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Modernism

Modernism. 1914-1945: wars, Prosperity, & Depression. Recognized not only in literature, but also. a rchitecture p hilosophy p sychology a nthropology painting m usic sculpture t he sciences. A Movement of Cultural Crisis. Exciting!. Disquieting!.

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Modernism

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  1. Modernism 1914-1945: wars, Prosperity, & Depression

  2. Recognized not only in literature, but also • architecture • philosophy • psychology • anthropology • painting • music • sculpture • the sciences

  3. A Movement of Cultural Crisis Exciting! Disquieting!

  4. BRUTAL REALITY OF MODERN WARPROMISE OF AN AMERICAN HERO DISILLUSIONMENT http://www.loc.gov/ pictures/item/2005683713/

  5. Modernist Paradigm (pattern or world view) • Loss of faith in dependable, predictable, orderly universe • Loss of certainty of truth • Man feels alone in an uncertain world • Rejection of tradition (particularly artists) • Life seems absurd: failure of reason, tradition, moral systems

  6. Technology • Record player, motion picture with sound, radio = greater sense of connectedness • BUT ALSO = manipulative commercialism! skepticism and apprehension about pop culture • Gap grows between better-off and worse-off Americans

  7. Greatest Technological Influence:Automobile • Reshaped American structure of industry and occupation; many jobs created • Cities change shape • Suburbs & highways

  8. BUT Constant movement and lack of tradition = “rootlessness of American life” Tocqueville (French social commentator)

  9. The Great Depression • 1929 stock market crash • Struggle to restore nation’s economical structure

  10. Clash of Values “Traditionalist Americans—believing in work ethic, social conformity, duty, and respectability—attempted to control social and private behavior according to a model of white, Protestant, small-town virtues… -

  11. Clash of Values arrayed against them were newly articulate groups: immigrants, minorities, youth, woman, and of course, artists, arguing for a diversity of styles of life.” -Norton Anthology of American Literature

  12. Freedom for Women Middle class man had sexual freedom Now woman demand sexual liberation (thanks to job opportunities, 19th Amendment)

  13. Other Demands: • Education • Professional work • Mobility • Any social benefits men already have (i.e. the right to voice an opinion in conversation)

  14. WomEn’s Dress Long, heavy, cumbersome 

  15. short, light, easily worn (freeing)

  16. African Americans in American Culture • Job opportunities in North lead to Great Migration • Faced racismand segregation • BUT better off economically and socially • Increase in personal freedom • Harlem Renaissance

  17. Existential Philosophy • Man has no ‘nature’ so he must create himself • No inclination toward good or evil at birth we are all potential • Man creates himself by means of choices • Man feels alone in a world without meaning • We must turn inward to seek truth in a fragmented and chaotic world

  18. breakdown of traditional society under pressures of modernity • Skepticism • Alienation • Irrationalism • Doubt as to the value of human existence

  19. Modernism in Art • New York Armory show of 1913 shocks and causes an uproar • “conviction that previously sustaining structures of human life, whether social, political, religious, or artistic, had been either destroyed or shown up as falsehoods or fantasies” • Fragmented and abstract is more true to life

  20. Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 French

  21. Walter Kuhn Morning American

  22. D. Putnam Brinley The Peony Garden American

  23. Wassily Kandinsky Improvisation No. 27 (Garden of Love) Russian

  24. Henri Matisse Goldfish and Sculpture French

  25. John Marin Broadway, St. Paul’s Church American

  26. Albert Pinkham Ryder Moonlit Cove American

  27. Photography: Social Realism Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother Series,1936 Florence Owens Thompson and children (subject) Caption: Destitute peapickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children. February 1936.

  28. Caption: Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is native Californian. Nipomo, California

  29. Caption: "Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32, the father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute."

  30. Modernist Music: Igor Stravinsky • The Rite of Spring • Riot in Paris where premiered, 1913 • Attributes: dissonance (disharmony) and discontinuity

  31. Modernist Architecture • “Form follows function” • Glorifying buildings as machines (simple and industrialized) • Steel and glass materials • Efficient to maximize productivity (identical floors)

  32. Walter GropiusGropiusHouse Lincoln, Massachusetts1938

  33. Frank Lloyd WrightFallingwaterMill Run, PA1936 and 1939

  34. Shreve, Lamb and Harmon The Empire State Building New York City 1929-1931

  35. Modernist Writing • “represents the breakdown of traditional society under the pressures of modernity” (Norton) • Often interprets modernity as an experience of loss • Generalization, abstraction, fragmentation • Stream-of-consciousness

  36. Thematic Features • Focus on form rather than meaning • Breaking down of limitation of space and time • Breakdown of social norms and cultural values • Despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future • Disillusionment

  37. Thematic Features • Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past • Need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life • Importance of the unconscious mind • Interest in the primitive and non-western cultures • Impossibility of an absolute interpretation of reality • Overwhelming technological changes

  38. Formal features of poetry • Free verse • Allusions and multiple association of words • Borrowing from other cultures and languages • Unconventional use of metaphor • Importance given to sound to convey “the music of ideas”

  39. Imagism • Concentrates on presentation of words or “word pictures” • Expresses essence of object, person, or incident without explanation • Spare, clean, presentation of an image • Freeze a moment in time to capture moment • Everyday language • Shies away from traditional poetic patterns

  40. “The Red Wheelbarrow”William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

  41. “This Is Just To Say”William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

  42. Works Cited Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. New York: Norton, 1999. Print. “Disillusion, Defiance, and Discontent." Prentice Hall Literature: Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2002. 704-713. Print.

  43. Works Cited Brooker, Peter, ed. Modernism/Postmodernism. London: Longman, 1992. Print. Hassan, Ihab and Hassan, Sally, eds. Innovation/Renovation: New Perspectives on the Humanities. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Print. Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Print. Lodge, David, ed. Modernism, Antimodernism, and Postmodernism. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 1977. Print. Wilde, Alan. Horizon of Assent: Modernism, Postmodernism and the Ironic Imagination. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Print

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