Ball Bearings and Winches: How Industrial Civilization Permeated the Arts

Abstract

The 18th century Enlightenment was characterized by a fascination with scientific experiments and technical inventions. The resulting discoveries were being harnessed to enable manufacturing, and thus applied science emerged. Later, the combination of experimentation and industrial applications became a model of progress. At least part of the stylistic experimentation in the arts, rife at the beginning of the 20th century, was inspired by the examples from science. Cubism, which emerged just before World War I, was perhaps the most visible of such experiments. It was a new way of seeing initiated by Braque and Picasso (1) and subsequently gained followers who included Fernand Leger, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, and Juan Gris. In the 1920s, however, Cubism started to be criticized for its decorativeness. This happened in the context of the general trend of “return to order,” to simpler art forms. This brought in a rational esthetic, purism, which was founded by two people who painted but also had architectural backgrounds, Amedee Ozenfant (1886–1966) and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887–1965). Jeanneret, later known as Le …