A factor of most promising character has arisen in the progress of English applied arts, in the form of the Design and Industries Association, founded during the World War by a group of edu cators, designers, craftsmen and manufacturers. The rational and progressive attitude of the Association towards industrial art has already made an impression upon public thought and has achieved certain distinct influences upon production.
In the United States the development of modernism has been marked in a few lines, but it is very uneven when the whole field is considered. In the design of the tall office building in the large cities America has evolved a distinct modern type. In a situation in which many well equipped minds are working on the same problem—a problem involving for its solution the adjust ment of rigid requirements of many kinds—social, physical, legal, economic and aesthetic—a result has been arrived at which, if it cannot be termed a style, is at least characterized by very definite and uniform tendencies and very modern qualities. Con sidered purely from the aesthetic side, these buildings show an increasing subordination of surface ornament and reliance upon fineness of line, mass and proportion, and the dignity of plain surfaces.
In the United States as in every other Western country, woman's outdoor dress is the most significant of all expressions of modern taste. Such dresses, compared with those of 35 years ago show a remarkable and rapid evolution. In response to the modern demands for greater freedom and more natural living, feminine costume has passed from an extreme of complexity and artificial ity to an extreme of simplicity of which no one can gainsay the aesthetic advantage. (See DRESS, Modern.) The more sober coloured winter street dress reflects the same qualities as those represented by other modern creations, viz., elimination of artificial ornament, emphasis upon functional form and tendency towards quiet spaces that gain interest from the material itself. These are qualities fundamental to modern de sign, but by themselves they are obviously not enough to express completely this age, with its speed, its innovations, its unconven tionality, intellectual activity and new ideas. On this side modern
life craves fantasy, novelty and fine colour and it is woman's dress that has first of all responded to this desire in the warm weather street and sport clothing of recent years.
This demand for strong beautiful colour and playful fantasy, felt more and more by Western peoples ever since the first vision of the Russian ballet, is one that extends to almost all phases of decoration (hangings, furniture stuffs, murals, floor and wall coverings and graphic advertising) and that brings with it an increasing problem of composition in a difficult field.
To sum up the general situation one might venture to state that wherever natural forces, such as social ideals, emulation, competition or seasonal demands, make for frequent changes and adjustments, there one finds highly developed critical taste on the part of the consumer, continuous artistic progress and inevitable acceptance of the principles underlying modern design.
Where these forces are either wanting or relatively weak, and this applies in large degree to all our household furnishings, progress is much slower and much snore dependent upon the chance of leadership. Inasmuch as a transition epoch from its very nature can produce but few leaders with the ability and vision to interpret the needs and tendencies of their time in forms of beauty, a manifest critical need of this period is for public discrimination as to what is sound and fundamental in contempo rary design and what is merely casual and novel.
It is still too early to forecast with any certainty the ultimate significance of these developments of the last 3o years, but it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the essential qualities that are increasingly apparent in the best of present day applied art are too much a part of the vital and organic tendencies of modern times to be ephemeral.
See ARTS AND CRAFTS ; ARCHITECTURE, and cognate articles ; GLASS ; GEMS IN ART ; POTTERY AND PORCELAIN, and the bibliographies thereto. (C. R. R.)