The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The Industrial Revolution, scientific and technological shifts, and extensive socio-economic changes are fundamentally connected to the rise of modernity, a time that redefined the social authority and cultural importance of entrepreneurs, scientists, and artists, while also reshaping collective memory. In his influential essay "L’Artiste, le savant et l’industriel" (1825, "The Artist, the Scientist and the Industrialist"), Henri de Saint-Simon outlined a vision wherein these three groups, especially artists as the societal "avant-garde," were instrumental in fostering social changes and “advancement”. Saint-Simon redefined the military term avant-garde as a cultural and intellectual metaphor, envisioning an ideal society where artistic invention, scientific development, and industrial expansion were closely interconnected. His text offers an illustration of the process of interlinking the scientific, the artistic, and the socio-economic that characterises the building of modernity and modernism. This panel examines this interlink to reveal mutual impacts among the artistic, scientific, and industrial domains from the late 19th century to the 1970s. The papers focus primarily on case studies from a Central and Eastern European context while also incorporating comparative perspectives beyond this region to address how artists, scientists, and industrialists interacted in shaping modernity. This panel explores the intricate exchanges that shaped modernist networks. through an analysis of collaborations among artists, art mediators, and emerging technologies, alongside the dialogue between science, literature, and artistic practices, as well as the impact of industrial innovations on cultural production.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Barbora Svobodová, U libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

Papers

• Art, Industry, and Social Thought in Modern Belgium and Bohemia: John Ruskin's reception in Networks - Eve Filée, U libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

• Czech and Russian Science Fiction from 1877-1972: Modernity as a Mirror to Science and Literature - Sybil Raysz, U libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

• Power, Pages, and Industrial Modernity: The Role of Literature and Corporate Media in the Global Expansion of Czechoslovak Shoe Company Baťa - Barbora Svobodová, U libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

Discussant

• Jindrich Toman, U of Michigan