Although sometimes described as a single aesthetic or movement, modernism is far broader than such a description suggests. It is in fact an attitude or set of beliefs; a specific mindset that proposes a particular way of looking at the world and, especially, of responding to or engaging with the very broad concept of modernity. More precise definition depends on the kind of modernity involved, which can range from a relatively narrow artistic or cultural context to the full panoply of changes and developments – cultural, social, political, philosophical, scientific – that characterize the so-called ‘modern’ period.
Such broad and narrow definitions are not independent. In the context of the West, modernity in the broadest sense is more or less precisely defined by the intellectual, rational and secular forces that have been active since the start of the Enlightenment in the 17th century. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a series of seismic shifts in human understanding of the world and man’s position in it, initiated by the momentous achievements of Marx, Darwin, Freud, Einstein and others. It was partly in sympathy with, or reaction to, the new world-view painted by such transformational figures that many dynamic forms of modernism emerged in the early decades of the 20th century. The outbreak in 1914 of the most terrible and traumatic war in history was another vital catalyst in modernist thinking.
In general, the modern phase of history has been regarded as progressive and sporadically revolutionary. Modernists, accordingly, have tended to see themselves, often quite exclusively, as constituting the cultural avantgarde; innovative, radical, challenging, experimental. Modernism has also tended to be self-referential and at times introverted, seeing its own efforts and accomplishments as absolutely valuable and worthwhile in their own right, irrespective of broader contexts. In this light, progress could be seen as an end in itself, art as an autonomous domain; and modernists have consequently been interpreted as taking up the rallying cry of 19th-century aestheticians: ‘art for art’s sake!’ Certainly some of the intellectual inspiration for modernism appears to come from the second half of the previous century – from the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, for instance, and from his fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud, who wrote in 1873: il faut être absolument moderne (‘one must be absolutely modern’).
‘Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.’
Charles Baudelaire, 1869
Towards abstraction In the visual arts, the forces of modernism spawned a bewildering array of avant-garde styles and movements before and after the start of the 20th century, including Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Symbolism, Vorticism, Dadaism, Futurism and Surrealism. The inspiration behind these groups was so diverse and the direction they took so various that it is hardly illuminating to lump them together as modernists. All modernist artists, to a greater or lesser extent, were bent on subverting or abandoning the norms and conventions of the past. With this came a new perception of the function of art, one that presented a radical challenge to the view going back to Aristotle and the ancients that beauty and aesthetic value resided in imitation and representation (mimesis), an ideal that encouraged realism and a belief that the task of the artist was to hold up a mirror to nature. Rejection of this tenet, which had been central to the understanding of art for thousands of years, initiated a march (far from smooth) towards abstraction, which was to characterize much of the development of art during the 20th century.
‘Make It New’ ‘We have to drop our manner of on-and-on-and-on, from a start to a finish, and allow the mind to move in cycles, or to flit here and there over a cluster of images.’ D.H. Lawrence’s plea that writers should abandon tired Victorian conventions of narrative and chronology had already been significantly answered by the time he made it in 1932. A decade earlier, in 1922, modernist literature had had its annus mirabilis in the publication of (arguably) its greatest prose and poetic masterpieces: James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Eliot’s despairing yet darkly humorous poem is a collage of fragmentary images and complex allusions, presented in a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives and points of view. Joyce’s novel, meanwhile, uses interior monologue and stream-of-consciousness techniques to conduct an unprecedented exploration of his characters’ inner thoughts, memories and perceptions. Later, in Finnegans Wake (1939), Joyce would combine stream of consciousness with multilingual punning and a baffling ‘dream language’, thus extending the limits of complexity and difficulty for which much modernist literature has been criticized.
Beyond tonality Among composers, as among painters, the forces of modernism were felt but provided no sure direction or unanimity of outlook. The single most significant development, in retrospect at least, occurred in the first decade of the 20th century, when Arnold Schoenberg’s experimentation with atonality signified an epochal break with the notions of consonance and dissonance that for centuries had been the accepted basis of music. The greatest success in creating the ‘shock of the new’, however, was achieved on 29 May 1913, when Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring was premiered in Paris. So violent was the reaction to the raw primitiveness of the music, with its driving rhythms and clamorous orchestration, that a riot ensued. The conflict between modernist innovation and popular taste that remains unresolved to this day was underway.
Without lies and games In 20th-century architecture, the concept of modernism was more unitary and coherent than in other areas, becoming especially identified with the movement known as ‘International Modern’ (or ‘International Style’). Purportedly rational and functional design, combined with a dogmatic rejection of all adornment, superfluity and historical reference, typically resulted in clean, white, box-like buildings, with flat roofs and strip windows. The most innovatory and progressive architects of the period, including Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, preached an ethos of ‘New Objectivity’, in which subjectively human elements – and aesthetic style as such – were firmly suppressed. Gropius called for buildings that were ‘shaped by internal laws without lies and games; all that is unnecessary, that veils the absolute design, must be shed’. The result was functional, logical, objective design that exploited industrialized construction, modern materials and mass-produced components. International Modern, already dominant among progressive architects in the 1920s and 1930s, became orthodox in the period of postwar reconstruction. Conformist and homogenized in unimaginative hands, modernist architecture became increasingly detached from and unresponsive to actual human needs. The number of key modernist buildings that were demolished in the second half of the century is a reflection of the extent to which the movement failed to live up to the promises of its prophets.
the condensed idea
The shock of the new