What was modernism

The movement came of age in the s, with Bauhaus , Surrealism , Cubism , Fauvism , Futurism and, perhaps the most nihilistic of all, Dada. By the time Modernism had become so institutionalized and mainstream that it was considered "post avant-garde" , indicating that it had lost its power as a revolutionary movement, it generated in turn its own reaction , known as Post-Modernism , which was both a response to Modernism and a rediscovery of the value of older forms of art.

Modernism remains much more a movement in the arts than in philosophy , although Post-Modernism has a specifically philosophical aspect in addition to the artistic one. Donate with Crypto. A huge subject broken down into manageable chunks. Random Philosophy Quote :. This rebellious attitude that flourished between and had, as its basis, the rejection of European culture for having become too corrupt, complacent and lethargic, ailing because it was bound by the artificialities of a society that was too preoccupied with image and too scared of change.

This dissatisfaction with the moral bankruptcy of everything European led modern thinkers and artists to explore other alternatives, especially primitive cultures. For the Establishment, the result would be cataclysmic; the new emerging culture would undermine tradition and authority in the hopes of transforming contemporary society.

The modernists believed that for an individual to feel whole and a contributor to the re-vitalization of the social process, he or she needed to be free of all the encumbering baggage of hundreds of years of hypocrisy. The rejection of moral and religious principles was compounded by the repudiation of all systems of beliefs, whether in the arts, politics, sciences or philosophy.

No more conventional cookie-cutter forms to be superimposed on human expression. What were some of the artistic beliefs that the modernists adopted? Ironically, the modernist portrayal of human nature takes place within the context of the city rather than in nature, where it had occurred during the entire 19th-century.

At the beginning of the 19th-century, the romantics had idealized nature as evidence of the transcendent existence of God; towards the end of the century, it became a symbol of chaotic, random existence. Why would the modernists shift their interest from nature and unto the city?

The first reason is an obvious one. This is the time when so many left the countryside to make their fortunes in the city, the new capital of culture and technology, the new artificial paradise. But more importantly, the city is the place where man is dehumanized by so many degenerate forces.

Thus, the city becomes the locus where modern man is microscopically focused on and dissected. In the final analysis, the city becomes a "cruel devourer", a cemetery for lost souls.

The Forces That Shaped Modernism. The year ushered a new era that changed the way that reality was perceived and portrayed. Years later this revolutionary new period would come to be known as modernism and would forever be defined as a time when artists and thinkers rebelled against every conceivable doctrine that was widely accepted by the Establishment, whether in the arts, science, medicine, philosophy, etc.

Although modernism would be short-lived, from to , we are still reeling from its influences sixty-five years later. How was modernism such a radical departure from what had preceded it in the past? The modernists were militant about distancing themselves from every traditional idea that had been held sacred by Western civilization, and perhaps we can even go so far as to refer to them as intellectual anarchists in their willingness to vandalize anything connected to the established order.

In order to better understand this modernist iconoclasm, let's go back in time to explore how and why the human landscape was changing so rapidly. By the world was a bustling place transformed by all of the new discoveries, inventions and technological achievements that were being thrust on civilization: electricity, the combustion engine, the incandescent light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, radio, X-rays, fertilizers and so forth. These innovations revolutionized the world in two distinct ways.

For one, they created an optimistic aura of a worldly paradise, of a new technology that was to reshape man into moral perfection. In other words, technology became a new religious cult that held the key to a new utopian dream that would transform the very nature of man. Secondly, the new technology quickened the pace through which people experienced life on a day to day basis.

For instance, the innovations in the field of transportation and communication accelerated the daily life of the individual. Whereas in the past, a person's life was circumscribed by the lack of mechanical resources available, a person could now expand the scope of daily activities through the new liberating power of the machine. Man now became literally energized by all of these scientific and technological innovations and, more important, felt a rush emanating from the feeling that he was invincible, that there was no stopping him.

Modernity, however, was not only shaped by this new technology. Several philosophical theoreticians were to change the way that modern man perceives the external world, particularly in their refutation of the Newtonian principle that reality was an absolute, unquestionable entity divorced from those observing it.

The first to do so was F. Bradley, who considered that the human mind is a more fundamental feature of the universe than matter and that its purpose is to search for truth.

His most ambitious work, Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay , introduced the concept that an object in reality can have no absolute contours but varies from the angle from which it is seen. Thus Bradley defines the identity of a things as the view the onlooker takes of it. The effect of this work was to encourage rather than dispel doubt. The carnage of the First World War and the Russian Revolution led to widespread utopian fervour, a belief that the human condition could be healed by new approaches to art and design.

Focusing on the most basic elements of daily life — housing and furniture , domestic goods and clothes — architects and designers set out to reinvent these forms for a new century. Europe had been ravaged by repressive political structures and glaring social inequalities. Tackling economic inequality became central to the Modernist agenda and many architects devoted their energies to housing.

Affordable housing was one of the most urgent needs of the inter-war period. Designers and architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelsohn and Walter Gropius developed model housing estates in an attempt to resolve the housing crisis. In their drive to transform society, Modernist architects set out to industrialise the building process.

New construction techniques and the use of materials such as steel, concrete and glass would reduce costs and allow for mass-production. Many artists and architects were intoxicated by the endless possibilities offered by science and technology. They envisaged a world entirely recreated in terms of the machine: everything from clothing to architecture, music to theatre.