Precisionism in perspective: Form and philosophy in twentieth century art.
Item
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Title
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Precisionism in perspective: Form and philosophy in twentieth century art.
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Identifier
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AAI9325131
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identifier
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9325131
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Creator
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Mille, Diana Dimodica.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Marlene Park
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Date
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1993
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History
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Abstract
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The purpose of this dissertation is to establish the broader significance of Precisionist form and philosophy in twentieth century art. While existing scholarship has notably codified Precisionism as primarily an artistic phenomenon of the 1920's, the significance of Precisionism in twentieth century art--as this dissertation demonstrates--lies, instead, in its extension beyond the 1920's, into the 1930's and 1940's. Precisionists' Charles Sheeler, Ralston Crawford and Niles Spencer, for example, carry forward into their later abstract/realist works--unlike many other artists who have been assigned the Precisionist label for only a handful of early works--many of the universal components derived from their initial 1920's hard-edged industrial Cubist-Realism vision.;More importantly, this dissertation explores how the consistent abstract/realist tendencies of Sheeler, Crawford and Spencer parallel--from the 1920's through the 1940's--similar abstract/realist developments in the broader arenas of photography and "Modernism" in the United States and Europe.;In its effort to establish the broader significance of precisionism in twentieth century art, this thesis also demonstrates how Precisionist content--as well as style--reflected both the content and style of European Bauhaus, Purist and Neue Sachlichkeit artists who were involved with similar machine-age aesthetics. The widespread artistic attempt among all of these artists, for instance, was to relate the simple, linear, and well-designed forms of an earlier nineteenth century craft or vernacular tradition to forms produced by twentieth century industrial means.;Furthermore, in linking artistic and utilitarian qualities, the Precisionists and the European machine-age artists codified positive attitude towards twentieth century industrialism and its objects which gained tremendous visibility and popularity, thus leading to the further articulation of these machine-age aesthetics in the broader literary world and in the public realm of museum programming.;As a result, this paper establishes the broader significance of precisionist form and philosophy beyond a singular American artistic movement of the 1920's, and demonstrates that Precisionism played a major role in a collective American and European ideology that continued throughout several decades of the twentieth century.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
