Modern
Modernity
Modernism
“The maelstrom of modern life has been fed from many sources: great
discoveries in the physical sciences, changing our images of the universe
and our place in it; the industrialization of production, which transforms
scientific knowledge into technology, creates new human environments and
destroys old ones, speeds up the whole tempo of life, generates new forms
of corporate power and class struggle; immense demographic upheavals,
severing millions of people from their ancestral habitats, hurtling them
halfway across the world into new lives; rapid and often cataclysmic urban
growth; systems of mass communication, dynamic in their development,
enveloping and binding together the most diverse people and societies;
increasingly powerful national states, bureaucratically structured and
operated, constantly striving to expand their powers; mass social
movements of people, and peoples, challenging their political and
economic rulers, striving to gain some control over their lives; finally,
bearing and driving all these people and institutions along, an everexpanding, drastically fluctuating capitalist world market. In the twentieth
century, the social processes that bring this maelstrom into being,
and keep it in a state of perpetual becoming, have come to be called
"modernization." These world-historical processes have nourished an
amazing variety of visions and ideas that aim to make men and women the
subjects as well as the objects of modernization, to give them the power to
change the world that is changing them, to make their way through the
maelstrom and make it their own.”
-Marshall Berman
“Allfixed,fast-frozenrela7ons,withtheirtrainof
ancientandvenerableprejudicesandopinions,are
sweptaway,allnew-formedonesbecome
an7quatedbeforetheycanossify.Allthatissolid
meltsintoair,allthatisholyisprofaned,andman
isatlastcompelledtofacewithsobersenseshis
realcondi7onsoflife,andhisrela7onswithhis
kind.”
–TheCommunistManifesto
KarlMarx
Impressionism
Renoir
“LaPremiere
Sor7e”(1876-7)
PissaroBoulevardMontmartre,1897
Manet“LuncheonontheGrass”
Monet“Impression,soleillevant”(1872)
“Portrait of Mme Cezanne In Her
Armchair”
-Cezanne (1877)
“Woman in the Hat”
-Matisse (1905)
FemmeAssis(1909)
LesDomisellesd’Avignon(1907)
FannyTellier(1910)
FiguredansunFauteuil1909
“Modernists,asIportraythem,areatonceathomeinthisworldand
atoddswithit.Theycelebrateandiden7fywiththetriumphsof
modernscience,art,technology,economics,poli7cs:withallthe
ac7vi7esthatenablemankindtodowhattheBiblesaidonlyGod
coulddo:to'makeallthingsnew'.Atthesame7me,however,they
deploremoderniza7on'sbetrayalofitsownhumanpromise.
Modernistsdemanddeeperandmoreradicalrewards:modernmen
andwomenmustbecomethesubjectsaswellastheobjectsof
moderniza7on;theymustlearntochangetheworldthatischanging
them,andtomakeittheirown.Modernistsknowthisispossible:the
factthattheworldhaschangedsomuchisproofthatitcanchange
s7llmore.Theycan,inastrikingphraseofHegel's,'lookthenega7ve
inthefaceandlivewithit'...Ifeverythingmustgo,thenletitgo:
modernpeoplehavethepowertocreateabe]erworldthanthe
worldtheyhavelost.”
–MarshallBerman
PaulGaugin“Wheredowecomefrom?
WhatAreWe?WhereAreWeGoing?”(1898)
LesDomisellesd’Avignon(1907)
“the effects of industry and technology thus help to demystify
the myth of femininity as a last remaining site of redemptive
nature. In this sense modernity serves to denaturalize and hence
to destabilize the notion of an essential, God-given femaleness.
Yet this figure of the woman as machine can also be read as the
reaffirmation of a patriarchal desire for technological mastery
over woman, expressed in the fantasy of a compliant female
automaton and in the dream of creation without the
mother” (20)
“GertrudeStein”(1905)
“GertrudeStein”(1905)
“PortraitofMmeCezanneInHer
Armchair”
-Cezanne
“ShehadthisCézanneandshelookedatitandunderits
s7mulusshewroteThreeLives.
Thenextthingthathappenedwasintheautumn.Itwas
thefirstyearoftheautumnsalon,thefirstautumnsalon
thathadeverexistedinParisandthey,veryeagerand
excited,wenttoseeit.TheretheyfoundMa7sse'spicture
acerwardsknownasLaFemmeauChapeau….”
-GertrudeStein
“Melanctha these days wandered very widely. She was
always alone now when she wandered. Melanctha did
not need help not to know, or to stay longer, or when
she wanted, to escape. Melanctha tried a great many
men, in these days before she was really suited. It was
almost a year that she wandered and then she met with a
young mulatto. He was a doctor who had just begun to
practice. He would most likely do well in the future, but
it was not this that concerned Melanctha. She found
him good and strong and gentle and very intellectual,
and all of her life Melanctha liked and wanted good and
considerate people, and then too he did not at first
believe in Melanctha. He held off and id not know what
it was that Melanctha wanted. Melanctha came to want
him very badly. They began to know each other better.
Things began to be very strong between them.
Melanctha wanted him so badly that now she never
wandered. She just gave herself to this experience” (76)