Object one: Sgabello chair from Italian Renaissance(Picture: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/20296) Object two: Desk Chair, ca.1898-99 by Charles Rohlfs from Art and Crafts Movement(Picture: http://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/artistic-furniture-charles-rohlfs#) Overview: Modernity is a state of mind that seeks to break with the past in order to elevate consciousness of the present. Although the term “modernism” is understood today as a formal category that emerged after industrialization, concepts of modernity existed in the Western world since the Italian Renaissance. The reintroduction and reinterpretation of ancient Greco-Roman design knowledge with the rise of the Florentine merchant class was intended as a departure from centuries of medieval traditions. This “modernization” of Europe by means of emulating pre-Christian antiquity is a kind of historical revivalism that challenges the contemporary assessment of modernism and historicism as diametrically opposed. In this assignment, the objective is to compare and contrast two works of design that represent modernism and historicism. – Select one example of historicism and one of modernism, dating between 1400 and 1999, that you would be interested in analyzing. These could be works of design from lectures, the course texts, other published sources, or museums that you have visited. While the two examples do not have to be from the same time period or geographic location, you should consider how they relate to each other.

– Compile information that furthers your knowledge of the two selected works. Visual documents like photographs and drawings show the design’s physical attributes. Scholarly publications, such as books printed by a university press or articles in academic journals, provide conceptual details. Make sure you use a variety of sources. Wikipedia, blogs, and most websites are not considered reliable for historical research.

– After you have sufficiently gathered and reviewed the information pertinent to your selected examples, compose a 1500-word essay that critically examines how the two works (1) differ from, (2) resemble, and (3) explain each other. The idea is that you are not only stating the points of overlaps and divergences observed. More importantly, you must assess the tension between historicism and modernism that the examples foreground. What is a historicist designer’s reasoning for reviving past forms? What makes modernist design particular to its time? Is the distinction between historicism and modernism a necessarily clear-cut one? These are questions that you could address in your essay. FORMAT
– Footnotes and a bibliography must accompany the paper, but this appended information cannot be included in the 5 page count. Please refer to the Chicago Manual of Style for formatting the footnotes and bibliography of a history paper.