MODERNISM – PART II (20.05.2013)

1. In what ways the world at the beginning of the 20

th

century is different from the 19

th

century

world?

The modernist movement in arts is set of cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and
far-reaching changes to Western society in 19

th

and early 20

th

centuries:



– it began with the Industrial Revolution. People were leaving villages and

urbanization

moving to big cities. It’s connected with technology development – there were more
employment opportunities in city.



– there were fewer and fewer places untouched by human beings.

industrialization



– more and more people were educated. Culture became more democratic

growing literacy

and popular.



– First World War which was like a huge blow to the 19

th

century

historical changes

optimism – this belief in science, progress died with the beginning of WWI.



– it was also a great dangerous power:

development of science

The development of Physics. It made people realize that the world is much more than it seems to be.
It’s a great difference between modern Physics (beginning of the 20

th

century) and the old one. The

old Physics was about the things that you can observe in real world like low gravity (Newton and an
apple). Modern Physics is much more complicated.
Also the ability of science to explain the world was simpler in the past – an apple fell on your head
and Newton explained why. Now we have lots of theories and explanations, but they concern the
things about which we now practically nothing as ordinary people. Even if the science explain
everything, it won’t help us much in everyday life, because it became sort of abstraction.

2. Modernism is very difficult to define, because it encompasses* a whole range of different
movements, such as:

the part that carries the meaning; ‘dada’ – a French word for ‘hobbyhorse’



dadaism:

works are marked by nonsense (you don’t have to think very hard to write a poem,

movement

it happens accidentally).

They would put words written on pieces of paper into a hat and draw these words on
random. Of course, these poems didn’t mean anything. Some people say that it was a
response to the First World War – since the artist saw that the world didn’t make any sense,
they rejected this irrational world. Nowadays it would be much easier because of the
advanced technology – the computer can sort of ‘mix’ the words for you. /both literature and
painting/



symbolism:

representation of a concept through symbols or underlying meanings of objects

or qualities. You have to suggest a lot rather that writing directly. /literature/



imagism:

clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images. It’s actually

connected with the poetry. Poetry shouldn’t be talking about things – if you use clear visual

images like in Haiku

a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 syllables. In short, the first

line has 5 syllables, the second one has 7 and the third has 5.

Ex:
Spring has come and gone
Summer is upon us now
Warmth will hold me soon

This is just a sequence of images and some poets are inspired by this. You do not say your
readers what they should think about it. When you say e.g. “The sun shining in the sky” –
people see it and they can interpret it whatever they want to.



impressionism:

light and its reflection, quickly painted surfaces, short brushstrokes, dirty

colors, rejecting the idea of mimetic art. You can speak of impressionism in literature but
primarily it’s connected with painting, so it’s visual art.

Claude Monet – Impression

This style is connected with the idea that everything changes and there’s no one objective truth. The
artists focused a lot on stunning light, because in painting everything depends on light. The light
changes – everything changes, everything looks different. They also mixed colors in order to reflect
the play of light. The whole movement is named after this painting.



cubism:

the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often geometric

structures. /painting/

Pablo Picasso - Figure dans un Fauteuil (Seated Nude, Femme nue assise)

Actually it’s pre-Cubism(?), because you can still see something.



expressionism:

distorted shapes, exaggerated colors, the artist attempt to depict not

objective reality but rather the subjective emotions. /both but primarily painting/

Edvard Munch – The Scream
The external world is the reflection of the inner world
(impressionism is the opposite). The artists were
interested in emotions.

subjective > objective



surrealism:

artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created

strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the
unconscious to express itself. /at first literature, then painting/

Max Ernst – The Elephant Celebes

The idea is that the world is not rational. The artists were quite a lot inspired by dreams. They
believed that we could learn something about the world through dreams.



minimalism:

the work is set out to expose the essence or identity of a subject through

eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. /both literature and painting/

Kazimir Malevich - Black Square on a White Ground

This is a sort of an art which “refuses” to be one (compare with Four
minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence).

I’m not an art! I’m nothing

special! I’M NOBODY! 

*includes