Precisionism

And

The Machine Age

Precisionism

• The American version of “call to order that swept Europe after WWI

• Tendency to look to the future and new world order based on rationality and science

• Chose modern machinery and industrial forms as models for precision, logic, purity that they desired in society and art.

Influences

• Corbusier

• Cubism

• Replaced Cubist chaos, flux, illegibility with order, balance, clarity

Characteristics

• Executed in dry, mechanical manner

• Flat, hard edge planes,muted colors

• Simplified geometric shapes of buildings

• Stressed efficiency, order, calculation of modern technology

• Based on machine and architectural imagery

Philosophy

• Reverence for industrial subjects

• Correlation of industry and religion

• Equation of America with machine and technology

• Exultation of the machine/industry

• Utopian vision of the city

• Aesthetic vision of industry

Artists• Charles Demuth• Charles Sheeler• Louis Lozowick• Hugh Ferriss• Howard Cook• George Ault• Joseph Stella• Georgia O’Keefe

Demuth

• My Egypt, 1927

• Incense of a New Church, 1921

Charles Sheeler

• River Rouge Plant, 1931

• Classic Landscape, 1931

Sheeler

• Industry, 1932

• Church Street, 1920

Louis Lozowick

• New York

• Pittsburg

Lozowick

Hugh Ferriss

• Study for Maximum Mass Permitted by the 1916 New York Zoning Law, 1922

George Ault

Jane Street at HudsonAnd Sullivan Street in

Howard Cook

• Skyscraper, 1929

Joseph Stella

• Brooklyn Bridge,• 1919;

• 1929

Georgia O’Keefe

Photographers

• Alfred Steiglitz

• Edward Steichen

• Lewis Hine

• Ralph Steiner

• Margaret Bourke-White

• Gerald Murphy

Steiglitz

• Flatiron Building

Steichen

• Flatiron

Margaret Bourke-White

• Chrysler Corporation, 1929

Bourke-White

• Chrysler Building

Gerald Murphy

• Watch

Lewis Hine

• Girl Worker

• Powerhouse Mechanic

Ralph Steiner

• Typewriter

• Power Switches

Paul Strand

• City Hall

• Wire Wheel