The Cultural and Intellectual Climate of Modernism

8/13/2019 The Cultural and Intellectual Climate of Modernism

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THE CULTURAL AND

INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE OF

MODERNISM


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ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON, 1904


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PABLO PICASSO, LES DEMOISELLESDAVIGNON, 1907


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LONDON MOTOR BUS


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OCTOBER 25, 1929AMERICAN STOCKMARKETCOLLAPSESMOST IMPORTANT FINANCIAL NEWSSTORY OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20THCENTURY


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E. M. FORSTERS HOWARDS END - 1910


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THE SCREAM EXPRESSIONISM1893Edvard

Munch - 15 years before the term was invented

" I was w alk ing along theroad wi th two fr iends.The sun set. I felt a tingeof melancho ly. Suddenlythe sky b ecame a bloodyred. I sto pped, leaned

against th e rai l ing , deadtired. And I look ed at thef lam ing clouds that hungl ike blood and a swordover the blue-black f jordand city. My fr iendswalked on . I stood there,t remb l ing wi th fr ight . AndI fel t a loud, unend ingsc ream piercing n ature."


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Erich Heckel, Geschw ister (Sibl ings), 1913

Source of German Expressionism -

DresdenOrganized in 1905, Die Brcke

(The Bridge) was a rebelartist group established in

Dresden, Germanyby fouryoung architecture students,including Erich Heckel.

For these artists, the young

embodied the process of

change and were central to

the identity of Brckeartists

themselves, who advocated

in their art free-formindividualism, creativity,

spirituality, and

independence from officially

sponsored, established art

organizations.


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DER BLAUE REITER (THE BLUE RIDER) GROUPMUNICH, GERMANY1911-1914


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ITALIAN FUTURISM1909-1914

We rebel against thatspineless worshipping

of old canvases, oldstatues and old bric-a-brac, against everythingwhich is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded bytime. We consider the

habitual contempt foreverything which isyoung, new and burningwith life to be unjust andeven criminal.

Filippo Marinetti,Manifesto of theFuturist Painters, 1910


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Marcel Duchamps Nude Descending a Staircase,

No. 2 (1912) and the Machine Aesthetic

Successive superimposed images,similar to stroboscopic motionphotography

A visual expression of what HenryAdams called the twentiethcentury multiplicity, showing

elements of both Cubist(fragmentation) and Futurist(dynamism) stylesDuchamp submitted the painting to the1913 Armory Showin New York Citywhere Americans, accustomed to

naturalistic art, were scandalized.Julian Street, an art critic for The NewYork Timeswrote that the workresembled an explosion in a shingle

factory"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Duchamp_-_Nude_Descending_a_Staircase.jpg


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THE ARMORY SHOWNEW YORK, 1913
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Museum/Armory/entrance.html


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First Impressionist Exhibition Grafton Gallery,

London, November 8 to Jan 15 1910


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IGOR STRAVINSKYTHE FIRE BIRD (1910),PETROUSHKA (1912), RITE OF SPRING (1913)

Whether Stravinsky'smusic be permanent orephemeral I do not know;but it did seem totransform the rhythm ofthe steppes into thescream of the motor horn,

the rattle of machinery,the grind of wheels, thebeating of iron and steel,the roar of theunderground railway, andthe other barbaric cries ofmodern life; and totransform thesedespairing noises intomusic.T. S. Eliot


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THE NEW METROPOLITAN TYPE

The psychological basis of the metropolitan type ofindividualityconsists in the in tensi f ication ofnervous st imulationwhich results from the swift anduninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli. //Lasting impressions, impressions which differ onlyslightly from one another, impressions which take aregular and habitual course and show regular andhabitual contrastsall these use up, so to speak, lessconsciousness than does the rapid crowding ofchanging images, the sharp discontinuity in thegrasp of a single glance, and the unexpectednessof onrushing impressions. These are thepsychological conditions which the metropoliscreates.Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life,1903


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FRAGMENTATIONCOLLAGE / MONTAGE


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THE NEW DESTINATIONTHE READER

Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of

multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into

mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is oneplace where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader,not, as was hitherto said, the author. The reader is the space onwhich all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed

without any of them being lost; a texts unity lies not in its

origin but in its destination.Yet this destination cannot any

longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography,psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in asingle field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. //

Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it,the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning tolet ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrasticalrecriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it setsaside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writingits future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of thereader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

- Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, 1968


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The Cultural and Intellectual Climate of Modernism