Can someone explain Modernism without me having to pull up a dictionary?

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Can someone explain Modernism without me having to pull up a dictionary?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Your question is too broad. Modernism is a catch-all term that applies in many areas it means different things depending on what you’re talking about.

Plus you’re using the internet right now, so it’s not like you have to pull up a dictionary. Literally just say the word modernism to your phone with the appropriate button press prefix or service name preceding it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I guess I’m looking for the philosophical definition then..?

Anonymous 0 Comments

Philosophy: The world changed very rapidly in the beginning on the 20th century, mega cities were formed, the atom was split and it looked like technology was going to turn the world into a Jetsons episode so modernism erupted on the scene with ideas and utopian visions of a perfect future that would transcend us all by progress.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Modernism was an early to mid 20th century artistic movement that was a reaction against the Victorian-era ideals of the prior generation. The previous movement was all about ideals and “shoulds” and putting the world into convenient categories. Modernism was about acknowledging that the world was kind of going to hell in a handbasket (see World War 1) and asking “what should we do?” or even “what CAN we do?” There was a lot of emphasis on futility, anxiety, and hypocrisy that artists saw in the world around them, and how rapid developments in technology didn’t necessarily make humanity better because it dehumanized the average person (think Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”).

This is just a cursory overview. There’s a lot more to it than that but my description is how I see the essence of it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound’s 1934 command to “Make it New” was the touchstone of the movement’s approach.

Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, and divisionist painting. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists also rejected religious belief. A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness concerning artistic and social traditions, which often led to experimentation with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating works of art.

While some scholars see modernism continuing into the 21st century, others see it evolving into late modernism or high modernism. Postmodernism is a departure from modernism and rejects its basic assumptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

Anonymous 0 Comments

Modernism is the idea that there is a meta-narrative, a grand overarching Idea that can be applied to everything-economics, politics, religion, social mores, culture-absolutely everything. The best and most successful Modernist idea was Communism. Communism attributed everything of interest to individuals and society to economic class. Through this lens of class, and in the struggle to eliminate class, everything could be ordered and organized and a utopian worker’s paradise could be achieved.

I would consider fascism and libertarianism Modern ideologies. Modernism continues to be evident today in architecture. Major mid-century architects like Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe sought to create an international style of architecture stripped of any culturally specific elements and reduced to their basic functions. This style dominated architecture during the Cold War.

Modernism was largely replaced by post-modernism, which rejects the idea that there is a single meta-narrative. This came about after the failure of Communist revolutions to yield truly communist societies. It also came about after the rejection of progressivism, the idea common in the early 20th century that all societies are “advancing” toward some state of civilization. Academics began appreciating different cultures on their own terms, without thinking of them in some linear unfolding of history and development. They stopped holding every culture in the world to preconceived Western European standards. For example, in architecture, post-modernists recognized that buildings themselves, even those stripped of so-called culturally specific ornamentation, were culturally specific. Therefore, an international style completely devoid of culture was impossible. This same concept occurred in politics, economics, etc. For example, a rentier state like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela has the economy it has not because it is less evolved on a single continuum of economic and political development, but because of factors unique to its environment and history and the same can be said of the capitalist organization of the American economy. Rather than seeing one as superior to the other, a post-modernist approach would study them by standards applicable to their unique circumstances rather than one, typically Euro-centric standard of correctness.