Modernism is Modernism in art. Representatives of modernism

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Modernism is a direction in art, characterized by a departure from the previous historical experience of artistic creativity up to its complete denial. Modernism appeared at the end of the 19th century, and its heyday came at the beginning of the 20th century. The development of modernism was accompanied by significant changes in literature, fine arts and architecture. Culture and art do not always lend themselves to spontaneous change, but the need for modernism as a means of change was already felt at the beginning of the 20th century. For the most part, the renewal process went smoothly, but sometimes modernism took on militant forms, as was the case with the young artist Salvador Dali, who tried to elevate surrealism to the rank of art without delay. However, culture and art have the property of timeliness, so no one can speed up or slow down the process.

The evolution of modernism

The paradigm of modernism became dominant in the first half of the 20th century, but then the desire forradical changes in art began to decline, and the French Art Nouveau, German Art Nouveau and Russian Art Nouveau, which preceded modernism as a revolutionary phenomenon, took on a calmer form.

Modernism in art or modernist art?

It was up to writers, artists and architects of the entire civilized world to understand the priority of these formulations. Some representatives of the beau monde in the field of art believed that modernism was a long-awaited change, and it should be put at the forefront of the further development of the entire civilization, others assigned modernism the role of updating certain areas in the field of art and nothing more. The debate continued, no one was able to prove their case. Nevertheless, modernism in art came, and this became an incentive for its further development in all directions. The changes were not immediately noticeable, the inertia of society affected, as is usually the case, discussions of new trends began, someone was for change, someone did not accept them. Then the art of modernism came to the fore, directors, famous writers, musicians, everyone who thought progressively, began to promote everything new, and gradually modernism was recognized.

Modernism in fine arts

The main directions of modernism in natural painting, portrait drawing, sculpture and other types of fine arts were formed in the second half of the nineteenth century. The foundation was laid in 1863, when a so-calledcalled the "Salon of the Outcasts", where avant-garde artists gathered and presented their work. The name of the salon spoke for itself, the public did not accept abstract painting, rejected it. Nevertheless, the very fact of the appearance of the "Salon of the Rejected" indicated that the art of modernism was already waiting for recognition.

Trends of modernism

Soon, modernist trends took concrete forms, the following trends in art appeared:

• Abstract expressionism is a special style of painting, when the artist spends a minimum amount of time on his work, scatters paint on the canvas, randomly touches the painting with brushes, randomly applies strokes.
• Dadaism - works of art in the style of a collage, the arrangement on canvas of several fragments of the same subject. The images are usually imbued with the idea of denial, a cynical approach to the topic. The style arose immediately after the end of the First World War and became a reflection of the sense of hopelessness that prevails in society.
• Cubism - randomly arranged geometric shapes. The style itself is highly artistic, genuine masterpieces in the style of cubism were created by Pablo Picasso. The artist Paul Cezanne approached his work somewhat differently - his canvases are also included in the treasury of world art.
• Post-impressionism is the rejection of visible reality and the replacement of real images with decorative stylization. A style with great potential, but only Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin realized it fully.

Surrealism, one of the main strongholds of modernism

Surrealism is a dream and reality, a true fine art that reflects the artist's most extraordinary thoughts. The most notable Surrealist artists were Salvador Dali, Ernst Fuchs and Arno Breker, who together made up the "Golden Triangle of Surrealism".

Extreme shade painting style

Fauvism is a special style that evokes a feeling of passion and energy, characterized by ex altation of color and "wild" expressiveness of colors. The plot of the picture is also in most cases on the verge of extreme. The leaders of this trend were Henri Matisse and André Derain.

Organics in art

Futurism - an organic combination of the artistic principles of cubism and fomism, a riot of colors mixed with intersections of straight lines, triangles and angles. The dynamics of the image is all-consuming, everything in the picture is in motion, energy can be traced in every stroke.

The style of Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani

Primitivism is an artistic image in the style of deliberate and deliberate simplification, resulting in a primitive drawing akin to the work of a child or wall paintings in the caves of primitive tribes. The primitive style of a picture does not at all reduce its artistic level if it is drawn by a true artist. A prominent representative of primitivism was Niko Pirosmani.

Literary modernism

Modernism in literature has replaced the established classical canons of storytelling. Formed at the beginning of the 20th century, the style of writing novels, stories and short stories gradually began to show signs of stagnation, a certain monotony of presentation forms appeared. Then the writers began to turn to other, previously unused interpretations of the artistic concept. The reader was offered psychological and philosophical concepts. This is how the style appeared, which received the definition of "Stream of Consciousness", based on a deep penetration into the psychology of the characters. The most striking example of modernism in literature is the novel by the American writer William Faulkner called The Sound and the Fury.

Each of the heroes of the novel is analyzed from the point of view of his life principles, moral qualities and aspirations. Faulkner's technique is justified, because it is precisely because of a conscientious and in-depth analysis of the character's character that an interesting story is obtained. Due to his exploratory style of writing, William Faulkner is included in the "golden five" of writers in the United States, as well as two other writers - John Steinbeck and Scott Fitzgerald, who try to follow the rule of deep analysis in their work.

Representatives of modernism in literature:

• W alt Whitman, best known for his poetry collection Leaves of Grass.
• Charles Baudelaire - collection of poetry "Flowers of Evil".
• Arthur Rambo - poetic works of "Illumination", "One Summer in Hell".
• Fyodor Dostoevsky with the works "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Crime and Punishment", this is Russian modernism inliterature.

The role of guiding vector forces influencing the writers - the founders of modernism, was performed by philosophers: Henri Bergson, William James, Friedrich Nietzsche and others. Sigmund Freud did not stand aside either.

The first thirty years of the 20th century saw a dramatic change in literary forms through modernism.

The era of modernism, writers and poets

Among the most famous writers of the period of modernism, the following writers and poets stand out:

• Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) - Russian poetess with a tragic fate, who lost her family during the years of Stalinist repressions. He is the author of several collections of poetry, as well as the famous poem "Requiem".
• Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is an extremely controversial Austrian writer whose works were considered absurd. During the life of the writer, his novels were not published. After Kafka's death, all his works were published, despite the fact that he himself categorically objected to this and, even during his lifetime, conjured his executors to burn the novels immediately after his death. The writer could not personally destroy the manuscripts, since they went from hand to hand, and none of his admirers was going to return them to the author.
• William Faulkner (1898-1962) - winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, who became famous for creating a whole fictional district in the American outback called Yoknapatotha, populated it with characters and began to describe their lives. Faulkner's works have an incredibly complex structuralcharacter, but if the reader manages to grasp the thread of the narrative, then it is already impossible to tear him away from the novel, short story or story of the famous American writer.
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) is one of the most faithful followers of modernism in literature. His novels and stories amaze with their life-affirming power. Throughout his life, the writer was an irritant to the American authorities, he was bothered by ridiculous suspicions, the methods used by the CIA to win Hemingway to their side were absurd. It all ended with a nervous breakdown of the writer and temporary placement in a psychiatric clinic. The writer had only one love in life - his hunting rifle. On July 2, 1961, Hemingway committed suicide by shooting himself with this gun.
• Thomas Mann (1875-1955) - German writer, essayist, one of the most active political authors in Germany. All his works are permeated with politics, but they do not lose their artistic value from this. Eroticism is also not alien to Mann's work, an example of this is the novel "Confession of the Adventurer Felix Krul". The protagonist of the work resembles the character of Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray. Signs of modernism in the works of Thomas Mann are obvious.
• Marcel Proust (1871-1922) - French writer, author of the seven-volume work "In Search of Lost Time", which is rightfully considered one of the most significant examples of literature of the 20th century. Proust is a staunch follower of modernism as the most promising way of literary development.
• Virginia Woolf (1882-1942) -English writer, is considered the most reliable follower of the "Stream of Consciousness". Modernism was for the writer the meaning of her whole life, in addition to numerous novels, Virginia Woolf has several film adaptations of her works.

Literary modernism has had a significant impact on the work of writers and poets in terms of improvement and development.

Architectural Modernism

The phrase "modernism in architecture" refers us to the term "modern architecture", since there is a logical connection here. But the concept of modernism does not always mean "modern", the word "modern" is more suitable here. Modern and modernism are two different concepts.

The architecture of modernism implies the beginning of the work of the pioneers of modern architecture and their activities over a certain period of time, from the 20s to the 70s of the last century. Modern architecture dates from later figures. The indicated fifty years is the period of modernism in architecture, the time of the emergence of new trends.

Trends in architectural modernism

Architectural modernism - these are separate areas of architecture, such as European functional construction of the 1920s and 30s or the immutability of the rationalism of Russian architecture of the twenties, when thousands of houses were built according to one project. This is the German Bauhaus, Art Deco in France, international style, organic architecture, brutalism. Allthe above are branches of the same tree - architectural modernism.

Representatives of modernism in architecture are: Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Richard Neutra, W alter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright and others.

Modernism in music

Modernism is a replacement of styles in principle, and in the field of music, changes primarily depend on the general directions of the ethnographic culture of society. The progressive currents of cultural segments are inevitably accompanied by transformations in the world of music. Modernity dictates its conditions to musical institutions that are in circulation in society. At the same time, the culture of modernism does not imply a change in classical musical forms.