Modernism

Modernism is basically modern thought, character, or practice.

What is it?

• Surge in scientific developments1. Belief they could master the universe

2. Faith in progress

3. Rational solutions

4. Universe more rational and predictable

• Technological advancements serve humanity- escalators, teabags, better light bulbs, car, instant coffee, air conditioner, E=MC2, sonar, tube amps, pop-up toaster, first robot, frozen food, penicillin, canned beer, radar, nylon, html (1945)

The World in which Modernists Lived

• Photography recording/documenting (color photography)

• Rapid transportation- railroads, helicopter

• Evolution of species (Darwin)

• Prohibition in U.S.- Bootlegging, speakeasies, gang warfare

• Radio, jazz, movies moved imagination

• Great Depression in 1929

• WW2- 1939-1945 and the Atom Bomb (in Japan)

The World in which Modernists Lived

1914-1918

Total number of military and civilian casualties was over 37 million. That’s about the entire population of Canada (35.2 million as of July 1, 2013) or about three times the amount of people living in Pennsylvania (roughly 12.7 million).

The impact of war had a dramatic effect on society at the time:

• When WWI happened in 1914, there was a growing tension and unease with the social order.

• Optimism ended during WWI.

• People didn’t trust values of the world anymore and sought new ideas applicable to modern life.

WWI: First World War

• Shrinking global community

• Gap between west and “less developed” countries

Other effects of WWI and II

• Inspiring enthusiasm and fear, questioning human values in a society where much can be done and controlled by machines and mass media.

• Interrogation of reality: How do we know what we know?• Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and futurism are all different

ways of expressing reality of the world

• Knowledge isn’t fixed or stable- much of what we think we know reflects questions we ask and methods we use to find answers.

• What does it mean to have a perspective?

Industry and Technological advances raised questions:

Ideas and Leading to Modernism

Fun in the early 1900sStreet Scene in England-

Composer and musician Scott Joplin

publishes The Entertainer in 1902.

The first silent film, The Great Train

Robbery, debuts in 1903.

Henry Ford begins production of the Model

T in 1908.- aka. “Tin Lizzy”

Audiences see the first motion picture with

sound The Jazz Singer in 1927.

KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, becomes the first

radio station to offer regular broadcasts on

November 2, 1920.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slx0NI1zLl0

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Auguste Comte

Karl Marx

Frederick Neitzsche

Sigmund Freud

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Edmund Husserl

Women

Key Players

French Philosopher (First of Science) and founder of Sociology and Positivism

1794-1859

Believed that everything can be explained- sociology (laws governing human society)

Social evolution in three stages:

1. Theological- Man’s place in society and the restrictions on man were referenced to God. Blind faith in what ancestor’s taught.

2. Metaphysical- Justification of universal rights of all people (classless)- these rights not referenced to the sacred beyond mere metaphor. Beginnings of questioning authority and religion.

3. Positive- “Positivism”- People can find solutions to social problems without human rights laws or will of religion. Faith in the power of science and rationality to discover answers for all problems (“scientific rightness” of certain ideas caused majorly obvious bias issues---and inflexible attitudes in real life.) aka. Secular Humanism/religion of humanity- “vivre pour autrui” (live for others)

Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte

• 1818-1883

• One of the most influential figures in human history

• German philosopher, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist

Believed:

• Basic material needs (food, shelter, social relationships for group survival- provided economic foundation from which all other aspects of human culture derived)

• There is an anti-human aspect of modern technological progress.

• Two competing forces of capital and labor- two social classes- rich and poor (Proletariat)

Marxism theory: “human societies progress through class struggle: a conflict between an ownership class that controls production and a dispossessed laboring class that provides the labor for production. He called capitalism the ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,’ believing it to be run by the wealthy classes for their own benefit; and he predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism.”

Karl Heinrich Marx

1844-1900

German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and composer

Relevant info:

In his Thus Spoke Zarathustra- “Ubermensch”- superman/superhuman unbound (refuses to be bound) to “social paradigms of nationalism, Christianity, faith in science, loyalty to state, or bourgeois civilized comfort.”

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the main character, Zarathustra, presents the superman as a gift- (symbolism) a creator of new values as a solution to the death of God and nihilism*. The superman rises above the notion of good and evil, above the herd.

Freedom from responsibility without religious law. Attacks mass society’s unimaginative mediocrity in modern industrial world.

*Nihilism- Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Sigmund Freud

1856-1939Austrian neurologist, father of psychoanalysis (Oedipus complex).

Consciousness/subconciousness- You have to take into account people’s irrational and rational levels of existence.

Everyone is the same basically- same sexual drive and civilizational repression.

People create and modify their images of self through engaging in dialog with others.

Ludwig Wittgenstein1889-1951Austrian-British philosopher, logician, mathematics, and language.

He says that language gives us only a series of symbols- a c-h-a-i-r isn’t a chair but symbols that stand for the thing. that you give meaning to those symbols and everyone has common ground. (connotations, denotations, etc.)

** Words and syntax/rules/structures are played with like games in this time period to exhibit the play of the relationships between things. Others (Flaubert) had a tough time finding the “right word”. Difficulty expressing the self.

** Language determines how we see the world, then we recognize other shaping issues of language- ads, political speeches, etc.

1859-1938

German Philosopher who established the field of Phenomenology.

What is it? A break from Positivist thoughts, instead believing that experience is the source of all knowledge.

Truth-in-itself and being-in-itself

Appearance vs. Reality- how does something appear? what is real?

Everything should be implicated in a relationship between the perceiver and the thing perceived.

Meaning and object

Sartre was influenced by Husserl, but later disagreed with his key

points.

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl

Women can finally vote! Took America long enough.

• Got the vote in 1920,

• Can get educated equally to men,

• Can have their own bank accounts,

• Can own and control property,

*As a result of WWI, women enter new professions.

Women

1916 in Zurich: born out of the horrors of WWI

Rejected reason and logic, prized nonsense, irrationality and intiution.

According to Has Richter Dada was “anti-art”. Whatever art was, dada was the opposite.

Intended to offend, subvert authorit, and break ALL the rules to liberate creative imagination.

Mind and emotion attacks- intense, playful, and openness to change. To reform society.

Conscious and unconscious states.

A “dizzying descent into ourselves”- Surrealist Manifestoes of 1924 & 1930.

Surrealists experimented with ways to liberate unconscious and reach “the marvelous” through dream writing, automatic writing (whatever came to your mind), riddles, collage, interruption, etc. Freeplay, antirationality, unconscious mind- collages, metamorphosis, and blurring dream and reality.

Dada-SurrealismRaoul Hausmann ABCD (Self-portrait) A photomontage from 1923-24

Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain 1917