Terry Smith is an art historian, and
Making the Modern: Industry, Art, and Design in America is a study of the relationship between the visual imagery of the 1920s and 1930s and the era's cultural, economic, and industrial configurations. Far from focusing on high modern art and design, Smith studies modern architecture, painting, photography, design, advertising as gleaned from sources as varied as Ford Motor Company photos of plants and work processes, architectural plans for office buildings, and documentation of the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Methodologically, Smith deconstructs each work or artifact via a rigorous investigation of its historical setting for signs that the work documents conflict or social change. Working across disciplinary boundaries, the book draws together a "visual regime" or "ensemble of processes of visualization and representation" of modernity, where visual representation and sociocultural processes work together to create a uniquely modern worldview called the "iconology of modernity."
