Some Features of Modernism (1890–1939)
“Rather than an artistic style, Modernism was a rebellious state of mind
that questioned all artistic, scientific, social, and moral conventions”
Rejection of Ossified Forms of Expression
Pablo Picasso “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907)
Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto (1909):
What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist
trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his
dream? … Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless
admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished,
trampled on?
Russian Futurist Manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1912):
Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. overboard from the Ship of
Modernity.
Virginia Woolf, “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown” (1923):
The literary convention of the time is so artificial … that, naturally, the feeble
are tempted to outrage, and the strong are led to destroy the very foundations
and rules of literary society. Signs of this are everywhere apparent. Grammar
is violated; syntax disintegrated; as a boy staying with an aunt for the
weekend rolls in the geranium bed out of sheer desperation as the
solemnities of the Sabbath wear on.
Rebellion against Traditional Moral and Social Conventions
Vorticist statement, “Long Live the Vortex!” in Blast (no. 1, 1914) edited by
Wyndham Lewis:
To make the rich of the community shed their education skin, to destroy
politeness, standardization and academic, that is civilized, vision, is the task
we have set ourselves.
Creation of New Artistic Forms and Idioms
In modernist music new techniques included: atonality, shifting keys, dissonance, and
asymmetrical rhythms. The idea behind these innovations was that certain aspects of human
experience were not captured fully by the existing music of the period, which was typically
tonal, melodic and harmonious. Modernists believed that art should be able to express
aspects of the human condition such as anger, loneliness, war brutality, anguish, not in a
sanitised way, but in a way as disquieting as the emotion itself.
Examples:
Bartok, First String Quartet (1909)
Stravinsky The Rite of Spring (1913)
Schoenberg, String Quartet No 3 (1927)
Not everything produced during the Modernist period can be categorised as Modernist. See
for example, Elgar’s Third Symphony (1933), written in a conventional romantic idiom.
Reality as Multiple and Subjective
New to this period was the idea that reality is multiple, many-faceted and subjective.
Various philosophical strands contributed to this outlook: Darwin, Marx, had long been
challenging received wisdom; Nietzsche, Freud were drawing attention to other possibilities
for framing experience.
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1915)
The title suggests that this is just one of many possible pictures, only one way of looking at
the reality of Stephen Dedalus. The implication is that reality is subjective; a matter of
perspective.
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
Faulkner tells a story from the perspective of four members of one family, the first being a
severely autistic boy. All versions suggest different realities.
Self-consciousness and Reflexivity
Art is more deliberate and artists are more aware of the effects they are achieving.
Ford Madox Ford, “On Impressionism” (1913)
…the difficulty in getting hold of any critical guidance was, when I was a boy,
insuperable. There was nothing. Criticism was non-existent; self-conscious art
was decried; you were supposed to write by inspiration; you were the young
generation with the vine-leaves in your hair, knocking furiously at the door. …
But young writers to-day have a much better chance, on the aesthetic side at
least. Here and there, in nooks and corners, they can find someone to
discuss their work, not from the point of view of goodness or badness or of
niceness or of nastiness, but from the simple point of view of
expediency. …the moment that you can find someone with whom to discuss
the relative values of justifying your character or of abandoning the attempt to
produce an illusion of reality – at that moment you are very considerably
helped.
Artists also use their art as a forum for discussing art. Art becomes a statement about itself.
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927)
Described as a novel that was written to explain why it was written.
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921, play)
FATHER (jumping up suddenly): Illusion? I would ask you not to speak of
illusion! I would beg you not to use that word. For us it has a particularly cruel
ring!
PRODUCER (astonished): For heaven’s sake, why?
FATHER: Oh, yes, cruel, cruel! You really ought to understand.
PRODUCER: What are we supposed to say? Illusion is our stock-in-trade [...]
FATHER: I entirely understand [...] As artists [...], you have to create a perfect
illusion of reality.
PRODUCER: That’s right.
FATHER: But what if you stop to consider that we, the six of us (he gestures
briefly to indicate the six characters) have no other reality; that we don’t exist
outside this illusion!
Difficulty – Leading to Misunderstanding
Edward Garnett fails to understand Joyce’s project in his Readers Report for A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916?):
at the end of the book there is a complete falling to bits; the pieces of writing
and the thoughts are all in pieces and they fall like damp, ineffective
rockets. … this MS wants time and trouble spent on it, to make it a more
finished piece of work, to shape it more carefully as the product of the
craftsmanship, mind and imagination of an artist.
Elitism and The Distinction between Capital-A Art and Mass Culture
D.H. Lawrence, Pornography and Obscenity (1929):
… it comes down to this: you accept the majority, the mob and its decisions,
or you don’t You box down before the vox populi, vox Dei, or you plug your
ears not to hear its obscene howl. You perform your antics to please the vast
public, Deus ex machina, or you refuse to perform for the public at all, unless
now and then to pull its elephantine and ignominious leg.
When it comes to the meaning of anything, even the simplest word,
then you must pause. There are two great categories of meaning, forever
separate. There is mob-meaning, and there is individual meaning.
Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1919) writing of HG Wells’s Utopias:
… what more damaging criticism can there be both of [HG Wells’s] earth and
of his Heaven than that they are to be inhabited here and hereafter by his
Joans and his Peters? Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish
whatever institutions and ideals may be provided for them by the generosity
of their creator?
This work by Carol Peaker is licensed by the University of Oxford under
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