Modernism rejected tradition. It was interested in new ways of doing old things. Also, there was a belief that science and technology could change the world for the better.[2]The term covers some movements which are somewhat contradictory.[3]
Some scholars think that modernism is (going on, or) continuing into the 21st century. Others see it (changing or) evolving into late modernism or high modernism.[4]
The start of modernism in painting: there are different ideas about that. One idea is that the start was in 1885–1886 with Seurat's painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (picture);[5] Historian William Everdell is known for having that idea. That painter put many small dots on his paintings; The many dots made up [each of those] paintings; This way of painting, has the name Divisionism.
Important parts of modernism in painting: Wassily Kandinsky made expressionist paintings, starting in 1903. Other important parts were
Modernism in architecture is found in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius the founder of Bauhaus, and Mies van der Rohe. Le Corbusier's famous remark "A building is a machine for living in" shows how different his thinking was to architects of the 19th century. The skyscraper, such as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York (1956–1958), became the archetypal modernist building.
Criticism
A criticism of the modern movement is that it does not value tradition, and goes in for change for the sake of change. What modernists want most is freedom of expression, or, perhaps, freedom of experimentation. This is why many modern paintings avoid making visual copies of real things. In modernist literature, an author may leave out plots or narrative or characterization in books.
Another criticism was of the connection between modernism and socialism. Certainly many modernists were also socialists. In the early days of socialism it seemed to offer hope of a new future without the baggage of the past. This also explains their rejection of tradition.
References
↑Childs, Peter 2000. Modernism. Routledge, London.
↑Hughes, Robert 1991. The shock of the new: art and the century of change. London: Thames & Hudson, p11. ISBN978-0-500-27582-5
↑Lewis, Pericles 2000, Modernism, nationalism, and the novel. Cambridge University Press.
↑Morris Dickstein, "An Outsider to His Own Life", Books, The New York Times, August 3, 1997; Anthony Mellors, Late modernist poetics: From Pound to Prynne.
↑Cite error: The named reference Everdell was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
↑Beebe, Maurice 1972. "Ulysses and the Age of Modernism". James Joyce Quarterly (University of Tulsa) 10 (1): p176.