Modernism: A New Perspective

Modernism: A New Perspective

Scope of the Seminar

This presentation is not intended to be a comprehensive study of Modernism nor a detailed analysis of its characteristics. The coming 30-40 minutes will be an attempt to shed light on one of most important factors that made it inevitable for modernism to emerge.

Modernism: A New Perspective

What is Modernism?
It is a 20th century self-consciousness movement that revolted against the socalled outmoded traditions, values, forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life. Modernism is a blanket term for an explosion of new styles and trends in the arts of the beginning of the 20th century.

Modernism: A New Perspective

The best quotation that sums Modernism up all is these lines from the Irish poet W.B. Yeats poem The Second Coming (1919): Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

To know what centre Yeats is referring to, it is necessary to go back into history.

Modernism: A New Perspective

Roots of Modernism
To understand Modernism one needs to know its relation to Modernity. This latter is considered to describe a way of living and of experiencing life which has arisen with the changes wrought by industrialisation, urbanisation, and secularisation; its characteristics are disintegration, ephemerality and insecurity.

Modernism: A New Perspective

Modernity and the Age of Enlightenment

What fell apart in the modern era were the values of the 18th century, known also as the Age of Reason. The main value of the age, besides reason, was the idea of progress. In the 18th century thinkers became optimistic that by using the universal values of science, logic and reason they could get rid of all the myths and holy ideas that kept humanity from progressing.

Modernism: A New Perspective

At the centre of this world view lies the philosophy of the French Rene Descartes (1596-1650). He declares that the only thing one cannot doubt is ones own existence: I Think, Therefore I am Whereas his principle was intended to free human mind from the fetters of irrational imagination, it opened the way to doubt all the deep rooted beliefs that so far provided the solid foundation for western civilization.

Modernism: A New Perspective

Science, Nothing but Science!

Through reason and science, all poverty, ignorance and injustice would finally be banished. Reality was supposed to be understood and perceived through the rational mind of the Enlightenment. With this in mind, 18th century people spent the long night of their century disturbed only by the nightmares of the open possibilities of their new rational religion.

Modernism: A New Perspective

The Dawn of the 20th Century

The growing suspicion about the validity and durability of these beliefs was assured by the increase in poverty, human bondage, deteriorating life conditions, and the writings of thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx among others. The one most important blow to these ideals, a blow that marked the end to all what was considered Enlightenment, was WWI. These ideals were shattered by the same tools that were thought they would bring prosperity and freedom to human kind.

Modernism: A New Perspective

In Search for a New Centre

Where western society had previously a centre: whether in Christian Religion or in the ideals of science and progress, suddenly it had NOTHING! There was an urging need to fill in this void, this emptiness. Nothingness itself was used as a filling to this void.

Modernism: A New Perspective

Modernism as a Filling!
Mans need for a centre to cling to was a compulsive drive behind the emergence of Modernism. If science proved to be futile then something else must take its place. Earnest Hemingway in his short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place uses the word nada (nothing in Spanish) to substitute significant places of Lords Prayer

Modernism: A New Perspective

Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name, thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, halewed be thy name, Let thy kingdom come. Thy will be fulfilled.

Modernism: A New Perspective

Modernist Artists as Supermen

Nietzsches idea of the superman who is beyond good and evil provided the impetus for artists to pursue their own distinct way of filling this void. Writers like T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, each developed their own distinct way of perceiving their reality

Modernism: A New Perspective

Modern Schools of Painting

Dadaism was among the earliest schools of painting that called for the destruction of all the traditional methods and styles of painting. It was total negation. To bring back an affirmation, Surrealism sprang from Dadaism to be a new way of representing reality. Cubism is another school that represented the world in a three dimensional way.