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Modernism

Modernism is a philosophical, religious, and art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.

For other uses of the word, see Modernism (disambiguation). For the period in sociology beginning with industrialization, see Modernity.

Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream of consciousness novel, montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and modern architecture. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism[a][2][3] and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody.[b][c][4] Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists also rejected religious belief.[5][d] A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness concerning artistic and social traditions, which often led to experimentation with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating works of art.[7]


While some scholars see modernism continuing into the 21st century, others see it evolving into late modernism or high modernism.[8] Postmodernism is a departure from modernism and rejects its basic assumptions.[9][10][11]

Definition[edit]

Some commentators define modernism as a mode of thinking—one or more philosophically defined characteristics, like self-consciousness or self-reference, that run across all the novelties in the arts and the disciplines.[12] More common, especially in the West, are those who see it as a socially progressive trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology.[e] From this perspective, modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was holding back progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end.


According to Roger Griffin, modernism can be defined as a broad cultural, social, or political initiative, sustained by the ethos of "the temporality of the new". Modernism sought to restore, Griffin writes, a "sense of sublime order and purpose to the contemporary world, thereby counteracting the (perceived) erosion of an overarching 'nomos', or 'sacred canopy', under the fragmenting and secularizing impact of modernity." Therefore, phenomena apparently unrelated to each other such as "Expressionism, Futurism, vitalism, Theosophy, psychoanalysis, nudism, eugenics, utopian town planning and architecture, modern dance, Bolshevism, organic nationalism – and even the cult of self-sacrifice that sustained the hecatomb of the First World War – disclose a common cause and psychological matrix in the fight against (perceived) decadence." All of them embody bids to access a "supra-personal experience of reality", in which individuals believed they could transcend their own mortality, and eventually that they had ceased to be victims of history to become instead its creators.[14]

Modernism, Romanticism, Philosophy and Symbol[edit]

Literary modernism is often summed up in a line from W. B. Yeats: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" (in 'The Second Coming').[15] Modernists often search for a metaphysical 'centre' but experience its collapse.[16] (Postmodernism, by way of contrast, celebrates that collapse, exposing the failure of metaphysics, for instance in Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of metaphysical claims.)[17]


Philosophically, the collapse of metaphysics can be traced back to the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776), who argued that we never actually perceive one event causing another. We only experience the 'constant conjunction' of events, and do not perceive a metaphysical 'cause'. Similarly, Hume argues (without using the actual terms) that we never know the self as object, only the self as subject, and we are thus blind to our true natures.[18] More generally, if we only 'know' through sensory experience (seeing, touching, etc.), then we cannot 'know' or make metaphysical claims.


Modernism is thus often driven emotionally by the desire for metaphysical truths, while understanding their impossibility. Modernist novels, for instance, feature characters like Marlow in Heart of Darkness or Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby who believe that they have encountered some great truth about nature or character, truths that the novels themselves treat ironically, offering more mundane explanations.[19] Similarly, many poems of Wallace Stevens struggle with the sense of nature's significance, falling under two headings: poems in which the speaker denies that nature has meaning, only for nature to loom up by the end of the poem; and poems in which the speaker claims nature has meaning, only for that meaning to collapse by the end of the poem.


Modernism often rejects nineteenth century realism, if the latter is understood as focusing on the embodiment of meaning within a naturalistic representation. At the same time, some modernists aim at a more 'real' realism, one that is decentred. Picasso's proto-cubist painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907 (see picture above) does not present its subjects from a single point of view (that of a single viewer), but instead presents a flat, two-dimensional picture plane. 'The Poet' of 1911 is similarly decentred, presenting the body from every point of view. As the Peggy Guggenheim Collections website puts it, 'Picasso presents multiple views of each object, as if he had moved around it, and synthesizes them into a single compound image'.[20]


Modernism, with its sense that 'things fall apart,' can be seen as the apotheosis of romanticism, if romanticism is the (often frustrated) quest for metaphysical truths about character, nature, God and meaning in the world.[21] Modernism often yearns for a romantic or metaphysical centre, but finds only its collapse.


This distinction between modernism and romanticism extends to their respective treatments of 'symbol'. The romantics at times see an essential relation (the 'ground') between the symbol (the 'vehicle', in I.A. Richards's terms)[22] and its 'tenor' (its meaning)—for example in Coleridge's description of nature as 'that eternal language which thy God / Utters'.[23] But while nature and its symbols may be God's language, for some romantic theorists it remains inscrutable. As Goethe (not quite a romantic) said, 'the idea [or meaning] remains eternally and infinitely active and inaccessible in the image'.[24] This was extended in modernist theory which, drawing on its Symbolist precursors, often emphasises the inscrutability and failure of symbol and metaphor—for example in Stevens who seeks and fails to find meaning in nature, even if he at times seems to sense such a meaning. As such, symbolists and modernists at times adopt a mystical approach to suggest a non-rational sense of meaning.[25]


For these reasons, modernist metaphors are often unnatural, as for instance in T.S. Eliot's description of an evening 'spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table'.[26] Similarly, in many later modernist poets nature is unnaturalised and at times mechanised, as for example in Stephen Oliver's image of the moon busily 'hoisting' itself into consciousness.[27]

Criticism of late modernity[edit]

In fact, modernism flourished mainly in consumer/capitalist societies, despite the fact that its proponents often rejected consumerism itself. However, high modernism began to merge with consumer culture after World War II, especially during the 1960s. Modernist devices also started to appear in popular cinema, and later on in music videos. Modernist design also began to enter the mainstream of popular culture, as simplified and stylized forms became popular, often associated with dreams of a space age high-tech future.[173][174]


In 2008, Janet Bennett published Modernity and Its Critics through The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory.[175] Merging of consumer and high versions of Modernist culture led to a radical transformation of the meaning of "Modernism". First, it implied that a movement based on the rejection of tradition had become a tradition of its own. Second, it demonstrated that the distinction between elite Modernist and mass consumerist culture had lost its precision. Modernism had become so institutionalized that it was now "post avant-garde", indicating that it had lost its power as a revolutionary movement. Many have interpreted this transformation as the beginning of the phase that became known as postmodernism. For others, such as art critic Robert Hughes, postmodernism represents an extension of modernism.


"Anti-modern" or "counter-modern" movements seek to emphasize holism, connection and spirituality as remedies or antidotes to modernism. Such movements see modernism as reductionist, and therefore subject to an inability to see systemic and emergent effects.


Some traditionalist artists like Alexander Stoddart reject modernism generally as the product of "an epoch of false money allied with false culture".[176]


In some fields, the effects of modernism have remained stronger and more persistent than in others. Visual art has made the most complete break with its past. Most major capital cities have museums devoted to modern art as distinct from post-Renaissance art (c. 1400 to c. 1900). Examples include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. These galleries make no distinction between modernist and Postmodernist phases, seeing both as developments within Modern Art.

(1979) The Literature of Replenishment, later republished in The Friday Book (1984).

John Barth

(1990) Interpreting Serials in The limits of interpretation, pp. 83–100, excerpt Archived 21 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine

Eco, Umberto

(1997) The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth Century Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Everdell, William R.

Orton, Fred and Pollock, Griselda (1996) , Manchester University.

Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed

(1998) After Babel, ch.6 Topologies of culture, 3rd revised edition

Steiner, George

Art Berman (1994) Preface to Modernism, University of Illinois Press.

on Modernism.

Ballard, J. G.

Denzer, Anthony S., PhD,

Masters of Modernism.

photographer, Edwardian Modernists.

Hoppé, E. O.

An online radio show that presents a humorous version of Modernism

Malady of Writing. Modernism you can dance to

Modernism Lab @ Yale University

Archived 14 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine, official publication of the Modernist Studies Association

Modernism/Modernity

Modernism vs. Postmodernism