Modernism (1 янв 1880 г. – 1 янв 1939 г.)

Описание:

In art, modernism took over. It involved constant experimentation, a search for new kinds of expression, and critical and challenging works that called attention to the irrational aspects of Western society.

The U.S. pioneered new architecture. Architects like Louis H. Sullivan built skyscrapers and office buildings. Frank Lloyd Wright built modern houses with low lines, open interiors, and mass-produced building materials. Those like Le Corbusier pioneered functionalism, which found more beauty in functionality and adopting new building designs and scientific technologies than fancy ornamentation. German Walter Gropius formed the interdisciplinary school the Bauhaus. Its impact was immense. Instructors and students sought to unify art, craft, and technology. They combined fine art, like painting and sculpture, with applies art, like printing, weaving, furniture making, and architecture. The goods they designed were mass-produced and marketed at affordable prices. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe captured International Style with his Lake Shore Apartments in Chicago.

The visual arts no longer tried to accurately portray reality. Artforms like Impressionism, Expressionism, Dadaism, and Surrealism became increasingly abstract. Art galleries and exhibition halls began popping up to show off the new work, most notably in Berlin, Munich, Moscow, Vienna, New York, and Paris. Schools, institutions, and instructors trained a generation in modern techniques and many young artists eagerly participated.

Impressionists like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt tried to portray their sensory “impressions” in their work. They looked to the world around them for subject matter. Capturing a fleeting moment of real life replaced accurate renditions of battles, religious scenes, or wealthy elites. Postimpressionists and Expressionists like Vincent van Gogh built upon impressionists by adding a deep psychological element.

After 1900, Pablo Picasso and others established Cubism, art with a more analytical approach and complex geometry. Italian Filippo Tommaso Marinetti pioneered Futurism, which was determined to glorify modernity and destroy the burdens of the past. He embraced the future and called for art that reflected the changing atmosphere and technologies.

In 1916, international artists and intellectuals invented Dadaism. It attacked all the familiar standards of art and involved outrageous behavior. They argued life was meaningless, and so should be art. They made “anti-art”-works that were insulting and nonsensical-like the Mona Lisa with a hand-drawn mustache and an obscene inscription. It became an international movement after the war.

In the mid 1920s, some Dadaists turned to Surrealism, which was deeply influenced by the Freudian idea of the unconscious. Their works often depicted fantastic worlds of wild dreams and uncomfortable symbols.

Many of these artist believed that art had a transformative mission. By the 20s, art and culture had become increasingly politicized. Many artists were aligned with the far left. The rise of the Nazi Party displaced artists and intellectuals, but benefited the U.S., specifically New York, after many fled there.

Modernist writers developed new techniques to express new realities. They often focused on the complexity and irrationality of the human mind. French novelist Marcel Proust recalled bittersweet memories of childhood and youthful love and tried to discover their innermost meaning in Remembrance of Things Past.

Some novelists used the stream-of-consciousness technique, which relied on internal monologues to explore the human psyche. Virginia Woolf captured the inner voice of characters and portrayed ideas and emotions that weave in and out like a patient on a psychoanalyst’s couch. William Faulkner used similar techniques in his works like The Sound and the Fury.

James Joyce’s Ulysses was one of the more experimental and disturbing novels of the time. In an attempt to mirror modern life, Joyce abandoned conventional plot, broke rules of grammar, included frank sexual descriptions, and blended foreign words, puns, bits of knowledge, and scraps of memory together.

Numerous creative writers rejected the idea of progress. Some described “anti-utopias” like in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. He described the crisis in confidence that followed the war. Franz Kafka portrayed an incomprehensible, alienating world. Like in his The Trial, The Castle, and The Metamorphosis, writers blended literary techniques and dark imagery to capture the anxiety of the modern age.

Music experienced similar change. Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was shocking because of its experimental combination of pulsating rhythms and dissonant sounds with representations of lovemaking from dancers. Alban Ber’s Wozzeck was one of most powerful examples of modernism in opera and ballet. Some composers abandoned musical conventions. Arnold Schonberg led a change of excluding traditional harmony and tonality. Audiences generally resisted atonal music until after World War 2.

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