Why is modernism good

Its demands are relentless; these are creations that decline to traffic in reassurance or open themselves to clicks and scans. One hundred years ago, more or less, those rebel modernists were not aiming to make trouble for its own savage sake.

Their forbidding work belonged to complicated, unforgiving times. Not all: some had no clothes. But for roughly four decades, from to , many risked poverty and courted humiliation. Even the most extraordinary had no idea that their works would endure, or be read by more than a few hundred committed admirers—much less find their place on college reading lists. Now, even unread, they haunt the present, ghostly images of what visionary culture might be. The idea was that art could be what religion had been, and what politics had failed to become—a sphere of conviction and a site of shared value.

For the most audacious, this was the gamble with history that we pay a price for forgetting. We have never been postmodern, not in any sense of living after, or beyond, the decades of rupture, the modernist break with taken-for-granted conventions. Those years set the terms for our own struggle with the New. They inform our uneasy dance between art and fashion, art and money—and our fraught debates over the claims of art, politics, and religion.

Stewart Williams, experimentation was welcomed, encouraged, and even expected. Thus modernist architecture — with the help of interior designers such as Arthur Elrod — redefined a sleepy, Spanish-infused town that was already lounging poolside. Some 60 years since its fledgling moments, modernism embodies how we aspire to live, favoring relaxation and recreation over busyness and materialism.

Museum altered her perspective and values. Modernism peeled away the pomp and ornamentation, leaving svelte structures dedicated to their essential functions. And, despite vast offerings of collectable midcentury design, inhabitants lived lighter. Minimalism was a happy byproduct of modernism. The widespread desire to do more living with less stuff consistently leads us back to modernist design. New Hollywood buys homes. Weekenders become residents. The media publish stories with photos of eye-popping architecture.

The city — much of the Coachella Valley, in fact — celebrates the aesthetics every February during Modernism Week , which offers the Modernism Show and Sale, home tours, lectures, panel discussions, screenings, and parties over 11 days. Meanwhile, the bones of modernist originals create a visceral response that spurs homeowners to keep them, Cygelman says.

However, Vorticism diverged from both Cubism and Futurism in the way it tried to capture movement in an image. It contained work by Ezra Pound, T.

Eliot, and by the Vorticists themselves. Its typographical adventurousness was cited by El Lissitzky as one of the major forerunners of the revolution in graphic design in the s and s. After this, the movement broke up, largely due to the onset of World War I and public apathy towards their work.

Symbolism was a late 19th century art movement of French, Russian, and Belgian origin that manifested in poetry and other arts. Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and realism, anti-idealistic styles that were attempts to represent reality in its gritty particularity, and to elevate the humble and the ordinary over the ideal.

Symbolism, on the other hand, favored spirituality, the imagination, dreams, emotions, and the personal subjectivity of the artist as a tool to illustrate larger truths. Thematically, Symbolist artists tended to focus on themes surrounding the occult, decadence, melancholy, and death. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly.

Thus, they wrote and painted in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Though the aesthetics of the styles can be considered similar in some ways, the two remain distinct. The symbolist painters were an important influence on expressionism and surrealism in painting, two movements that descend directly from symbolism proper. The work of some symbolist visual artists, such as Jan Toorop, directly affected the curvilinear forms of art nouveau.

Art Nouveau was an international style of art and architecture that was most popular from — Art Nouveau is an international style of art and architecture that was most popular from — AD. It is also considered a philosophy of furniture design. Art Nouveau furniture is structured according to the whole building and made part of ordinary life. Art Nouveau was most popular in Europe, but its influence was global.

It is a very varied style with frequent localized tendencies. These decorative displays became so strongly associated with the style, that the name of his gallery subsequently provided a commonly used term for the entire style.

Likewise, Jugend Youth was the illustrated weekly magazine of art and lifestyle of Munich, founded in by Georg Hirth. Jugend was instrumental in promoting the Art Nouveau style in Germany. As a result, Jungenstil , or Youth Style, became the German word for the style. The origins of Art Nouveau are found in the resistance of the artist William Morris to the cluttered compositions and revivalist tendencies of the 19th century.

His theories helped initiate the Art Nouveau movement. About the same time, the flat perspective and strong colors of Japanese wood block prints, especially those of Katsushika Hokusai, had a strong effect on the formulation of Art Nouveau. The Japonisme that was popular in Europe during the s and s was particularly influential on many artists with its organic forms and references to the natural world.

Although Art Nouveau acquired distinctly localized tendencies as its geographic spread increased, some general characteristics are indicative of the form. According to the philosophy of the style, art should strive to be a way of life, and thereby encompass all parts.

For many Europeans, it was possible to live in an Art Nouveau-inspired house with Art Nouveau furniture, silverware, crockery, jewelry, cigarette cases, etc.

Popular British Modernists include the following: James Joyce from Dublin, Ireland - His most experimental and famous work, Ulysses , completely abandons generally accepted notions of plot, setting, and characters. Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse , as well, strays from conventional forms, focusing on Stream of Consciousness. Stevie Smith - Novel on Yellow Paper parodies conventionality.

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World protests against the dangers and nature of modern society. Lawrence - His novels reflected on the dehumanizing effect of modern society. Farewell to Arms narrates the tale of an ambulance driver searching for meaning in WWI. Image by Eli Digital Creative from Pixabay This post is part of the series: Literary Movements These brief descriptions of literary movements make an easy day of notes for you.