DE 400: Survey of Modernism in Design

Steven Michael Vroom, Instructor

Course Description: An examination of the relationship of the many philosophies and movements that comprise Modernity. Artistic Communities in both Europe and the United States will be investigated to understand the meta-power relationships between both the visual and plastic arts and those of design.

Syllabus [subject to revision]
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Week Topic
01. Introduction and Course Philosophy.
02. Pageant Master to the Republic, Jacques-Louis David, the French Revolution and the Birth of the Modern World.
03. Landscape as Metaphor, How the Hudson River School shaped the American Aesthetic.
04. The Romantic Revolution.
05. Art and Revolution: Realism, Gypsies and Bohemians and other Modernist Myths
06. New Visual Vocabularies: Matisse, Braque and Picasso look at African Art.
07. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and the United States: Elbert Hubbard meets William Morris.
08. The Mid-Term Examination.
09. Futurism: "Language is the Motherlode of all Culture" F.T. Marienetti.
10. Expressionist Aesthetics, World War One and the Dadaistic Impulse
11. The Great Russian Experiment
12. Art between the Wars: Surrealism and Constructivism
13. Modernism in Exile: Art and Dictatorship, the Bauhaus comes to The United States.
14. How New York stole the Flame of Modernism.
15. The Final Examination.