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In Western culture the term modernism has several meanings. This article focuses on the cultural movement labeled modernism (or the "Modern Movement").

The modern movement refers to the necessity of an individual rejecting previous tradition, and by creating individual techniques, produces work which is original to that artist. In general, the modern movement sought to reach down to basic preceptual and primitive, in the sense of being fundamental, realities.

(See Freud)

Historical Outline

Precursors To Modernism

In 19th Century Europe, the first half was marked by a series of turbulent wars and revolutions, which gradually formed in a series of ideas and doctines now identified as Romanticism, which focused on individual subject experience, the supremacy of "Nature" as the standard subject for art, revolutionary or radical extensions of expression, and individual liberty. By mid-century, however, a synthesis of these ideas, and stable governing forms had emerged, called by various names, it was rooted in the idea that what was "real" dominated over what was subjective. Exemplified by Bismark's Realpolitick, philosophical ideas such as positivism and cultural norms now described by the word Victorian.

Core to this synthesis, however, was the importance of instituions, common assumptions and frames of reference. These drew their support from religious norms found in Christianity, scientific norms found in classical physics and doctrines which asserted that depiction of the basic external reality from an objective standpoint was possible. Cultural critic and historian labels this set of doctrines Realism, though this term is not generally used.

Against this current were a series of ideas. Some were direct continuations of Romantic schools of thought, in particular the ideas of Karl Marx and other communist and socialist revolutionaries, and a host of artists who believed that art was to depict subjective experience first and foremost.

Among these two schools, originating in France, would have particular impact. The first was Impressionism, a school of painting which was initially focused on painting, not in studios, but in the "plain air". They argued that human beings do not see objects, but instead, they saw light itself. The school gathered adherents, and despite deep internal divisions among its leading practioners, became increasingly influential. Initially rejected from the most important commercial show of the time - the government sponsored Paris Salon - Emperor Napoleon III - created the "Salon des rejects" which displayed all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by inferior artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention, and opened commercial doors to the movement.

The second school was Symbolism, a belief that language was expressly symbolic in its nature, and that poetry and writing should follow which every connections the sheer sound and texture of the words created. The poet Mallarme would be of particular importance to what would occur afterward.

At the same time, social, political and economic forces were at work which would eventually be used as the basis to argue for a radically different kind of art and thinking.

Chief among these was industrialization - which produced buildings such as the Eiffel Tower, that broke all previous limitations on how tall man made objects could be, and at the same time a radically different environment in urban life. The miseries of industrial urbanity, and the possibilities created by scientific examination of subjects would be crucial in the series of changes which would shake European Civilization, which, at that point, regarded itself as having a continuous and progressive line of development from the Renaissance.

The breadth of the changes can be seen in how many disciplines are described, in their pre-20th Century form as being "classical", including "classical" physics, economics and arts such as ballet.

= The Beginning of Modernism 1890-1910

Initially the movement can be described as a rejection of tradition, and facing problems from a fresh perspective based on current ideas and techniques. Thus Gustav Mahler considered himself as a "Modern" composer and Gustave Flaubert's made his famous remark that "It is essential to be thoroughly modern in ones tastes." The rejection of tradition by the Impressionist movement, makes it one of the first artistic movements to be seen, in retrospect as a modern movement. In literature the symbolist movement would have a tremendous influence on the development of the Modern movement, because of its focus on sensation. Philosophically, the break with tradition by Nietzsche and Freud provides a key underpinning of the movement going forward: to begin again from first principles, abandoning previous definitions and systems. This wave of the movement generally stayed within late 19th century norms of presentation, often its practioners regarded themselves as reformers rather than revolutionaries.

Beginning in the 1890's and with increasing force afterwards, a strand of thinking began to assert that it was necessary to push aside previous norms entirely, and instead of merely revising past knowledge in light of current techniques, it would be necessary to make more thorough going changes. The movement in art paralleled such developments as Relativity in physics; the increasing integration of internal combustion and industrialization; and the rise of social sciences in public policy. In the first 15 years of the 20th century, a series of writers, thinkers and artists made the break with the traditional means of organizing literature, painting and music - again, in parallel to the change in organizational methods in other fields. The argument was that if the nature of reality itself was in question, and the restrictions with which, it was felt, had been inherent to human activity were falling, then art too, would have to radically change.

The landmarks include Schoenberg's atonal ending to his Second String Quartet in 1906, the abstract paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903 culminating with the founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich, the rise of cubism from the work of Picasso and Georges Braque in 1908.

Powerfully influential in this wave of modernity were the theories of Sigmund Freud, who argued that the mind had a basic and fundamental structure, and that subjective experience was based on the interplay of the parts of the mind. All subjective reality was based, according to Freud's ideas, on the play of basic drives and instincts, through which the outside world was perceived. This represented a break with the past, in that previously it was believed that external and absolute reality could impress itself on an individual, for example Locke's tabula rasa doctrine.

However, the modern movement was not merely defined by its avant-garde but also by a reforming trend within previous artistic norms. This search for simplification of diction found in the work of Joseph Konrad. The pressures of communication, transportation and more rapid scientific development began placing a premium on architectural styles which were cheaper to build and less ornamented, and on writing which was shorter, clearer and easier to read. The rise of cinema and "moving pictures" in the first decade of the 20th Century gave the modern movement an artform which was uniquely its own, and again, created a direct connection between the perceived need to extend the "progressive" tradition of the late 19th century, even if this conflicted with then established norms.

This wave of the modern movement broke with the past in the first decade of the 20th Century, and tried to redefine various artforms in a radical manner. Leading lights within the literary wing of this movement include Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Guilliame Apollinaire, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, Wyndham Lewis, H.D., Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams and Franz Kafka. Composers such as Schoenberg and Stravinsky represent modernism in music. Artists such as Gustav Klimt, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian and the Surrealists represent the visual arts, while architects and designers such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe brought modernist ideas into everyday urban life. Several figures outside of artistic modernism were influenced by artistic ideas, for example John Maynard Keynes was friends with Woolf and other writers of the Bloomsbury group.

The Explosion of Modernism 1910-1930

On the eve of World War I, a growing tension and unease with the social order began to break through - seen in the Russian Revolution of 1905, the increasing agitation of "radical" parties, and an increasing number of works which either radically simplified or rejected previous pratice. In 1913 Igor Stravinsky, working for Diaghlev and the Ballet Russe, composed Rite of Spring for a ballet that depicted human sacrifice.

Beginning in the 1920's and increasingly there afterword, Modernism became the paradigm for implementation, in architecture, government, schooling and social organization. There was a subtle, but important shift from the earlier phase: in the beginning the movement was by individuals who were part of the establishment, or wished to join the establishment. Increasingly, the tone became one of individuals who were trying to replace the older hierarchy with one based on new ideas, norms and methods. By 1930, Modernism had won a place in the establishment, including the political and artistic establishment.

Modernism, Reception and Controversy

The most controversial aspect of the modern movement was, and remains, its rejection of tradition, both in organization, and in the immediate experience of the work. This dismissal of tradition also involved the rejection of conventional expectations: hence modernism often stresses freedom of expression, experimentation, radicalism and even primitivism. In many art forms this often meant startling and alienating audiences with bizarre and unpredictable effects. Hence the strange and disturbing combinations of motifs in Surrealism, or the use of extreme dissonance in modernist music. In literature this often involved the rejection of intelligible plots or characterisation in novels, or the creation of poetry that defied clear interpretation.

Many modernists believed that by rejecting tradition they could discover radically new ways of making art. Schoenberg believed that by ignoring traditional tonal harmony (the relationship between consonance and dissonance) he had discovered a wholly new way of organising sound, based in the use of twelve-note rows (See 12 tone technique). This became known as serial music by the post-war period. Abstract artists, taking as their examples the Impressionists, as well as Cezanne and Edvard Munch began with the assumption that colour and shape formed the essential characteristics of art, not the depiction of the natural world. Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich all believed in redefining art as the arrangement of pure colour. The use of photography, which had rendered much of the representational function of visual art obsolete, strongly affected this particular aspect of modernism. However, these artists also believed that by rejecting the depiction of material objects they helped art move from a materialist to a spiritualist phase of development.

Other modernists, especially those involved in design, had more pragmatic views. Modernist architects and designers believed that new technology rendered old styles of building obsolete. Le Corbusier (born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret) thought that buildings should function as "machines for living in", analogous to cars, which he saw as machines for travelling in. Just as cars had replaced the horse, so modernist design should reject the old styles and structures inherited from Ancient Greece or from the Middle Ages. Following this machine aesthetic, modernist designers typically reject decorative motifs in design, preferring to emphasise the materials used and pure geometrical forms. The skyscraper, such as Mies's Seagram Building in New York (1956 - 1958), became the archetypal modernist building. Modernist design of houses and furniture also typically emphasised simplicity and clarity of form, open-plan interiors, and the absence of clutter. Modernism reversed the 19th century relationship of public and private: in the 19th century, public buildings were horizontally expansive for a variety of technical reasons, and private buildings emphasized verticality - to fit more private space on more and more limited land. Where as in the 20th century, public buildings became vertically oriented, and private buildings became organized horizontally.

In other arts such pragmatic considerations were less important. In literature and visual art some modernists sought to defy expectations mainly in order to make their art more vivid, or to force the audience to take the trouble to question their own preconceptions. This aspect of modernism has often seemed a reaction to consumer culture, which developed in Europe and North America in the late 19th century. Whereas most manufacturers try to make products that will be marketable by appealing to people's preferences and prejudices, modernists rejected such consumerist attitudes in order to undermine conventional thinking. The art critic Clement Greenberg expounded this theory of modernism in his essay Avant Garde and Kitsch. Greenberg labelled the products of consumer culture "kitsch", because their design aimed simply to have maximum appeal, with any difficult features removed. For Greenberg, modernism thus formed a reaction against the development of such examples of modern consumer culture as commercial popular music, Hollywood, and advertising. Greenberg associated this with a revolutionary rejection of capitalism.

Many modernists did see themselves as part of a revolutionary culture: one that included political revolution. However, many rejected conventional politics as well as artistic conventions, believing that a revolution of consciousness had greater importance than a change in political structures. Many modernists saw themselves as apolitical, only concerned with revolutionising their own field of endeavour. Others, such as T. S. Eliot, rejected mass popular culture from a conservative position. Indeed one can argue that modernism in literature and art functioned to sustain an elite culture which excluded the majority of the population. The Soviet Communist government rejected modernism on the grounds of alleged elitism; and the Nazi government in Germany deemed it narcissistic and nonsensical. The Nazis exhibited modernist paintings alongside works by the mentally ill in an exhibition entitled Degenerate art.

In fact, modernism flourished mainly in consumer/capitalist societies, despite the fact that its proponents often rejected consumerism itself. However, modernism began to merge with consumer culture after World War II, especially during the 1960s. In Great Britain a youth sub-culture even called itself "modernists", though usually shortened to Mods. In popular music Bob Dylan combined folk music traditions with modernist verse, adopting literary devices derived from Eliot and others. The Beatles also developed along these lines, even creating atonal and other modernist musical effects in their later albums. Musicians such as Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart proved even more experimental. 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 stylised forms became popular, often associated with dreams of a space age high-tech future.

This merging of consumer and modernist culture led to a radical transformation of the meaning of "modernism" itself. Firstly it implied that a movement based on the rejection of tradition had become a tradition of its own. Secondly it demonstrated that the distinction between elite modernist and mass consumerist culture had lost its precision. Many have interpreted this transformation as the beginning of the phase that became known as Postmodernism. And recently (2000) a new paradigm has been suggested, comprising not only Traditionalism versus Modernism but also a third group, called Cultural Creatives, who differ from both.

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 (circa 1400 to circa 1900). Examples include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Such galleries (and popular attitudes) make no distinction between modernist and post-modernist phases, seeing both as developments within 'Modern Art'.

In architecture the term 'modernist' had the most specific meaning, referring to severe and minimalist styles that rejected decoration. Again some aspects of modernist design persist within the mainstream of contemporary architecture, while its dogmatism has given way to more playful use of decoration, historical quotation, and spatial drama.

Experimental rejection of tradition in any of these fields now often bears the label avant garde, a phrase once almost interchangable with 'modernist'. The concepts separated in meaning during the 1960s when some writers declared that modernism had become so institutionalized that it was now 'post avant-garde'.