Beauty in the Machine Age

By Ian Vorres
(August 1, 1959, Saturday Night Magazine)

It has been the twentieth century which has, at last, taken the notion of beauty from its high philosophical pedestal and, chopping off many of its rather precious and confusing subtleties, brought it down to the market place for practical use and public enjoyment.

The new, popularized aesthetic preaches that beauty does not only lie in certain examples of nature and art but should also be found in every manufactured product of daily life, be it a sky-scraper or a toothpick. And so industry has spent a great deal of money to evolve good design, that is, a pleasing relationship between line, shape, color and mass on the one hand, with certain functional requirements on the other.

That this practical and materialistic concept of beauty has been evolved on a large scale by the West, with its utilitarian social philosophy of "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people", is not surprising: for a rational understanding of beauty is one of the true pleasures in life.

It was Charles William Elliot, the president of Harvard University, who pointed straight to the future when he said on May 31, 1905, at the opening of the new Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo: "Beauty often results chiefly from fitness: indeed, it is easy to maintain that nothing is fair except what is fit for its uses or functions. If the function of the product of a machine be useful and valuable, and the machine be eminently fit for its function, beauty will be discernible in the machine. An American axe is eminently fit for its function, and it conspicuously has the beauty of fitness. A locomotive or a steamship has the same sort of beauty, derived from the supreme fitness for its function."

Thus came about the twentieth century concept of beauty based on an aesthetic which recognizes the machine and takes advantage of its possibilities. It is formulated on principles of sound design which accepts forms suited to pass production and, at the same time, are practical for use.

The new aesthetic actually had its forerunner in Josiah Wedgewood when, as early as 1765, he produced his Queen's Ware in carefully thought out forms, suited to mass production and practical use.

It was, however, the enormous accumulation of ugliness at the Great Exposition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace in London that first impressed upon a shocked public the artificiality, inutility and pompous ornamentation of most products created by the Industrial Revolution.

Reaction swiftly set in and such artistic movements as the Arts and Crafts movement in America and the Art Nouveau in Europe took up the cause for unpretentious, clean and utilitarian forms that aimed at comfort, economy and the abolition of fussy superfluities.

These early movements, however, did not really cope with the problems brought about by the machine, except to turn from it and look backward to the sincerity of pure art and hand-made products.

It was only after World War I, when Walter Gropius formed the Bauhaus in Germany, a new school for progressive architects and designers, that the machine was finally accepted as the main vehicle of form.

Eventually artists and designers came to work closely and directly with industry and soon everything from textiles, furniture and porcelain to umbrellas, nails and perfume bottles poured forth in clear, functional forms.

After World War II, the progressive ideas of design based on function and simplicity were further advanced by the use of new plastics and synthetic materials which gave the finished product freshness and an exciting quality of beauty.

The new aesthetic is by now well entrenched in both industry and among the public, and sound design is encouraged and recognized on a national scale.

The National Industrial Design Council in Ottawa, for example, grants numerous awards every year to Canadian products which are rated outstanding in good design on the basis of appearance, usefulness and good value. The NIDC also, through its own Design Centre in the capital, organizes exhibitions, grants scholarships and generally promotes the cause of sound design.

To mark our new era of machine made beauty, a growing number of good design exhibitions find their way to our galleries and museums. Only recently a mammoth survey of design in the 20th century opened at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo and will be shown in major museums across the United States this year.

Design exhibitions cover the entire realm of human endeavor. Included are furniture, appliances, business machines, toys, sporting goods, dishes, glassware, leather and everythng else imaginable.

What place do such things have in a museum, one may ask?

And the answer is, the same place that a Grecian urn of 2,500 years ago has in our museum today. For centuries ago the potter who made a vase was primarily fashioning a useful object for household use. If soon it became a "work of art" and treasured museum piece, it was simply because of its sound design that combined purity of line with function.

Already many of the manufactured products in our daily use are "landmarks" of twentieth century design like the popular wrought iron chairs designed in 1954 by Charles Eames.

Surrounding us today in our homes, offices and factories are many of the potential museum pieces of the future. Any twentieth century item that is well designed will, in all probability, survive and become valuable. An exhibition of modern design in a museum today tries to predict which items at present will be museum pieces of the future.

Function, quality and pleasing form are the keys to the machine aesthetic of our scientific age, and by accepting this practical philosophy on beauty, the 20th century has made a full swing back to the 5th century B.C. when Plato preached that artists are basically artisans who must primarily produce useful products for society.

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