Modern Transformed
The domestication of industrial design culture in Norway, ca. 1940-1970
Thesis for the degree philosophiae doctor Trondheim, October 2007
Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art
Department of Architectural Design, Form and Colour Studies
Innovation and Creativity
Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art Department of Architectural Design, Form and Colour Studies
© Kjetil Fallan
ISBN 978-82-471-4624-8 (printed version) ISBN 978-82-471-4638-5 (electronic version) ISSN 1503-8181
Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2007:210 Printed by NTNU-trykk
University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art. I am most grateful for the generous funding and the opportunities provided by the institution’s recognition of the value of interdisciplinary research. My colleagues at the Department of Architectural Design, Form and Colour Studies and the rest of the Faculty deserve many thanks for welcoming a historian in their midst and generously sharing their expertise and experiences on issues less immediate to the author.
I must express my deepest gratitude to my advisors Eivind Kasa and Per Østby for their inspiring enthusiasm, skilful guidance, sharp critique and valued friendship. Their willingness to take on a project off the beaten disciplinary track and their ability to see potential rather than problems in such a venture has been of vital importance. All along this long and winding road they have encouraged me and challenged me, always making me go the extra mile.
Through the years, many people have contributed to my understanding of the material presented in this dissertation. For rewarding discussions, pointed comments and pleasant conversations, I am indebted to Stig Kvaal, Finn Arne Jørgensen, Thomas Brandt, Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen, Hilde Berntsen, Kjersti Øverbø Schulte and several others at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Center for Technology and Society, the Department of Product Design, and elsewhere.
Figgjo AS most kindly gave me unrestricted access to their company archive. I wish to thank everyone at Figgjo for all their hospitality and helpfulness, especially former CEO Per Arne Jensen, former design manager Olav Joa, designer Jens Olav Hetland and design manager Constance Gaard Kristiansen.
The NTNU Library has been an invaluable resource in my work. The expertise and expedience of its staff, especially the librarians at the Library for Architecture, Civil Engineering and Product Design, greatly aided my search for more or less obscure sources.
In acknowledgment of the direct impact Norwegian design itself has had on me and on the formation of this project, I also want to thank my Nobø Type C panel radiator designed by Herman Semmelmann in 1946 for keeping my office warm during long, cold winters, my Luxo L1-P task lamp designed by Jacob Jacobsen in 1937 (shade redesigned by Tom Valø in the late 1960s) for shedding the most flexible light on my work, my Håg H05 office chair designed by Peter Opsvik AS in 1999 for excellent support through endless hours of reading and writing, and my Figgjo Verde coffee cup designed by Johan Verde in 1995 for a steady and stylish supply of stimulating elixir.
Finally, my most heartfelt thanks go to my wife Miriam for her infinite patience, endless support and steadfast encouragement. Her soundness of mind and warmth of heart never ceases to amaze me. This one’s for you.
Thank you all!
Trondheim, June 2007 Kjetil Fallan
Part I: Introduction 1
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Topic and scope 3
1.2 Sources 8
1.3 Demarcations 13
1.4 Structure 15
Part II: Theoretical Frameworks 19
2 Modernism or Modern ISMS? 21
2.1 Introduction 21
2.2 Modern, modernity, modernism 22
2.3 Isms vs. epistemes 25
2.4 Isms and the “essential tension” of ideology and practice 27
2.5 Isms as dynamic discourses 30
2.6 Reading isms 34
2.7 (R)evolution? Reassessing Kuhnian paradigms 37
2.8 Alternative paradigms and their different levels 41
2.9 (R)evolution? Paradigm(s)? Modernism(s)? 45
2.10 Modern ISMS 49
2.11 Conclusion 51
3 Historicising design, designing history 55
3.1 Introduction 55
3.2 The heritage from art history 58
3.3 Industrial design history 66
3.4 Design history or design history? 75
3.5 Material culture studies of industrial design history 83 3.6 Conclusion: A cultural history of industrial design 95
4 The Seamless Web of Socio-Design 101
4.1 Introduction 101
4.2 History of technology, SCOT and STS 102
4.3 Actor-Network Theory 110
4.4 Script 117
4.5 Domestication 126
4.6 Conclusion 136
Part III: Constructing Design Discourse 139
Introduction: Constructing Design Discourse 141
Section A: Setting the agenda 145
5 Forming a forum: Establishing the design magazine Bonytt 147
5.1 Introduction 147
5.2 Background: The Applied Art Association 148
5.3 The emergence of Bonytt 152
5.4 Seeing functionalism as an apolitical and ahistorical truth 158
5.5 “Decor in our time” 164
5.6 Mixing oil and water? Reconciling craft and industry 167
5.7 Conclusion 173
6 Forming a field, shaping a society: Design discourse and postwar reconstruction 175
6.1 Introduction 175
6.2 Putting a human face on modernism 176
6.6 Mass-production: Marvel or malady? 196
6.7 Stavanger Applied Art Association 203
6.8 Conclusion 206
Section B: Setting the table 207
7 Finding form: Establishing pottery production at Figgjo 209
7.1 Introduction 209
7.2 From Power to Pottery 209
7.3 Setting up shop: A pottery primer 212
7.4 Making business, making pottery, making do 214
7.5 Testing trends, finding forms 217
7.6 Conclusion 222
8 Forms in formation: New ambitions in pottery design 223
8.1 Introduction 223
8.2 Gearing up, going pro 223
8.3 Directing design: Ragnar Grimsrud 232
8.4 Conclusion 246
Conclusion: Constructing Design Discourse 247
Part IV: Negotiating Design Networks 251
Introduction: Negotiating Design Networks 253
Section A: Translations on the agenda 257
9 Expressive form, industrial form: Situating design in culture and commerce 259
9.1 Introduction 259
9.2 From social vocation to artistic expression 260
9.3 Responsible craft vs. experimental industry 265
9.4 Taking industry seriously 271
9.5 Conclusion 278
10 Foreign forms: Internationalising Norwegian design discourse 281 10.1 Introduction 281
10.2 Slowly stepping out 281
10.3 America—fears and desires 288
10.4 The revelation in Milan—or: selling art as design 300 10.5 Returning to Milan—or: selling design as science 307 10.6 Conclusion 312 11 Factory forms: Articulating the characteristics of industrial design 315 11.1 Introduction 315
11.2 Making room for compromise and pragmatism 316
11.3 The Norwegian Group of Industrial Designers (ID-gruppen) 320 11.4 Mind the gap—handicrafts vs. industrial design 323 11.5 The distinctive power of the modernist aesthetic 330
11.6 Promoting the unaffected 335
11.7 Conclusion 341
Section B: Translations on the table 343
12 The formation of a factory: Figgjo’s transition to industrial earthenware production 345 12.1 Introduction 345
12.2 From hen house handicraft to fordist factory 345
12.3 Materials, Man, Machine 352
12.4 Design strategy & management: “something for everyone” 361
13.2 Mundane meadows on standard shapes 371
13.3 Invented traditions and notional nostalgia 374
13.4 Coloured clay: credibility and commerciality 385
13.5 Conclusion 401 14 Forms of fancy: Towards a more discerning design practice 403 14.1 Introduction 403
14.2 Too modern? Failure and experiment 404
14.3 Hermann Bongard at Figgjo: Creativity on commission 411 14.4 Forced free trade: Figgjo and Norway towards EFTA 429 14.5 Conclusion 433
Conclusion: Negotiating Design Networks 435
Part V: Reconfiguring Design Cultures 439
Introduction: Reconfiguring Design Cultures 441
Section A: Clearing the agenda 449
15 Forming positions, framing practice: The fragmentation of the design field 451 15.1 Introduction 451
15.2 The ID-ing of I.D. 452
15.3 The “artification” of arts and craft 473
15.4 (Re)organize to professionalize 478
15.5 Conclusion 485 16 Form, fame, finesse and feelings: Aesthetic quality as reconciliation strategy 487 16.1 Introduction 487
16.2 The lingering desire for international fame 488
16.3 Insisting on the artistic aspects of design 495
16.4 Justifying “the need for cosiness” 507
16.5 The consumer: friend or foe? 512
16.6 Conclusion 516 17 (Re)forming message and medium: Radical design ideals, pliant design advice 519 17.1 Introduction 519
17.2 Design for the real world? 520
17.3 “We have teacups enough!” 530
17.4 nye bonytt: From fervent advocacy to friendly advise 535 17.5 Conclusion 541
Section B: Clearing the table 543
18 Forms of flexibility: Designing rational and fashionable tableware 545 18.1 Introduction 545 18.2 Redirecting product strategy: curtailment and cultivation 545 18.3 Fade to white: new basis for rational product differentiation 551 18.4 Conclusion 562
19 Festive forms: Decor design and emotive élan 565
19.1 Introduction 565
19.2 Domesticating modern models I: Folklorica 566
19.3 Domesticating modern models II: Rusticana & Psychedelia 574 19.4 Conclusion 583 20 Form, function fiction: Towards a new design practice 585 20.1 Introduction 585 20.2 Material morals: The virtues of vitreous china—Figgjo 3500 585
20.6 Conclusion 617
Conclusion: Reconfiguring Design Cultures 619
Part VI: Summary and conclusions 625
21 Summary and conclusions 627
21.1 Introduction 627
21.2 Theoretical perspectives revisited 627
21.3 Constructing design discourse 634
21.4 Negotiating design networks 638
21.5 Reconfiguring design cultures 645
21.6 Conclusion: Modern Transformed 651
Sources 655
Bibliography 657
Introduction
1 Introduction
“Everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge... Quotidian things. If they weren’t important, we wouldn’t use such a gorgeous Latinate word. Say it,” he said.
“Quotidian.”
“An extraordinary word that suggests the depth and reach of the commonplace.”1
These are the words of the stoic, wise old Jesuit priest Father Paulus in Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld. In all its simplicity, this statement epitomise the motivation behind this project. Throughout his epic account of the recent history of our modern world DeLillo lets the minute, mundane events and the grand, great narratives resonate in a proposal for an “underhistory”. And as the quote demonstrates, it is not only everyday events that rise to prominence in his philosophy of history; everyday things are just as essential to the understanding of our society and culture. To me, this little reflection on the importance of learning from quotidian things inspires the writing of a design history that recognises the extraordinary significance of the ordinary.
But what can quotidian things tell us about our culture and history, and how? Perhaps the most interesting aspect of industrial design as a field of historical inquiry is its many guises of inherent ambiguity, its “essential tension” between ideology and practice, between mind and matter, between culture and commerce, between production and consumption, between utility and symbol, between tradition and innovation, between the real and the ideal.
Looking at an advertisement for a product that will reemerge later in this study, the 1954 Figgjo Sissel earthenware service [Figure 1-1], may offer some initial clues as to the richness and complexity of meaning that pertains to the design of such ordinary objects. Detailed investigation will have to wait; suffice to say for the moment that many of the ambiguities mentioned above seem to loom large in this design. The design of everyday things can thus function as a lens, allowing us to better see some of the most prominent paradoxes of modern society and culture. Everyday products, the ideas that shaped them, and the meanings they mediate constitute a rich material and fertile ground for cultural history.
1.1 Topic and scope
This is a history of how industrial design culture was domesticated in Norway in the mid- twentieth century. Its primary ambition is to explore how ideas of what modern design was, could and should be were transformed over time between 1940 and 1970, in two
1. Don DeLillo, Underworld (New York: Scribner, 1997) p 542
Figure 1–1: Advertisement for the 1954 Figgjo Sissel earthenware service. The copy reads: “The house- wife’s joy—the table’s adornment”. (Facsimile of advertisement in Figgjo archive)
sites: the national design community—articulated through the leading design magazine Bonytt—and the design strategies and practices of the ceramic tableware manufacturer Figgjo. As such, the dissertation is an attempt at writing a cultural history of industrial design, where design (as) culture is seen as a sort of dialectic or discourse between ideology and practice. This often uneasy relation between ideology and practice is the leitmotif of the study. This principle is derived from the American historian William Sewell Jr.’s conceptualisation of cultural change as a dialectic between system and practice (I will return to this discussion in Chapter 2).2
The ideas and ideals of what was considered good, modern design in mid-twentieth century Norway were partly inherited from the traditional applied art movement (brukskunstbevegelsen) and partly imported from various international currents of the so-called “modern movement”. But just as overt traditionalism was generally taboo, international avantgarde modernism now received criticism for being too “cold”,
“inhuman” and “alien”. In addition to such concerns, the industry had to consider the saleability aspect; consumer taste was generally considered conservative, and modern design could thus often seem like a risky business. This means that in the Norwegian design discourse, past and foreign design ideology had to be “tamed”, or domesticated, in order to better suit the contemporary and local context. The national design community thus transformed these ideas and ideals through professional debate and public propaganda, here traced in the columns of Bonytt, and the manufacturing industry and its designers transformed them through their design strategies and practice, here traced in the documents and products of Figgjo.
This study will be not so much a history of objects and their designers, but more a history of the translations, transcriptions, transactions, transpositions and transformations that constitute the relations between things, people and ideas. In a sense, then, the questions that underpin and frame this study are, as phrased by the American cultural historian Bill Brown;
questions that ask less about the material effects of ideas and ideology than about the ideological and ideational effects of the material world and transformations of it. They are questions that ask not whether things are but what work they perform—questions, in fact, not about things themselves but about the subject-object relation in particular temporal and spatial contexts.3
Whereas Brown’s wording here might seem to imply something of a dichotomy in the causal connection between the “ideal” and the “real”, this study will emphasise the relational and reciprocal dynamics of idea and object, mind and matter, ideology and practice.
Brown’s last point, about the temporal and spatial particularity of the meaning of things, is of utmost importance to a history of design. The cultural contingency of design should need no elaborate explanation. Modernism is anything but static, but undergoes
2. William Sewell Jr., “The Concept(s) of Culture” in Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn—New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1999) p 47
3. Bill Brown, “Thing Theory” in Bill Brown (ed.), Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) p 7
continuous transformations, and the so-called “International Style” is not particularly international. To students of modernism in design, the mid-twentieth century constitutes a very interesting and rewarding period, as it encompasses quite comprehensive cultural changes over a relatively short time-span. Questions pertaining to this temporal context, i.e. the chronological demarcation of this study, will be discussed below. Regarding the spatial context, it should be unnecessary to justify the decision to study Norwegian design. Cultural history is sensitive to contextual variations in society, culture and nationality, and a history of Norwegian design is thus inevitably different from (although not incommensurable with) that of, say, Turkish design or even Swedish design.
Although this study is set in a national site or setting, I will not make a case for a particular “national style” of Norwegian design. The nation is a complex and contested unit but it nontheless makes a viable arena for domestication processes. The mesh of cultural, social, political and economic configurations and codes the make up our society clearly contributes to maintaining the nation and the national as valid categories of demarcation and identity. I thus believe it is meaningful to discuss Norwegian design as distinct from that of other nations, but without striving to find some innate “Norwegian- ness” in its form.
However, it has been claimed that the home and its material constitution is particularly important in Norwegian culture. Explaning this claim by pointing to climatic circumstances has been repeated so often as to become more or less a truism. Whilst Mediterranean people live their lives mostly outdoors, the story goes, the long, cold, dark winters force us to spend so much time in our homes that they come to take on a significance.4 Even the Norwegian social anthropologist Marianne Gullestad does, to some extent, subscribe to the climate argument in her study of how young Norwegian women configure their social lives and identities around their homes, but nevertheless points to ideological concerns and symbolic values as far more important factors in understanding the centrality of the home in Norwegian culture:
As products and symbols of contemporary Norwegian culture the homes are perhaps more important than banks, insurance companies, and public buildings. The culture is home- centred, and the homes may perhaps invite a symbolic comparison with, let us say, the Gothic cathedral of medieval France. They are not comparable in terms of aesthetic quality and gradeur, but in terms of being among the central products and symbols of their cultures.5
Gullestad’s assertion is based on a ethnographic study from around 1980, but if she is correct, I would argue that her point is no less valid in 2005 or in 1955. Whatever the reason may be, there seems to be some truth to the claim that Norwegians are particularly concerned with their homes and interiors, something which should be taken into account when writing a history of Norwegian design.
4. The questionable logic of this argument is easily revelad by pointing out the very different home culture among traditional Inuit and Sami communities.
5. Marianne Gullestad, Kitchen-table Society [1984] (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2001) p 110
Given this remarkable centrality of the home in Norwegian culture, it is hardly surprising that the domestic sphere to a large degree has been the dominant domain both in the professional design debate and in consumers’ concerns with design. This focus also seems to be in line with the assertion by the American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and sociologist Eugene Rochberg-Halton that “the emotional integration of the home is concretely embodied in household objects.”6 They recognise that many other types of objects also are important in people’s lives, such as tools of the trade, cars, objects encountered in public space, etc. But, they continue;
one can argue that the home contains the most special objects: those that were selected by the person to attend to regularly or to have close at hand, that create permanence in the intimate life of a person, and therefore that are most involved in making up his or her identity.7
It follows that the design of such artefacts and the ideas that underpin them should be of great interest to historians.
In the context of the present study it is also interesting to note that among household objects in general, Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton identified tableware as one of the most meaningful of all categories.8 Also, tableware was one of the favoured product categories in the mid-twentieth century Norwegian design discourse—both as illustrations of theoretical arguments, as exemplars of good (or bad) design, and as common tasks for designers. So, choosing a ceramic tableware factory as a case study might not be the most controversial decision, but it is a sensible one. And although design history is no stranger to tableware, a humble, run-of-the-mill enterprise such as Figgjo will represent something different. As the British design historian Jonathan Woodham has observed: “There has been comparatively little penetrating and substantive writing about twentieth-century industrial ceramics.”9 Even less so, I wold argue, if those focusing on famous brands and designers are subtracted. Still, my ambition is not to write a history of tableware or ceramic design, but to use the design practice at Figgjo and the design debates in Bonytt to better understand the development of mid-twentieth century Norwegian industrial design in general as cultural history.
Why all this talk about domesticity and household objects? Does not industrial design exceed this limited sphere of material culture and is not the failure to appreciate this one of the cardinal sins of design history? Yes indeed. But a historian is always to some extent a prisoner of his or her sources. My scope in this study is to investigate how modernist ideology was domesticated in design culture understood as debate and practice, and it would prove difficult to identify intellectual communities and arenas of debate engaged in these matters in mid-twentieth century Norway that did not have a heavy bias towards the domestic environment.
6. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things—Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) p 165
7. Ibid. p 17 8. Ibid. p 82
9. Jonathan Woodham, “Ceramic History” in Hazel Conway (ed.), Design History—A Student’s Handbook (London:
Routledge, 1987) p 56
This study is a cultural history of modern design in Norway. It seeks to trace the domestication of industrial design culture in Norway over three decades. In order to reach a comprehensive understanding of the transformations that the ideas of what modern was and should be underwent in this setting, they need to be described and discussed at length and in depth, revealing the complexity of culture and dynamics of historical change. Contexts and nuances are essential in the interpretation of culture, a point which has been argued perhaps most prominently by the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz and epitomised in his notion of thick description.10 So, the rather lengthy and detailed character of this study is warranted by the richness and multivalence of its subject matter.
With this little “disclaimer” about the scope and topic of this study, it is befitting to turn to a discussion of the primary source material upon which it is based.
1.2 Sources
“[T]hink of what a boon it will be to Czech historians of the future. The complete recorded lives of the Czech intelligentsia on file in the police archives! Do you know what effort literary historians have put into reconstructing in detail the sex lives of, say, Voltaire or Balzac or Tolstoy?
No such problems with Czech writers. It’s all on tape. Every last sigh.”11
Although Norway has been called “the last Soviet state”,12 I have, as a Norwegian historian, not benefited from the situation here sarcastically outlined by the Czech author Milan Kundera in his critique of the dictatorial police control in his native country following the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion in 1968. I have had to rely on more conventional sources.
As I have chosen to study a relatively long period of time and comprehensive field of inquiry with a vast multitude of potential sources, I have for the sake of researchability selected two distinct trajectories for the empirical investigations: the design magazine Bonytt and the ceramic tableware manufacturer Figgjo. Regarding the first of these trajectories, the magazine itself constitutes the primary source material. 30 volumes consisting of about 300 issues published during this period make up a rich an valuable source material of a consecutive order and consistent character. The second trajectory is primarily based on Figgjo’s company archive, which contains a wide variety of material.
10. Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973) 3-30
11. Milan Kundera, The unbearable lightness of being (New York: Harper & Row, 1984) p 212
12. Believing that the microphones and cameras were turned off after a TV debate in September 1999 about the unsuccessful negotiations on a possible merger between the Norwegian telecom giant Telenor and its Swedish counterpart Telia, both with heavy state ownership, the Swedish Minister of Industry Björn Rosengren offered this now legendary characteristic of Norway.
I have, however, here focused on sources pertaining to the company’s design strategies and design practice.
When studying the (trans)formation of, debate on and mediation of design ideology in mid-twentieth century Norway, Bonytt is more or less given as the major source. It was not just the leading design magazine—it was pretty much the only design magazine in Norway in this period. Thus, “everyone” in the design community read and related to Bonytt—at least the entire applied art community formed around the schools, museums and organisations, along with practitioning designers and some manufacturers. In addition, the magazine managed to reach a realtively large audience among the general public. Moreover, Bonytt was the official mouthpiece of the major design organisation, the National Association/Federation Norwegian Applied Art (Landsforeningen/- forbundet Norsk Brukskunst) from 1947 to 1970 (and unofficially so from the very beginning in 1941).
This means that the ideas and ideals that were expressed in the columns of Bonytt had origins in, influence on and implications for much wider circles than the little group of editors/writers and their “congregation”. The intricacy of the network in which Bonytt was enmeshed can be illustrated by how the central actors were juggling a lot of different hats: The regular contributors counted representatives of the various organisations in the field, practitioning designers, business managers, shop owners, writers, journalists, educators, museum curators, etc. Some of the most avid actors wore three, four, or more of these hats simultaneously. They thus brought with them impulses from many different arenas (along with their different agendas) in their contributions to Bonytt. This intricate situation also meant that the ideology they helped form and transform in Bonytt got several outlets beyond the magazine’s audience: One would meet these ideas and ideals as museum audience, as newspaper reader, as student, as consumer, as reader of advice literature, etc.
Such concerns about the magazine’s background, context and networks are vital when assessing its status as source material. As the American historian of technology Eugene S. Ferguson observed in a discussion on the use of technical (trade) journals as sources:
In order to use those journals intelligently as historical sources, we should know what was on an editor’s agenda, how his ideology influenced the words we read, what hobby or obsession or loyalty may stand behind the campaigns and crusades we encounter... The motives and purposes of editors (and publishers, when an editor was not also publisher) were varied and full of subtleties, but we can be sure that few editors saw their calling as merely a job do be done in order to collect a weekly pay envelope.13
Ferguson’s point is not to discourage historians’ use of this material, but to stress that the explicit programmes, the implicit ideologies and the more or less hidden agendas that
13. Eugene S. Ferguson, “Technical Journals and the History of Technology” in Stephen H. Cutcliffe and Robert C.
Post (eds.), In Context—History and the History of Technology (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1989) p 67-68
underpin publications such as technical journals or design magazines must be duly factored in by the conscientious historian for them to become good sources.
Design magazines in general are receiving increased scolary attention as important source material. Back in 1984 the British design historian Clive Dilnot wrote that
A history of the rise of the design journal as the vehicle for projecting the ideology or the value of “design” would be an enormous contribution to understanding the profession’s self-promotion of design values. To map the changing values, ideas and beliefs expressed or communicated in text and graphic layout could, in a sense, map the history of the professions. Is the history of design literally contained in the glossy pages of Domus or Industrial Design?14
Perhaps it is because Dilnot hid this intriguing remark in a footnote that this challenge seems to have been little acted on. Whereas it is my opinion that a “history of the professions” would require a far wider spectre of sources, I fully agree with Dilnot that design magazines such as Bonytt are vital sources in “understanding the profession’s self- promotion of design values.” This is precisely how I used the design magazine Stile Industria in my master thesis on 1950s’ Italian design,15 and also how I in the present study will use Bonytt.
To my knowledge, a comprehensive history of design magazines as called for by Dilnot is yet to be written. But his request for greater attention to their value as historical sourses is slowly being responded to. The British design historian Grace Lees-Maffei has observed that arenas of design mediation, such as magazines and advice literature, recently have become valued as design historical sources because they provide the historian with a focus attentive to negotiations between the spheres of production and consumption.16 Likewise, in their introduction to a recent special issue of the Journal of Design History on the role of magazines in the making of the modern home, the British design historians Jeremy Aynsley and Francesca Berry argued that
Publishers [of interior design magazines] negotiated the intersection between manufacturers, retailers, designers and the consumer; they addressed the householder interested in matters of taste and decoration as well as providing specialized knowledge of the art and decorating professions.17
There are, in other words, many reasons why design magazines such as Bonytt are interesting and important historical sources, and most of them seem to hinge on the magazines’ unique position as a site of mediation, negotiation and domestication. To borrow a concept from the Dutch historian of technology Ruth Oldenziel (et al.), design
14. Clive Dilnot, “The State of Design History, Part II” in Design Issues, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1984, p 19 (n 95)
15. Kjetil Fallan, Shaping Sense—Italian post-war functionalistic design [Master thesis] (Trondheim: Norges teknisk- naturvitenskapelige universitet, 2001)
16. Grace Lees-Maffei, “Studying Advice: Historiography, Methodology, Commentary, Bibliography” in Journal of Design History, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2003 p 3
17. Jeremy Aynsley and Francesca Berry, “Introduction: Publishing the Modern Home—Magazines and the Domestic Interior 1870-1965” in Journal of Design History, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2005 p 2
magazines comprise an excellent source for studying “the mediation junction”.18 The relevance and importance of Bonytt as a source should thus have been established.
In an essay on the pivotal role of the factory in modern society the Czech-Brazilian design critic and philosopher Vilém Flusser proposed that one can see “human history as the history of manufacturing and everything else as mere footnotes”.19 Without going to the same extremes as Flusser, this study does in a way follow his assertion that understanding industrial manufacture is essential in the writing of a history of modern society.
As already mentioned, the second strand of empirical inquiry will focus on the ceramic tableware manufacturer Figgjo. Using a manufacturing company as the focal point of a study is by no means a novel approach in design history. Many scholars have chronicled the histories of more or less famous companies renowned for their discerning use of design, or simply for their role as “patrons” of “great” designers. However, as the Italian design theorietician and historian Raimonda Riccini has argued, this tradition fails to adequately consider the economic and industrial factors of industrial design practice, such as business management, market strategies, production planning, manufacturing technology, product development. As a means to improving design history’s handling of these essential factors she calls for a closer intergration of design history and business history because, as she asserts; “the enterprise offers an ideal vantage point from which to understand the history of products and the profession of the industrial designer”.20
This line of reasoning, paired with my interest in ordinary rather than extraordinary objects, led me to choose a company like Figgjo as a case study. It is not a company famous for innovative design, “great” designers or a contribution to the canon of design history. It is an ordinary company whose design strategies and design practice were steeped in pramatic, everyday concerns, and whose products found their way into a great many kitchen cupboards but precious few museum showcases. On the other hand, as a ceramic tableware manufacturer, Figgjo might be classified as belonging to the sphere of
“industrial art” alongside glass works, furniture makers, goldsmith companies, etc. Since this sector always has been overrepresented in design history, one might have preferred choosing a case study from a less charted industrial territory. But doing so could easily have resulted in a situation where the two trajectories of empircial inquiry would appear as two completely separate narratives with no interrelation, and thus failing to fill their function in this study. Just as it would be unwise to choose a company with too close ties to the national design elite, it would equally inadvisable to select one with no relation to the applied art community at all. It is the oscillating proximity and distance that comprises the dynamics of this setting.
The Figgjo strand of empirical inquiry is based predominantly on the company’s archive. Actually, “archive” might be a sligtly misleading term. Figgjo does not have a
18. Ruth Oldenziel, Adri Albert de la Bruhèze and Onno de Wit, “Europe’s Mediation Junction: Technology and Consumer Society in the 20th Century“ in History and Technology, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2005, p 107
19. Vilém Flusser, “The Factory” in Vilém Flusser, The Shape of Things—A Philosophy of Design (London:
Reaktion, 1999) p 44
20. Raimonda Riccini, “History From Things: Notes on the History of Industrial Design” in Design Issues, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1998, p 44
proper archive in the customary meaning of the word. There are no organised files of documents neatly collected in cabinets or shelves. However, a lot of important historical source material does exist, heaped up in a corner of a factory building, and kept by the company seemingly with no end or purpose. Most of the material was collected for the short-lived and now dismantled company museum, but no archival or museum expertise was involved neither in the collection of the material nor in its subsequent handling. Not only is this situation worrying with regard to the future fate of the material, but it also makes it quite difficult to access, assess and utilise in historical research.
These problems and shortcomings notwithstanding, the company archive does contain much unique and highly valuable source material, albeit of a heterogeneous character. A large collection of Figgjo products spanning the entire period of investigation survives. In addition to these artifacts, the archive contains a motley collection of documents such as marketing material (brochures, catalogues and advertisements), press coverage (newspaper clippings), in-house information (company newsletters), communication with external parties (correspondence), management documents (consultancy reports, minutes from administration meetings, records of proceedings, etc.) and design documentation (sketches, drawings, photographs, minutes from design meetings, etc.).
Despite its utter disarray, the comprehensive collection of products kept by the company is a pre-eminent source of knowledge about the design practice at Figgjo. The use of artefacts as sources is often emphasised and encouraged in design history. To the British art and design historian John A. Walker, “hands-on” experience with artefacts is essential to design historians “because this almost always reveals information secondary sources such as photographs fail to communicate.”21 Simply visiting a museum will not do full justice to this decree, though. Because, as Walker continues, “since function is a key aspect of design, ideally goods should be used as well as scrutinized.”22 Similarly, the American design historian Jeffrey L. Meikle has explored the value of keeping the objects of study at hand while writing, “so I could touch and hold them, tap them with a fingernail, bend them, sometimes even break them.“23 Being neither precious museum pieces nor expendable fleemarket paraphernalia, the Figgjo product collection provided me with invaluable “hands-on” experience with my study objects. I may not have eaten off the plates, and I certainly could not break them, but touching, feeling, holding, handling, manipulating, trying, testing and generally scrutinising the artefacts "up close and personal" surely makes for a new level of understanding when analysing their role in a history of industrial design.
Things, however, have a tendency of becoming more eloquent in the company of more conventional documentary sources. The American historians of technology Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery has argued that whereas artefacts are highly valuable sources, and generally have been underrated as such by historians, they are best used in conjunction with written documents and other types of more traditional source
21. John A. Walker, Design History and the History of Design (London: Pluto, 1989) p 5 22. Ibid.
23. Jeffrey L. Meikle, “Material Virtues: on the Ideal and the Real in Design History” in Journal of Design History Vol. 11, No. 3, 1998, p 194
material.24 This study conforms to such a line of reasoning, and will seek to produce history from both things and texts.
In addition to the uniqueness of the collection of products as sources, much of the documentary material mentioned above is of particularly great value. Catalogues provide a good survey of Figgjo’s product portfolio and its development over time.25 Brochures and advertisements tell of how the company sought to portray the image of itself and its products, and may also indicate how they imagined their consumers. Newspaper clippings supply a host of detailed information about the company in general and important events and developments throughout the period. Company newsletters offer a way to learn about the inner workings of the company. Surviving correspondence is relatively scarse and sporadic, but some of the remaining material has resulted in very interesting findings. The various kinds of management documents make it possible to peer “behind the scenes” by uncovering discussions and controversies in the company management. Finally, the design documentation, both in visual and written form, permits an intimate encounter with Figgjo’s design strategies and design practice. Conjoined with the artefacts, these documents provide a good, albeit sometimes disparate, source base for writing a history of design as practiced at Figgjo.
1.3 Demarcations
A few remarks need to be made on the chronological demarkation. I have chosen to focus on the mid-twentieth century because this relatively short period of time encompasses quite comprehensive transformations both of the ideas, ideals, portrayals and practices of modern design as well as of society and culture at large. As a period it is, in short, an area of concentration well-suited to experience and study the dynamics of historical change at close hand. Some further notes should be made on my more exact delimitation of the period defined as the mid-twentieth century to the years (approximately) between 1940 and 1970.
Does it make any sense to study the 1940s as a more or less continuous period rather than seing this decade as divided into two separate eras; the war years and the postwar years? The historian’s eternal dilemma of continutity versus rupture strikes again. For generations of Norwegians, the dates April 9, 1940 (German invation) and May 8, 1945 (capitulation) loom as giant schisms of “before” and “after”. While acknowledging the extraordinary situation brought about by World War II, it is equally important to emphasize the fact that the world did not start from scratch at the end of the war. The empirical foci of this study are testimony to such an approach cautiously prioritizing continutity over rupture.
24. Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery, “Introduction” in Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery (eds.), History From Things—Essays on Material Culture (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993) p ix
25. Raimonda Riccini has observed that catalogues “are a fundamental resource and one that has still been very little explored by the historiography of design”: Riccini, op.cit. p 61 (n 10)
As we shall see in Part III, both the design magazine Bonytt and the ceramic tableware manufacturer Figgjo were founded in 1941, established and consolidated their activities in the midst of an occupied country at war, and continued their business along the same lines—although under significantly improved circumstances—after the war.
Towards the end of the decade, when the worst (material) wounds caused by the war were healing, both Bonytt and Figgjo had “grown up” and established themselves as professional institutions to be reckoned with in their respective domains. This is why the period I have labeled “Constructing design discourse” spans the 1940s as a whole; war and peace.
It is not, however, just in the sphere of design that continuities can be traced through the war. For instance, the foundations for the welfare state that would develop after the war were laid in the latter half of the 1930s, following the social reforms introduced by the first long-lasting and stable Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet) government that came to power in 1935.26 Nevertheless, the 1940s was an extraordinary decade, in Norway as it was in most parts of the world—chiefly because of World War II.
What about the upwards chronological demarkation; why can the mid-twentieth century be said to end around 1970? The historian’s conundrum of continutity versus rupture surely is at play here as well. Despite the ambitions of the more militant fractions of the political radicalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it is hard in retrospect to identify revolutionary changes in the society around 1970. But significant shifts did occur nonetheless. The postwar era of great political concord was drawing to an end in the 1960s. When this turbulent decade ended, the political landscape was severely radicalized and polarized, with a heated EEC debate, Cabinet crisis and the oil crisis waiting around the bend. The cultural radicalism of the late 1960s also included a growing criticism of the consumer society, something which also affected the design discourse.
As we shall see, around 1970, critical voices began questioning the role of design in an affluent society and market economy, calling for a new perspective on design and for radical design solutions to the more fundamental problems of this world. In a sense, then, the design discourse became more ideological than ever around 1970. But at the same time, the traditional applied art movement and its ideological underpinnings virtually disintegrated. The modernist mission lost its broad, unifying organisational base as the movement slowly fragmented and the various design sub-fields became more autonomous.27 Furthermore, Bonytt, which hitherto had been an arena for professional
26. Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1990 (Oslo: Det norske samlaget, 1992) p 146-169
27. The Norwegian design historian Fredrik Wildhagen has also identified a significant shift in the Norwegian design discourse around 1970, and argued that it was predominantly the result of a generational change among practitioners. Fredrik Wildhagen, “Formgivning for velferd” in Tormod Alnæs (ed.), Vårt daglige miljø 1918- 1978 (Oslo: Landsforbundet norsk brukskunst, 1978) p 18 and Fredrik Wildhagen, “Samarbeid og styrke—
Nordisk formgivning i tiden etter verdenskrigen” in Hermann Bongard, Rolf Himberg-Larsen and Fredrik Wildhagen (eds.), Nordisk kunsthåndverk og design (Oslo: Landsforbundet norsk brukskunst, 1981) p 30-33.
While this is clearly part of the equation, I believe there are several other elements that should be factored in as well, such as organsiational work, industrial readjustment, increased consumption and general socio-cultural developments.
debate and utterly committed to the cause, was “secularised” and became a strictly commercial medium for friendly advice on interior decoration.
Most industrial design practitioners must be said to have continued performing their work somewhere between these two extremes. At Figgjo, for instance, it was business as usual. The company and its designers would continue to turn out teacups long after a design school teacher declared such products redundant in 1968. But of course it is not completely true that it was business as usual. The circumstances for the manufactured goods industry in Norway changed dramatically in the 1960s, primarily as a result of international free trade. Any company had to readjust to this new situation, both in terms of management, production and design. So, for Figgjo too, the late 1960s was a period of significant change—the most emblematic being the merger with their neighbor and major domestic competitor Stavangerflint in 1968/1969.
Rounding up this discussion on the demarcation of the study, it is interesting to note that the period I have chosen to study, 1940 to 1970, coincides exactly with the period that the Norwegian historian Francis Sejersted has dubbed “the social democracy’s happy moment”.28 Without overdoing the comparison, one might be tempted to ask whether the same period also can be said to represent modern design’s “happy moment”?
1.4 Structure
Within this basic frame outlining the scope of the study, I have made use of a few organising concepts—implemented with rather modest rigidity—in order to help structure its contents. As in most historical research, there is a fundamental chronology in the material, so that the first empirical chapters pick up events in the early 1940s and the last empirical chapters leave them off around 1970. This timeframe is then sectioned in three parts or periods, each loosely corresponding to one of the three decades that are covered. In addition to this conventional approach, a different major structuring device runs through the material. As already mentioned, the empirical studies follow two paths/
levels: the design ideology debated in and mediated through the trade magazine Bonytt, and the design strategy and practice developed by the ceramic tableware manufacturer Figgjo. These two empirical trajectories are pursued separately, and sections discussing each of the two are placed in alternating order within the chronologically structured parts.
Parts III, IV and V thus each contain a Section A discussing design ideology and a Section B discussing design practice.
The time-honoured use of chronological structure requires little deliberation, as its pros and cons are tried and tested. However, my decision to section the period in three parts or periods, each loosely corresponding to a decade, warrants a brief comment. As the British art and design historian John A. Walker most poignantly has put it:
28. Francis Sejersted, Sosialdemokratiets tidsalder—Norge og Sverige i det 20. århundre (Oslo: Pax, 2005) p 199-357 (“Sosialdemokratiets lykkelige øyeblikk”)
Units of time such as centuries used as the basis for histories are purely arbitrary impositions; the course of history does not alter just because the date changes. As a way of coping with the art, design and fashion of the twentieth century, a ‘decades’ approach has proved popular. Almost invariably ‘decades’ historians feel compelled to detect a style or spirit of the age in each decade whether there was one or not.29
I can not emphasise strongly enough that the structure of this study is in no way the result of such a simplistic ‘neohegelianism in overdrive’. This is not a study of ‘the style of a decade’ (or three). Nor are the sections monolithic blocks of neatly defined ‘epocs’, but rather messy, partly overlapping and intersecting phases or modes in the study’s main narritive. If the three phases I have identified by and large coincide with the three decades covered by this study, it is because the empirical material reveals significant events and changes coalescing around the turns of decades. In this study, then, the more or less decadic system of structure emerges from empirical investigation rather than being imposed on the material a priori.
The other organising concept, the dual/alternating structure by theme/level/site, may require some consideration. This structure reflects the research perspective outlined above, where design (as) culture is seen as a sort of dialectic or discourse between ideology and practice, and design ideology is seen as subject to domestication in two levels/sites; the Norwegian design community and the design practice in manufacturing industry. The motivation, then, for moving back and forth between these two levels or sites throughout the text is to elucidate these dynamics of cultural change. However, such a dual/alternating structure may also have its problematic aspects. First of all, the ambition of pursuing two parallel narratives in one study might compromise its coherence and stringency. Of greater concern, though, is the question of to what degree the material chosen to explore the two trajectories in fact does illustrate the relations suggested by the research hypothesis. As will become clear, the two strands of investigation—the Bonytt discourse and the Figgjo practice—intersect, diverge, attune, conflict, pay attention and ignore each other on and off, to varying degrees, throughtout the period under investigation. But it is precisely this ‘oscillating’ pertinence that makes it interesting: the combination of both discrepancies and correlations in the relationship between ideology and practice points to the nonlinearity and complexity of cultural transformation and historical change.
The topic, scope, demarcation and general structure of this study should now be fairly clear. However, as a means to enhance this picture, a brief presentation of the dissertation’s configuration is in order.
Design history as a field or discipline is a relatively recent phenomenon. Generally speaking, it must still be characterised as having reached only a quite modest degree of professional dispersion, organisation and institutionalisation. Whereas the field has achieved a certain degree of autonomy in some select places—notably Britain—there is still precious little “indigenous knowledge” available to those of us entering design history from more general or neighbouring disciplinary backgrounds. This is why I have found it both appropriate and necessary to allow ample space for the development of
29. Walker, op.cit. p 82-83
theoretical perspectives and frameworks as a way of positioning myself in the field.
Thus, Part II of this dissertation is devoted to theoretical frameworks forming the basis for the ensuing empirical study.
Chapter 2 sets out to prepare the ground by discussing some basic epistemological questions related to the study of modern design. Primarily, it seeks to investigate the rather intangible notion of (modern) isms as categorising concept and analytic tool, and to develop an understanding of design ideologies as parts of cultural modes. Chapter 3 is a historiographic survey. First it presents a brief outline of the development of the field before discussing more in detail some major approaches in recent design history. Chapter 4 discusses some theoretical perspectives and methodological concepts appropriated from science and technology studies (STS) and how these might benefit a cultural history of industrial design.
The empirical investigations begin with Part III. This first phase has been dubbed constructing design discourse as it is characterised by entrepreneurship in both the ideological and the material sides of design discourse. Section A (Chapters 5 and 6) traces the first of these, from the estblishment of the new design magazine Bonytt through its years of formation until the publication is firmly consolidated as the leading arena for professional debate in the Norwegian design community as reorganised after the war. While the design community and Bonytt were setting the agenda, Figgjo was setting the table. Section B (Chapters 7 and 8) traces the humble beginnings of the company and its pottery production and design, on through their preparations for the transition to larger scale industrial earthenware production.
Part IV comprises the second phase called negotiating design networks in recognition of the many different actors, interests and realms that were enrolled in the expanding design networks in this period of development and maintenance both in the design community and in industrial practice. Section A (Chapters 9, 10 and 11) discusses how negotiations between these different actors and interests put translations on the agenda in a design community at the height of its unity and strength in the 1950s. Section B (Chapters 12, 13 and 14) discusses how Figgjo in the same period, at their hight as a domestic market earthenware factory, put many translations on the table in their efforts to mediate between the vast array of different, contradictory and incommensurable actors, interests and considerations involved in industrial design practice.
The last empiric phase of this study is laid out in Part V and identified as reconfiguring design cultures, denoting the processes of fragmentation, specialisation, reorientation and re-constellation that both the Norwegian design community as well as the manufacturing industry and design practice underwent in the 1960s. Section A (Chapters 15, 16 and 17) examines how the traditional applied art movement’s universalistic approach to design encountered ever more resistance and various interest groups made different bids at clearing the agenda for a new order. Section B (Chapters 18, 19 and 20) examines how Figgjo devices and implemented strategies for reorganisation of their business model and reorientation of their design practice in order to cope with the brave, new world of international free trade.
This rather comprehensive and detailed study is then summed up in Part VI where Chapter 21 offers a summary that will briefly reconsider some of the theoretical
perspectives in light of the empirical material before trying to excerpt its major findings and suggesting a few concluding remarks.
Theoretical Frameworks
2 Modernism or Modern ISMS?
2.1 Introduction
Thus far we have only hinted at the complexity and ambiguity inherent in concepts like modern, modernity and modernism. As these concepts are essential to any study of twentieth century design, an investigation of their structure and meaning beyond the colloquial and commonsensical is required. Terminological discussions are an important part of the epistemology and meta-theory of any academic discipline. This chapter will explore some questions arising when modern design culture is articulated as modernism.
In design studies there is an abundance of classifying and analytic terms which are often taken for granted. Of these, a surprisingly little explored but yet commonly used is the phenomenon of isms. In much architectural and design history literature, the nature of isms seems to be taken for granted and is rarely debated explicitly. As the Italian philosopher Omar Calabrese has pointed out, terms constructed as tools of classification, like isms generally are, are troublesome in that they often make use of key words designed to unify and connect their subject matter. But to function this way, these denominators have to be extremely simplifying and abstract, and thus become obstacles to any rewarding comprehension of history.1
The significance of reflexive analysis of terminology has been receiving increased attention in the human and social sciences. Philosophers and social scientists have come to realize that the terms, concepts and categories they use to explain the social world can not be taken for granted, but should themselves be made objects of analysis. This is what the French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J. D. Wacquant call reflexive sociology.2 This reflexivity is also a core component in the American sociologist Margaret R. Somers’ proposed historical sociology of concept formation, alongside the relationality and the historicity of concepts:
A historical sociology of concept formation also requires a relational approach, for what appear to be autonomous concepts defined by a constellation of attributes are better conceived as shifting patterns of relationships that are contingently stabilized in sites...
[C]oncepts... are products of their time and thus change accordingly... Understanding how concepts gain and lose their currency and legitimacy is a task that entails reconstructing their making, resonance, and contestedness over time... From the perspective of a historical sociology of concept formation, concepts do not have natures or essences; they have histories, networks, and narratives that can be subjected to historical and empirical investigation.3
1. Omar Calabrese, L’età neobarocca (Bari: Laterza, 1987) p 4-5
2. Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992) 3. Margaret R. Somers, “The Privatization of Citizenship—How to Unthink a Knowledge Culture” in Victoria E.
Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn—New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1999) p 133-135
Keeping this in mind and returning to the sphere of design studies, numerous questions spring to mind. What is an ism? In order to find out, we must explore how it is constructed, negotiated, mediated, consolidated and decomposed. How is an ism formed and then transformed? Is there room for negotiations and temporal changes? Isms are often portrayed as discrete entities, but experience still shows evidence of one ism encompassing other isms, overlapping each other, or even running parallel to each other.
Are isms equivalent, comparable phenomena, or do they operate on different levels? We also need to examine the relations between isms describing systems of beliefs, or epistemes, and those describing aesthetic movements or design styles.
To undertake a fundamental critique of the (mis)use of these meta-terms is difficult.
Comprehensive analysis of the core issues of design can hardly be achieved without using the terms and language of design discourse itself. In other words: we set out to discuss and criticise elements which are indispensable to design history. The task at hand, then, will be to reconstruct these elements of the language of design discourse in order to question and discuss the fundamental terms and notions of interest for further inquiry.
In the following I will discuss some the above mentioned questions and their relevance to design history. First, we need a brief historical outline of the fundamental terms modern, modernity and modernism. This part is by no means any attempt to conduct a comprehensive investigation of this vast philosophical subject matter, but a brief outline is nevertheless essential as a backdrop for the subsequent discussion.
Moreover, a clarification is required of the relation between isms as doctrines or aesthetic ideologies on the one hand and isms as world views or structures of society on the other. My main focus will then be to investigate the nature of isms as tools of classification and analysis, especially in the context of modernism and its etymologically derived isms. Based on this discussion I will suggest that an ism can be understood as a cultural mode defined by negotiations between design ideology and design practice—a notion that will underpin the rest of this study. Having established this understanding of modern isms as articulations of design culture and as decidedly dynamic discources, I will then examine some of the problems and challenges posed by reading isms in the context of historical research. The latter part of this chapter shifts gear, so to speak, assessing the prospects of the concept of paradigms, as coined by the historian of science Thomas Kuhn and revised by Paul Feyerabend and Margaret Masterman, in framing the dynamics of historical change in design ideology and how it relates to the notion of isms.
Concise answers to these questions are of course mere utopia, so my aim is rather to suggest a framework for further discussion.
2.2 Modern, modernity, modernism
Understanding 20th century design is inconceivable without somehow relating to modernism and its etymologically derived isms such as e.g. proto-modernism, late- modernism, post-modernism, neo-modernism, etc. All these ideologies and modes of