First Image:
Joseph Mallord William Turner
“Rain, Steam and Speed”
Oil on canvas
1844
Second Image:
“Rain, Steam and Speed”
1844
Detail
As you will come to understand in the next post above, J.M.W Turner’s ‘Modern World’ actually has a quite similar concept to the one expressed in Dustin Yellin’s ‘The Man Machine’. Both artists attempt to capture the root of industrialisation, only one in the 19th century and one in the 21st. More closely however, the “replacement of man-power by machine-power” - a topic probably big enough to go on forever, but a fracture of which captured beautifully by the two artists. Whilst Turner showcases what seems to be the beginning of the Industrial revolution by making his focus in the artwork a product of this change - the train, Yellin concentrates on the source behind it all - us.
In terms of history, this really reminds me of the Russian Revolution in 1917 - a time of great objection and change, out of which, more specifically, the art movement of ‘Russian Constructivism’ began. Just as how Turner and Yellin aimed to ‘trap’ this change in their artwork, Constructivism turned to engineering and construction out of everyday industrial materials, due to their new-found love of machines and technology, to mark the beginning of this new Communist society. Their hope was to ‘reconstruct’ this prominent sensual appeal that was evident across the masses into artwork promoting rational thought and practice merely for social purposes, eventually resulting in the transformation of all art disciplines, including film, poetry, architecture and theatre.