An Article on Modern Horological Art....

[Wei]

On the Foundation de la Haute Horlogerie's site charts the rise of watchmaking's new wave of creators and the core shift in watches from precision tools to commerical art form. The writer is not totally incompetent but a bit wordy and hyperbolic.

http://journal.hautehorlogerie.org/e...-art-4121.html

He mentions Richard Mille and URWERK quite a bit.

He is aware that there is a typo (Marcel Duchamp not March Duchamp)

Cheers

Wei

[gregorypons]

Hi, Wei, and thanks.
Even translated in french, it sounds well !
The link between movies and watches is very clever and helps to understand better the new wawe in horological art...

[IanS]

Readers should not miss the 'more' at the end as what is shown on the link is only half of the article.

[Jack Forster]

. . . I could not agree more that the last ten years have been a period really of unprecedented horological ferment and creativity. I think probably we have not seen such a surge of competitive inventiveness in every respect since probably around the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, when well defined national and personal styles were emerging, the stranglehold of the medieval crafts guilds was diminishing and allowing individual artisans a creative continuity between dial, case and movement which had not been possible before, and you couldn't swing a watch chain without hitting a new escapement. The same thing is happening nowadays but with an even greater degree of creative freedom born of the liberating of the watch from the tyranny of functionality.

At the same time, despite the fact that watches today are unecessary as pragmatic timekeepers per se I think many connoisseurs expect an engagement with horological solutions to chronometric problems. The recent spate of new escapements is an interesting case in point. The interesting reality is that while pragmatic timekeeping is no longer the raison d'etre of watchmaking per se, it is one of the primary avenues by which watches achieve their emotional appeal and create a sense of continuity with the craftsmanship of the past. The ambivalence many feel towards the introduction of high tech materials and techniques into movement design is an interesting case in point; for watches to function as art -that is to say for them to appeal to our emotions -they must not entirely abandon the basic principles and methods which drove their evolution or they risk sacrificing much of the emotional resonance which makes them appealing in the first place.

To carry the avante garde comparison Wei has made a bit further the works of modern art, at least to my eye, which seem to have enduring value seem less revolutionary and more evolutionary as the years go by. Jackson Pollocks's drip paintings seem to extend abstraction as far as it can possibly be taken and they seem to be completely non-figurative- a radical rejection of the tradition of figurative easel painting, and yet the longer you look at them the more you realize that they represent an evolution of the compositional and gestural idioms which have been part of easel painting for centuries; so much so that in his last (and in my opinion underrated) "black paintings" the figure begins to reassert itself.

For all the flourishes they may bring to the form, and for all the intriguing visual, tactile and mechanical innovations with which modern watches express our relationship with time, if they lack an engagement with mechanical integrity and chronometry they lack interest in my opinion and will not represent enduring value aesthetically.

Jack

[watchculture]

thanks Wei, indeed a new era in watchmaking

[ei8htohms]

Nice read Wei, well done! (nt)

[Wei]

John, Gregory, Ian and Zach thanks for your comments it means alot coming from the four wisemen!

Jack, you really should be writing this stuff instead of me, your watch and art knowledge is peerless!

Cheers

Wei

[Jack Forster]

Originally Posted by Wei

John, Gregory, Ian and Zach thanks for your comments it means alot coming from the four wisemen!

Jack, you really should be writing this stuff instead of me, your watch and art knowledge is peerless!

Cheers

Wei

. . . you're very kind but it was a wonderful and very thought provoking article and raises a number of very interesting questions, not the least of which is the extent to which modern production techniques and the ability to realize mechanical visions which might not have been practical in bygone eras, in association with the decoupling of mechanical horology and practical necessity, have created a real problem for the modern connoisseur, which is to figure out on his or her own, in a sense, a system of values by which to evaluate modern horological products.

Modern design work is becoming increasingly sophisticated, I think you will agree, with truly successful well integrated designs like the Urwerk Hammerhead on the one hand (and on your hand ) and. . . well, you know, the other stuff . I think collectively we are still in the midst of a period of significant re-evaluation of taste and the dust has far from settled.

Jack

[foversta]

Congrats Wei for this article !