Architectural Principles in Designing Clothes - Article Example

MODERNISM & POSTMODERNISM BA Fashion Design RFAS1001 Fashion History 09/10 for the Creative Arts Tutor: Words: Contents Essay (To what extent do the separate disciplines P.3 - 9 of architecture and fashion influence one another? Discuss with reference to specific practitioners or architectural movements.) Seminar Questions P. 10 - 23 Quotes and images P. 24 – 26 References P. 27 Fashion and Architecture The human form is being used by both disciplines; architecture and fashion. Many designers are also trained architects like Paco Robanne, Pierre Cardin, Roberto Capucci and Gianfraco Ferre. They use architectural principles in designing clothes rather than the rules of tailoring. Architecture is the art or practice of designing and building structures especially habitable ones. Fashion is the prevailing style as in dress during a particular time. It is the choice or usage as in dressing a particular time. It is the choice or usage as in dressing generally accepted by those who regard themselves as up-to-date and sophisticated. “The suffocation of natural objects, the extinction of nature -- a general economy of excess”, and fashion as one particular “spectacular sign of a parasitical culture which, always anyway excessive, disaccumulative, and sacrificial, is drawn inexorably towards the ecstasy of catastrophe”- their “excessive,” over-the-top-language offering one kind of postmodern response to what they analyze – (Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Fashion and the Postmodern Body page 3) An area of study which is encircled with theories, architecture is often traditionally debatable leading back to the time of the Greek philosophers Socrates 470-399 B.C who was Plato’s revered master and Plato, 427-347 B.C. Architecture as a discipline can be regarded as modern or even post-modern. For fashion designers, architects move freely in a bright and privileged world which is long established, powerful, public and masculine. Architects try to express their fundamental craving for beauty, their ideals and aspirations visualizing in stone, steel, or other materials their purposes in creating a building. There are three requisites of architecture, their work must adapt to purpose, beauty and sound structure. The design must be suited for the purpose intended. If the edifice did not provide the varied needs of those for whom it was built, then it failed to that extent as a work of architecture. As for the aesthetic value of its beauty, its design must be avoided. For sound structure, it means that the building’s design must be carried on to build whatever structure is planned making it strong enough and safe to live in (Upjohn). Fashion signifies the prevailing mode or customary style of clothing. It reflects the events, surroundings and customs of its era and influenced by wars, conquests, laws, the arts and personalities (Sloan). The publicity and excitement being generated by architecture in recent times spilled over into the world of fashion. We will analyze how architecture and fashion as disciplines have moved closer to one another throughout the last thirty years. Among architects, structures are categorized as merely buildings or these are those that can be accepted as architecture. Buildings which may be so ordinary which conveys that they were just constructed to serve as dwelling places, not given the needed effort to make them look different and with aesthetic value. On the other hand, historic monument, iconic structures and edifices with poetic monuments, iconic structures and edifices with poetic gestures such as those with sculptures, columns and other decorative structures. Fashion has high regard for beauty so it is said that aesthetic elitism is present in fashion which is also true in architecture where visionary structures are acclaimed. In fashion, styles of dresses are being considered while buildings or structures are taken into consideration in architecture. Buildings designed giving new direction to architecture will be considered since these are the ones which demonstrate links with fashion. The are museum has been a useful place where architecture is categorized and understood. One example is the Museum of Modern Art-MoMA-in New York where new and experimental concepts of elite notions of the arts are channeled for mainstream acceptance. Art works including the experimental ones are being displayed in museums which include architectural works for the benefit of art lovers. This particular museum has showcased hand-picked architects as current from Htichcock and Johnson’s 1932 “International Style” show to Mark Wigley’s “Deconstructivist Architecture of 1988 since architecture is associated with fashion, to call it fashionable will seem like a criticism because of the seriousness of the practice. World of architecture is described as an art long established, powerful, public and masculine. “Long life to the cinema where else will we find our illusions?” - Ruth Vassos When Modern Movements began theorizing modern architecture, style and ornament have been compared degradingly to fashion. Without ornaments buildings are seen as nude because ornaments are just like clothing. Architectures did not like the transient and commercial qualities of fashion associating it with the superficiality of ornament. Ribbons and ruffs of women’s fashion were compared by architects such as le Corbusier or Walter Gropius to the 19th century architecture. For them, fashion especially women’s fashion was frivolous, unfunctional and wasteful, the antithesis of rationality and simplicity. Fashion paradoxically played another role when a modern architectural style must be like a man’s tailored suit. “Clothing and other kinds of ornamentation makes the human body culturally visible. Clothing draws the body so that it can be culturally seen and articulates it in a meaningful form.”- Kaja Silvermann Architectural style must be like a man’s tailored suit. Architects need functionalism, timelessness and internationalism in their own designs which were the symbol of men’s fashion. The term fashion when used in architecture was just like the concept of short-lived style or a trend. According to Siegfried Giedion, a key architectural theorist, modern architecture is defined as a refusal of the seductions of fashionable dress. The styles of the 19th century architecture was condemned by him as fashion conscious and like the modernists who followed him he called for a paradigm of minimalist architecture that would have lasting appeal. Fashion and modernity’s changing whims were tried to be resisted by modern architecture by proposing a style to end all styles but then change could not be avoided. Their age was represented by the strong aesthetic statement of the Modern Movement’s architecture and design. Ironically Architecture of the International Style became fashionable by celebrating the present and rejecting the past. “The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from objects of everyday use.” - Adolf Loos Almost all the influential writers whether for or against the question of the post modern, have addressed architecture in order to elaborate their position. They argued that aside from being the field in which the term first gained currency, it articulates the phenomenon more clearly than any other. The celebration and condemnation of the so-called post modern condition was made possible by architecture. Three key writers introduced Postmodernism into architecture and design. They were the cultural critic; Charles Jencks. One of the first historians and Critic to address the changes in design was Reyner Banham. The need for the elitist worlds of architecture and the need for the elitist worlds of architecture and design to conform to popular culture, transience and expendability in a throw away consumer society was the recurring theme in Banham’s writing. He argued that Modernism in design could only be understood as a style in his 1960’s “Theory and Design in the First Machine Age.” Thinking they could go beyond style, the early modernists had deceived themselves. Because he was widely accused of being inhuman and mechanical, Bandam believed that modern design land and architecture could oppose such accusation. It could be done by adopting the values of popular culture to celebrate the consumer world of late capitalism rather than the celebration of the machine aesthetic of an earlier moment. Robert Venturi’s book, “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,” 1966 followed by “Learning from Las Vegas,” 1972 was widely seen as introducing the beginning of the end of the Modernist domination in architecture. Evolution rather than revolution was pleaded by Venturi and he accepted hunky-tonk elements in“hybrid” architecture. For him less was not more but a bore and he preferred messy vitality to obvious unity and ambiguity to clarity. He wrote about his admiration for Las Vegas as architecture of communication. He defended “Decorated Shed” which was his term for the “ugly and ordinary architecture found in the Las Vegas Strip. It was dominated by signs denoting meaning which are usually function and brand name and which signify commercialism. Being a mismatch of design and function, the Decorated Shed is a building which has applied to it the ornaments and signs that indicate its use. For Venturi, his time was not for heroic communication through pure architecture. Communication within architecture as seen in commercial buildings of Las Vegas was a rejection of the alienation and lack of understanding in the austere architecture of modernism. That architecture is a language, not only of the modernist language of pure form was first recognized by Venturi. To communicate which needs inter-relatedness, symbolism and cultural relevance is the purpose of Postmodern architectural language. American critic and historian Charles Jencks also made communication the basis of his theory in his “The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, 1977. The death of Modern Architecture was set on July 15, 1972 by Jencks. It was during that time when a Modern housing estate in St Louis of 1952 was destroyed by dynamite and argued that Modernist buildings failed to communicate outside the elite groups who understood their abstract “Language.” The demands of a pluralist media saturated society were responded by the post-modern according to Jencks. He suggested that Postmodern buildings should be double-coded rather than using “form following function.” A major part of an architectural post modern language which brings the past and present together with a peaceful co-existence was historicism as seen by Jencks. It was a hybrid of present style and technology with the forms of the past. Like Venturi he also suggested symbolism to be allowed within architecture. Through history and symbolism architecture can communicate with people in our postmodern consumerist society. However both propose that these have to be used in a knowing ironic way. Due to such debates, Postmodernism in architecture became a mixing of styles from different historical periods. Being a highly ornate, elaborately designed, playful, eclectic and brought an emotional response into the built environment, celebrating style and surface. The carnival of competing looks threatened to reduce architecture to the status of another consumer durable as Postmodern buildings dated quickly. This aspect was important in bringing debates about the links between fashion and architecture together. Since the division between functionalism and representation is breaking down, modern architecture is becoming more interactive with its users. Traditionally the preserve of the Fine Arts, Post modernism imagination, memory and emotion are now finding their way into architecture. This reflects the ever changing relationship to material culture of our postmodern society. What is defined as post-modern architecture’s many key examples became carnivalized, celebratory and relative to all the other cultural experiences around it. This is where it has come to link especially with fashion: and it is always relative to society around it. Space for fashion was allowed to be taken more seriously as architecture has become reflective of consumer society and yet it remained serious inspite of this. Fashion as a branch of design has a new sense of worth within postmodernism. Now we can see that Fashion and Architecture as disciplines influence one another. Through the concept of Postmodernism, fashion and architecture have both been compared through their style and ornamentation. Just like clothes which make use of fashion to make them beautiful because of the ornaments or decorations being done to make them attractive, architecture also needs such ornamentation to be considered a work of art. Without such additions, buildings would be as plain-looking as clothes are without having ribbons or other trimmings to make them beautiful. This is one consideration where in fashion and architecture is loosely related as art works. According to the purpose for which they will be intended, both of them also need to consider such factor. “Clothing and other kinds of ornamentation makes the human body culturally visible. Clothing draws the body so that it can be culturally be seen and articulates it in a meaningful form.” (Kaja Silvermann, Fashion and the Past modern Body page 6) Clothes are being designed according to the occasion where they will be worn. Fashion plays an important role to clothes intended for important occasions such as those for high-society gatherings. Clothes for ordinary wear are being given simpler designs. The same is true with buildings. A very simple structure which may not look so attractive and not elegant will simply be called a building. Differentiated from an elegant and well-decorated building, such structure will be called an art or an architectural structure which is more prestigious than being just an ordinary building. Ornament and Crime What style is the article written in and why? The article is an informal essay because it is informal in purpose and treatment, demanding name of neither the rigorous logical completeness of the analysis nor the equally strict chronological order of the process theme What is his stance towards ornament (positive/negative)? And how does he support his views? For him, “the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from objects of everyday use.” – (Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime page167). So he has a negative stance. To support his views, he said that ornament means wasted labor and therefore wasted health. Today, it also means wasted material, and both mean wasted capital. How might you criticize his argument? Although he said that there were waste of labor, health, material and also capital, ornamentation can given us happiness. I find joy looking at beautiful things and ornamentation gives beauty to lots of things. How do his views fit with modernism? Modernism means the philosophy and practices of modern art. So there must be improvement in art. For him ornamentation is a crime because it leads to the waste of human labor, money and materials. So his views contradict the principle of modernism. People are depressed knowing they could no longer create new ornament (Loos, 1908). Introduction to Modernism in Design what were the two phases within the modern design movement and what brought about the need for a new approach to design? The first phase is pioneer modernism which consisted of a series of movements and individuals who addressed themselves to the problem of an appropriate design for the twentieth century. The second phase is the International Style which opened in the early 1930’s. There is a need for a new approach to design because modernists throughout Europe argued violently through letters, articles and personal confrontations and by 1935 they had drifted apart in terms of their actual design work. Explain alienation and in what ways the modernists believed it could be eradicated through design. Alienation became an intense psychological impoverishment, characterized as the negation of the spiritual essence of humankind. Design was bound up with commodity production which was the driving force behind the creation of wealth. So design has the potential to transform the economic and social conditional of the masses so the spectre of alienation could be eradicated In what ways did the modernists believe design could help social advancement? Belief in the biological advanced of humankind along Darwinian lines suited Modernists, despite its heinous implications for non-industrial societies. Modernists believed in the idea of aesthetic advance rather than simply of aesthetic change and design could do the same. Why were the modernists international in their outlook? The Modern Movement was unavoidably internationalist in outlook for being part of the quest for a universal human consciousness. If the new design was international in its appearance, this would lead to cultural exchange and reduce the sense of Difference which often leads to war. It would also encourage creativity in design outside of the dominance of local politics (Greenhalgh, 1990). What style is the article written in and why? The article is written in formal style because formal style is the language of research, of legal papers, of academic and technical writing. This article is academic so it uses the formal style. How does he define craft (what “needs” does it address”)? He defined craft by four simultaneous identities. First, craft is usually made substantially by hand. Second, it is medium-specific. It is always identified with a material and the technologies invented to manipulate it. Third, it is defined by use. Craft disciplines are traditional groupings of functions-jewelry, furniture, clothing. Fourth, it is also defined by its past. Each of the craft disciplines has a multicultural history that is recorded mostly as objects, many from societies that have long since disappeared. How does he define modern art (What is its status)? Modern art is defined by theory. Craft teachers and students have long envied the status enjoyed by modern art, as well as its financial rewards. The common strategy to achieve art’s prestige has been to adopt the style of any recently certified art movement, from abstract Expressionism to performance art. Using Metcalf’s argument discusses: What role craft can have in current society? Craft depends on the continuous revival of preindustrial technologies. Most practitioners still use processes that have been in use for thousands of years whether it is throwing on the potter’s wheel, hammering a sheet of metal into a hollow form, spinning and weaving fiber, or blowing glass. Whether fashion is Art or Craft? Fashion is craft. According to the third definition of craft, it is defined by use. One of its functions is clothing and fashion involves clothing. What is Art Deco, and is it representative of Modernism’s ideals? Art Deco is the main visual idiom to convey modernity, but it was in Hollywood films that the style reached its full potential for fantasy, glamour and mass popularity. Yes, it is representative of Modernism’s ideals (Metcalf, 1993). How do Hollywood films of the 1920’s reflect American values of the time. It was through practice such as block booking and blind booking that Hollywood films saturated world markets and created a global taste for modern American culture and with it Art Deco as the style that represented that culture. How do American film and its values differ from European film? Hollywood transmitted American values and American ideals and eventually American style in the form of streamlining, worldwide although their design was dominated by Europeans. What are the features of modern films? Contemporary art and design were used to denote modern themes. Neo-romantic or mythical plots were filmed in artificial and highly stylized sets defined by heightened contrast of light and shadow. 30 Art Deco and Hollywood film Ghislaine Wood Fashion and the Postmodern Body Why does Wilson defend postmodernism as a portmanteau concept? Wilson defends postmodernism as a portmanteau concept because it indicates the aesthetication of dystopia –the Knife-edge quality of so much contemporary culture as well as our contradictory responses to that which is made pleasurable. It is useful to have a world that names our confusion, and our aspirations towards changes we cannot really imagine. Explain how postmodernisms have enabled a feminine/feminist point of view to be heard. Some aesthetic forms of art have been stereotyped as feminine and so they are almost automatically judged as less important, less worthy, less great than more masculine kinds of art. What was traditionally seen as feminine was reappraised and subjects once considered unworthy of serious attention enabling feminist point of view to be heard. What impact has the latter had on the study of fashion? Clothing and other ornamentations make the human body culturally visible, clothing draws the body so that it can be culturally seen and articulates it in a meaningful form. The post- modernism debate has helped rescue the study of dress from its lowly status, and has created- or at least named- a climate in which any cultural or aesthetic object may be taken seriously. Explain the end of “grand narratives” and the impact on identity. Grand narrative is the idea advanced by post modernist philosophers, historians and sociologists that we can no longer subscribe to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment belief in continuous progress, evolution and the dominance of scientific rationality. Despite the different and inconsistent ways in which fragmentation and “identity” are used in discussions of post modernism as concepts they are of interest in relation to dress. Fashion and the Postmodern Body Elizabeth Wilson Post modernism and Consumer Society How does he define postmodernism? Postmodernism as a concept is not widely accepted or even understood today. Some of the resistance to it may come from the unfamiliarity of the works it covers, which can be found in all the arts and also in a whole new style of commercial or fiction films. Explain through an example of film/art/music. Post modernism can be found in all the arts like in music as in the later synthesis of classical and “popular” styles found in composers like Philip Glass and Terry Riley; in punk and new-wave rock with such groups as the Clash, the Talking Heads and the Gang of Four; in film, everything that comes out of Godard-contemporary vanguard film and video. What is parody? How is it different from pastiche? Parody is a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule. Pastiche is a literary, artistic or musical work that imitates the style of previous work. Parody differs from pastiche in that the imitation produced mocks the original or costs ridicule unlike in pastiche where there’s only imitation or mimicry but no satirical impulse. What is his stance on post-modernism (positive/negative)? He dealt with the two features of postmodernism which are the transformation of reality into images and the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents which are both extraordinarily consonant with this process. He concluded with a question about the critical value of the newer art, post modernism. Old modernism functioned against society in ways which are described as critical, negative, contestatory, subversive, oppositional and the like. Postmodernism has a way to replicate or reproduce-reinforce the logic of consumer capitalism. The significant question of whether postmodernism can resist such logic is a question we must leave open. So we can say that he has a positive stance on postmodernism. Postmodernism and Consumer Society Fredric Jameson Irony, Nostalgia and the Post Modern What are the key features she identifies as post-modern? For the author postmodern has little to do with nostalgia and much to do with irony. We can never deny that a lot of contemporary culture was indeed nostalgic but there was also lots of irony. She ignores the nostalgic dimension of the postmodern in favor of the ironic. Although she is utterly un-nostalgic she is also relatively un-ironic. Explain through an example of post-modern film/art/fashion. An example of post modern film is “All in the Family” which is an American television series. Its creators intended it to be ironic de-bunking but then the show was popular because it was conservative, indeed openly nostalgic, appeal to attitudes perhaps consciously denied but deeply felt. How does she define nostalgia and why do we have this today? Nostalgia has a Greek Origin roots-nostos, meaning “to return home” and algos, meaning “pain.” A 19-year old Swiss medical student coined it in 1688 which was a literally lethal kind of severe homesickness. The more memory we store on data banks, the more the past is sucked into the orbit of the present making the past simultaneous with the present in a new way. That’s why we have nostalgia today. What is her stance on post-modernism (positive/negative) and how does she support this? Positive. Nostalgia and irony are almost on equal bearing with regard to postmodernism they can’t be separated because they are not qualities of objects but responses of subjects. Ironizing of nostalgia is one way the postmodern has taken responsibility for such responses by reflecting thought about the present as well as the past (Hutcheon, 1998). Identity, Culture and the Post Modern World What are the key theorists and their ideas that Sarup uses? Key features usually associated with postmodernism are as follows. First, there is an acceptance of ephemerity, fragmentation, discontinuity. Writers like Michael Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard are against having a metalanguage or metatheory through which all things can be connected or represented. The Hegelian view of history and the idea of progress is rejected by postmodernists. Fredric Jameson links to textuality, ecriture or schizophrenic writing a new form of private temporality. What do postmodern commentators mean by a crisis in time and space? Many commentators have attributed the postmodern shift to a crisis in our experience of space and time, a crisis in which spatial categories come to dominate those of time, while themselves undergoing such a mutation that we cannot keep pace. What does the author mean by Post Modernism’s preoccupation with the signifier rather than the signified? If a person’s identity is forged through a certain temporal unification of the past and future with the present, then an inability to unify past, present and future means a similar inability to unify the past, present and future of our own biographical experience or psychic life. This fits with postmodernism’s preoccupation with the signifier rather than the signified. Why does the author suggest there is an impulse in postmodern society to preserve the past? Do you believe Britain is obsessed with the past? The search for historical roots is a sign of a search for more secure moorings and longer-lasting values in a shifting world. Images of the past influence the present and the future. And there are many conflicting pasts. I believe that Britain is obsessed with the past and it’s entropic – a measure of increasing disorganization/disorder. The popularity of the “heritage industry” which someone believe that the past seems more attractive than the present. Bibliography Loos, Adolf. (1908): Ornament and Crime -- In Ornament and Crime Selected Essays. Ariadne Press 1997, pp. 167-176. Greenhalgh, Paul (1990): Modernism in Design. New York: Reaktion Books. Metcalf, Bruce (1993): Art Deco and Hollywood Film. Hutcheon, Linda Ph.D. (1998): Irony, Nostalgia and the Postmodern. University of Toronto. (http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/criticism/hutchinp.html) Modern Sarup, Chapter Seven (1996): ‘The Condition of Postmodernity’ in Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, Edinburg University Press Ltd., pp. 94-104. Upjohn, Everard M. “Architecture”, Collier’s Encyclopedia, 39th ed., vol.2 p.482. Sloan, Alfred V. Jr. “Fashion and Clothing”, Collier’s Encyclopedia, 39thed, vol. 9 p.577. Read More