85502 Chap.6 Modernism and Its Myths
Modernism and Its Myths
The dominant story
Week 6 introduces modernism as usually told: a response to industrialisation and mass production that rejected ornament and historical styles and believed design could shape a better future.
Omissions and blind spots
The lecture challenges that canon, arguing that modernism’s radical ideas were simplified, consolidated and co-opted, and that “form follows function” mis-characterises them.
Starting Assessment 2
The tutorial introduces the research project and the museum catalogues you will use to find at least one of your two artefacts.
Why it matters
Modernism remains the default story many designers absorb.
Learning to see where that story was simplified gives you a method you can turn on any movement, including the ones shaping design today.
A carpet as evidence
The lecture page opens with Gunta Stölzl’s knotted floor carpet of 1923, a textile that quietly questions a canon built mostly from buildings and chairs.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Historical conditions that shaped modernism
- 02
The dominant narrative of modernism
- 03
Form follows function as a mis-characterisation
- 04
Simplified, consolidated and co-opted
- 05
Textiles and women at the edge of the canon
- 06
The untold story of modernism in Australia
- 07
Finding artefacts in museum catalogues
- 08
The Miro board: sorting artefacts by theme
Worked example · free
Test the slogan form follows function on one object
- 1State the function plainly: to support a seated person.
- 1List formal choices that function alone does not explain, such as colour, finish or a distinctive silhouette.
- 1Explain those choices with the lecture’s alternative: modernist emphasis on materials and form, or later styling for sale.
- 1Conclude: the slogan simplifies a more complex story, which is the lecture’s point about how the canon was flattened.
Key terms
- Modernism
- A varied and sometimes contradictory body of ideas, methods and looks that remade art, building and design from the late 1800s.
- Canon
- The accepted list of important designers and objects that a field teaches as its history.
Modernism and Its Myths FAQ
Why does the lecture call form follows function a mis-characterisation?
Because the designers moved towards abstraction, usefulness and attention to material and form for reasons that the slogan squeezes into four words. The lecture treats the idiom as a popular simplification of a more complex and contested movement, not as an accurate summary of what designers did.
What are the main omissions in the modernism story?
The lecture asks you to identify problems and omissions in the dominant narrative. Its own materials point to some: a textile by Gunta Stölzl as the lecture image, readings on women in design, and a book promising the untold story of modernism in Australia, all suggesting voices and places the canon left out.
Which museum catalogues can I use for Assessment 2?
The Week 6 tutorial lists many, including Trove, the Powerhouse, Museums Victoria, the Australian Museum, the National Library of Australia, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum Group and the Smithsonian. It recommends Google Arts and Culture over an ordinary image search for museum images.
What are the Week 6 required readings?
Two: a 2017 Medium essay by Mathias Agbo Jr arguing that form follows function is a fallacy taken too far, and Ann Stephen’s introduction to Modern times, the untold story of modernism in Australia. Recommended extras are Judith Attfield’s chapter on pioneers of modern design in Women in design and a Bad Gays podcast episode on Philip Johnson.
What happens in the Week 6 tutorial?
Assessment 2 is introduced, and the core skill is using museum catalogues to identify artefacts, with the exercise related to modernism. The class also works on a shared Miro board, sorting museum artefacts into themes, which is good practice for finding the connecting concept between your own two artefacts.
How do I use modernism in Assessment 2?
Week 6 is the first lecture in the Weeks 6 to 12 range the research project must draw on. A strong use pairs an object from the modernist canon with something it overlooked, such as a textile, a domestic object or a design from outside Europe, and asks what the comparison reveals about how the canon was formed.
Assessment move
Write the lecture’s three learning aims as three headings in your journal and add evidence under each as you read. Spend one session on two or three museum catalogues and save five candidate artefacts with their full catalogue details, since the Assessment 2 template asks for exactly those. If modernism is one of your Assessment 2 themes, pair a canonical object with something the canon ignored.
Close the week by writing the slogan form follows function at the top of a page and listing three objects that obey it and three that do not.
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