Modernism

In literary history Modernism was a time from the early 1900s until the 1940’s, and its purpose was all about renovating creation. It was now all about the new ways of poetic art and leaving behind the old as they were not considered efficient anymore. With the Modernism movement a lot of experimenting happened, mostly in the years following World War 1. The movement was characterized by a time with many big changes such as nearly global capitalism, quick social changes, industrialization, advances in science and social science. An incompatible alienation with Victorian convention, morality and optimism was drawn by Modernists. Philosophy, psychology, and political theory had now new ideas which started a search for new ways of expression.

For most of the Modernist literature urbanization and industrialization were what inspired it, as well as the search for the original responses to a very changed world. Even though there are many literary works by writers such as  Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and others were considered Modernist, most of the Modernist works were created post World War 1. Fragmentation and disillusionment were reflected in post war Modernist literature as war had crippled all the human faith in the structure Western society and culture.

In terms of visual arts Eduard Manet is the painter that is associated with the roots of Modernism, Manet not only depicted modern life scenes but also broke the tradition of painting the real world exactly as it was on terms of perspective and modeling. Instead, he embraced the fact that brushes left marks on the canvas with paint and worked with that to his advantage. The Avant Garde art movements that followed are considered Modernist, some of these include Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism and Abstract Impressionism.

Essential functional concerns became a part of architecture along with this movement as well and architects abandoned past styles. The geometric shapes and unadorned facades which ended the historic-reference way of building was known as International Style, in the mid 20^th century this style took the form of clean lined unadorned glass skyscrapers and buildings.