Modernism

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). This proto-cubist work is considered a seminal influence on subsequent trends in modernist painting.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon Guggenheim Museum completed in 1959[1]

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 Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete.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.

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]

  1. ^ "Modernist architecture: 30 stunning examples". Trendir. 2 September 2016.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Graff73 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Graff75 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Childs2000p17 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Lewis, Pericles (2000). Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 38–39. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511485145. ISBN 978-0-521-66111-9.
  6. ^ Faulkner, Peter (1990). Modernism. London: Taylor & Francis Ltd. p. 60. ISBN 0415051452.
  7. ^ Gardner, Helen; de la Croix, Horst; Tansey, Richard G.; Kirkpatrick, Diane (1991). Gardner's Art through the Ages. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 953. ISBN 0-15-503770-6.
  8. ^ Morris Dickstein, "An Outsider to His Own Life", Books, The New York Times, August 3, 1997; Anthony Mellors, Late modernist poetics: From Pound to Prynne.
  9. ^ "Postmodernism: definition of postmodernism". Oxford dictionary (American English) (US). Archived from the original on 4 May 2016. Retrieved 16 February 2018 – via oxforddictionaries.com.
  10. ^ Ruth Reichl, Cook's November 1989; American Heritage Dictionary's definition of "postmodern"
  11. ^ Mura, Andrea (2012). "The Symbolic Function of Transmodernity". Language and Psychoanalysis. 1 (1): 68–87. doi:10.7565/landp.2012.0005.


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