avante garde

I was more struck by the stamped reds, grainy photos and hard angles of the Avante Garde Art in Everyday Life exhibit than I was by the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of the Renzo Piano addition... I find it refined and striking, a space to uplift: broad, clean planes and vertical lines that transform to something completely voluminous and delicate...

But I get fully immersed in the palette and composition of early modern graphics. And what it says about the time and the designers. I am fascinated by the idea that modernism 'failed.' Its intention was so pure, its expression so restrained and ordered. There was a clarity to space and form that was so very difficult to achieve, but expressed itself as simple. The same held true of the graphic design of the time. And this is part of the magic.

Ladislav Sutnar

Ladislav Sutnar

The exhibit focused on a specific time and place: early 20th century eastern europe, when the Bauhaus and constructivism were emerging. There was this fascinating dichotomy to the work shown- an egalitarian and utilitarian neutrality that is shown in the information graphics and industrial design. And then there was the hugely political work, the anti-regime, pro-worker propaganda of the periodicals and posters. Across all of it though, it was guided by radical notions of equality and accessibility in the new modern times- the socialist collective, mass production, standardization, functionality, rationality: creating a sense of order and understanding through form and function, not icons or ornament.

I am sort of obsessed with this site I came across a few months ago... DISPLAY... "a curated collection of important modern, mid 20th century graphic design books, periodicals and ephemera."

It is rather a black hole if you love the graphics and ideologies of this work and this era. And I do. I think tenets of modernism (broadly casting a net here) speak to so many things in life. Simplicity allows for clarity, contrast allows for awareness, white space lets you breath and absorb, large forms create an anchor, patterns generate a field, a continuity- these are mechanisms of space and design that we respond to, often unknowingly.

I believe we seek to know, to align, to orient ourselves in space and time, in message or intention. But when necessary, we should be jarred, unsettled, made aware through contrast and confusion, a break in order, a call for attention and response. Modernism required input, an external influence to soften its edges and impart meaning. We are all capable of responding to pure form, space, colour... but to make it our own, to take the uniform and standardized, the pure modern expressions and adapt them to life, we must not only react but act on it. It takes effort to take place oneself in the modern space... a reciprocal feed.