MODERN EXPRESSIONISM

Sydney Opera House

Modernist architecture has these features: little or no ornamentation, factory-made parts, man-made materials such as metal and concrete, emphasis on function, and rebellion against traditional styles.

Modern Expressionist architecture emphasizes function. It attempts to provide for specific needs rather than imitate nature. The roots of Modernism may be found in the work of a Russian architect by the name Berthold Luberkin (1901-1990), who settled in London and founded a group called Tecton. The Tecton architects believed in applying scientific, analytical methods to design. Their stark buildings ran counter to expectations and often seemed to defy gravity.

Modernist architecture can express a number of stylistic ideas, including: Structuralism, Formalism, Bauhaus, the International Style, Brutalism, and Minimalism. These styles add to the fuctional emphasis of modern expressionalist architecture.

The defining characteristics of modernist architecture include these features: little or no ornamentation, factory-made parts, man-made materials such as metal and concrete, emphasis on function, and rebellion against traditional styles.

Architects known for their modernist buidlings include Rem Koolhaas, I.M. Pei, Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe.  Le Corbusier is known for his modern expressionalist architectual masterpiece the Notre Dame de Haut. The Sydney Opera House by Jorn Utzon is a modern masterpiece and architectural marvel.
 

The History of the Modern Expressionist Movement:

In the later decades of the twentieth century, designers rebelled against the rational Modernism and a variety of post modern styles evolved. Examples of post modern architecture include: Postmodernism, High Tech, Organic, and Deconstructivism.

Modern Expressionism is characterized by a post-expressionistic artistic style in which the artist creates his or her artwork by merging images and/or objects with emotions. This is accomplished through the use of both literal and abstract emphasis on color, texture, obscured subject matter, distortion, unnatural depth, exaggeration and modified surrounding imagery.

Modern Expressionism feeds off of the roots of Expressionism, German Expressionism and Abstract expressionism but combines them with present-day media and subject matter. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche presented his theory of the ancient dualism between two types of aesthetic experience, namely the Apollonian and the Dionysian; a dualism between a world of the mind, of order, of regularity and polishedness and a world of intoxication, chaos, ecstasy. The Apollonian represented the rationally conceived ideal, whereas the Dionysian represented artistic conception proper, originating from man's subconscious. 

The analogy with the world of the Greek gods typifies the relationship between these extremes: two godsons, incompatible and yet inseparable. According to Nietzsche, both elements are present in any work of art. The basic characteristics of expressionism are Dionysian: bold colors, distorted forms, painted in a careless manner, two-dimensional, without perspective, and based on feelings (the child) rather than rational thought (the adult).

The term was also coined by Czech art historian Antonín Matìjèek in 1910 as the opposite of impressionism: "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself....[An Expressionist rejects] immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures....Impressions and mental images that pass through mental peoples soul as through a filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence [...and] are assimilated and condense into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols." (Gordon, 1987)

In architecture, two specific buildings are identified as expressionist: Bruno Taut's Glass Pavilion at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914), and Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany completed in 1921. Hans Poelzig's Berlin theatre (Grosse Schauspielhaus) interior for Max Reinhardt is also sometimes cited. The influential architectural critic and historian, Sigfried Giedion in his book Space, Time and Architecture (1941)dismissed Expressionist architecture as a side show in the development of functionalism.  It was only in the 1970s that expressionism in architecture came to be re-evaluated in a more positive light.

(source: http://www.architecture411.com)