Article ID: CBB396830113

More Beautiful Than Necessary (October 2018)

unapi

What was it about the First World War that brought on Modernism? Like the simplified poppy form and the sword-within-a-cross which both came to memorialize the First World War in British culture, materiel from that era—shells, rifle stocks, helmets, bullets, bunkers— have a thoroughly modern, almost Bauhaus aesthetic. This was not entirely new in the history of weapons; the common soldier had often fought with unadorned weapons. In this war, however, there was nothing else to see; soldiers could safely regard only the sky, their comrades, their weapons and—viewed through a periscope’s framing—a landscape stripped of nature’s adornments. The inference is that this limited vision and consequent focus on unadorned form were key to the modern aesthetic taking hold.

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Authors & Contributors
Wosk, Julie
Siotto, Andrea
Mark C. Wilkins
Michael Toscano
Cody Hartley
Filippo Cappellano
Concepts
World War I
Military technology
Modernism
Aesthetics
Technology and art
Technology and war; technology and the military
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
21st century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Italy
Montreal (Quebec, Canada)
Japan
Germany
Institutions
Haeger Potteries
California Institute of Technology
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