Modernism (pronounced mod-er-niz-uhm)
(1) A modern usage or characteristic;
modern character, tendencies, or values; adherence to or sympathy with what is
modern.
(2) In theology, a movement in Roman
Catholic thought that sought to interpret the teachings of the Church in the
light of philosophic and scientific conceptions prevalent in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The movement was condemned in 1907 by Pope Pius X (always with
initial capital).
(3) In theology, the liberal theological
tendency in Protestantism which emerged in the twentieth century and became the
intellectual core of the moderate wings in many denominations, most obviously
displayed in the interplay between the liberal and evangelical factions at
recent Lambeth Conferences.
(4) A deliberate philosophical and
practical estrangement or divergence from the techniques and practices of the
past in the arts and literature, occurring from late in the nineteenth century
and (a little arbitrarily), thought to have concluded in the post-war
years. Taking the form in any of various
innovative movements and styles, it was an aesthetic descriptor used in mostly
in architecture, literature and art to label work thought modern in character,
quality of thought, expression or technique (sometimes with initial capital).
1730-1740: The construct is modern + ism. Modern was from the Middle French moderne, from the Late Latin modernus (modern), from the Classical
Latin modo (just now; in a (certain)
manner)), from the adverb modo (to
the measure) originally ablative of modus
(manner; measure) and hence, by measure, "just now". Root was the primitive Indo-European med- (take appropriate measures). The adjective modern entered English circa
1500 in the sense of "now existing", the meaning "of or
pertaining to present or recent times" attested from the 1580s. The verb modernize (give a modern character
or appearance to, cause to conform to modern ideas, adapt to modern persons)
has existed since the 1680s, thought probably a borrowing from the French
modernizer rather than a native coining.
In the narrow, technical sense, modern
began in English enjoying a broad meaning, simply a description of that which
was not ancient and medieval, but it quickly gained niches, Shakespeare using
it to indicate something "every-day, ordinary, commonplace" and the
meaning "not antiquated or obsolete, in harmony with present ways"
was formalized by the early nineteenth century.
Formerly, the scientific linguistic division of historical languages
into old, middle, and modern began only in the nineteenth century, the first
university department of modern (ie those still living (unlike Latin and Ancient
Greek) and of some literary or historical importance) was created in 1821
although the use of Modern English can be traced from at least circa 1607 when
jurist John Cowell (1554–1611) published The
Interpreter, a dictionary of law which, inter alia, examined and explained
the words of Old and Middle English. The
extended form modern-day was noted from 1872; Modern dance is attested by 1912;
modern conveniences (increasingly electrically-powered labour-saving devices)
dates from 1926; modern jazz was used in 1954 and the slang abbreviation mod
(tidy, sophisticated teen-ager (and one contrasted usually with a disreputable
rocker or some other delinquent)) dates from a surprisingly early 1960.
There have been references to modern art
since 1807 but it then was simply a chronological acknowledgement in the sense
of something being recent rather than a recognizable style or school, that
sense, “work representing a departure from or repudiation of traditional or
accepted styles”, not attested until 1895, the idea by 1897 extended to the
individual, a modern person one thought “thoroughly up to date”. Although it would take decades to assume its (now)
modern meaning, as an adjective, post–modern appears first to have been use in
1919 and by the late 1940s had become common in the language of architects
(presumably the first among the modernists to feel no longer modern) and use
extended to the arts in the 1960s, infecting politics, literature and just
about every form of criticism.
The –ism suffix is from the Ancient Greek
ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly,
sometimes through the Latin –ismus
& -isma (from where English
picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus,
all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to
express a finished act or thing done).
It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract
nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was
used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or
practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic,
devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism;
realism; witticism etc).
Tarta T77, Czechlosavakia 1934.Confusion is
sometimes attached to the words “modernity” and “modernism”. The noun modernity, dating from the 1620s, meant
simply the "quality or state of being modern", an elaborated way of
saying “recent”, the sense "something that is modern" noted since
1733. As a word to describe specifically
the epoch which began in the early twentieth century, it was in use before the
First World War. The sense of that modernity
was the particular combination of circumstances and forces which had coalesced
to produce in Europe and North America a society which had in technical and
other ways progressed with greater rapidity than any in history: (1) A long
period of general peace, (2) a level of prosperity, which although uneven and
often erratic, was unprecedented, (3) an array of technical innovations
(electricity, radio, flight, telegraphs, internal combustion engines etc), (4)
increasing literacy and a proliferation of mass-media, (4) an on-rush of new
and transformative theories in psychology, philosophy & science (Freud,
Darwin, Einstein et al), and (5) a relaxation of historically censorious attitudes
which allowed innovations in art and literature to flourish.
Modernism, a word Dr Johnson (1709-1784) claimed was invented by
the novelist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) to suggest any "deviation from the
ancient and classical manner" had by 1830 come to refer to generally to "modern
ways and styles" but since the mid-1920s, it’s been used exclusively to
describe the movements in art, music, architecture and literature which depart
in some radical way from classical and other traditional antecedents. By 1925, the noun modernist was applied to a
producer or follower of the work of the movement. In the 1580s it had meant "one who
admires or prefers the modern"; something similar but without the political
and other connotations modernity imposed.
Monument House of the Bulgarian Communist
Party (Buzludzha Monument), Buzludzha Peak, Bulgaria (1974-1981). Now a ruin.Modernism, even if considered
separately within the genres where the label was adopted had no coherence of
style, intent or result, the significance being what it was not in that it
deliberately aimed to depart from classical and traditional forms. Although it’s contested still, much of what
began as modernist art is attributed to the modernist’s growing alienation from
the strictures and conventions which had characterized their formative years
during the Victorian age. It defined an epoch
and, somewhere in the post-war period, became part of the history of art or
architecture and for those for whom modernism is now just another product, such
as art dealers, there’s really no distinction between modernist and
postmodernist phases, both grouped under the rubric of Modern Art.
Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde (1910) by Pablo
Picasso (1881-1973), analytical cubism from his cubist period.Modernist literature
was influenced by the bleak surroundings created by urbanization and industrialization
but it was the blast of the Great War which left writers grasping to find a
response to what was a much-changed world. The roots of modernist literature can be found
in pre-war works but the war had so undermined faith in the foundations of
Western society and culture which early in the century had been viewed with an optimism
it’s hard now to convey. An inescapable
element in modernism was a rejection of beauty as if humanity had proved itself
somehow unworthy of loveliness and modernist literature reflected disillusionment
and betrayal, TS Eliot’s (1888-1965) epic-length poem The Waste Land (1922) is emblematic, reflecting the search for redemption
in a spiritually empty landscape and technically, its discordant images and deliberate
obscurity typify Modernism and preview the techniques developed in
post-modernism which demand the reader be involved in interpreting and
deconstructing the text.
Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) reading Ulysses, 1955.
Modernist
fiction however, in content or technique, wasn’t monolithic and even to label
it a genre does require that word to adopt a nuance of meaning, the works could
explore the life of one, of a group or all of humanity and ranged from the nihilistic
to the utopian. The great landmark was James
Joyce’s (1882-1941) Ulysses (1922), a work of such sometimes impenetrable
density which adopted the even then known device of a stream of consciousness
to document the events of one day in the lives of three Dubliners, the idea
being the abandonment of any structural order, conventional sentence
construction sacrificed in an attempt to capture the nature of human fragmentary
thought. Not all readers were seduced by
the approach but Ulysses picked up a cult following which endures to this day,
some of the adherents compelled even to praise Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), a work which in which a few find rare genius while others conclude it's merely modernism pursued to its inevitability unintelligible conclusion. Reading Joyce can be hard work although Anthony Burgess
(1917–1993), a fair critic of modernism, literary and otherwise, claimed to find a laugh of every page
of Finnegans Wake. For most, it's no
fun at all.
In painting, the
roots really lie in mannerism although elements can be traced through thousands
of years of what is, strictly speaking, non-representational art, exemplified
in many aspects by the sometimes (and not deliberately) almost abstract Italian
primitives created between
the late eleventh and mid-thirteenth centuries. However, historians regard the first of the
modernists as Édouard Manet (1832-1883) who, from his early thirties began to distort
perspective and devalue representation, using techniques of brushstroke to emphasize
the very nature of the flat canvas on which he worked, something artists had for
centuries crafted to disguise. In his
wake came the rush of -isms that would characterize modernism: Impressionism, Cubism,
Constructivism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism & Expressionism, an
array of visions which would see the techniques and physical construction of
the works vie for attention (at least among fellow artists and critics) with what
was once thought the art itself.
In
architecture, while not literally technologically deterministic, the advances
in the technologies available made possible the abandonment of earlier
necessities. However, while the existence of steel frames and increasingly
complex shapes rendered in reinforced concrete may have allowed what came to be
known as the “new international style”, neither precluded the ongoing use of
decoration and embellishment, the discarding of which was a hallmark of
modernist architecture. It was the choice
of the architects to draw simple geometric shapes with unadorned facades, a
starkness associated especially with the mid-to-late twentieth century steel and
glass skyscrapers. Architects are less
keen to be associated with some other high-rise buildings of the era, especially
the grim housing projects which blighted so much of the urban redevelopment of
the post-war years; there was none of the awful grandeur of the best
neo-brutalism to many of these.
