On the eve of World War I, a
growing tension and unease with the social order began to break through - seen
in the Russian Revolution of 1905, the
increasing agitation of "radical" parties, and an increasing number
of works which either radically simplified or rejected previous practice. In 1913, Igor
Stravinsky, working for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, composed Rite of Spring for a ballet that depicted human sacrifice, and a young painters such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse had only
recently begun causing a shock with their rejection of traditional perspective
as the means of structuring paintings - a step that the Impressionists, and
even Cezanne, had not taken.
This development began to give a new meaning to what was termed
'Modernism'. At its core was the embracing of disruption, and a rejection of,
or movement beyond, simple Realism in literature and art, and
the rejection of, or dramatic alteration of, tonality in music. In
the 19th century, artists had tended to believe in 'progress', though what that
word entailed varied dramatically, and the importance of the artist's
contributing positively to the values of society. So for example, writers like Dickens and Tolstoy,
painters like Turner, and
musicians like Brahms were
not 'radicals' or 'Bohemians', but were instead valued members of society who
produce art which added to society, even if, at times it was critiquing less
desireable aspects of it. Modernism, while it was still "progressive"
increasingly saw traditional forms and traditional social arrangements as
hindering progress, and therefore the artist was recast as revolutionary,
overthrowing, rather than enlightening. A example of
this trend was to be found in Futurism. In 1909, a
manifesto was published in the Le Figaro, and rapidly a group of painters: Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini co-signed The Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Such manifestos were
modeled on the famous "Communist Manifesto" of the previous century, and were meant to provoke and gather
followers, even as they put forward principles and ideas. However, Futurism was
strongly influenced by Bergson and Nietzsche, and it should be seen as part of
the general trend of Modernist rationaliztion of disruption.
It must be stressed that Modernist philosophy and art were still viewed
as being part, and only a part, of the larger social movement. Artists such as
Klimt, Paul Cezanne and Mahler and Richard Strauss were "the terrible
moderns" - those farther to the avant-garde were more heard of, than
heard. Polemics in favor of geometric or purely abstract painting were largely
confined to 'little magazines' (like The New Age in the
However, World War I and
its subsequent events were the cataclysmic disruptions which Victorians such as
Brahms had worried about, and avant-gardists had embraced.
First, the fantastic failure of the previous status quo seemed
self-evident to a generation which had seen millions die fighting over scraps
of earth - prior to the war, it had been argued that no one would fight such a
war, since the cost was too high. Second, the introduction of a machine age
into life seemed obvious - machine warfare became a touchstone of the ultimate
reality. Finally, the immensely traumatic nature of the experience made both
critical and subjective strands of the modern movement basic assumptions:
Realism seemed to be bankrupt when faced with the fundamentally fantastic
nature of trench warfare - as exemplified by books such as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Moreover, the view that Mankind was making slow and steady moral
progress came to seem ridiculous in the face of the senseless slaughter of the Great War. The
First World War, at once, fused the harshly mechanical geometric rationality of
technology, with the nightmarish irrationality out of myth.
Thus in the 1920s and
increasingly after, modernism, which had been such a minority taste before the
war, came to define the age. There was a subtle, but important, shift from the
earlier phase: in the beginning the movement was by individuals who were part
of the establishment, or wished to join the establishment. However,
increasingly, the tone became one of individuals who were trying to replace the
older hierarchy with one based on new ideas, norms, and methods. By 1930,
modernism had won a place in the establishment, including the political and
artistic establishment.
Ironically, by the time it was being accepted, Modernism itself had
changed. There was a general reaction in the 1920s against the pre-1918
Modernism which emphasised its continuity with a past even as it rebelled
against it, and against the aspects of that period which seemed excessively
mannered, irrational and emotionalistic. The post-World War period, at first,
veered either to system or nihilism, and had, as perhaps its
most paradigmatic movement, Dada.
Since both rationality and irrationality are present in all large
movements, some writers attacked the madness of the new Modernism, while, at
the same time, others described it as soulless and mechanistic. Modernists, in
turn, attacked the madness of hurling millions of young men into the hell of
war, and the falseness of artistic norms which could not depict the emotional
reality of life in the 20th century.
The rationalistic side of modernism was a move back towards control,
self-restraint, and an urge to re-engage with society. Examples of this
approach include Stravinsky's neoclassical style of composition, the "International style" of Bauhaus, Schoenberg's
Serialism, the New Objectivity in German painting. At the same time, the desire to turn social
critique into persuasive counter-order found expression in the beginnings of
econometrics, and the rise of societies to reform nations along scientific, and
often socialistic, lines. The victories of the Russian Revolution, with its emphasis, at least in words, to both humane life and rational
planning, came to be taken by many that "the future is here, and it
works".
However, it must be remembered that these concepts and movements were
often in competition with each other, and even in direct conflict. Within
modernity there were disputes about the importance of the public, the
relationship of art to audience, and the role of art in society. Rather than a
lockstep organization, it is better to see modernism as taking a series of
responses to the situation as it was understood, and the attempt to wrestle
universal principles from it. In the end science and scientific rationality,
often taking models from the 18th Century Enlightenment came to be seen as the source of logic and stability, while the basic
primitive sexual and unconscious drives, along with the seemingly
counter-intuitive workings of the new machine age, were taken as the basic
emotional substance. From these two poles, modernists began to fashion a
complete world view which could encompass every aspect of life, and express
"everything from a scream to a chuckle".
By 1930,
modernism had entered popular culture with "The Jazz Age" and the increasing urbanization of populations, it had begun
making systematic challenges to previous art and ideas, and was beginning to be
looked to as the source for ideas to deal with the host of challenges faced in
that particular historical moment. Modernism was, by this point, increasingly,
represented in academia and
was developing a self-conscious theory of its own importance. The Modernism of
the 1930's then increasingly begins to focus on the realities of there being a
popular culture which was not derrived from high culture, but instead from its
own realities, particularly of mass production. Modern ideas in art were also
increasingly used in commercials and logos. The famous London Underground logo is an early example of the need for clear, easily recognizable and
memorable visual symbols.
Another strong influence at this time was Marxism. After the generally primitivistic/irrationalist aspect of pre-world
war one Modernism (which more or less precluded any serious political
commitment) and the passively reactionary neoclassicism of the 1920s (as
represented most famously by T.S. Eliot), the rise of Fascism, the Great Depression, and the march to war helped to radicalise a generation. Bertolt Brecht, Auden, and
the philosophers Gramsci and Walter Benjamin are perhaps the most famous examplers of this Modernist Marxism.
This move to the left only happened to certain artists in a highly
specific political situation. There is no particular reason to associate Modernism
with 'the left' and, in fact, many Modernists were explicitly right wing (for
example, Wyndham Lewis, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and
many others).
One of the most visible changes of this period is the adoption of
objects of modern production into daily life, electricity, the telephone, the
automobile - and the need to work with them, repair them and live with them -
created the need for new forms of manners, and social life. The kind of
disruptive moment which only a few knew in the 1880's, became a common
occurance. The kind of speed of communication reserved for the stock brokers of
1890, became part of family life. Modernism as leading
to social organization would produce inquiries into sex and the basic bondings
of the nuclear, rather than extended, family. The Freudian tensions of
infantile sexuality and the raising of children became more intense, because
people had fewer children, and therefore a more specific relationship with each
child: the theoretical, again, became the practical and even popular.