery. Other than this, the arts and crafts movement

followed an open mindset, being accessible and visible to everybody.

Arts and crafts architecture strongly demonstrated the principles and

ideals of the movement. One of the typical features of arts and crafts architecture

was the usage of elements of the vernacular. This feature augments the open

mindset that exists in the movement. Extreme importance was given to the

usage of locally available materials, in their natural form. The open mindset

is well reflected in the plans and details of the buildings of the arts and crafts

movement.

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WORKS

1. The Red house, designed by Philip Webb for William Morris, in

1860, is the first example of the arts and crafts movement and

is considered to be a building of importance. The design of the

house is known to be inspired by Gothic architecture, which is visible

in its false Gothic arches, tall windows, steep roofs emphasizing on

verticality, to name a few. The design of the house was highly

influenced by the beliefs of John Ruskin. He was of the opinion

that the function of each room in a building should be visible from

outside. This is well reflected in the plan of the Red House.

The plan of the house shows that Philip Webb designed the house such

that there are a series of room slinked by a corridor. The plan of the

house is L-shaped, which allows the gardens to be a part of the interior

of the house. Other than this, the L-shaped plan also allows the

formation of a courtyard, which is another prominent feature of the arts

and crafts architecture. A courtyard also extends the open mindedness

seen in design, as it allows visibility and light. Furthermore, the

openness is reflected in the materials used in the house. They are

rustic; local bricks, tiles and timber are used, which were local

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materials, used in their natural form an important element of the arts

and crafts architecture.

2. The Melsetter House, built for a retired businessman, by William

Lethaby, in 1898, is another house that exemplifies the domestic

architecture of the arts and crafts movement .Located in Oarkney,

Scotland, the house portrays many of the underlying principles of

the movement - simplicity, strength, and harmony with nature. The

house is a three- storey country mansion built around a paved

courtyard, with walled gardens. The arts and crafts movement

involved affordable crafts, for the common man of the times, as

opposed to Art Nouveau, which was ideally meant for the elite.

The architecture reflected the same idea. The Melsetter House,

like many houses of the arts and crafts movement, is a simple

building, such that everyone understands its design and

architecture.

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CUBISM

Cubism was a truly revolutionary style of modern art developed by

Pablo and Georges Braques. It was the first style of abstract art which

evolved at the beginning of the 20th

century in response to a world that

was that was changing with unprecedented speed. Cubism was an

attempt by artists to revitalise the tired traditions of western art which

they believed had run their course. The cubists challenged conventional

form of representations such as perspective.

By 1909, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque both felt that cubism was becoming

stagnant because the two of them had already pushed their original analytical

investigations to their logical conclusions and that, consequently, it was their

duty to regenerate cubism if it was not to degenerate into just another banal

picture formula. Their next step was to focus on the structure of objects by

depicting them through a grid-like scaffolding system on which the objects' many

aspects, including those hidden from sight, are displayed in a facet-like,

fragmented manner.

Picasso's Woman with Mandolin (1910) further illustrates the groundwork that

was being laid by these two artists. Picasso fragmented the girl's body into facets

that were modeled to stimulate their projection out of the flat picture plane

toward the viewer and that portray her in movement as she strums her mandolin.

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Furthermore, they no longer concerned themselves with the representation of

space because now the emphasis was on digesting multiple layers of information

and shapes. The end results were compositions that were simpler, brighter, and

bolder accomplished through the following techniques:

bringing together familiar scraps and unfamiliar forms in order to give shape to a

particular sense of urban life

exploring the individual experiences associated with public spaces and urban

recreation

using the language of publicity and commerce in an ambiguous manner to

suggest a multiplicity of contradictory meanings, especially through puns

capturing the new sense of simultaneity of diverse experiences-the fusion of

objects, people, machines, noises, light, smells, etc.

What Are the Characteristics of Cubism?

Braque and Picasso thought that the full significance of an object could

only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view and at different

times. So, they abandoned the idea of a single fixed viewpoint and instead

used a multiplicity of viewpoints.

The object was then reassembled out of fragments of these different

views, rather like a complex jigsaw puzzle. In this way, many different

views of an object were simultanously depicted in the same picture.

As far as artistic technique was concerned, Cubism showed how a sense of

solidity and pictorial structure could be created without traditional

perspective or modelling.

thus the Cubist style focused on the flat, two-dimensional surface of the

picture plane, and rejected the traditional conventions and techniques of

linear perspective, chiaroscuro (use of shading to show light and shadow)

and the traditional idea of imitating nature.

Cubists sought to depict the intellectual idea or form of an object, and its

relationship to others.

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Geometricity, a simplication of figures and objects into geometrical

components and planes that may or may not add up to the whole figure or

object known in the natural world.

Approximation of the Fourth Dimension. Conceptual, instead of perceptual,

reality.

Distortion and deformation of known figures and forms in the natural world.

Passage, the overlapping and interpenetration of planes.

Simultaneity or multiple views, different points of view made visible on one

plane.

DE STIJL

The violence and destruction of World War 1 shocked the world and group of

artists responded in various ways. For Dutch painter and architect Theo Van

Doesburg (1884-1931) and Dutch painters Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Bart Van

Der Neck (1876-1958), the goal was to create art that promoted universal peace

and harmony , both visually and politically. They named their movement De Stijl :

which simple means The Style .

De Stijl is characterized by flat colors and simplified , rectilinear forms .

As a movement, De Stijl influenced painting, decorative arts (including furniture

design), typography, and architecture, but it was principally architecture that

realized both De Stijl s stylistic aims and its goal of close collaboration among

the arts.

The Cubist artists themselves were unwilling to take the final step into total

abstraction and to relinquish their hold on reality, but the De Stijl artists were

concerned with concepts that were abstract compared to the more mundane

sources of Cubism.

In addition, Cubism was a pre-War movement and De Stilj was a post-War

movement with the goal of rethinking the world. But the impact of Cubism upon

De Stijl would be a strong one, particularly the author of the 1920 series of

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articles on Neo- Plasticism , Piet Mondrian, who used cubist ideas as a vehicle

through which he made concepts concrete through painting.

Bibliography

1. De Stijl Continued: The Journal Structure (1958-1964) : an Artists' Debate

By Jonneke Jobse

2. De Stijl and Dutch Modernism By Michael White

3. The Handy Art History Answer Book By Madelynn Dickerson

4. Ching D. K. (2006) A Global History of Architecture

5. Jarzombek Mark M. (2010). A Global History of Architecture 2nd Ed.

Wiley