Precisionism vs Purism

プレシジョニズム / ピュリスム

Both reduce the objects of the machine age to simple geometry and paint them as smooth planes with the brushwork wiped away.

How to tell them apart. Precisionism looks up at factories and silos from outside. Purism sets bottles and glasses on a table, squared to horizontal and vertical.

Precisionism

Precisionism — デムース『私のエジプト』1927 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainPrecisionism — シーラー『交差するコンベア』1927 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainPrecisionism — デムース『金色の5』1928 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Paints factories, silos, cities and machines reduced to clear contour, simple geometry and smooth planes.

Purism

Purism — 雑誌『L'Esprit Nouveau』創刊号表紙 1920 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainPurism — 『L'Esprit Nouveau』第1号 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainPurism — Amédée Ozenfant《黒地の上のグラフィック》1928 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

A movement that attacked Cubism's drift into decoration and called for a return to forms fit for the machine age. Standardized objets-types such as bottles, glasses and guitars are painted within a horizontal-vertical order and a restrained palette. Through the journal L'Esprit Nouveau it became a norm for modern architecture and graphics.

PrecisionismPurism
Era1910s–1940s1918–1925
FamilyAmerican Modern ArtModern Design Movements
KindStyleStyle
CuesSharp contours / Industrial landscapes / Geometric simplification / Smooth surfacesSilhouettes of standardised everyday objects / Compositions built on horizontals and verticals / A restrained number of colours / Contour lines of overlapping forms
Best used forRendering factories and warehouses as ordered and quiet images · Showing industrial structure as form, with no people in the frameCatalogues and technical magazines that present industrial products quietly as standardized types · Pages introducing buildings and equipment, read for dimension on a horizontal-vertical grid with a restrained palette
TypeKeep only the lettering already on the building and add noneA light geometric sans aligned to the horizontals, held to two sizes
CompositionBuild on horizontals and verticals, split planes with hard diagonal shadowsSet the horizontal and vertical armature first, then overlap silhouettes for shallow depth
MaterialSmooth paint with no visible stroke, grey to white tones, hard lightGreys and ochres with a little blue, surfaces painted evenly and matte
CautionCleaning up contours without deciding where the light comes from leaves the planes unexplained, and the picture flattens into a technical drawing.Bringing anecdote or ornament back turns the objects from standardized types into picturesque still lifes, and the clarity of the machine age is lost.

Put these two together

American Modern Art ／ Modern Design Movements

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