Famous Architectural Landmarks: Chrysler Building

Architectural Landmarks

• Chrysler Building
  • Was briefly the world's tallest building before the Empire State Building in 1931
  • Second tallest building in New York City
  • Ornamentation based on Chrysler automobiles, featuring eagles and radiator caps
• The Empire State Building
  • Built by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon architects
  • 102-story skyscraper located in New York City
  • Named after the nickname for New York, the Empire State
  • Held the title of world's tallest building for 40 years

Expressionism (late 19th C early 20th C)

• Opposes academic standards and emphasizes artists' subjective emotion
• General features:
  • Sacrifices representational accuracy for distortion
  • Strong outlines and bold colors
  • Simpler and more direct compositions
  • Thick impasto paint, loose brushstrokes, and occasional symbolism
• Important Artists:
  • Vincent Van Gogh
    • Greatest Dutch painter since Baroque times
    • Reflected social consciousness in subjects
    • Used powerful brushstrokes
    • Famous works: The Starry Night, Sunflowers
  • Edward Munch
    • Norwegian painter and printmaker
    • Influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century
    • Work: The Scream, Puberty

Abstraction (start between 1910-1920)

• Movement that eliminates recognizable appearances
• Wassily Kandinsky
  • Influential Russian painter and art theorist
  • Credited with creating the first purely abstract works

Cubism

• Represents objects in basic geometric shapes
• Famous Artists:
  • Georges Braque
    • French painter and leader of Cubism
    • Incorporated Cubist aim of representing the world from multiple viewpoints
    • Work: Piano and the Mandola, Violin and Candlestick
  • Pablo Picasso
    • Spanish painter and sculptor
    • Co-founder of Cubism
    • Known as the Father of collage
    • Famous works: Guernica, Demoiselle d'Avignon
    • Developed collage using paper and other materials
    • Introduced simultaneity in art, presenting multiple sides of an object
    • Had Blue and Rose periods in his work
  • Marcel Duchamp
    • Associated with Dadaism and Surrealism
    • Experimented with Cubism
    • Work: Nude Descending a Staircase

Phases of Cubism

• Analytic Cubism
  • Early phase of Cubism
  • Characterized by geometric shapes and monochromatic color
  • Artists invented specific shapes to represent whole objects or people
• Synthetic Cubism
  • Symbolic style with more colorful and varied materials
  • Incorporates extraneous materials and collage

De Stijl

• School of art founded in the Netherlands in 1917
• Characterized by use of black and white with primary colors, rectangular forms, and asymmetry
• Founded by architect Gerrit Rietveld and artists
• Piet Mondrian, famous for Composition in Yellow and Blue

Modernism/Modern Style

• A deliberate estrangement from the past in the arts and literature in the 20th century
• General features:
  • Rejection of historical styles as a source of architectural form
  • Form follows function

Bauhaus Design (1919-1933)

• School of design established in Neimar, Germany in 1919 by Walter Gropius
• Characterized by the synthesis of technology, craft, and design aesthetics
• Emphasized functional design in architecture and applied arts
• General features:
  • Shuns ornamentation and favors functionality
  • Uses asymmetry and regularity versus symmetry
• Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, prominent architects associated with Bauhaus
• Works: Barcelona Pavillion, Seagram Building, Tugendhat House

International Style

• An architectural style that is minimalist in concept
• Devoid of regional characteristics
• Stresses functionalism
• Rejects all non-essential decorative elements
• Emphasizes the horizontal aspects of a building

Architectural Landmarks

• The Designed Environment Professions, INC.
  • Guggenheim Museum, New York
    • Organic shapes spiraling down like a nautilus shell
    • Visitors follow a sloping ramp through connected exhibition spaces
  • Johnson Wax Administration Building, Wisconsin
    • Constructed with over 200 sizes and shapes of bricks
    • Light shines through glass tubes
• Usonian houses by Frank Lloyd Wright
  • Made up of easy-to-assemble, pre-fabricated wood sandwich panels
  • Designed to be erected in a simple construction

Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret, 1887-1965)

• Known as "Corbu" (raven)
• Wrote Vers Une Architecture in 1923, linking ancient Greek temples, Gothic cathedrals, aircraft, cars, and ocean liners with modern architecture
• Invented the pilotis, a column supporting a building above an open ground level
• Works:
  • Villa Savoye, Poissy
  • Unite d'Habitation, France
  • Notre Dame-du-Haut Ronchamp

Other Landmarks

• UN Headquarters, New York
  • Built by a committee of architects headed by Wallace K Harrison
  • Largest building is the Secretariat, home of the UN's administration
  • Features a green glass-curtain tower
• Seagram Building, New York
  • Built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson
  • Made of glass and bronze

Dadaism

• Movement aimed at ridiculing and destroying the idea of art
• Importance lies in its break with outmoded ways to gain new freedom for the artist

Abstract Expressionism

• Movement in which artists applied paint rapidly and with force to huge canvases
• Emphasizes feelings and emotions, using non-geometric and gestural brushstrokes
• Important Artists:
  • Hans Hoffman
  • Mark Rothko
  • Jackson Pollock

Surrealism

• Movement in hunt of the science of expression of the subconscious
• Began after French poet Andre Breton published Manifesto de Surrealisme in 1924
• Important Artists:
  • Salvador Dali
  • Frida Kahlo
  • George de Chirico
  • Marc Chagall

Pop Art

• Style that emerged in America in the 1960s
• Uses popular imagery from commercial sources, mass media, and everyday life
• Important Artists:
  • Roy Lichtenstein
  • Andy Warhol
  • Richard Hamilton

Post Modernism (1970s)

• Movement in architecture and decorative arts in reaction to modernism principles and practices

High Tech

• Style that aims to liberate the maximum volume of space inside by positioning all working elements outside the interior environment

Brutalism (1950s)

• Movement in architecture emphasizing the aesthetic use of basic building processes
• Often used cast-in-place concrete with no apparent concern for visual amenity
• Based on Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation

Expressionism

• Evolved from the work of avant-garde artists and designers in Germany and other European countries
• Key features:
  • Distorted shapes
  • Fragmented lines
  • Organic or biomorphic forms
  • Massive sculpted shapes
  • Extensive use of concrete and brick
  • Lack of symmetry