Getting Started
The late 19th and 20th centuries were a period of unprecedented technological and industrial change in Europe and America. This revolution provided artists and architects with a new toolbox of materials, processes, and techniques that fundamentally altered the nature of art. From the construction of soaring skyscrapers to the creation of art from the earth itself, this era saw innovation in materials directly drive radical new forms of artistic expression.
What You Should Be Able to Do
Explain how new building materials like steel and reinforced concrete led to the development of the skyscraper and the International Style of architecture.
Analyze the ways new media, such as photography and serigraphy, affected the subject matter and appearance of artworks.
Connect the use of industrial technology and prefabrication to the creation of monumental modern sculptures and earthworks.
Attribute key architectural works to the International Style based on their visual and material characteristics.
Key Developments & Analysis
This section analyzes how new materials and techniques directly influenced the visual form and meaning of art and architecture.
The Revolution in Architecture: Steel, Glass, and Concrete
The Industrial Revolution introduced building materials that shattered the limits of traditional stone and wood construction. These new technologies enabled architects to design buildings that were taller, more open, and visually lighter than ever before.
Materials & Techniques:
Steel-frame construction is a building technique using a structural "skeleton" of steel beams to support a building's weight. This meant that the outer walls no longer had to bear the load.
Ferroconcrete, or reinforced concrete, is concrete strengthened with a web of steel rebar. This gives the material the compressive strength of concrete and the tensile strength of steel, allowing for fluid, sculptural forms.
A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Ferroconcrete made dramatic cantilevers possible, creating a sense of lightness and defiance of gravity.
Effects on Form and Meaning:
The most immediate result of steel-frame construction was the skyscraper. In the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, Louis Sullivan used a steel frame to open up the ground floor with massive plate-glass windows, ideal for a department store. While the steel skeleton is hidden, its effects are clear in the wide, open bays.
Later, architects of the International Style chose not to hide these new materials but to celebrate them. This architectural style, which proliferated globally, was defined by its geometric simplicity, lack of ornamentation, and honest expression of structure.
- Seagram Building (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson), 1958, steel frame with glass curtain wall and bronze, corporate headquarters.
This skyscraper is a masterclass in the International Style's "less is more" philosophy. The steel frame supports the structure, allowing the exterior to be a non-load-bearing "curtain wall" of glass. The bronze I-beams on the exterior are purely decorative, but they serve to articulate the structural grid beneath, making the building's construction its primary aesthetic feature. The building's sleek, geometric purity was intended to reflect the corporation's modern, efficient, and powerful identity.
New Media and Industrial Processes in Art
Just as architecture was transformed by new materials, the visual arts were revolutionized by new media and industrial processes that challenged traditional notions of the unique, handmade art object.
Materials & Techniques:
Photography is a medium for producing images by recording light. Early photography was valued for its ability to capture reality with perceived objectivity.
Serigraphy, or silkscreen printing, is a printmaking technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. Because the process is fast and can be used to create many identical images, it was originally a commercial technique.
Prefabrication involves manufacturing components of a structure or artwork in a factory to be assembled on-site.
Effects on Form and Meaning:
Photography offered a new way of seeing. In The Steerage, Alfred Stieglitz used a handheld camera to capture a "decisive moment," elevating a documentary scene into a complex formal composition of shapes, lines, and textures. He argued that photography could be an art form as expressive as painting.
Pop artists in the 1960s embraced commercial techniques to critique a culture saturated with mass media.
- Marilyn Diptych (Andy Warhol), 1962, oil, acrylic, and silkscreen enamel on canvas, commentary on celebrity and mass media.
Warhol used serigraphy to mass-produce Marilyn Monroe's image, mimicking the way her face was endlessly reproduced in newspapers and films. The repetition, fading, and garish colors drain the image of its individuality, turning the celebrity into a flattened, commercial product. The diptych format, traditionally used for religious altarpieces, ironically suggests that celebrity has become a new form of worship.
Art at a Monumental Scale: Earthworks
By the mid-20th century, artists began using industrial technology and the landscape itself as their medium, creating massive works that could not be contained within a gallery.
Materials & Techniques:
- Earthworks, or Land Art, are artworks made directly in the landscape by sculpting the land itself or by making structures in the landscape using earth, rock, or other natural materials. The creation of these works often requires industrial machinery like bulldozers and dump trucks.
Effects on Form and Meaning:
Earthworks represent a culmination of using non-art materials and industrial processes. They are site-specific, meaning their form and meaning are inextricably linked to their location.
- Spiral Jetty (Robert Smithson), 1970, mud, precipitated salt crystals, rock, and water, earthwork.
Smithson used construction equipment to move over 6,000 tons of rock and earth into the Great Salt Lake, creating a 1,500-foot-long spiral. The work's form is not static; it is in a constant state of flux as the water level rises and falls, encrusting the black basalt rock with white salt crystals. The spiral shape evokes natural forms like galaxies and seashells, connecting the industrial process of its making to the immense, geological time of the site itself.
Data & Organization Tools
Required Works ID
| Title | Artist / Culture | Date | Materials / Technique |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carson, Pirie, Scott Building | Louis Sullivan | 1899–1903 | Steel frame, terracotta exterior, cast iron |
| The Steerage | Alfred Stieglitz | 1907 | Photogravure |
| Villa Savoye | Le Corbusier | 1929 | Steel and reinforced concrete |
| Seagram Building | Mies van der Rohe, Johnson | 1954–1958 | Steel frame, glass, bronze |
| Marilyn Diptych | Andy Warhol | 1962 | Oil, acrylic, silkscreen on canvas |
| Spiral Jetty | Robert Smithson | 1970 | Earthwork: mud, salt, rock, water |
Evidence Bank
Steel-frame construction: A building method using a metal skeleton to support the weight of a structure, freeing the walls from load-bearing duty and enabling greater height and larger windows.
International Style: An architectural style developed after World War I, characterized by the use of modern materials (steel, glass, concrete), a lack of ornamentation, and an emphasis on simple geometric forms and function.
Photography: The art and process of creating durable images by recording light. In the early 20th century, artists championed it as a fine art medium capable of formal beauty and expression.
Serigraphy (Silkscreen): A printmaking process where ink is forced through a mesh screen onto a surface. Its commercial origins and capacity for mass reproduction were exploited by Pop artists.
Earthworks: A form of art that uses the natural landscape as its medium and site. These monumental works often require industrial equipment for their construction.
Seagram Building: An iconic example of the International Style skyscraper, its external bronze beams articulate its internal steel structure, embodying the principle that "less is more."
Marilyn Diptych: A key Pop Art work that uses the commercial process of serigraphy to comment on the nature of celebrity, mass media, and death in modern culture.
Spiral Jetty: A canonical earthwork that uses industrial methods to create a monumental form in a remote landscape, engaging with themes of nature, time, and entropy.
Skill Snapshots
Visual:
Feature: The non-load-bearing glass curtain wall of the Seagram Building. → Effect: Creates a sleek, transparent, and light appearance, expressing the modernity of the corporation within.
Feature: The repeated, slightly misregistered silkscreened images in Marilyn Diptych. → Effect: Drains the celebrity's face of individuality, turning her into a depersonalized, mass-produced commodity.
Feature: The use of black basalt rock against the pink water of the Great Salt Lake in Spiral Jetty. → Effect: Creates a dramatic visual contrast that changes over time as white salt crystals form on the rock, highlighting the dynamic, natural processes of the site.
Comparison/Attribution:
The Carson, Pirie, Scott Building and the Seagram Building both use a steel frame, but the former hides it behind decorative terracotta while the latter expresses the structural grid as its primary aesthetic.
Both The Steerage and Marilyn Diptych are mechanically reproduced images, but Stieglitz uses photography to create a unique, formalist composition, whereas Warhol uses serigraphy to explore the concept of mass reproduction itself.
The Villa Savoye and the Seagram Building are both prime examples of the International Style, but one applies its principles of geometric purity and ferroconcrete construction to a private home, while the other applies them to a monumental corporate tower.
Continuity & Change in Style:
Baseline: Traditional architecture before the late 19th century relied on heavy, load-bearing walls of masonry, which limited building height and the size of window openings.
Change: Steel-frame construction allowed architects to build to unprecedented heights, leading to the skyscraper and radically changing the urban skyline.
Change: Ferroconcrete and cantilevering allowed architects of the International Style to create buildings that appeared to float, with open floor plans and horizontal ribbon windows.
Continuity: Despite revolutionary new materials, architects continued to engage with classical principles of design, such as proportion, rhythm, and balance, in their modern structures.
Common Misconceptions & Clarifications
Misconception: The International Style is just any modern-looking glass box.
- Clarification: It is a specific style with defined principles: radical simplification of form, rejection of ornament, use of a visible structural grid, and an emphasis on volume over mass.
Misconception: Photography was immediately accepted as a fine art.
- Clarification: For decades, photography was debated and often relegated to a scientific or documentary tool. Artists like Alfred Stieglitz actively fought to have it recognized for its artistic potential.
Misconception: Earthworks are just large sculptures placed outdoors.
- Clarification: Earthworks are site-specific, meaning their form, materials, and meaning are inextricably tied to their particular location in the landscape. They are made of and in the land, not just placed on it.
Misconception: New media like photography and serigraphy completely replaced painting.
- Clarification: Artists have always adopted new technologies, but they rarely cause the complete abandonment of older ones. New media existed alongside, and often in dialogue with, traditional art forms like painting and sculpture.
Summary
The late 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a profound transformation in art and architecture, driven by technological innovation. New materials like the steel frame and ferroconcrete gave rise to the skyscraper and the clean, geometric forms of the International Style, reshaping our cities. Simultaneously, new media such as photography and serigraphy allowed artists to engage with the world in novel ways, from capturing fleeting moments to critiquing mass culture. This trajectory of using industrial processes and non-traditional materials culminated in massive earthworks, where artists moved beyond the gallery to sculpt the land itself. Ultimately, these advances did not just provide new tools; they fundamentally expanded the definition of what art could be, where it could be found, and how it could be made.