Introducing Modernism E-Book

Chris Rodrigues

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Introducing...
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 108

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Modernism is usually thought of as a shock wave of innovations hitting art, architecture, music, cinema and literature - the work of Picasso, Joyce, Schoenberg, movements like Futurism and Dada, the architecture of Le Corbusier, T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and the avant-garde theatre of Bertolt Brecht or Samuel Beckett. But what really defines modernism? Why did it begin and how long did it last? Is Modernism over now? Chris Rodriguez and Chris Garratt's brilliant graphic guide is a brilliant exploration of the last century's most thrilling artistic work - and what it's really all about.

Leseprobe

Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP Email: [email protected]

ISBN: 978-184831-116-9

Text copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd

Illustrations copyright © 2012 Icon Books Ltd

The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights

Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Realizing Modernism

What is Modernism?

Media High Profile

Keeping up with Fashion

Cultural Foundations of Modernism

What is the Difference between Modernism and Modernity?

Technologies of Time

Standard Time

Key Inventions of Modernity

The New Industrial Art

So … How does Modernism Fit into All This?

An Experimentalist Attitude

Simultaneous Futurism

Architecture: Functionalist Modernism

Giedion’s Bible

Sticking Things Together

Tatlin’s Tower

How do we Recognize a Modernist Work?

The End of the Past

Reading Picasso …

… and Reading Similarities

The Pleasure of the Text?

How do the Arts Relate to Each Other?

Multi-Artform Performances

A Spirit of Modernist Cooperation

Avant-garde Film-making

Towards Atonality and Abstraction

Is There a Modernist Theory in Relation to Practice?

Structural Linguistics

The Relation of Modernism to Philosophy

Science and Sociology

What About Marx, Nietzsche and …?

Cross-Currents of Influences

Literary Cross-overs

What is the Relation of Modernism to Primitivism?

Is Primitivism Ethnocentric?

Expressionist Primitivism

Primitivism in Literature

What is the Relation of Modernism to Psychoanalysis?

The Primitivism of Sigmund Freud

Freud’s Influence

How Did Freud “Filter Through”?

The Century’s Greatest Listener …

Psychoanalysis and Surrealism

The Birth of Surrealism by Manifesto

“The Impossible Dream”

The “Dream Factory”

What is the Role of the City in Modernism?

The Crowd

The Human River …

… and the Flâneur

The City as Narrative

Architects’ Utopia

Why Are Modernists So Often “Exiles”?

Modernist Nomads

Exile Into Language

What is the Role of Élites and Avant-gardes in Modernism?

Is Avant-gardism “Pure” Modernism?

The Cohesion of Avant-gardes

Picasso’s Alliances

What Politics Did the Modernists Espouse?

Reactionary Modernism?

Modernists on the Ultra-Right

The Political Errors of Modernism

Examples of Progressive Modernists

No One’s Perfect …

How Does Modernism Relate to Mass Culture?

Against Mass Culture

Understanding Mass Culture

Cultural Industries

The Impact of the First World War

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

“And What For?”

What Would You Choose?

Crimes Against Humanity

Modernism Emigrates to America

Is America the Natural Home of Modernism?

The Great Crash and Recovery Programme

Modernism: the Un-American Activity

Entartete Kunst

Soviet Censorship

An Unholy Alliance

The Elite Defence of Modernism

Kitsch, High Culture and Abstract Expressionism

Hijacking Abstract Expressionism

Duchamp Descending a Staircase …

Pop Art or Neo-Dadaism?

The “End” of Modernism?

What is the Relation of Cinema to Modernism?

Against the Modernist Grain

European Art Cinema

Avant-garde Cinema: Surrealism

Expressionism in Films

Avant-garde Soviet Films

Reconsidering Hollywood

The New Wave

Breathless …

Has Modernism “Ended”?

Postmodern MoMA

Out of Babylon

Bibliography

Index

Realizing Modernism

This book will try to answer 15 basic questions on modernism, and is specifically concerned with modernism in the arts.

1. What is modernism?

2. When does modernism begin?

3. What is the difference between modernism and “modernity”?

4. Is modernism just a reaction to modernity?

5. How do we recognize a “modernist” work?

6. Is there a modernist theory in relation to practice?

7. What is the relation of modernism to primitivism?

8. What is the relation of modernism to psychoanalysis?

9. What is the role of the city in modernism?

10. Why are modernists so often “exiles”?

11. What is the role of élites and avant-gardes in modernism?

12. What politics did modernists espouse?

13. How does modernism relate to mass culture?

14. What is the relation of cinema to modernism?

15. Has modernism ended?

THE LAST QUESTION IS A RETURN TO THE FIRST WITH (WE HOPE) A SATISFYING ANSWER TO IT. YOU MIGHT SEE THESE QUESTIONS AS CHAPTERS IN A DETECTIVE NOVEL ...

What is Modernism?

What is the first feature of modernism that is generally acknowledged? Most of us will agree that a modernist work is perceived as difficult, and that its difficulty is associated with unfamiliarity and difference. D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who might himself be classified a modernist writer, expressed this feeling of the pleasure and pain of difficulty.

“… to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be resistance. The same with new pictures, new music. You may judge of their reality by the fact that they do arouse a certain resistance, and compel, at length, a certain acquiescence.”

All works that can be accommodated under the umbrella of modernism – or, as we’ll see, schools of modernisms – share a relationship to the modern world which is peculiarly new and exceptional to any other previous cultural and historical condition.

Novelty and difficulty form a special historical alliance. That’s one feature. Another is the reply that most people will give to the question: “What is modernism?” More than likely, they will identify it by naming its icons.

PABLO PICASSO (1881–1973), SALVADOR DALÍ (1904–89), T.S. ELIOT (1888–1965), ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951), LE CORBUSIER (1887–1965), KASIMIR MALEVICH (1878–1935). ... EZRA POUND (1885–1972), FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (1867–1959), MARCEL PROUST (1871–1992), VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941), IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971), RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875–1926) ... MAN RAY (1890–1976), THOMAS MANN (1875–1955), LEON TROTSKY (1879–1940), ALBAN BERG (1885–1935) ...... ... SHALL WE GO ON?

Interesting reasons can be found – positive and negative – why these names occur. Let’s consider just three from this list.

Media High Profile

What makes an icon? Picasso is likely to be remembered not just because he was a “great artist”. Media notoriety is crucial.

HIS PAINTINGS COMMAND FANTASTIC PRICES AT ART AUCTIONS! HE HAD LOTS OF WIVES AND MISTRESSES, AND CONSTANTLY APPEARED IN MAGAZINES. LE CORBUSIER ... DIDN’T HE START ALL THAT HIDEOUS MODERN ARCHITECTURE? WHAT ABOUT SCHOENBERG – WHAT’S HE FAMOUS FOR?

Arnold Schoenberg might not figure so high in the media stakes. His brand of (“classical”?) modernist music is, of all the modernisms, the most élitist and remote from the feelings of contemporary society. What does the “a-tonal” style or the “serial” system of composition mean to us? Most of us are happier with less cerebral forms of music that we can still identify as modern.

JAZZ – THAT’S REALLY MODERN! YES, BUT SO WAS THE TANGO CRAZE OF THE 1920S ...

Keeping up with Fashion

Fashion has the benefit of making us reflect on what modernism isn’t, what it was reacting against, what it intended to replace.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH VICTORIAN VALUES? THE VIRTUES OF COMFORT, SENTIMENT, ESTABLISHED RULES ... YOU’RE STUFFY, UNSEXY ... UNMODERN! TRY READING EZRA POUND – VITAMIN C FOR THE SOUL, THAT’S WHAT YOU NEED!

And this might lead us to think of trends or movements characteristic of modernism – for instance, Cubism, Dadaism or Surrealism – instead of simply naming personalities.

Such isms – indeed modernism itself – provide clues to the “spirit of the age’’, the Zeitgeist as it’s often called. Modernism expresses the new energies sweeping through from the late 19th century onwards – the revolutionary potentials opened up by Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and others.

A FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN OUR UNDERSTANDING OF CLASS ...

TRANSGRESSION OF PREVIOUS SEXUAL PROTOCOLS AND RULES IN PERSONAL LIFE ...

A NEW SET OF FUNCTIONS FOR ART, ARCHITECTURE, MUSIC AND LITERATURE!

So, modernism concerns not only novelty and difficulty, but also a change in social dynamics. Nevertheless, we are still in the realm of generalities. How do we identify the specifics of modernism? Perhaps the question of modernism’s timeliness is a good way to begin.

Chronologies and dates are often seen as the boring bits of cultural history. Stuff we glance at, or skip over, in our hurry to get to the “heart of the matter”. But with accounts of modernism, something strange happens. Dates and starting points begin to matter. The problem with defining modernism is that of fixing a chronology – who did what first, when and where? Establishing the credentials of originality is crucial to modernism.

WHO TAKES THE CREDIT FOR DOING SOMETHING FIRST? AND HOW DOES THAT INFLUENCE SOMEONE ELSE, SOMEWHERE ELSE?

We can get lost in a complex schedule of “originalities” that pollinate each other across frontiers – but always from one major city to another: Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, Zurich, New York …

Modernism appears like an international conspiracy, a wildfire contagion, an irresistible epidemic. But this can make us forget how limited it was to small, so-called “avant-garde” élites in urban centres. Its shock waves were disproportionate to its size. How can we explain the speed and extent of modernism’s success?

THINK OF IT IN TERMS OF SIMULTANEITY AND INSTANTANEITY ... ... WHICH ARE FEATURES OF A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM IN CONSTANT COMPETITION WITH ITSELF.

Of course, radical modernist changes in visual art, literature, music and architecture do not occur at exactly the same moment for each. But the coincidences are enough to persuade us of a shared climate of experimentation in all these sectors.

We are still left with three problems: (1) plural modernisms; (2) their continuity; (3) their decline and end. We need a time-scale. A rough and ready one is provided by Henri Lefèbvre.

“The absolute sovereignty of modernism is ushered in around 1910 by a rupture with the classical and traditional vocabulary […] The reign is consolidated after World War I: cubism, abstract art, the rise of the Bauhaus, etc. … That reign lasts until the 60s and 70s: then another reign is ushered in.”

Cultural Foundations of Modernism

c. 1890:

Opposing senses of progress, crisis and transition combine in the term “modernism”.

1863:

Anticipation of modernism in the art criticism of Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life”.

1872:

The term Impressionism coined for a style of art that will be the prototype of avant-gardism.

1879:

Henrik Ibsen puts feminism on stage with A Doll’s House.

1883:

Friedrich Nietzsche announces the “superman” in Thus Spake Zarathustra.

1888:

August Strindberg opposes Ibsen’s feminism with his play Miss Julie.

1893:

Edvard Munch’s painting “The Cry” foreshadows Expressionism.

1894:

Claude Debussy sets Stéphane Mallarmé’s Symbolist poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune to Impressionist music.

1900:

Sigmund Freud inaugurates psychoanalysis with The Interpretation of Dreams (same year as the birth of quantum physics).

1901:

Pablo Picasso in his pre-Cubist “Blue Period”.

1902:

Alfred Stieglitz founds Photo-secession in New York and exhibits early modernist art from Europe.

1905:

Les Fauves (“Wild Beasts”) group in Paris introduce an “expressionist” element in art… In the same year, modernist Expressionism launches with Die Brücke (“The Bridge”) group in Dresden, Germany.

1907:

Picasso’s archetypal modernist artwork, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”.

1908:

Picasso and Georges Braque begin work in Cubism.

1909:

Filippo Marinetti proclaims the first manifesto of Futurism in Paris.

1909–11:

Serge Diaghilev founds the modernist Ballets Russes that will tour Europe.

1910:

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” specifies the modernist element of cultural disenchantment.

1911:

Arnold Schoenberg’s “Six Little Piano Pieces”, Op. 19, pushes Expressionism in music to atonality and the beginnings of his 12-tone serial system.

1911:

Wassily Kandinsky and others found Der Blaue Reiter (“the Blue Rider”) Expressionist art group in Munich (to which Schoenberg is allied).

1912:

Picasso produces his first collage work and Marcel Duchamp his “last painting”, the mechanico-cubist “Nude Descending a Staircase”.

1913:

Schoenberg’s disciple Anton von Webern composes “Six Bagatelles for String Quartet”, Op. 9, a three-and-a-half-minute work of atonal abstraction.

1913:

Kandinsky outlines the principles of abstraction in art, On the Spiritual in Art.

1913:

Igor Stravinsky’s music The Rite of Spring for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes causes a riot in Paris.

1913:

The Armory Show – or International Exhibition of Modern Art – seen in New York, Chicago and Boston, introduces the American public and artists to the revolutionary avant-gardism of European art.

1914:

James Joyce publishes his experimental short stories Dubliners.

1916:

On the eve of the Russian Revolution, the anti-war and anarchic Dadaism founded in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire.

1917:

Picasso works with poet Jean Cocteau, composer Erik Satie and Diaghilev’s choreographer Léonide Massine on the ballet, “Parade”.

1919:

United Artists film studio founded in Hollywood by Charlie Chaplin, D.S. Griffiths, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

1920:

Groupe des Six – composers including Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud – return to music expressive of charm, wit and accessibility against the extremes of avant-gardism.

1921:

Ludwig Wittgenstein publishes the key work of modernist logic that challenges all previous philosophy, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

1921:

Man Ray produces photographs without a camera, the Dadaist “Rayographs”.

1922:

The twin totems of modernist literature are published: James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.

1924:

André Breton issues his first Surrealist Manifesto.

1925:

Sergei Eisenstein deploys the essence of modernist film techniques in Battleship Potemkin.

1925:

The term Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”) coined to describe the extreme anguished realism of the post-war artists – George Grosz, Otto Dix and others in Germany.

1925-6:

Modernism diversely manifested in American writings: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and the experimental work of Gertrude Stein.

1926:

Edgard Varese introduces a new “concrete” element into avant-garde music with Arcana