Modernism

Defining Modernism

Modernism is a cultural movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that rejected past ideals as failed, and seeks new ideals to replace them. Modernists thought that the art, writing and philosophies of the past were artificial, false and unsound. It was hoped that a new approach based on honest and fearless reassessment of human nature and society would produce a better civilization. The movement began before World War I, but the war greatly intensified the perception that that past ideas had failed, and new ones were desperately needed.

Modernist thinkers believed foremost that European culture had a superficial understanding of reality. After the war, grand theories and ideals which promised to explain everything and lead to a greater future were utterly discredited.  Even idealism itself seemed to be misguided.  The truth seemed more complicated and erratic.

A good example of this sort of thinking is the novel you read, All Quiet on the Western Front. This novel was published in 1929, and offers a modernist view of the war.  It was a huge European best-seller in the 1930s.  One German commentator wrote that "the effect of the book springs in fact from the terrible disillusionment of the German people with the state in which they find themselves, and the reader tends to feel that his book has located the source of all our difficulties."  An American critic wrote that it encapsulated the whole modern impulse--an amalgamation of prayer and desperation, dream and chaos, wish and desolation. The optimism of the past seemed to inappropriate and inadequate.

In this new mood of pessimism, Christianity suffered terrible decline in Europe, along with other cultural and social traditions. One might expect a religious revival in times of difficulty, but the rejection of past tradition contributed to a steep decline of religious observance in Europe after the war.  Christianity before the war was bound up in spirit of the day.  Protestants especially embraced a more optimistic, humanistic outlook.  They celebrated the value of individual faith and also devotion to nation and the empire.  All these things were discredited after the war.  In the face of war and economic depression, the individual seemed insignificant.  Hope seemed out of place; empires crumbled, and the nation-state proved weak and untrustworthy.  It seemed to many Europeans that there was no benevolent God, or that at least the institutional churches had nothing to say to them.

Modernists were not all about negativity, however. They were eager to find new paths forward. That is why early twentieth century modernism was a time of great innovation. We will focus our discussion on the artistic side of the modernist movement, in which you can literally see and hear the ideals and aspirations of that time.

Abstract Art

Modernism in the fine arts can be crudely defined as abstraction in art, functionalism in architecture, and atonality in music. In each case, the hope was to discover a new and more reliable truth.

Abstraction was the move away from imitating reality in visual arts. Instead of reproducing a scene or likeness of a person, the abstract artist worked with shapes, lines and colors to create an image intended to provoke thought rather than simple recognition. One form of abstraction was called "surrealism," an art form popular in the 1930s. A famous example of surrealism is Spanish painter, Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory

Salvador Dali, Persistence of Memory (1931)

As you can see, surrealism is a form in which familiar objects are distorted and placed in unfamiliar arrangements. This painting has a dreamlike quality to it, and suggests something about time and perceptions of our subconscious mind. What sort of "truth" does it try to tell?

Functionalist Architecture

Modern architecture has a good deal in common with modern art. It too is abstract in nature, using basic shapes, lines and colors to build a

vocabulary of design. The German architect Walter Gropius is considered one of the most important innovators, teaching his new ideas at his Bauhaus School of Design in Germany. He designed the building for the school, which became a model of the new style.

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Building (1925)

Gropius believed that better design would improve human lives, and help society progress. The key, in his mind, was to build buildings that conformed to human needs (functionalism) rather than being merely traditional, decorative or impressive. One way to serve needs is cheapness and convenience. Square buildings with flat roofs built of steel and glass were cheaper to build and add onto, and the openness of the building brought more natural light into the interior. People in the building would have more usable space, more natural light, and also the good views of the natural outdoors.  Gropius believed the such a building was both more functional and more beautiful, because it was it was elegantly simple, and blended with nature. If all people had good places to work and live, he reasoned, the quality of life would increase for all.

Atonal Music

Modernist composers hope to reinvent music too. The equivalent of abstraction and functionalism in music was atonality. This means an escape from the traditional scales and harmonic systems of classical music, and exploring a larger range of sounds. A famous innovator in music was the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who developed the "twelve-tone" or "serial" system. The traditional major or minor scales are made of up 7 notes. But there are actually 12 pitches in every scale. Why not use all 12? Choosing the 8 notes seems arbitrary, but using all twelve is more natural, he reasoned, because our ears can naturally distinguish twelve tones. He set about to create new music on this basis.

Watch the following YouTube clip so you can hear it for yourself.

Arnold Schoenberg