1 Industrial Age ART

 

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -ASSORTS -by Gautam Shah  

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1 Industrial Age ART

Industrial age marks a period from later half of 18^th C to first half of 19^th. It was a period of significant innovations and social upheaval. This included migration from rural areas, fast urbanization and degradation of social life.

Art, branched in to two major streams. 1 The artists of the period went on to country life, coastal, uncharted territories for tracing fresh scenes. First it was plein-air, but followed by Impressionism and Expressionism. 2 At another extreme, the artists stayed in own urban localities, capturing industrial buildings, production areas, construction sites, poor condition of workers and the evolving city scapes. In both the cases, the common characteristic was truthful depiction without any personal bias. But both Arts, were subtly experimenting with the form and composition, which ultimately led, to cubism, abstraction and surrealism, etc.

Some used, plein-air sketching, whereas, others began to use camera for the first capture. This was also the period when artists’ colours, in many pre-mixed shades, began to be available in collapsible tubes. Black colour was a taboo for centuries, now, Auguste Renoir believed it to be ‘the king of all colours’ and Vincent Van Gogh, said ‘whoever tries to suppress the black, has nothing to do (with art?)’.

There were few distinct classes of Industrial Age Art. Urban Landscape showing street architecture and Industrial plants, Complexities of construction sites and technical buildings, like cranes, silos, bridges, towers, scaffolding, degradation of living environments, urban level twilight and night street scenes, modern life-style (fashion), and new modes of entertainments.

 

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