Modernism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| *''[[Bad Modernisms]]'' | *''[[Bad Modernisms]]'' | ||
| *''[[Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity]]'' (2000) - [[Allison Pease]] | *''[[Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity]]'' (2000) - [[Allison Pease]] | ||
| - | *[[The First Moderns : Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought]] (1998) - William R. Everdell | + | *''[[The First Moderns : Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought]]'' (1998) - William R. Everdell |
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| - | In the early 1870s, mathematicians like Cantor and Dedekind discovered the set and divided the mathematical continuum; in 1886, Georges Seurat debuted his visionary masterpiece, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"; by the end of 1900, Hugo de Vries had discovered the gene, Max Planck had laid claim to the quantum, and Sigmund Freud had laid bare the unconscious workings of dreams. Throughout the worlds of art and ideas, of science and philosophy, Modernism was dawning, and with it a new mode of conceptualization. With astounding range and scholarly command, William Everdell constructs a lively and accessible history of nascent Modernism -- narrating portraits of genius, profiling intellectual breakthroughs, and richly evoking the fin-de-siecle atmosphere of Paris, Vienna, St. Louis, and St. Petersburg. He follows Picasso to the Cabaret des Assassins, discourses with Ernst Mach on the contingency of scientific law, and takes in the riotous premiere of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring'. But how are we to define the inception of an era predicated upon such far-flung and radically disparate innovations? Everdell is careful not to insist on the creative interrelation of these events. Instead, what for him unites such germinally modernist achievements is a profound conceptual insight: that the objects of our knowledge are - contrary to the evolutionary seamlessness of nineteenth-century thought -- discrete, atomistic, and discontinuous. The gray matter was found to be made out of neurons, poems out of disjunctive images, and paintings out of dots of color, all by innovators whose worlds were just beginning to align. Theoretically sophisticated yet marvelously entertaining, "The First Moderns" offers an invigorating look at the unfolding of an age. | + | |
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| *[[The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918]] (1983) - Stephen Kern [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] | *[[The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918]] (1983) - Stephen Kern [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK] | ||
| Stephen Kern writes about the sweeping changes in technology and culture between 1880 and World War I that created new modes of understanding and experiencing time and space. | Stephen Kern writes about the sweeping changes in technology and culture between 1880 and World War I that created new modes of understanding and experiencing time and space. | ||
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Revision as of 23:27, 5 February 2008
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Modernism is a artistic and cultural movement which has its roots in mid-19th century France, generally defined by new forms of art, architecture, music and literature emerging in the decades before 1914 as artists rejected 19th century artistic traditions such as romanticism.
High modernism is the golden age of modernism. It peaked from 1910 to 1930.
In music, it was characterized by atonality, in architecture by the lack of ornament, in literature by the stream of consciousness technique and the lack of chronological narrative and finally, in the visual arts by lack of representation. Generally, Modernists celebrated novelty and innovation.
Some see Modernism as an ongoing development (Richard Kostelanetz), others (Stephen Bayley and John Carey) as a distinct era of ephemeral taste. It can be argued that architectural modernism died with the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe buildings in 1972, design-modernism died in 1981 with the formation of the Memphis Design Group.
Compare modern and modernity
Character
Modernism is a tendency rooted in the idea that the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life had become outdated; therefore it was essential to sweep them aside. In this it drew on previous revolutionary movements, including liberalism and communism. 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, and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. In essence, the modernist movement argued that the new realities of the industrial and mechanized age were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt their world view to accept that the new equaled the good, the true and the beautiful.
See: neophilia
See also
- Anti-modernism
- Modern architecture
- Modern art
- Modernist architecture
- Medium specificity
- International style (architecture)
- Postmodern art
Further reading
- Bad Modernisms
- Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity (2000) - Allison Pease
- The First Moderns : Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought (1998) - William R. Everdell
- The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (1983) - Stephen Kern [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Stephen Kern writes about the sweeping changes in technology and culture between 1880 and World War I that created new modes of understanding and experiencing time and space.
