24/09/2017

WHAT IS MODERNISM?
An Introduction to Modernity and Modernism?

Dr Priyantha Udagedara
Ph.D/MFA United Kingdom, BFA Sri Lanka
Department of History and Art Theory
Faculty of Visual Art
University of Visual and Performing Arts

What is Modernism? When Was Modernism?

• In his Il Libro dell'Arte (translated as ‘The Craftsman’s
Handbook’) written in the early 15th century, the Italian writer
• Experimenting with representations of reality
• Value judgments (e.g. High culture= good, low culture = bad)
and painter Cennino Cennini explains that Giotto made
painting ‘modern’.

Cennino Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook: Il Libro dell'arte, trans. D. V.

Thompson, Jr. (New York, 1933).

• Giorgio Vasari writing in the 16th century, refers to the art of

his own period as ‘modern.’

Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de Eccellenti Architetti, Pittori, et Scultori Italiani,

Florence, 1550, 2 vols. (Reprint Broude International Editions, New York, 1980).
Expanded second edition published in Florence, 1568 (edition published in Opere
di Giorgo Vasari, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, Florence, 1879 (1906 edition reprinted in
1981).

When Was Modernism? When Was Modernism?

• Within the context of art history, the term MODERN ART
refers to art theory and practice, predominantly in Western
Europe and North America, from the 1860s to the late 1960s -
the period associated with MODERNISM.
• Modern Art is defined in terms of a linear progression of
styles, periods and schools, such as IMPRESSIONISM,
CUBISM and ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM.
• In terms of social, political and philosophical discourse,
modern refers to the period that began with the
Enlightenment in the seventeenth century. More generally,
modern can be used to refer to all things since the early
RENAISSANCE. The relative and temporal nature of the
term resists a clear or fixed definition, and is subject to
considerable debate in terms of meaning and timeframe.

• In general usage, there is considerable overlap and confusion

between the terms MODERN and CONTEMPORARY, both
of which refer to the present and recent past. Modern is a term
which has a broad application depending on the context in
which it is used. It can refer to the present or the
contemporary.

1

In the history of art, however, the term ‘modern’
is used to refer to a period dating from roughly
the 1860s through the 1970s and describes the
style and ideology of art produced during that
era.
In literature writers such as Richard Wagner and
Henrik Ibsen already foresaw what future
civilizations and accompanying progress could do
to individuals; Ibsen in particular questioned the
morally upright Victorian image as false and
flawed and presented his views that morality was
not as simple as black and white.
NICHOLLS, P.1995. Modernisms: A Literary Guide. Hampshire and London:
Macmillan
24/09/2017
Roots of Modernism
The intellectual underpinnings of modernism emerge
during the Renaissance period when, through the study
of the art, poetry, philosophy, and science of ancient
Greece and Rome, humanists revived the notion that
man, rather than God, is the measure of all things, and
promoted through education ideas of citizenship and
civic consciousness.
The period also gave rise to „utopian‟ visions of a more
perfect society, beginning with Sir Thomas More's
Utopia, written in 1516, in which is described a fictional
island community with seemingly perfect social, political,
legal customs.
Accompanying this intellectual movement was
the Scientific Revolution (late 17th to early 18th
centuries) which showed scientific truths as
debunking numerous conventional beliefs that
were held in place by institutions such as the
Church. The open-mindedness of the 18th-
century period allowed people the freedom to
think and apply reason to find truth.
In the scientific arena, Charles Darwin‟s
seminal Theory of Evolution which posited
that human beings were in essence,
biologically animalistic in impulse and origin
single-handedly changed the way people
thought about religious doctrine which held
that man‟s creation was made possible by
divinity.
2

New Discoveries of Travel and Colonialism
Opens New Possibilities and Experiences about
the Undiscovered World.
Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
1863, oil on canvas.
Modernism is a cultural movement which
rebelled against Victorian mores
Victorianism
• emphasized nationalism &
cultural absolutism.
• placed humans over and outside
of nature.
• showed a single way of looking
at the world, and in absolute
and clear-cut dichotomies
between right and wrong, good
and bad, and hero and villain.
• saw the world as being governed
by God's will, and that each
person and thing in this world
had a specific use.
24/09/2017
In art, a new way of seeing was showed by the
Impressionism movement which took art
away from the artificiality of the studio and
into the “realness of the outdoors”.
What is Modernism?
• Rejection of Romanticism and Realism
• Experimenting with representations of
reality
• Late 19th Century and Early part of the 20th
century
• Value judgments (e.g. High culture= good,
low culture = bad)
Édouard Manet, Olympia
• A lot of what is generally accepted as ‘the
1863, oil on canvas. norm’
The turning point…
• Modernism believed that the lives of people would
improve thanks to science and a world based on logic.
• It was a time of optimism and carried over from Victorian
Era, through the Edwardian and right up to 1914…
But
• The terrible carnage of the First World War sowed seeds
of doubt as to whether the world was becoming a better
place.
• The fact that science was turned to creating weapons of
mass destruction and killing on an industrial scale as a
trademark of the war, a wave of pessimism swept across
Europe.
3
 24/09/2017

• 1939 – France and England declare war on Germany when Hitler

Significant Events of the Modern invades Poland. World War II begins.
Period
• 1914 – World War I begins. President Wilson declares
America‟s neutrality.
• 1917 – The U.S. enters World War I to “make the world
safe for democracy.”
• 1918 – World War I ends • 1941 - Japan attacks Pearl harbor, and America enters WWII.

• 1942 - President Roosevelt initiates the Manhattan Project, a research

and development project to build the atomic bomb.

• 1945 - Allied troops liberate German concentration camps,

American bombers drop napalm in Tokyo, the U.S. drops
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
surrenders, World War II ends.
8.7 million people died for reasons many people could not understand

The events that took place during these tumultuous

1930s – The Great Depression times had a deep and wide-ranging impact on aesthetic
sensibility.

Artists felt that traditional art forms could no longer

express the modern psychological state of dislocation,
alienation, anxiety.

The Modernism was ended with What is Modernism?

Holocaust
Modernism reflects a loss of faith in traditional values and
beliefs, including the American Dream.

• Artistic/literary movement
• Post World-War One
• Pessimistic picture of culture in disarray
• Prettiness & sentimentality
• Rejected 19th century optimism

4

Why is Modernism?
My opinion is that new art needs new
techniques. And the modern artists have found
new means of making their statements. It seems
to me that the modern painter cannot express
this age of the aeroplane, the atom bomb, the
radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of
any other past culture. Each age finds its own
technique.
Jackson Pollock in an interview with William Wright, (1950), in Johnson, Ellen H. (ed.),
American Artists on Art from 1940 to 1980, Harper & Row, 1982.
Virage Calme (Calm Bend)
With the modern art movement, there is
a focus on progress. This is linked to
free enterprise, the Industrial
Revolution, and capitalism.
Artist: Wassily Kandinsky
Date: 1924
Medium: Drawings and Watercolors,
Gouaches/Watercolors
Size: sheet 13.625 x 8.875 x inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Thank You.
24/09/2017
Modernism‟s most significant
feature is:
Experimentation
Subject Matter
Style
Modern Art - the rejection of traditional academic art
forms
Modern Art saw a shift from the traditional art forms to :
• Different use of media, like photography, collage, assemblage
• Different use of space in architecture – the high rise building (sky scrapers)
• Significant rise in Abstract and Non-Representational Art
• Social and political transformation/ non-conformity
• Artists were eager for change
When did the Modern Art Movement begin?
According to most art critics, Modernism in painting first started with the Frenchman,
Jean Claude Monet, and the French Impressionists, for its rejection of traditional
academic art forms of the 18th and early 19th century.
ARTISTS WERE READY FOR A CHANGE!