The word “modern” at first appeared long time ago – in 1585 and its meaning in Late Latin was “just now”. In English language the term modern had almost a similar meaning – “existing now”. There are two terms that relate to modern: modernism and modernity. Though they seem to be the same while derived from one term, it is though necessary to point out a definition of each of them and tell about their differences. Modernity, also known as modernization, can be defined as a process of social and economic development, involving the rising of industry, urbanization, technology and bureaucratic institutions that can be traced back as far as 17th century. Thus, it is possible to say that modernity is associated with the era of the Enlightenment and become its history. Thus, while modernity is defined more as a time period, modernism is a movement with trends in culture, social life and art that are characterized by the establishment and development of the modern world. (Hathaway et al. 4) However, these terms are interrelated and are based on the same idea.
As it has been mentioned above, modernism is the era that relates to culture or social life. Modernism has a very significant influence on the art that is believed to have specific characteristic that makes it different from art of other eras and movements. For example, paintings of modernist artists are characterized as works full of original vision and rebellious attitude to traditions. Artists of that time were interested in contemporary subjects and events, which they tried to depict and reflect in their paintings. They wanted to express and demonstrate their freedom from realism and old traditions point out their personal original vision. During the modernism era several modern movements, especially in painting, including futurism, cubism, impressionism, post-impressionism, constructivism and some others existed. Impressionism, for example, was considered to be an art movement of industrialized Paris. It was focused on the depiction of chaotic transformations happening in French life during the second half of 19th century. The poet and critic Charles Baudelaire described the impressionist movement in his essay “The Painter of Modern Life” in the following way: “Impressionist works represent an attempt to capture a fleeting moment – not in the absolutely fixed, precise sense of a Realist painting but by conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions”. (Kleiner, 364) One of the most famous artists of that movement and possible the whole modernism era is Claude Monet, who used the urban landscapes and the rapid pace of life in his paintings as the subject of matter. (Kleiner). Another movement of modernist art is post-impressionism that appeared after impressionism in the late 19th century. The main characteristic of post-impressionism is that it rejects the spontaneity of impressionism, and is characterized by well defined brushstrokes and bright colors. Among the most famous post-impressionists are Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and others. (Dickerson 188) Cubism is the third movement of the modern art that developed after post-impressionism at the beginning of 20th century. It is characterized by fragmented images that can be viewed from multiple different angles. Cubism is interrelated with Post-impressionism and especially with the artist Paul Cezanne. The most well-known and famous artists of this movement are Georges Braque and, of course, Pablo Picasso. (Dickerson 201) Fauvism is also one of the movements of modern art. It is considered to be an early form of avangarde. It was developed in France in 201th century. The term “fauvism” itself means “wild beasts”, and therefore the main characteristics of this movement are contrasts and many bright colors on paintings. The most famous artist of fauvism is Henry Matisse. (Dickerson 265) Futurism is the next movement that was born in Italy is linked to cubism and could not exist without it. Its characteristics and features are also very similar to cubism because futurist artists used a lot of geometric forms and near-abstraction. They often created abstract paintings of machines and emphasized the movement. The famous futurist artists were Gino Severini, Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni and others. (Dickerson 204) One more movement is constructivism that appeared in Russia in 1914 and after 1920s it spread to the West. The main feature of constructivism is the use of different industrial materials, such as metal, glass, wood, plastic and etc. The father and the founder of constructivism is considered to be Vladimir Tatlin, who was inspired by his visit to Paris in 1914. After coming back to Russia he started making different constructions of industrial materials. Thus, constructivism is more related to sculpture, though there are also painters, who use this movement in order to create their images. (Chilvers 166). There are also some other movements of the modernist art including vorticism, suprematism, De Stijl, Surrealism and Dada. In general it is possible to draw a conclusion that modernist painting can be considered as an answer to traditional forms of paintings, a kind of revolt to them in order to make art more expressive, abstract and emotional.
Another area that is related to modernism and was influenced by it is modernist literature that is also known as literary modernism. It was developed at the end of 19th – beginning of 20th century mostly in America and Europe. The purpose of the modernist literary authors was similar to modernist artists: to change the traditional forms of literature, add new ones and express new sensibilities of that time. Thus, it is possible to say that modernist literature was characterized as experimental. Literary modernism had several specific features that made it unique. The first characteristic is individualism. Its purpose is to reflect author’s perspective and a view as against the conventional narrative norms. In simpler words, individualism means that the inner world of an author is preferred to the outer world of the society around an individual. Individualism also emphasizes the alienation of an individual, which means that every person takes refuge in his or her own real of existence. The second feature of the literature of that time is stream-of-consciousness. It can be defined as an experimental strategy in order to delve into the mind of a person that is considered as an ocean of knowledge. Stream-of-consciousness is focused on the reproduction of the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character’s mental process. The third important element of modernist literary works is irony. The definition of irony is following: the statement in which the meaning that a speaker implies is different from the meaning that is actually expressed. Irony plays a very important role in modernist narratives because it makes their structure very unpredictable by allowing readers to face something more than just a simple narration. (Hooti and Omrani 255)
Just like modernism in art, literary modernism also has several various movements. The first one is imagism. Imagism relates to poetry and it is focused in describing images and objects with very simple language. The poets, who followed imagism, rejected discursiveness and sentiment. Symbolism is another characteristic of modernist literature that appeared at the end of 19th century. Symbolist authors and poets used highly symbolized language in order to express emotional individual experience of people. Futurism movement existed not only in art, but in literature as well. Futurism in literature is a movement that is characterized by unexpected combinations and use of images and by short length and economy of speech. Besides these three movements in modernist literature described above, there are also some others including expressionism, vorticism, surrealism and Acmeist poetry. As it is possible to see, most of these movements are similar to modernism art movements, which leads to a conclusion that modernist art and literature were interrelated.
The modernist literature also covers a variety of different topics. Since modernism rejects old traditions existed before, one of the main topics is breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties. Another topic is an individual, his metal processes, emotions and alienation. The third common topic of the modernist literature is products of cities, metropolis and urbascapes, since modernity is the period of industrialization and fast growth of cities. Most modernist writers and poets were either Americans or English. The most famous and well-known among them are Samuel Beckett, D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost and others. (Lewis)
Works Cited
Chilvers, Ian. The Oxford Dictionary of Art. New York: Oxford University Press. 2004. Print
Dickerson, Madelynn. The Handy Art History Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink Press. 2013. Print
Hathaway, Heather, Josef Jarab and Jeffrey Melnik. Race and the Modern Artist. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Print.
Hooti, Noorbakhsh and Vahid Omrani. “Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day: A Modernist Study. “ Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 1.3. (2011): 252-262. Print.
Kleiner, Fred. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art. Cengage Learning, Inc. 2009. Print.
Lewis, Pericles. The Cambridge introduction to modernism.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. Print
