modernist period essay

Poems & Poets

An introduction to the monumental artistic movement that changed poetry forever.

BY The Editors

“Poets in our civilization,” T.S. Eliot writes in a 1921 essay, “must be difficult.” Such difficulty, he believed, reflected the times: advanced industrialization transformed the West, Europe reeled from World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution ignited Russia. Thinkers such as Darwin, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Einstein changed people’s understanding of history, economics, philosophy, science, psychology, physics, and even religion. “Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity,” Eliot continues, and “this variety and complexity … must produce various and complex results.” With the inventions of everything from the automobile to the airplane, the vacuum cleaner to the incandescent lightbulb, the motion picture to the radio, and the bra to the zipper, people’s lives were changing with unprecedented speed. Many English-language artists, including poets, thought a new approach was needed to capture and comment on this new era, requiring innovation in their own work: the result was called Modernism, the largest, most significant movement of the early 20th century. 

Difficult, various, complex : these are often the very terms critics use to describe Modernist poetry in general. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is often seen as the acme of Modernist writing—so much so that William Carlos Williams later compared its publication in 1922 to “an atom bomb” dropped on the landscape of English-language poetry. The long, obscure poem exhibits many of the techniques associated with the movement: use of collage and disjunction, free verse, an unsentimental impersonality, and a dense web of references to both high and low culture. However, neither those gestures nor the poem’s apocalyptic atmosphere fully represents Modernist poetry, which is often, in its “variety and complexity,” difficult to read and to define.

One of Modernism’s most famous slogans is a case study in its contradictions. For later critics, “make it new” became a shorthand for the movement’s goals, especially its obsession with artistic novelty. But the phrase, attributed to Ezra Pound , wasn’t well-known to the Modernists themselves and, ironically, wasn’t itself new. In fact, it’s an ancient, a translation of a translation: according to the Confucian texts Pound took the phrase from, it was once emblazoned on the bathtub of the first ruler of the Shang dynasty.

For Pound, the it in “make it new” was perhaps not so much poetry as history. His magnum opus, The Cantos , is a case in point: it retells classical stories as it attempts to revitalize outmoded forms, such as accentual verse. Both a scholar and an agitator, Pound had a hand in many of Modernism’s decisive turns. In the 1910s, he dabbled in theories under the heading of futurism , and alongside H.D. and Amy Lowell , he founded Imagism , an early Modernist school crucial to the development of free verse. Pound’s friendships with W.B. Yeats and Eliot propelled both men toward the visionary, and Pound’s influence on dozens of writers helped define Modernism more than that of any other poet.

Not every Modernist poet thought as Eliot and Pound did. Wallace Stevens , another giant of the era, saw contemporary upheavals in a less pessimistic light. His lavish philosophical poems explore how poetry might constitute a “supreme fiction” that could take the place of organized religion. And Hart Crane positioned his varied, ornate epic The Bridge as a direct challenge to The Wasteland in an expansive, Whitmanesque vein.                                         

Others sought a more decisive break with tradition. “Nothing is good save the new,” William Carlos Williams writes in the prologue to Kora in Hell . For him, the new meant jarring enjambment, vernacular language, and an improvisational style—innovations fueled in part by innovations in the visual arts such as cubism and the readymade. Marianne Moore mixed “plain American which cats and dogs could read” with quotations from a huge range of sources, and measured her jagged lines by syllable instead of stress. Some poets discarded the line altogether. Gertrude Stein , one of the earliest Modernist innovators, wrote prose poems that sought to focus readers on the sonic and associative textures of words. And E.E. Cummings seized on the potential of the typewriter, using the space of the page, the parenthesis, and even the individual letter in radically new ways.

Mina Loy also experimented with typography, but saw her male counterparts far eclipse her reputation. Her example raises questions about who is included in conversations about the movement. For instance: should Robert Frost , with his ear for both the vernacular and the iambic, be part of the story of Modernist poetry? Langston Hughes offers another limit case: is his blues prosody better understood as a Modernist achievement, or in the context of the Harlem Renaissance ? What about such poets as César Vallejo and Anna Akhmatova , innovators outside the Anglo-American tradition? As with any far-reaching movement, individual artists rise above any particular tradition: not everyone’s work adheres to all the same principles nor does a movement’s output exhibit all the same styles and tendencies.

Such questions are crucial but vexing; more certain is Modernism’s legacy. The movement’s most immediate heirs were the Objectivists , whose varied writings extended the work of the first-generation Modernists starting in the later 1920s and ‘30s. But the influence of the Modernists extends well into the postwar period. Charles Olson’s influential 1950 essay “ Projective Verse ” consciously aligned the Black Mountain School and the later San Francisco Renaissance with “the experiments of Cummings, Pound, and Williams,” but they would “make it new” by innovating their own poetics to address their different times and culture. The formidable effects of Modernism are also measurable by later reactions against them, the postwar turn towards Confessionalism in particular.

The following selections of poets, poetics essays, poems, articles, poem guides, and audio recordings are intended as an introductory sample of the Poetry Foundation’s offerings on Modernism; they cannot be an exhaustive representation of the school’s many and varied aspects.

• T. S. Eliot

William Carlos Williams

• William Butler Yeats
• Wallace Stevens
• E. E. Cummings
• Gertrude Stein

Preface to Some Imagist Poets

“A Retrospect” and “A Few Don’ts”

The Poetry of the Present

Tradition and the Individual Talent

Composition as Explanation

Introduction to The Wedge

The Poem as a Field of Action

Projective Verse

p1 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Waste Land

p1 In a Station of the Metro

P1 three cantos.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley [Part I]

p1 Sunday Morning

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

The Bridge: To Brooklyn Bridge

The Red Wheelbarrow

A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass

p1 [anyone lived in a pretty how town]

The Second Coming

Leda and the Swan

Sailing to Byzantium

The Wild Common

p1 From "Paterson V"

P1 from briggflatts: an autobiography.

Edward Thomas 101

E.E. Cummings 101

William Carlos Williams 101

100 Years of Poetry : “In the Middle of Major Men”

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Turns 100

All Things Original and Strange

Significant Soil

p1 Willing to Be Reckless

P1 reading the difficult.

The Modernist Journal Project: The Little Review, Blast, Coterie, The Owl, The Crisis , and more magazines for you to download (seriously)

Hart Crane: “Voyages”

Mina Loy: “Lunar Baedeker”

Wallace Stevens: “Sunday Morning”

Wallace Stevens: “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”

William Carlos Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow”

Gertrude Stein: “The house was just twinkling in the moon light”

William Carlos Williams: “To a Poor Old Woman”

Robert Frost: “The Road Not Taken”

Robert Frost: “Mending Wall”

Amy Lowell: “The Garden by Moonlight”

Edna St. Vincent Millay: “Renascence”

Gertrude Stein: Essential American Poets

Wallace Stevens: Essential American Poets

E.E. Cummings: Essential American Poets

William Carlos Williams: Essential American Poets

Langdon Hammer: American Perspectives

Helen Vendler: American Perspectives

The Waste Land: The App

Robert Pinsky

• Modernist Journals Project
• The Modernism Lab at Yale
• EdSITEment: Introduction to Modernist Poetry
• Becoming Modern: America in the 1920s
• Museum of Modern Art’s Learning Portal

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Modernist Literature Guide: Understanding Literary Modernism

Written by MasterClass

Last updated: Jun 7, 2021 • 5 min read

Modernism was a literary movement that lasted from the late nineteenth century to around the mid-twentieth century, and encapsulated a series of burgeoning writing techniques that influenced the course of literary history.

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Celtic Modernism: Yeats, Joyce, Jones, and MacDiarmid

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The Modernist revolution

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• Table Of Contents

Anglo-American Modernism : Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot

From 1908 to 1914 there was a remarkably productive period of innovation and experiment as novelists and poets undertook, in anthologies and magazines, to challenge the literary conventions not just of the recent past but of the entire post-Romantic era. For a brief moment, London , which up to that point had been culturally one of the dullest of the European capitals, boasted an avant-garde to rival those of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, even if its leading personality, Ezra Pound , and many of its most notable figures were American.

The spirit of Modernism—a radical and utopian spirit stimulated by new ideas in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis—was in the air, expressed rather mutedly by the pastoral and often anti-Modern poets of the Georgian movement (1912–22; see Georgian poetry ) and more authentically by the English and American poets of the Imagist movement, to which Pound first drew attention in Ripostes (1912), a volume of his own poetry , and in Des Imagistes (1914), an anthology. Prominent among the Imagists were the English poets T.E. Hulme , F.S. Flint , and Richard Aldington and the Americans Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and Amy Lowell .

Reacting against what they considered to be an exhausted poetic tradition, the Imagists wanted to refine the language of poetry in order to make it a vehicle not for pastoral sentiment or imperialistic rhetoric but for the exact description and evocation of mood. To this end they experimented with free or irregular verse and made the image their principal instrument. In contrast to the leisurely Georgians, they worked with brief and economical forms.

Meanwhile, painters and sculptors, grouped together by the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis under the banner of Vorticism , combined the abstract art of the Cubists with the example of the Italian Futurists who conveyed in their painting, sculpture, and literature the new sensations of movement and scale associated with modern developments such as automobiles and airplanes. With the typographically arresting Blast: Review of the Great English Vortex (two editions, 1914 and 1915) Vorticism found its polemical mouthpiece and in Lewis, its editor, its most active propagandist and accomplished literary exponent. His experimental play Enemy of the Stars, published in Blast in 1914, and his experimental novel Tarr (1918) can still surprise with their violent exuberance.

World War I brought this first period of the Modernist revolution to an end and, while not destroying its radical and utopian impulse, made the Anglo-American Modernists all too aware of the gulf between their ideals and the chaos of the present. Novelists and poets parodied received forms and styles, in their view made redundant by the immensity and horror of the war, but, as can be seen most clearly in Pound’s angry and satirical Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), with a note of anguish and with the wish that writers might again make form and style the bearers of authentic meanings.

In his two most innovative novels, The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920), D.H. Lawrence traced the sickness of modern civilization—a civilization in his view only too eager to participate in the mass slaughter of the war—to the effects of industrialization upon the human psyche. Yet as he rejected the conventions of the fictional tradition, which he had used to brilliant effect in his deeply felt autobiographical novel of working-class family life, Sons and Lovers (1913), he drew upon myth and symbol to hold out the hope that individual and collective rebirth could come through human intensity and passion.

On the other hand, the poet and playwright T.S. Eliot , another American resident in London, in his most innovative poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) and The Waste Land (1922), traced the sickness of modern civilization—a civilization that, on the evidence of the war, preferred death or death-in-life to life—to the spiritual emptiness and rootlessness of modern existence. As he rejected the conventions of the poetic tradition, Eliot, like Lawrence, drew upon myth and symbol to hold out the hope of individual and collective rebirth, but he differed sharply from Lawrence by supposing that rebirth could come through self-denial and self-abnegation. Even so, their satirical intensity, no less than the seriousness and scope of their analyses of the failings of a civilization that had voluntarily entered upon the First World War, ensured that Lawrence and Eliot became the leading and most authoritative figures of Anglo-American Modernism in England in the whole of the postwar period.

During the 1920s Lawrence (who had left England in 1919) and Eliot began to develop viewpoints at odds with the reputations they had established through their early work. In Kangaroo (1923) and The Plumed Serpent (1926), Lawrence revealed the attraction to him of charismatic , masculine leadership, while, in For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order (1928), Eliot (whose influence as a literary critic now rivaled his influence as a poet) announced that he was a “classicist in literature, royalist in politics and anglo-catholic in religion” and committed himself to hierarchy and order. Elitist and paternalistic, they did not, however, adopt the extreme positions of Pound (who left England in 1920 and settled permanently in Italy in 1925) or Lewis. Drawing upon the ideas of the left and of the right, Pound and Lewis dismissed democracy as a sham and argued that economic and ideological manipulation was the dominant factor. For some, the antidemocratic views of the Anglo-American Modernists simply made explicit the reactionary tendencies inherent in the movement from its beginning; for others, they came from a tragic loss of balance occasioned by World War I. This issue is a complex one, and judgments upon the literary merit and political status of Pound’s ambitious but immensely difficult Imagist epic The Cantos (1917–70) and Lewis’s powerful sequence of politico-theological novels The Human Age ( The Childermass , 1928; Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta , both 1955) are sharply divided.

Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot were the principal male figures of Anglo-American Modernism, but important contributions also were made by the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats and the Irish novelist James Joyce . By virtue of nationality, residence, and, in Yeats’s case, an unjust reputation as a poet still steeped in Celtic mythology, they had less immediate impact upon the British literary intelligentsia in the late 1910s and early 1920s than Pound, Lewis, Lawrence, and Eliot, although by the mid-1920s their influence had become direct and substantial. Many critics today argue that Yeats’s work as a poet and Joyce’s work as a novelist are the most important Modernist achievements of the period.

In his early verse and drama , Yeats, who had been influenced as a young man by the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite movements, evoked a legendary and supernatural Ireland in language that was often vague and grandiloquent. As an adherent of the cause of Irish nationalism , he had hoped to instill pride in the Irish past. The poetry of The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914), however, was marked not only by a more concrete and colloquial style but also by a growing isolation from the nationalist movement, for Yeats celebrated an aristocratic Ireland epitomized for him by the family and country house of his friend and patron, Lady Gregory .

The grandeur of his mature reflective poetry in The Wild Swans at Coole (1917), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), and The Winding Stair (1929) derived in large measure from the way in which (caught up by the violent discords of contemporary Irish history) he accepted the fact that his idealized Ireland was illusory. At its best his mature style combined passion and precision with powerful symbol, strong rhythm, and lucid diction; and even though his poetry often touched upon public themes, he never ceased to reflect upon the Romantic themes of creativity, selfhood, and the individual’s relationship to nature, time, and history.

Joyce, who spent his adult life on the continent of Europe , expressed in his fiction his sense of the limits and possibilities of the Ireland he had left behind. In his collection of short stories, Dubliners (1914), and his largely autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), he described in fiction at once realist and symbolist the individual cost of the sexual and imaginative oppressiveness of life in Ireland. As if by provocative contrast, his panoramic novel of urban life, Ulysses (1922), was sexually frank and imaginatively profuse. (Copies of the first edition were burned by the New York postal authorities, and British customs officials seized the second edition in 1923.) Employing extraordinary formal and linguistic inventiveness, including the stream-of-consciousness method, Joyce depicted the experiences and the fantasies of various men and women in Dublin on a summer’s day in June 1904. Yet his purpose was not simply documentary, for he drew upon an encyclopaedic range of European literature to stress the rich universality of life buried beneath the provincialism of pre-independence Dublin, in 1904 a city still within the British Empire . In his even more experimental Finnegans Wake (1939), extracts of which had already appeared as Work in Progress from 1928 to 1937, Joyce’s commitment to cultural universality became absolute. By means of a strange, polyglot idiom of puns and portmanteau words , he not only explored the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious but also suggested that the languages and myths of Ireland were interwoven with the languages and myths of many other cultures .

The example of Joyce’s experimentalism was followed by the Anglo-Welsh poet David Jones and by the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid (pseudonym of Christopher Murray Grieve). Whereas Jones concerned himself, in his complex and allusive poetry and prose, with the Celtic, Saxon, Roman, and Christian roots of Great Britain, MacDiarmid sought not only to recover what he considered to be an authentically Scottish culture but also to establish, as in his In Memoriam James Joyce (1955), the truly cosmopolitan nature of Celtic consciousness and achievement. MacDiarmid’s masterpiece in the vernacular , A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926), helped to inspire the Scottish renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s.

Modern Art – An Exploration of the 20th-Century Modernist Movement

The Modernism movement within art, arising in the early 20 th century, referred to art that accurately reflected the society in which artists found themselves. After the French industrial revolution, artists demonstrated a great desire to move away from the traditional aspects that previously governed fine art in favor of creating artworks that sought to capture the experiences and values in modern industrial life. Thus, Modern Art existed as a broad movement that incorporated a variety of other “isms” under its title.

Table of Contents

• 1 What Is Modernism?
• 2 An Appropriate Modernism Definition
• 3.1 The Influence of the Industrial Revolution
• 3.2 The Influence of War
• 4 Main Characteristics of Modern Art
• 5 Criticisms of Modern Art
• 6.1 Impressionism (1870s – 1880s)
• 6.2 Fauvism (1905 – 1907)
• 6.3 Expressionism (1905 – 1920)
• 6.4 Cubism (1908 – 1914)
• 6.5 Futurism (1909 – 1944)
• 6.6 Dadaism (1916 – 1924)
• 6.7 Surrealism (1924 – 1950s)
• 6.8 Abstract Expressionism (1940s – 1950s)
• 6.9 Pop Art (1950s – 1960s)
• 7 Modern Art in America
• 8.1 Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906)
• 8.2 Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)
• 8.3 Georges Seurat (1859 – 1891)
• 8.4 Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)
• 8.5 Giacomo Balla (1871 – 1958)
• 8.6 Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)
• 8.7 Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968)
• 8.8 Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989)
• 8.9 Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956)
• 8.10 Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987)
• 9 Modernism into Postmodernism

What Is Modernism?

Known as a global movement that existed in society and culture, Modern Art developed at the start of the 20 th century in reaction to the widespread urbanization that appeared after the industrial revolution. Modern Art, also referred to as Modernism, was viewed as both an art and philosophical movement at the time of its emergence. This movement reflected the immense longing of artists to produce new forms of art, philosophy, and social structures that precisely reflected the newly developing world.

Modernism included a variety of different styles, techniques, and media within the broad movement. However, the fundamental principle that was demonstrated in all the artworks of each movement within Modernism was a complete dismissal of history and traditional concepts associated with realism.

Artists began to make use of new images, materials, and techniques to create artworks that they thought better reflected the realities and hopes that existed in rapidly modernizing societies.

Due to the fact that it was not considered a singular and cohesive movement, many different movements developed that fell into the bracket of Modernism. These Modern movements included Post-Impressionism , Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Expressionism, and Futurism, to name a few. The unifying element that existed within these movements was the consistent yearning to break away from the customs of representational art .

A great influence of Modernism was considered to be the Impressionism movement, as artists practicing within this period began to make use of non-naturalistic colors when depicting subjects. Impressionism was wildly unpopular with high society at the time, as it embraced elements that did not fit into the traditional way of making art. Thus, this deviation from the norm was said to pave the way for the beginning of Modernism Art as it embraced the start of abstract tendencies that were still to be explored.

Modernists disregarded old rules relating to color, perspective, and composition in order to create their own visions of how artworks should be constructed. These attitudes were strengthened by the rapid changes that were brought on by the industrial revolution decades before, as well as the start of World War One in 1914. Artists, in reaction to the horror and brutality that was seen in society as a result of war, abandoned intellect for intuition within their artworks and depicted the world exactly as they observed it.

This period of rapid changes characterized modern society at the time, leading artists to constantly update and refine their techniques when making art so as to accurately depict the aspirations and dreams of the modern world that had developed. Modernism was a response to the rapidly changing conditions of life due to the rise of industrialization and the beginning of wartime, with artists looking for new subject matter, working techniques, and materials to better capture this change.

Additionally, the reason for this change in technique was because artists regarded traditional forms of art to be outdated and therefore obsolete within modern society. Artists stated that they felt a growing alienation from the previous Victorian society and searched for new modes of expression that would adequately reflect how they felt within the new world. Modernism was heavily motivated by the different social and political agendas of the time, with artists attempting to reflect these ideal visions of human life and society in their works.

Whilst artists experimented with new techniques to adequately depict modern life, they also attempted to express the emotional and psychological effects of negotiating a world in rapid changes in their artworks. This was an important element in Modern art, with artists like Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne exploring their subject matters in-depth and in ways that shocked society.

Modernism Art was essentially the creative world’s answer to the rationalist customs and viewpoints of the new lives and ideas that were provided by the technological progressions of industrialization. Artists attempted to represent their experience of modern life in innovative ways irrespective of the artistic genre they were working from. Thus, Modern Art was characterized by artists who rejected traditional styles and values, instead including their own perspective into their works and portrayed their subjects exactly as they existed in the world.

By the 1960s, Modernism had become a leading movement within the art sphere. While some academics have said that the movement continued into the 21 st century, others have stated that it evolved into a late type of Modernism that was termed “Postmodernism.” Despite using the term “modernism” in its name, the Postmodern art movement demonstrated a vast departure from Modernist principles, as it rejected its fundamental assumptions in an effort to produce a new kind of art.

An Appropriate Modernism Definition

Modernism has been interpreted to mean a variety of things, ranging from a manner of thinking to an aesthetic form of self-examination. Additionally, the movement has also been viewed as a broad social, cultural, and political initiative that upheld the principles of impermanence within the newly urbanizing world.

The terms “Modernism” and “Modern Art” were used by art historians and critics when describing the series of art movements that emerged after the Realism period that was dominated by artist Gustav Courbet . Realism occurred just prior to the Industrial Revolution in France and along with Courbet’s distinct style, marked the beginning of an art period that abandoned the romanticism that previously dictated artmaking.

The philosophical characteristics that accompanied the Modernist movement helped to define it as a way of thinking in addition to an art medium . This was demonstrated by the self-consciousness and self-reference that artists included within their artworks. These brazen and unashamed elements were used to refer to their new modern reality, as well as to highlight their straying away from what was previously seen as fine art.

In Western society, Modernism was defined as a socially liberal trend of thought. Modern Art was said to acknowledge the strength of human beings in creating, enhancing, and restructuring their environment through the advancements in technology and scientific knowledge. These changes were demonstrated through the subsequent art movements that developed, which all found their basic principles under the broad term of Modernism.

Poet Ezra Pound’s famous 1934 line, “Make it New”, went on to exist as the benchmark of the Modernism approach, as Pound ordered artists and creatives to produce art out of distinctly innovative materials.

Thus, an appropriate Modernism definition would be artworks that rejected all traditional forms of art in an attempt to include the perspective of artists and the consequences and effects of industrialization in the developing contemporary world.

The Origins of Modern Art

Modern Art was said to begin in 1863 after artist Édouard Manet exhibited his shocking and disrespectful painting, Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe , at the Salon des Refuses in Paris. Despite Manet’s artwork paying respect to a Renaissance artwork by Raphael, its exhibition to society is widely considered to mark the start of the changes that began to occur in art, which led to the emergence of Modernism.

After Manet’s painting, the new generation of artists were tired of following the conventional academic art forms that dominated the 18th and early 19th century. These artists were branded as “modern”, and they started to create a variety of Modernism paintings that were based on new themes, materials, and methods.

Whilst sculpture and architecture were also affected by these new ideas within art, their period of changes occurred at a later stage. Initially, fine art painting appeared to be the first creative sphere that abandoned traditional views in favor of a Modern outlook that acutely reflected society at the time.

In the centuries that preceded the Modern era, many advancements were made in the numerous styles that developed, as shown in movements such as the Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo periods . The prevailing characteristic that appeared throughout these movements in art was the idealization of the subject matter.

Instead of painting exactly what they saw, artists were known to paint what they imagined to be the epitome of their subject.

The first Modern artist who veered away from these traditional values of art was Gustave Courbet, who sought to establish his own distinct style in the mid-19 th century. Courbet achieved this with his large 1948 – 1850 painting, Burial at Ornans , as he portrayed a funeral of an ordinary man with filthy farmworkers surrounding the open grave. This angered the formal art academy, as only works devoted to classical myths or historical scenes were seen as appropriate subject matter for a painting of this proportion.

Despite being shunned for this artwork, Courbet’s painting went on to be highly influential to the following generations of Modern artists. This idea of rejecting artworks previously reserved for religious and important imagery was embraced by artists when Modernism fully developed, with artists creating immense artworks to depict the lives and struggles of common society as they saw fit.

The Influence of the Industrial Revolution

The onset of the Industrial Revolution in France in the mid-19 th century was seen as a turning point in both the world’s history and the elements of formal art. With the invention and rapid advancement of technology, artists began to abandon a romanticized view of the world in order to accurately depict what they were seeing. This drastic urbanization led to a change in the pace and quality of ordinary life, with artists feeling compelled to represent this change in the works.

Many people began to relocate from rural farms into city centers in order to find work, which transferred the center of life from the country and villages to the growing urban capitals. Artists were drawn to these rapid developments and began to depict the new visual landscapes that emerged in society, as they bustled with a variety of modern wonders and styles that were waiting to be fully explored.

A significant technological advancement that occurred within this time frame was the invention of the camera in 1888 , which began to rapidly progress. As technology began to develop, photography became more and more accessible to the general public. Suddenly, ordinary people were able to create their own portraits simply by taking a photograph, instead of commissioning an artwork to be made.

This development in portraiture presented a threat to traditional artistic modes of portraying a subject, as no existing artforms were able to capture the same degree of detail and depth as a photograph could. Due to the accuracy of photography, artists were forced to find new methods of expression, which led to new ideas and paradigms in the artistic community.

The Influence of War

Whilst modern society believed in the idea of progress and its many benefits, this belief faded when the First World War began. This period of time sparked further outrage that was felt in connection to traditional art, as artists began to question the morality of urbanization if it could lead to something as gruesome as war.

World War One had a destructive impact on Europe and on the minds of every individual that it reached. A noticeable shift in artistic creation happened after the war, as societies began to distance themselves from its aftermath. Cities began to quickly expand, which led artists, writers, and philosophers to begin adopting views and beliefs that differed from those that existed prior to the war.

Some artists turned towards notions of beauty, order, and harmony within their modern works as a way to offset the disorder, separation, and ugliness that was left from the war. Others began to represent the individuals as hollow and ghostlike within their artworks, in an attempt to refer to the destruction that the war had caused. This was very noticeable in the artworks that formed part of the German Expressionist movement during World War One.

However, some artists viewed this fragmentation and deformity of figures in the art to be cruel, as society had already suffered so much death and pain when soldiers returned home.

Some artists believed that returning to prewar Cubism and Expression was impossible, and so instead looked ahead for a new form of expression that would appropriately capture their current time whilst not coming across as brutal.

Main Characteristics of Modern Art

Lasting for almost an entire century, Modern Art involved multiple different art movements that all incorporated a variety of different elements and techniques. Modernism embraced everything in its subsequent movements, including pure abstraction, hyperrealism, and anti-art styles to name a few. Due to the movement’s great diversity, it is difficult to consider any unifying characteristics which can be used to define this era.

However, one thing that can be said about Modernism Art that managed to separate it from prior movements, as well as the Postmodern movement which followed it, was that artists truly believed that their art was important and held real value. This differed from their predecessors who simply assumed that their work was valuable if it incorporated traditional elements, purely because the art academies told them so.

Despite there being no singular defining characteristic of Modern Art, it incorporated various important characteristics over a few of the movements. The first characteristic was that most Modern Art movements attempted to create a new type of art, through using styles such as collage art, assemblage, animation, photography, land art , and performance art.

The second characteristic was that most modern painters attempted to make use of new materials when creating art, such as attaching fragments of newspapers and other items to canvases. A good example of this is artist Marcel Duchamp, who popularized the use of readymade objects through his iconic artworks which he essentially created out of trash. By using a variety of new materials, a type of assemblage art was created, which allowed some artists to combine a variety of different and ordinary materials in one singular work.

The third characteristic that most Modernists incorporated into their work was a vivid use of color. The movements that made use of this technique the most were Fauvism and Expressionism, as artists practicing within these genres tended to exploit color in a variety of ways so as to emphasize the emotions they were attempting to convey.

Lastly, the fourth characteristic that was used within these Modernism movements was the invention of new techniques. Examples of this include automatic drawing and frottage that were invented by Surrealist artists , and benday dots and silkscreen painting that were introduced by Pop artists and brought into formal art.

Criticisms of Modern Art

Like every other artistic period, Modern Art had its fair share of criticisms. Due to the fact that Modernism disregarded conventional elements of art and placed emphasis on freedom of expression, experimentation, and radicalism, it was met with complete disbelief and outrage from audiences. Modernism also managed to alienate certain audiences through its eccentric and unpredictable effects, such as the disturbing motifs that were included in Surrealist artworks.

A major criticizer of the Modern Art era was the Nazi government in Germany, who deemed the artworks that fell into the bracket of Modernism as narcissistic and nonsensical. The Nazis went so far as to label Modern Art as “degenerate art”, and had some works belonging to the German Expressionism movement destroyed.

Most Important Movements Within Modernism

As Modernism was merely an umbrella term for a variety of different movements that came into existence after the Industrial Revolution and in the early 20 th century, it is easy to wonder: what is Modernism? Essentially, Modernism was a period in which many movements existed. What made these movements similar was the unifying characteristic that rejected all traditional forms of art, which made them each modern within their own sense.

Impressionism (1870s – 1880s)

Seen as an important precursor to the Modernist movement, Impressionism made famous the use of non-naturalist colors in the artworks that were created. The importance of Impressionism was demonstrated by artist Claude Monet , whose landscape works focused on capturing transient moments of light and color in excruciating detail.

This attention to detail was also seen when artists chose the colors within their artworks, as these vivid and shocking colors were said to emphasize the emotions that they felt. Additionally, Impressionists made use of loose and highly textured brushstrokes that made the painting unrecognizable if viewed from up close. These specific techniques made Impressionism very disliked in the conventional art spheres, as the works created did not conform to the traditional elements of art.

This led to Impressionism being seen as an important influence of Modernism, as it was one of the initial movements to reject the realism associated with traditional art through the color palette and brush strokes used. Impressionism went on to validate the use of unrealistic colors in artworks, which went on to pave the way for the emergence of abstract art . This continued to be upheld as an important characteristic in the Modern Art movements that developed.

Fauvism (1905 – 1907)

Led by Henri Matisse, Fauvism was an incredibly short-lived movement that existed during the mid-1900s in Paris. Despite its lifespan, it was an incredibly dynamic and influential movement and was seen as a very fashionable and modern style during its time.

Fauvism is known for launching at the Salon d’Automne , with the movement becoming instantly renowned for its intense, loud, and non-naturalistic colors that were used in the artworks created. This excessive use of color made the previous movement of Impression seem monochromatic in its palette choice, with the use of colors being extremely exaggerated in Fauvism.

The major contribution of Fauvism to the Modern Art movement was its demonstration of the power of color. Fauvism showcased the independent strength that colors possessed, which turned artworks into a force to be reckoned with when various colors were combined. Additionally, Fauvism was seen as a highly subjective movement, existing as a strong contender to the previous classical artistic style that was used.

Expressionism (1905 – 1920)

Despite being predicted in the artworks by artists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, the Expressionist movement only truly came into being in pre-war Germany. Two groups within Expressionism emerged named Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter , which went on to define this movement as one that belonged within Modern Art.

Existing before and after World War One, Expressionism was said to be heavily based on the brutalities that occurred. The Expressionist movement used the horror associated with the war as its main subject and created works that accurately echoed the devastation and consequences felt in society after it ended.

Die Brücke , translated to “the bridge”, was formed in Dresden in 1905 and existed as one of the integral groups within Expressionism. Founded by artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Die Brücke made use of figural distortions, a primal straightforwardness of rendering, and expressive use of color in its artworks.

The second essential group within the Expressionist movement was Der Blaue Reider . Known as “the Blue Rider”, this group was founded by Wassily Kandinsky in Munich in 1911 and centered around the potential of pure abstraction within the art that was created. Kandinsky also argued that abstraction offered completeness that mere representation did not.

The importance of Expressionism within Modernism was that the movement popularized the idea of subjectivity in painting. Additionally, the vivid color palette used in Expressionist artworks existed as a fundamental characteristic within other Modern Art movements.

Cubism (1908 – 1914)

Developed by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Cubism existed as quite a harsh and challenging style of painting. This art form differed greatly from previous movements that were inspired by the techniques of linear perspective and softly curved volumes made famous in the Renaissance. Instead, Cubism made use of a compositional arrangement of flat and shattered planes that were combined to make up a painting.

Cubism was developed into two versions, namely Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism. Analytical Cubism, which existed from 1910 to 1012, examined the use of basic shapes and overlapping surfaces to portray the individual forms of the subjects in a painting. Synthetic Cubism appeared after and ran from 1912 to 1914. This style emphasized on including characteristics such as simple shapes and bright colors that held hardly any depth in the artworks that were created.

Despite its influence over abstract art, the appeal surrounding Cubism was extremely limited. However, an important contribution of the Cubism movement within Modern Art was that it offered an entirely new alternative to standard perspective due to its creation of the flat picture plane.

Futurism (1909 – 1944)

The Futurist movement, founded by Italian art theorist and poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was an art form that celebrated technology, speed, inventions such as the automobile and the airplane, and scientific achievement.

This movement saw all of these avenues of development as worthy of praise and believed that they were responsible for the advancement of modern society. Futurism captured the dynamism and energy that existed in the modern world and proposed the creation of art that celebrated modernity and the development of technology in all its forms.

Existing as a heavily influential movement, it borrowed elements from other eras such as Neo-Impressionism, Italian Divisionism, and Cubism. This was demonstrated through the splintered forms and numerous viewpoints that were typical of some Futurist artworks.

Futurism was at its most influential stage between 1909 and 1914, as World War One brought the first wave of Futurism to a close. This led artists to turn to different styles that incorporated elements of modernity. However, after the war had ended, Marinetti revived the movement and continued to develop into what was called second-generation Futurism. Thus, Futurism was seen as a significant Modern Art movement as it introduced the element of movement into art and linked the concept of beauty to scientific achievement.

Dadaism (1916 – 1924)

Seen as the first anti-art movement to be established, Dada was an art practice that rebelled against the system which had allowed the atrocity of World War One to take place. Dadaism began at the Cabaret Voltaire in Switzerland and was led by a group of artists who had relocated to the neutral country during the outbreak of the war.

The boisterous, facetious, and iconoclastic performances that were created were intended to lay heavy criticism on the bourgeois society and the economic forces that the Dadaists blamed for the onset of war. Dadaism quickly became a revolutionary movement as its main aim was to undermine the art establishment in an attempt to point out the futility in order and tradition as it led to war.

Using performance art that could not be commodified, the Dada movement advocated for the eradication of the commercial art institution along with its traditional concepts and reasons. Dada artists embraced the notions of irrationality and originality within their works, as demonstrated by artists such as Jean Arp, Hugo Ball, and Marcel Duchamp.

Existing as the most notable artist within the Dada movement was Duchamp, whose infamous 1917 Fountain caused enormous controversy due to him merely making use of an ordinary urinal in his artwork and submitting it for exhibition. Duchamp also introduced the idea of the “ready-mades” into art, which was the use of everyday items in place of traditional artistic elements.

Dadaism existed as an important movement in Modern Art, as it managed to disrupt the traditional art academy through its anarchistic tendencies. Dadaism brought great creativity and critique into modern society, as demonstrated through its embrace of junk items as art, which forced audiences to consider what intellect within art and society truly meant.

Surrealism (1924 – 1950s)

Existing right after the Dadaism movement and still maintaining its seditious humor, Surrealism was established in Paris by writer Andre Breton. Surrealism was seen as the last significant avant-garde movement that existed in the interwar period, as it began to fade out with the onset of World War Two.

Evolving out of the nihilistic Dada movement, Surrealism rejected the notions of order and beauty within its artworks, yet it was not viewed as anti-art or heavily political. Surrealism was built on a preference for the irrational and created artworks that used dreams, hallucination, and random and automatic image generation. This was done to evade rational thought processes in the creation of art, in addition to demonstrating the absurdity that existed in the intellectual minds of society.

Surrealist artists avoided any notion of rationality within their works. Instead, artists leaned towards psychological concepts about the unconscious mind that was primarily introduced by neurologist Sigmund Freud, who believed that this was where the base of artistic creativity lay. Thus, Surrealism attempting to connect with the unconscious mind through interpreting dreams and using automatism within the artworks created.

The main contribution of Surrealism to Modernism was its ability to generate a refreshing set of new artworks that were constructed out of one’s subconscious mind. Surrealism was able to introduce a period of imagination and fun into the interwar years within Modern Art.

Abstract Expressionism (1940s – 1950s)

Developed in New York City after the ending of World War Two, Abstract Expressionism was established by a group of vaguely associated artists who sought to create a stylistically varied body of work. Abstract Expressionism, also known as the New York School, introduced extreme new directions in art and relocated the art world’s attention to focus on Abstract Modernist art.

Abstract Expressionism, which was strongly influenced by European artists living in America, consisted of two main styles. The first was an extremely energetic form of gestural painting that was introduced by Jackson Pollock, and the second was a more passive mood-directed style known as Color Field painting made famous by Mark Rothko .

Abstract Expressionism aimed to create art that, while still abstract in nature, was able to evoke great expression and emotion as an effect. This was inspired by the previous movement of Surrealism, as Abstract Expressionists also subscribed to the notion that art should develop from the unconscious mind. The influence of Abstract Expressionism within Modernism was its ability to popularize abstraction, in addition to inventing a new style called “action painting”, as demonstrated by Pollock’s drip paintings.

Pop Art (1950s – 1960s)

The last influential movement said to exist within Modern Art was Pop Art. Initially emerging in America and England in the late 1950s, Pop Art reflected the popular culture and mass consumerism that existed in America in the early 1960s. Pop Art existed as a dominant form of avant-garde art due to its brazen and easy-to-recognize imagery, its use of vivid block colors, and the inclusion of famous icons.

Andy Warhol was an exemplary figure of the Pop Art movement, as his use of famous icons and popular celebrities in his artworks made his work incredibly well-known. Pop Art also branched into the creation of posters, advertisements, comic strips, and product packaging, to demonstrate the flexibility of art within the new consumer-driven society. Additionally, these materials helped to reduce the separation that existed between commercial art and fine art.

Essentially, Pop Art celebrated the consumerism of the post-World War Two period. The movement rejected Abstract Expressionism in an effort to praise and subsequently glorify advertising, the material consumer culture, and the image representation of the mass production era. Thus, the main contribution of Pop Art within Modern Art was its demonstration that any art deemed worthy could be unsophisticated and mass-marketed, in addition to being constructed out of mere commodities.

Modern Art in America

Due to the expansiveness of Modern Art, it is not easy to integrate the various movements of America and Europe into a chronological timeline. A multitude of historical and sociocultural factors exist for both American and European Modernism, which makes combining the two variations of Modern Art very challenging.

Modern Art took slightly longer to ground itself in America among its artists, critics, and the public. Prior to the development of Modernism, there was a variety of other American movements that had started to embrace elements of modernity in the artworks created.

The event that acted as the true catalyst for the growth of Modernism within America was the 1913 Armory Show, which was exhibited in New York. Nearly 1300 artworks created by 300 artists were displayed, with two-thirds of these artists being American. The style within these works included Ashcan, French Impressionist, Cubist, and Fauvist , which gave fellow artists, collectors, critics, and the public a glimpse into the future of Modern Art.

Modernist ideas began to grow within the minds of American artists , which were encouraged in the upcoming years by refugee artists who fled Europe at the onset of World War One. Additionally, the influx of artists who left Nazi-occupied Europe in the run-up to World War Two also brought new techniques and philosophies, which greatly inspired American artists and helped spur the development of Modern Art.

The introduction of Abstract Expressionism was also seen as a major turning point in American Modernism, as artists were largely influenced by the number of European avant-garde artists who had settled in America. Due to the country’s economic advantage that emerged after the end of World War Two, New York replaced Paris as the unofficial capital of Western art. This was thought to lead to the eventual appearance of Modern Art as a full-blown movement within America.

Notable Modern Artists and Their Well-Known Artworks

Throughout the expansive period of Modern Art, many different artistic movements embraced the rejection of traditionalism and the introduction of modernity within the Modernism paintings created. Listed below are some of the more notable artists and their artworks to come out of the Modernism era.

Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906)

A significant artist existing in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist period was Paul Cézanne, whose artworks have been considered as important precursors to the development of Modern Art. Completed in the year that Cézanne passed away, The Large Bathers was painted from 1898 to 1906 and existed as one of the finest examples of Cézanne’s investigation of the theme of the modern and courageous nude within a natural setting.

Cézanne created a series of these bathing nudes, with The Large Bathers existing as both his last and his largest composition in the series. Within this work, Cézanne depicted the female nudes in numerous effortless positions, with the ease that he created his composition being likened to him arranging objects in a still life. The archway formed by the overlapping trees and sky helped to ground the figures in the middle of the painting, in addition to turning them into the focal point through drawing the eyes of the viewer inwards.

When painting The Large Bathers , Cézanne attempted to create an artwork that would be viewed as timeless. He achieved this through his deviation from the Impressionist themes of light and natural effect and instead composed the scene as a series where his emphasis fell on the carefully constructed figures. Cézanne was more interested in the way his forms were able to occupy space as opposed to depicting his visual observations as realistically as possible.

This artwork was seen as a significant predecessor in the development of Cubism, as its disruption of illusionism and growing abstraction were elements that were later adopted in the Cubist movement. The brushstrokes within this painting were obvious, which gave Cézanne’s work an incomplete quality. Additionally, he boldly left traces of his working patterns on his paintings, with his colors blending into each other at certain points.

Despite its seemingly unrefined state, The Large Bathers is still seen as a masterpiece of Modern Art due to the characteristics it introduced to the art world. Cézanne’s work was praised for its use of vivid yet cool colors which swirled around the canvas, with the commanding nature of his colors later going on to be an important characteristic within Modern Art.

Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)

Another influential artist within the Impressionism period was Claude Monet. Impressionism was generally thought to be the first fully Modern movement to exist, with some of its characteristics influencing the later movements in the Modernism period. Within his landscape artworks, Monet placed focus on light and atmosphere, which existed as key characteristics of the Impressionism movement. In his 1873 painting, titled Impression, Sunrise , Monet demonstrated his focus on the same elements.

Impression, Sunrise is seen as Monet’s pioneering Modernism artwork. A misty sunrise over a French harbor is depicted, along with a very blurred background. The orange and yellow tones chosen by Monet contrast vividly with the darker ships, with little to no detail being visible to viewers at all.

Monet’s loose style of painting and use of abstraction evoked what he felt and experienced when painting the scene at the harbor, which was a very uncommon approach for a painter at that time. Additionally, the title of his work conveyed the ephemeral nature of his painting, as it was based purely on what Monet observed at the time of the sunrise.

This painting was very unusual of Monet’s own work during this time and of the Impressionist movement in general, as little to no Impressionist methods of light and color were shown. The colors chosen were incredibly restrained and at certain places, Monet left pieces of the canvas entirely visible.

Monet’s work was considered to be extremely atmospheric and subjective as opposed to analytical, which would go on to be an important characteristic of Modern Art. Monet kept details to a bare minimum within Impression, Sunrise , with the painting making use of a fleeting and near-abstract technique. Due to this, the style of his painting drew more attention than the actual composition itself, which outraged viewers at the time. Audiences even claimed that they were unable to identify what they were viewing at all.

Due to the techniques employed by Monet within Impression, Sunrise , this work is viewed as an important precursor to Modernism, as it made use of a variety of styles that would go on to later inform other Modern movements.

Georges Seurat (1859 – 1891)

An important Neo-Impressionist French artist was Georges Seurat, who’s paintings seemed to supersede his own reputation. Seurat altered the direction of Modern Art through his introduction of the Neo-Impressionism movement , which emerged at a time in modern France where painters were searching for new methods to explore. Existing as the best-known and largest painting done by Seurat is his 1884 to 1886 masterpiece, titled Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte , which was an important Neo-Impressionist work.

Seurat’s artwork depicts relaxed individuals in a park on an island in the Seine River known as “La Grande Jatte”, which was a popular place for middle- and upper-class Parisians in the 19 th century. What makes this painting so remarkable is that its theme captured something as boring and ordinary as a normal Sunday afternoon, yet it still carried an air of mystery.

At first glance, this work appears to be a painting of ordinary people relaxing in the park. However, upon closer inspection, truly peculiar images come to light. For example, the lady carrying the parasol on the right appears to be walking a monkey on a leash, and the little girl wearing the white dress that is placed in the center of the painting is the only figure who is depicted without a shadow.

Additionally, Seurat’s bizarre artwork introduced a new style of painting called Pointillism , with this technique still being known by this name today. This painting technique was highly systematic and near scientific in its development but was relatively easy for other artists to copy. Seurat started with a layer of small horizontal brushstrokes of complementary colors , upon which he later added small dots that appeared solid and radiant from afar.

This was done to prove his theory that painting in dots was able to create a brighter color than painting in strokes, as the viewer’s eye would be able to optically blend the colors from a distance. This led to a radical turning point within the Modern Art era, as artists were presented with an alternative way to define forms within their artworks as opposed to making use of the worn-out traditional methods.

Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954)

Existing as an important artist within the Fauvism movement was Henri Matisse , who was well-known for his expressive use of color and his fluid and original drawing techniques. Matisse is commonly regarded as an artist who helped define the groundbreaking developments within visual arts, with some of his paintings existing as important works in early Modernism.

One such work is his painting, titled Le Bonheur de Vivre (The Joy of Life) , which he painted from 1905 to 1906. Within this work, Matisse depicted the figures of blue-green and pink nudes dancing, singing, and frolicking in what seemed to be an unblemished and multicolored version of Eden.

Through overemphasizing and simplifying his figures at odd angles, Matisse was able to emphasize the canvas as a mere two-dimensional support for the harmonious contrast of color as opposed to any sort of precise depiction of nature.

Matisse separated color from reasoning within his artwork, as he used these bright tones as an expressive medium that was not intended to make any visual sense.  It was thought that this technique was used to introduce the concept of Primitivism into 20 th century Modernism, with artists like Matisse choosing to paint naïve and simple artworks in an era dominated by rapid industrialization and modernization. Additionally, Matisse’s work implied a lot about the new territory of Modernism that was emerging.

Giacomo Balla (1871 – 1958)

Futurist artist Giacomo Balla produced some incredibly well-known artworks within Modern Art. As a key proponent of Futurism, Balla skillfully depicted light, movement, and speed in his artworks. What set him aside from other Futurists was that his focus on movement did not relate to that produced by a machine, which led his artworks to be quite playful and witty in nature.

Balla’s most notable work, as well as the most well-known work of the Futurist movement, was his 1912 painting, titled Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash . Within this work, Balla combined the idea of art and science, which was influenced by his fascination with chronophotographic studies of animals in motion. Chronophotography existed as a technique whereby several photos were taken in quick succession to capture the movement of a subject.

The artwork depicts a black dachshund walking alongside a woman wearing dark shoes and a dress, which added to the monochrome feeling of the painting. Both the feet of the figure and the dog are shown to be in speedy motion, as signified by their slight blurring and the multiplication of their parts, as well as the numerous depictions of the dog lead.

A striking feature of this artwork is the quiet sincerity that is implied by the skittering dog. Thus, while the painting’s title expressed the lively movement as seen by the motion of the dog, the peaceful honesty present in the work contradicts this.

To reinforce the perception of speed, Balla painted the ground using diagonal lines and positioned his signature and the date at a lively angle. This work made use of characteristics that were significant within Modernism, such as the fascination with speed and technology, which were later referred to in other modern movements.

Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)

An important artist working within the Cubism movement was Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. His artworks have been categorized into different periods, such as his Blue Period and his Rose Period, which allowed Picasso to experiment with a variety of styles. These include both Analytic and Synthetic Cubism, as well as making use of some elements of Neoclassicism and Surrealism in his later works.

Out of all his Cubist works, his 1907 painting titled Les Demoiselles d’Avignon remains one of his most notable works. Considered to be the artwork that essentially launched the Cubism movement, Picasso’s work was met with substantial controversy for its portrayal of a brothel scene and for the rough, prominent, and abstract forms he used to represent the women.

When painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon , Picasso accumulated inspiration from various sources, such as African tribal art , Expressionism, and the Post-Impressionist artworks of Paul Cézanne. These sources are noticeable within Picasso’s work, as demonstrated by several of the women whose faces seemed to be modeled on African masks, as well as the sculptural deconstruction of space that originated from the works of Cézanne.

The multiplicity of the styles used within this painting clearly represented a turning point in Picasso’s career, as well as managing to separate his version of Modern Art from the Western artistic tradition. Thus, the integration of these diverse sources within a single painting demonstrated the new approach to art-making that artists had adopted. This also conveyed how the perspective of artists had expanded with the steady rise of the Modernist movement.

Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968)

Commonly regarded as one of the most influential artists who helped define the innovative developments in the plastic arts at the start of the 20 th century is Marcel Duchamp . Additionally, Duchamp is also commonly recognized as the face of the Dada movement, in which he exists as one of its most notable contributors.

Duchamp’s invention of the “readymade”, in which he made use of common items and claimed them to be artworks, rattled the traditional and formal art academies. In using ordinary items, that were sometimes even considered to be junk, Duchamp managed to separate the items from their utilitarian purpose in order to present them as new forms of art. Thus, Duchamp helped to reformulate what made essentially made up a work of art within the modern era.

His most well-known work, created in 1917, remains Fountain . Within this readymade sculpture, Duchamp made use of a store-bought urinal which he signed with the pseudonym “R. Mutt”, before submitting the work to the Society of Independent Artists in New York for exhibition. Fountain caused enormous controversy upon being submitted with the society ultimately rejecting Duchamp’s sculpture, which caused a great uproar in the artistic community at that time.

Duchamp, along with his sculpture, demonstrated that an extraordinary work of art no longer required the act of creation, as an artist simply needed to label the work as art in order for it to be deemed as such. This thought quickly spanned across Europe and the rest of the world, influencing the art-making techniques that existed. Thus, this Dada sculpture is regarded as a major avant-garde landmark in 20 th century Modern Art.

Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989)

Spanish artist Salvador Dalí was an important figure within the Surrealism movement and was celebrated for his technical skills, drawing ability, and the remarkable yet peculiar images in his work. Existing as an incredibly well-known work of art is his 1931 painting, titled The Persistence of Memory .

This painting depicts an otherworldly landscape in a very organic manner, where time was portrayed as a series of melting watches that were surrounded by crawling ants. The idea of decay as a natural process held great fascination for Dalí, with this concept often coming up throughout history with critics attempting to understand the meaning behind his work.

However, when asked about the meaning of his work, Dalí continuously stated that he did not know the meaning. Additionally, he refused to associate his depictions of clocks with any tangible concepts, simply referring to them only as the “camembert of time.”

Through creating haunting dreamscapes in his Modernism paintings, Dalí succeeded in portraying images of solid absurdity. Dalí developed a technique called a paranoiac-critical method, in which he would self-induce a hypnotic state. He believed that this would allow him to break free of reality as the visions for his paintings would only appear to him in this unrestricted state of mind. Thus, in The Persistence of Memory , a metaphorically empty space is created out of Dalí’s subconscious mind, where time truly had no power.

Dalí’s obsession with dream imagery and metaphor would go on to firmly cement his place in the Surrealism movement of the early 20 th century. Additionally, the unrestrained and seemingly wild thoughts that he translated into his paintings referred to the increasing artistic freedom and experimentation that had developed in Modernism.

Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956)

The Abstract Expressionism movement developed in New York City as a post-war movement in the 1940s, with Jackson Pollock going on to become one of the movement’s most notable artists. In addition to defining the concept of Action Painting, Pollock developed his “drip” style of painting, which led to him being seen as one of the influential driving forces behind Abstract Modernist art.

Drip painting involved Pollock setting up his canvases horizontally on the ground and then, with a paintbrush or paint jar, walking all around them and letting paint fall wherever he desired. This style within his Modernism paintings allowed Pollock to uncover a new abstract, visual language from his unconscious that moved beyond the techniques associated with Surrealism.

An important drip painting of his, created in 1950, is Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) . At this period of time, Pollock was at the peak of his career and created this nonrepresentational painting out of an unstretched canvas and thinned paint. With his canvas flat on the floor, Pollock dripped, dribbled, scumbled, poured, flicked, and splattered the paint onto the canvas. He then made use of sticks and knives to strengthen and intensify the thick and lyrical composition, which included intricate labyrinths of line.

Within Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) , there is no main point to focus on and no ranking of elements, which allowed Pollock to create a composition where every bit of the surface was regarded as equal. At certain places, Pollock’s work evoked elements of both Impressionism and Surrealism. Pollock’s work was an important contribution to Modern Art, as it demonstrated the complete freedom and lack of formality that artists were experimenting with.

Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987)

Lastly, a notable Pop Artist within the Modern Art era was Andy Warhol. Creating artworks that made use of commercial reproduction, Warhol upheld the Modernist art notion that celebrated the development of technology and the use of machinery. An iconic artwork, that falls within both the Modernism and Postmodernism era, is his 1962 silkscreen, titled Marilyn Diptych .

Within this work, Warhol mass-produced a well-known image of Marilyn Monroe using the silkscreen method and repeated the image of her face 50 times in both color and black and white. At first glance, the sheer amount of Monroe’s face encourages a form of worship to the legendary icon. However, Warhol merely selected this image due to its prominence in popular culture at the time and went on to immortalize it as art.

Marilyn Diptych , along with Warhol’s other artworks, embraced the notion of Modernism through their continuous reference to consumerism and commodification. Additionally, the advancement of technology is demonstrated through the method of production chosen, with Warhol demonstrating the influence that pop culture held over society at the time.

Modernism into Postmodernism

While some art historians believe that Modernist art principles have lived on into the current 21 st century, others have stated that they evolved into a movement now known as Postmodernism. This movement was said to symbolize an intentional departure from the Modernist values that had previously guided artistic creation and involved a wider range of approaches in art such as visual art, literature, design, and other avenues.

Although existing as a new form of art at the time, Modernism eventually went on to be seen in all the institutions against which it initially rebelled. This led to the development of Postmodernism, which sought to break the established rules about style and worked to introduce even more freedom into the creation of art.

Postmodernism was defined by attitudes of incredulity and irony, as it blatantly dismissed the idea that art or life had any intrinsic value. Postmodernism began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s and criticized concepts such as reality, human nature, rationale, science, morality, and social progress.

Artists within Postmodernism began to experiment with digital, conceptual, and performance art, among other styles. Postmodernism aimed to surpass the limits set by Modernism and went on to pick apart Modern Art’s grand narrative so as to investigate cultural codes, politics, and social ideology in their immediate context.

It was this engagement with notions of the surrounding world that differentiated Postmodern Art from Modern Art, as well as appointing Postmodernism as a unique factor within the developing Contemporary Art . Postmodernism went on to explore several movements, including Conceptual Art , Feminist Art, Installation Art, and Performance Art.

Modernism was a period of art that encapsulated a variety of different art movements under the same title. Modernists attempted to reflect society exactly as they perceived it and made use of various styles that could adequately capture their thoughts and feelings. Thus, Modern Art existed as a period of great experimentation and rebellion, as the traditional aspects previously dictating artistic creation were rejected in favor of the techniques emerging from the rapidly developing industrialized world.

Take a look at our Modernism Art webstory here!

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Isabella, Meyer, “Modern Art – An Exploration of the 20th-Century Modernist Movement.” Art in Context. April 28, 2021. URL: https://artincontext.org/modern-art/

Meyer, I. (2021, 28 April). Modern Art – An Exploration of the 20th-Century Modernist Movement. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/modern-art/

Meyer, Isabella. “Modern Art – An Exploration of the 20th-Century Modernist Movement.” Art in Context , April 28, 2021. https://artincontext.org/modern-art/ .

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The Modernism Lab

The Modernism Lab, a virtual space dedicated to collaborative research into the roots of literary modernism, was compiled from 2005 to 2012. Through this project, we hoped, by a process of shared investigation, to describe the emergence of modernism out of a background of social, political, and existential ferment. The project covered the period 1914-1926, from the outbreak of the first world war to the full-blown emergence of English modernism. The Lab has supported undergraduate classes on Modern Poetry, the Modern British Novel, Modernist London, and Joyce’s Ulysses , and a graduate course in English and Comparative Literature, “Moderns, 1914-1926,” as well as a class on modern German literature at the University of Notre Dame. Students in the classes have contributed materials to the website and used it as the platform for their research. The main components of the original website were an innovative research tool, YNote, containing information on the activities of 24 leading modernist writers during this crucial period and a wiki consisting of brief interpretive essays on literary works and movements of the period.

The project as a whole aimed to reconstitute the social and intellectual webs that linked these writers—correspondence, personal acquaintance, reading habits—and their influence on the major works of the period. We were interested, too, in broadening the canon of works studied in the period by paying attention to minor works by major authors, major works by minor authors, and works that may have been influential in their time but that are no longer much read.

Questions of particular importance for our research involved the modernists’ engagement with their literary, intellectual, and historical context. We were particularly interested in Anglo-European literary relations. A typical question of this sort would be, “How did the translations of Dostoevsky by Constance Garnett influence English writing in the period?” Another major concern was the tracing of intellectual trends: “How and when did psychoanalysis make its impact felt in modernist writing?” We paid particular attention to the literary manifestations of a broader historical context, including the modernists’ involvement with political movements such as socialism, feminism, liberalism, nationalism, and imperialism. Another major theme was the attitudes of these writers to formal religion and to alternatives such as atheism, neo-paganism, spiritualism, and the occult. The database traced the empirical information—such as references to Dostoevsky or Freud or Tagore in writers’ correspondence—while the wiki offered interpretive accounts of how these influences played out in the modernists’ formal and thematic concerns.

Lab vs. Archive vs. Reference Work

Our orientation towards ongoing research differentiated this project from other major websites devoted to humanistic research. One very successful model has been the electronic archive—a collection of primary documents made available on the web (e.g. the Modernist Journals Project or The Valley of the Shadow). In the case of our period, however, the potential archive of primary documents is massive. Questions of copyright also limit the applicability of this model. In our original website, we therefore included a set of links to existing web-based archives, including the collections of the Beinecke Library, Project Gutenberg, and Google Book Search.

Another model, typified by the Victorian Web, offers authoritative essays on the period. We recognize the value of such an approach, but ours was, by design, more experimental. As a Laboratory, we posed research questions and worked together to answer them. In a prototype of Modernism Lab, for example, Pericles Lewis and his graduate students created an archive of information from the letters, biographies, and published statements of 12 major modernist writers during the four months immediately following Britain’s declaration of war on August 4, 1914. This information served as the basis of Lewis’s article, “Inventing Literary Modernism During the Great War,” which argues that these authors’ contemporary reaction to the war continued to shape modernism for years to come.

While we have expanded the chronological field of inquiry, we used a comparative method to address some of the following major research questions:

• What was the influence of figures associated with the modernist movement and techniques, like Dorothy Richardson and May Sinclair, who are less often read today than they once were?
• What role did Edwardian writers like Wells, Galsworthy, Bennett, and Ford play in the development of literary modernism, before and after Woolf’s critical essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”?
• What Russian literature were the modernists reading and how did this affect their sense of their own literary endeavors?
• How much did the modernists know about the development of psychoanalysis and at what level did they engage with this emergent discipline in their own work?
• How did formal techniques like free indirect discourse and stream of consciousness, and genres like the Bildungsroman and the travelogue, develop and change in this period?

A collaborative project, the Modernism Lab  drew on the efforts of over eighty graduate and undergraduate students at Yale and ten other universities.

History of the Modernism Lab

The Modernism Lab has its roots in Pericles Lewis’s courses on Modern British literature. In 2005, Professor Lewis received a grant from the ELI/Davis foundation to develop a website for the study of the Modern British Novel. That website became the nucleus for the Modernism Lab. Lewis’s book  The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism , based partly on his undergraduate teaching, became the basis for some of the first wiki entries posted on the Modernism Lab. His research has been supported by Hilles and Griswold fund grants at Yale.

The Yale Modernism lab was created as a space where students and established scholars could share insights on the work of modernist authors and collaborate in analysis, while reflecting the modernists’ spirit of collaboration, shared readership and reflection, and the exchange of ideas.

Other projects like  the Victorian Web  and  the Walt Whitman Archive , both of which pre-date the Yale Modernism Lab, work to accomplish similar goals, although more weight is placed in creating a database of primary resources or curated essays, in contrast with the Modernism Lab, which focuses on contributions generated by students and scholars.

Professor Lewis explained, “In the first few years of this century, the Web 1.0 model of publishing was being replaced by the Web 2.0 model that emphasized user-generated, dynamic content. We were aiming to bring that approach to scholarly work. If we were doing it today, we would probably be interested in what is now called Web 3.0, that is the semantic web and using machine learning to approach literary and biographical sources.”

As Anthony Domestico, a former managing editor of the Modernism Lab who is now an Assistant Professor of Literature at SUNY Purchase, explained, ““we’re always hearing about the crisis in the humanities, how we need to justify our existence — and I am resistant to trying to justify the existence of the humanities in a certain way because when you get into an instrumental argument by saying that humanities, that we should continue to fund the humanities because we make good workers, or we should fund the humanities because, you know, they train you for the kinds of critical thinking that can be useful in…consulting or something like that. I get very weary of that. I think that we should support the humanities because they are good in and of themselves, not because they serve this greater instrumental purpose. But — I think one way, if not to justify the humanities, in a way, make the inherent value of the humanities more obvious, is by writing for a broader audience, is by sharing your work with people outside the narrow coterie that is modernism.”

Since its original conception, the Modernism Lab has been widely used as a public resource for modernist research. Its editors continue to receive emails inquiring about the Modernism Lab wiki essays, from both professors who use the site as a pedagogical tool and students (like myself, as I referenced the wikis in writing my undergraduate thesis on James Joyce) who have used the wikis as a resource for analyzing modernist textsm(and, as you can see in Sam Alexander’s reflections, his student even plagiarized a Modernism Lab in his class!). Contributor Kirsty Dootson informed me her piece on Wyndham Lewis’s  Time and Western Man  had been cited in a scholarly book about James Joyce.

For technical reasons, we have migrated the site to a new address and to WordPress. This version of the site, designed, assembled, and developed during the summer of 2017, provides an archive of the original essays and collected media of the original site, which were primarily compiled between 2005 and 2012. We were unable to migrate the YNote database, which is discussed in Sam Alexander’s account of the site’s founding. As Professor Domestico noted, even the wikis did not achieve quite the level of interactivity we had hoped for: “Because, really, what they ended up being were short, more informal essays that were written and shared with the word, but weren’t — we didn’t leave them open to editing by other people — sometimes, you know, I’d look at Sam’s and offer suggestions, he’d look at mine and offer suggestions. Pericles would look at both of ours and offer suggestions. But it wasn’t a true Wiki, in kind of the broadest sense. And maybe a true Wiki isn’t quite what we were going for, I just wish that somehow, I think the Wikis were successful, but they weren’t as collaborative and provisional, as, at least in our initial conception we wanted them to be.”

One reason for this result was a concern with quality control—only about a hundred people had editing rights on the site—but another was probably the tendency of humanities scholarship towards sole authorship.

After 2012, Professor Lewis, the director of the project, largely stopped work on the Modernism Lab, in order to fulfill his new role as President of Yale-NUS College and aid in designing its curriculum. Here, he developed with his team a core curriculum which similarly strove for this spirit of collaboration and conversation in its approach to learning.

The course pages for Professor Lewis’s The Modern British Novel class and his seminar on  Ulysses  have also been preserved under the Modernism Lab’s Undergraduate Gateway. On these pages, you can find course materials, readings, and other resources used in the teaching of these courses, which serve as useful guides for approaching these subjects, in addition to their use as a pedagogical record.

Anthony Domestico, who was a PhD student at Yale and worked with Professor Lewis building and editing the Modernism Lab, explained that part of the intent originally was to profile non-canonical works, by canonical Modernist authors. This branched out into what the Modernism Lab is today, with essays on over 40 different modernist authors and artists, connected along the lines of time, correspondence, and collaboration.

In an interview with Domestico, he emphasized the liberating volume of content that was needed to create the Modernism Lab, explaining that it encouraged students and scholars alike to share more provisional content, and to open themselves up to feedback at an early, more vulnerable stage of composition. Generally, he explains, and particularly with graduate students, people can become isolated during the writing process, and unwilling to share their works-in-progress for fear of revealing flaws oropening themselves up to criticism prematurely. Domestico argues this stems the flow of ideas which conversation and collaboration can facilitate, which is crucial to creating not only the most thorough end-product, but also a more enjoyable, community-based way of working.

As Domestico said, ““a grad student has a very solitary existence — we don’t have to share our work if we don’t want to, and I think it’s good to share your work. Because it forces you to do work, it forces you to be in conversation with other people, other ideas.”

The “laboratory aspect” of the Modernism Lab, then, was sharing provisional work and getting feedback from peers, as opposed to what he described as the typical grad student way of “cordoning yourself off for 8 or 9 months, and then presenting something to the world.” This outlook of accessibility and outward-facing scholarship for graduate education extends to what Domestico sees as an opportunity for humanities academia. Of his hopes for the Modernism Lab’s effect on wider humanities scholarship, Domestico explained, “my hope would be that humanities scholars are less insular. More outward looking in their writing, meaning both that they write more for a popular audience, I mean I think that that’s one good thing about the writing — they were generally understandable by non-specialists.”

Interestingly, this mode of creativity and collaboration replicates the way this period of literature was produced:

“One of the trends within modernist studies is the networks of modernism — and the Modernism Lab ideally was a network of scholars looking at the networks of modernism. I mean, that was part of the purpose of the database itself, was to have an entry for, you know, a bit of Virginia Woolf’s diary, in which she talks about T.S. Eliot with Leonard, or something like that…talking to another modernist about another modernist. So network theory is important to modernist studies right now, and modernists themselves were a very networked movement.”

In fact, in a section of his forthcoming book, Domestico engages with periodical culture in modernist literature (poetry specifically), which was formative in the era’s literary culture. Publications like  The Little Review  and  The Egoist  cultivated networks in literary circles, their contents both growing out of and forging relationships. The structure and collaborative nature of the Modernism Lab, though perhaps imperfectly realized, draws on this value for connectivity and conversation in writing and engaging with literature. It can be described in much the same way that these modernist circles can be described: a group of enthusiastic people talking to each other, printing each other, and connecting each other to friends who could help them.

The web-presence of the Modernism Lab enables a new kind of connectivity in scholarship, and particularly in humanities scholarship. One of the founding goals of this project was to tap into this spirit of collaboration and community and create a more outward-looking kind of humanities scholarship, as Domestico described. In our conversation, he explains, “what we were hoping, for the Modernism Lab, was that it would, both at Yale and ideally rippling out from Yale, serve as a kind of testing space for the kinds of collaborative provisional projects that digital technology seems to enable.”

He continues, “I know for myself I’ve gotten lots of emails from people who read the Wikis. And so I think that, in that sense, it was a success, in that I think it was…a lot more people read our Wiki writing than will ever read any of the scholarly essays we’ve written (laughs).” Sam Alexander expressed a similar kind of amusement that a student in one of his classes had plagiarized a Modernism Lab article from his time as an editor. Both agree that the accessibility of the Modernism Lab online has generated a much wider and more informal audience, facilitating access to the material and breaking down the often insular nature of humanities academia.

In our conversation, Domestico stressed the importance of provisional work, and the accessibility of that provisional work to feedback, in addition to its being more accessible in terms of being useful and understandable to a broader audience of non-specialists.

One of the most successful projects, in Domestico’s view, was the  Mapping Ulysses project , perhaps because of its visual quality and how present and accessible it made the material. Students were enthusiastic, and it was readily understandable what this project was meant to accomplish. Domestico explains, “one tool that grew out of the Modernism Lab work we did was using arcGIS to map Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway, and I think that had a clear pedagogical purpose — the students got really excited to be able to see how characters were moving through the narrative, moving through a city.”

Aside from fulfilling Joyce’s dream (the author painstakingly constructed  Ulysses  street by street and shop by shop, from the Dublin that he knew), these projects thoroughly engaged the students, who were excited to see the plots and characters of these novels mapped out in physical space. This project provided a visual and interactive use of literature, working toward the pedagogical goal of the digital humanities: increased engagement in art and literature by way of technology.

In the interest of cleaning up and facilitating the use of the modernism lab as this testing space, we have used the summer of 2017 to do some renovations. In this next edition of the Modernism Lab, we have decided to do away with the YNote feature, as well as the Digital Archive. However, we will be preserving the Undergraduate Gateway as a record of courses taught by Professor Pericles Lewis, and which utilize the Modernism Lab as a pedagogical tool. In our renovations, we hoped to make the Modernism Lab easier to navigate and more user-friendly, creating a more streamlined look and intuitive interface.

The Modernism Lab’s strength is its enthusiastic pedagogy, providing a space for people curious about this period of literature and wanting to explore it, whether for the first time or the thousandth. Our hope is that its content will continue to be used as a valuable tool in modernism research for many years to come.

—Ally Findley

Sam Alexander, a former Managing Editor of the project, provided his thoughts and reflections on the Modernism Lab — they can be read  here .

Contributors

Project director.

• Pericles Lewis

Managing Editor

• Anthony Domestico (2011-2012)

Associate Editors

• Sam Alexander, Managing Editor (2007-2011)
• Michaela Bronstein
• Colin Gillis
• Elyse Graham
• Tobias Boes, Editor for German Literature and Culture

Instructional Technology Group

• Ken Panko – Project Management, Instructional Design
• Yianni Yessios – Project Management, Technical Design
• Jacob Albert
• Annie Atura
• Anne Aufhauser
• Emily Cersonsky
• Michael Chan
• Patrick Clardy
• Olivia Coates
• Codi Coslet
• Samuel Cross
• Jay Dockendorf
• Merrick Doll
• Kirsty Dootson
• Nathan Ernst
• Colleen Fleshman
• Elizabeth Freund
• Julia Galeota
• Joshua Gang
• Edgar Eduardo Garcia
• Andrew Gates
• Alex Gatlin
• Matthew Gerken
• Stephen Gilb
• Ruth Gilligan
• Charles Ginner
• Kevin Godshall
• Paul Goerhke
• Monika Grzesiak
• Michael Hathaway
• James Heffernan
• Robert Higney
• Kira Hillman
• Steven Hobbs
• Lauren Holmes
• Qingyuan Jiang
• Daniel Jordan
• Andrew Karas
• Eike Kronshage
• Erik Larsen
• Elizabeth Legris
• Marcus Liddell
• Kenneth Ligda
• James Ross Macdonald
• Laura B. Marcus
• Katherine McComic
• Anne-Marie McManus
• Alexandria Miller
• Hayley Mohr
• Mariel Osetinksy
• Emily Petermann
• Annie Pfeifer
• Natalie Prizel
• Elizabeth Pugh
• Heather Rhoda
• Meaghan Rubsam
• Glyn Salton-Cox
• Jesse Schotter
• Michael Shapiro
• Carolyn Sinsky
• Jack Skeffington
• Aaron Steiner
• Aleksandar Stevic
• William Stewart
• William Stone
• Jessica Svendsen
• Nathan Suhr-Sytsma
• Jessica Technow
• Samantha Terkeltaub
• Olena Tsykynovska
• Noah Warren
• Christina Walter
• Robert Wiene
• Andrew Williamson
• Matthew Wilsey
• Ben Zweifach

Editorial Board

• Tobias Boes , University of Notre Dame
• Christopher Bush, Northwestern University
• Susan Chambers, Yale University
• Sarah Cole, Columbia University
• Kevin Dettmar, Pomona College
• Jed Esty, University of Pennsylvania
• Laura Frost, The New School
• Joseph Gordon, Yale University
• Langdon Hammer, Yale University
• Eric Hayot, Pennsylvania State University
• Pericles Lewis, Yale University
• Doug Mao, Johns Hopkins University
• Jesse Matz , Kenyon College
• Barry McCrea, Yale University
• Liesl Olson, University of Chicago Society of Fellows
• Siobhan Phillips, Harvard Society of Fellows
• Jessica Pressman, Yale University
• Martin Puchner, Columbia University
• Megan Quigley, Villanova University
• Ravit Reichman, Brown University
• Victoria Rosner, Texas A&M University
• Paul Saint-Amour, University of Pennsylvania
• Sam See, Yale University
• Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Rutgers University
• Mark Wollaeger, Vanderbilt University
• Alex Woloch, Stanford University

Initial funding was provided by a John and Yvonne McCredie Fellowship in Instructional Technology. Funding was also contributed by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Paul Moore Memorial Fund for Instructional Innovation in Yale College, and the Provost’s Office of Yale University. Technical support was provided by the Instructional Technology Group.

Modernism in Literature: Definition, Characteristics, Examples, and More

The Industrial Revolution – and the rapid industrialization that followed it – marked the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But new technologies didn't only change the ways of manufacturing. They also made writers reconsider their attitudes toward the established norms of the craft. Out of this cultural shift, one of the most compelling literary movements was born: modernism.

Modernism in literature is the act of rebellion against the norms on the writers' part. They refused to conform to the rules any longer. Instead, they sought new ways to convey ideas and new forms of expressing themselves. In their opinion, the old ways of writing simply couldn't reflect the rapid social change and a new generation born out of it.

Today, let's take a deep dive into modernist work. What is modernism in literature? What are the key characteristics that set it apart from other literary movements? What modernism in literature examples reflect the movement's qualities the best? And who can represent modernism in American literature?

You'll find the answers to all of these questions – and more – below!

What is Modernism in Literature

As any physic helper would advise you to approach a subject, let's start with one crucial question: ‘What is modernism?’

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term 'modernism' as a practice characteristic of modern times and seeking to find original means of expressing oneself. Modernism was a movement not just in literature but also in arts, philosophy, and cinema.

As for the modernism in literature definition, the same dictionary describes it as a conscious break from the past and a search for new ways of expressing oneself. But its spirit is best reflected in a motto coined by Ezra Pound: ‘Make it new.’

The movement's main characteristics are individualism, experimentation, and absurdity. Its other characteristics include symbolism and formalism.

What about the history behind the modernism literary movement? Started by the Industrial Revolution and fueled by urbanization, the movement originated in Europe, with Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Robert Musil as early modernists. It was also heavily influenced by the horrors of World War I: it shattered the preconceived notions about society for many modernists.

The movement first developed in American literature in the early 20th century modernism. Apart from the Industrial Revolution, it was influenced by Prohibition and the Great Depression and fueled by a sense of disillusionment and loss. William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, and E. E. Cummings are among the prominent American modernists.

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5 Key Characteristics of Modernist Literature

Now that we've covered the modernist genre definition let's examine why certain works are considered modernist more closely. In other words, what sets modernist works apart from their counterparts?

The key to unraveling the answer lies in the key characteristics of modernism. We'll define five of them that matter the most:

• individualism;
• experimentation;

Below you'll find a short description of each characteristic, along with examples.

Individualism

Individualism is one of the key elements of modernism. It postulates that an individual's experiences, opinions, and emotions are more fascinating than the events in a society as a whole.

So, modernism is focused on describing the subjective reality of one person rather than societal changes or historical events on an impersonal scale.

A typical protagonist in modernist literature is just trying to survive and adapt to the changing world. Presented with obstacles, the protagonist sometimes perseveres – but not always. You can find compelling examples of individualism in the works of Ernest Hemingway.

The fascination with subjective reality also led to the development of unreliable narrators in fiction. You can find great examples of the Madman type of unreliable narrator in Franz Kafka's works.

Experimentation

Literary modernism rejected many of the established writing norms, paving the way for experimentation with the form. Modernist poets best exemplify it: they revolted against the accepted rules of rhyme and rhythm, thus inventing free verse (vers libre) poetry.

Modernism in literature also led to experiments with prose. Combined with individualism as another core characteristic, writers developed a narrative device called ‘stream of consciousness.’

This device is meant to reflect how the characters think, even though it may be inconsistent, chaotic, or illogical. This new technique allowed writers to craft novels that read like the protagonist's stream of consciousness.

Among authors, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are the best examples of this characteristic in action. As for poetry, T. S. Eliot's and Ezra Pound's bodies of work are a must-read.

During the modernist period, authors watched the world as they knew it crumbled around them. Two World Wars, the rise of capitalism, and fast-paced globalization all undermined authors' beliefs and opinions about humankind.

This led many of them to consider the world absurd and reflect it in their writing. From the setup to the plot development, modernist works based on this characteristic take surrealist or fantastical turns. They can also be described as bizarre or nonsensical.

The rise of absurdism also led to the invention of the Theatre of the Absurd. Pioneered by European playwrights, it revolves around the idea that human existence has no grand purpose or meaning. Absurdist plays don't seek to communicate effectively; instead, they include irrational speech.

There's no better example of absurdity in literary modernism than Franz Kafka's works, especially The Metamorphosis .

While symbolism in literature existed before the late 19th century, it quickly became one of the central characteristics of modernism in literature. Modernist authors and poets also reimagined symbolism. Where their predecessors left little unsaid, modernists preferred to leave plenty of blanks for the reader's imagination to fill.

That, however, doesn't mean there was no attention to details. On the contrary, modernist authors infused every layer of their work of fiction with symbolic details. The difference is that their way of using symbolism in writing allowed for several interpretations, all simultaneously possible and valid.

As a characteristic, symbolism in the modernism literary movement is most prominent in the works of James Joyce and T. S. Eliot.

As mentioned above, 20th-century modernism was defined by the search for radically new forms of expression. Creativity fueled this search, paving the way for the emergence of original forms.

In modern period literature, the writing process was no longer perceived as a laborious craft. Modernists treated it as a creative process instead. In some cases, the originality of the form was deemed more important than the substance.

Take the works of E. E. Cummings as an example here. Instead of conventionally putting the poetry on the page, he spread out separate words and phrases on the page as if it were a canvas and his poem – the paint.

Other examples of formalism include the use of invented or foreign words and phrases and unconventional structure – or its absence.

4 Recurring Themes in Modernist Literature

As an act of rebellion against conventional norms of the craft, literature of the modernist period touched on various themes that could best convey the author's opinion on the world around them.

Due to their variety, listing all of them here would be impossible. However, some of the modernist themes are more prominent than others. Below you can find four of them, along with examples.

These themes also represent a great starting point for essay writing. Whether you want to do it yourself or turn to a write my essay service, you can choose one of them as your topic for exploration.

Transformation

Modernism is practically inseparable from the theme of transformation. Be it the transformation of form, expression, or norm; the movement is based on the idea of radical change. If you want to see this theme in action, start with Ezra Pound's manifesto, Make It New .

As a theme, transformation also means a change in beliefs, opinions, and identities, a symbolic rebirth. Fueled by loss, destruction, and the war experiences of the authors caused fragmentation, this aspect of the theme.

You can find examples of transformation as a theme in Franz Kafka's absurdist The Metamorphosis . As for modernism in American literature, you can identify this theme in the works of Ernest Hemingway ( The Sun Also Rises ) and William Faulkner ( Barn Burning ).

Mythological Tales

Unlike their predecessors, modernist artists and authors didn't just refer to the Greek-Latin and other myths. Instead, they reimagined those tales in a new, modern world setting. Used as symbols or characters central to the plot, mythological tales and figures define modernism in literature.

As for examples of myths in the works of the modernist period, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is one of the best. In this poem, T. S. Eliot reimagines the myths of the Fisher King and uses Tarot cards and the Holy Grail as symbols. T. S. Eliot also used Greek and Latin phrases to enhance the poem's meaning.

Other examples of myths in modernist works include James Joyce's Ulysses, which alludes to Homer's Odysseus, and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, which reimagines the Greek myth of Electra.

Loss, Separation, and Destruction

The cruel experiences of war are the major reason this theme became prevalent in modern-period literature. These experiences were infused with loss, separation, and destruction, and many authors lived through them. So, these experiences were reflected in the works of the post-war times.

Loss, destruction, and separation were also universal experiences that many went through simultaneously and shared their consequences. That's why the modernist works were also well-accepted by the readers.

You can find more than one instance of this theme in the works of Virginia Woolf, a British author and a pioneer of modernism in English literature. In American literature, the best examples of these themes are present in the works of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and T. S. Eliot.

Love and Sensuality

As one of the characteristics of modernism, individualism drove the theme of love and sensualism in the literature of this period. However, these themes didn't escape the disillusionment and demystification: they were reimagined somewhat cynically (or, some might say, realistically).

In modernist works, love isn't described as a magical feeling that can move mountains. Instead, the tone of love stories becomes grimmer and more fatalistic, and it serves as more proof of the social fabric corroding away.

In addition to love and sensuality, modernist works were marked by discussions of and reflections on sexuality, gender roles, and feminism. Some prominent authors in this regard are Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence.

For love and sensuality modernism examples in literature, read and analyze F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls . D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is also a great example here as it examines the theme from the perspective of emancipation and gender equality.

10 Notable Modernist Writers in the Literary Movement

Need to write a literature review about one instance of modern-period literature? Start your search for the subject by checking out the works of the following ten authors and poets!

These creators are among the most prominent modernists that defined the movement, developed its qualities, and experimented with its main characteristics. Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and more age-defining creators are among the notable modernist writers and poets below.

Virginia Woolf

A pioneer in modernism in English literature, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and her body of work defined the movement. For one, she was one of the first authors to start using the stream-of-consciousness narrative device to display the complex inner world of her characters.

Woolf also infused her works with feminist themes. She was one of the three female authors of the period to explore ‘the given,’ according to Simone de Beauvoir. However, other themes of the time – the war, destruction, and the role of social class – are also central to her work.

Virginia Woolf's most prominent works are Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To The Lighthouse (1927). You may also enjoy reading The Waves (1931) and The Years (1936).

Further reading on Virginia Woolf's life and body of work includes J. Goldman's The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf (Cambridge University Press) and V. Curtis's Virginia Woolf's Women (University of Wisconsin Press).

James Joyce

An Irish poet and novelist, James Joyce (1882-1941) is best known for his Ulysses novel (1922). He belonged to the group of creators who explored new styles and forms of expression. His approach to writing was detail-oriented, infused with internal monologues, and overturning traditional plot and character devices.

James Joyce focused on modernist themes such as destruction, social class, enlightenment, and identity. However, his works mostly focused on slice-of-life tales told in new, creative ways.

Apart from Ulysses , James Joyce's major works include a collection of short stories, Dubliners (1914), the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and Finnegans Wake (1939). The latter pushed the use of stream of consciousness to its extreme.

As for poetry, James Joyce is best known for his three collections of poems, with Chamber Music (1907) being the most acclaimed one.

Gertrude Stein

Often referred to as the mother of modernism, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is one of the most important American modernist writers. Like the two previous authors on this list, Stein experimented with stream of consciousness and other narrative devices. Her writing style, in turn, can be described as distinctive and playful.

Stein's first novel, Q.E.D. Q.E.D. (1903), was one of the first to explore a coming-out story. A lesbian herself, Stein focused on sexuality in some of her works (case in point: Fernhurst (1904)) – an unprecedented choice for the time.

As a poet, Stein is best known for Tender Buttons (1914), a collection of poems that capture the routine of mundane life. In the publication, Stein experiments with sounds and fragmented words to convey an image to the reader.

Stein's most prominent prose works of fiction include The Making of Americans (1902–1911) and Three Lives (1905–1906).

William Faulkner

Look no further if you're looking for modernism examples in literature that explore symbolism and multiple perspectives. William Faulkner (1897-1962), an American novel and short story writer, belongs to the group of celebrated modernist authors who focused on these themes.

A Nobel prize laureate and a Mississippi native, Faulkner is famous for his Southern Gothic stories taking place in the made-up Yoknapatawpha County. Besides symbolism and multiple-perspective storytelling, Faulkner also explored the unreliable narrator and nonlinear storytelling devices.

Faulkner's most prominent novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), The Wild Palms (1939), and Light in August (1932). He was also working as a Hollywood screenwriter between 1932 and 1954. During that time, he crafted screenplays for films like Flesh (1932), To Have and Have Not (1944), and The Big Sleep (1946).

An expatriate American poet, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is one of the most prominent figures of 20th-century modernism. He was unrivaled in using free-verse poetry and allusions in his body of work.

Pound also excelled in using imagism in his works – and he was one of the first poets to do so. This makes his poems vivid and powerful for the reader's imagination.

You've already seen several references to Ezra Pound's Make It New (1934), a manifesto for the modernist movement. However, that's not the cornerstone of Pound's literary legacy. To delve into it, read The Cantos (c. 1917–1962), an epic 800-page poem, In a Station of the Metro (1913), or The Return (1917).

Franz Kafka

An Austrian-Hungarian author, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is one of the most prominent modernist writers in the German-speaking world. Kafka explored the themes of transformation, existentialism, and alienation in his works.

Kafka focused his craft on absurdist, surrealistic, and fantastical plots, as best exemplified by The Metamorphosis (1915). In this short story, a salesman has turned into a large insect (commonly interpreted as a cockroach).

Kafka's body of work led to the birth of a new term – Kafkaesque. This term is the easiest way to describe the author's style: it's marked by absurdist, disorienting complexity and a surreal distortion of reality.

The Metamorphosis isn't the only work of Kafka worth reading. His best novels include The Castle (1926) and The Trial (1925).

E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was one of the most productive American poets and authors of modern-period literature. Over his lifetime, he crafted around 2,900 poems, four plays, and two autobiographical novels over his lifetime.

Cummings' poetry style is best defined as idiosyncratic. The poet disregarded not just the established norms of rhyme and rhythm. He went further and refused to abide by the syntax, punctuation, and spelling rules. His poems often employ lowercase spelling as a form of expression.

If you want to get acquainted with the best works of E. E. Cummings, we suggest you start with may I feel said he (1935) and [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] (1952). His books of poetry – 1 × 1 (1944) and No Thanks (1935) – are also a worthy read and a great introduction to the poet's unique style.

H. Lawrence

Another prominent English novelist and poet, D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), didn't earn himself a worthy place in the modernism literary movement during his lifetime. Only after his death did his works earn him the recognition he deserved.

His works dealt with themes of sexuality, industrialization, modernity, and spontaneity. Exploring sexuality – especially from the standpoint of female characters – earned D. H. Lawrence many enemies. As a result of public persecution and censorship trials, D. H. Lawrence spent years in voluntary exile.

D. H. Lawrence's most prominent novels are Sons and Lovers (1913), Women in Love (1920), The Rainbow (1915), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). However, the latter was deemed too scandalous to be published in Great Britain until 1960, after D. H. Lawrence's death.

Ernest Hemingway

An American novelist and short-story writer, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) isn't just considered one of the most influential creators of the modernist period but American literature as a whole. He is famous for his unique style of prose. It's economical, straightforward, and matter-of-fact, with few descriptive adjectives in the text.

Having spent years as a journalist on the battlefield, Hemingway experienced the horrors of war first-hand. This influenced the themes he explored in his writing: his novels reflected war, love, destruction, loss, and disillusionment.

Hemingway's bibliography consists of seven novels and six collections of short stories. His most prominent works include For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), based on his experiences of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, and The Sun Also Rises (1926).

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is one of the iconic feminist modernist writers who specialized in crafting short stories. A New Zealand native, Mansfield reflected on anxiety, identity, existentialism, and sexuality in her works.

Mansfield's style draws inspiration from visual arts and psychoanalysis. This made for vivid descriptions in her prose and complex characters. Her short stories often have a twist in the form of a revelation or an epiphany about the protagonist.

If you want to get acquainted with Mansfield's literary style, we recommend you start with short stories like The Garden Party (1922) and Daughters of the Late Colonel (1920). Other great but lesser-known examples of her short stories include Something Childish But Very Natural (1914), Bliss (1918), and Sun and Moon (1920).

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Modernism and Post‑Modernism History

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 21, 2018 | Original: August 16, 2017

Modernism in the arts refers to the rejection of the Victorian era’s traditions and the exploration of industrial-age, real-life issues, and combines a rejection of the past with experimentation, sometimes for political purposes. Stretching from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, Modernism reached its peak in the 1960s; Post-modernism describes the period that followed during the 1960s and 1970s. Post-modernism is a dismissal of the rigidity of Modernism in favor of an “anything goes” approach to the subject matter, processes and material.

MODERNISM IN ART

The shift to modernism can be partly credited to new freedoms enjoyed by artists in the late 1800s. Traditionally, a painter was commissioned by a patron to create a specific work. The late 19th century witnessed many artists capable of seizing more time to pursue subjects in their personal interest.

At the same time, the growing field of psychology turned the analysis of human experiences inward and encouraged a more abstract kind of science, which inspired the visual arts to follow.

With shifts in technology creating new materials and techniques in art-making, experimentation became more possible and also gave the resulting work a wider reach. Printing advances in the late 1800s meant posters of artwork widened the public’s awareness of art and design and ferried experimental ideas into popular culture.

Officially debuting in 1874, Impressionism is considered the first Modernist art movement. With leaders like Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir , the Impressionist's use of brief, fierce brush strokes and the altering effect of light separated their work from what came before it. The Impressionists’ focus on modern scenes was a direct rejection of classical subject matter.

Subsequent movements such as Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Constructivism, and De Stijl were just a sampling of those following the experimental path started by Impressionism.

The Dada movement took experimentation further by rejecting traditional skills and launching an all-out art rebellion that embraced nonsense and absurdity. Dadaist ideas first appeared in 1915, and the movement was made official in 1918 with its Berlin Manifesto.

French artist Marcel Duchamp exemplified the haughty playfulness of the Dadaists. His 1917 piece Fountain , a signed porcelain urinal, and his 1919 L.H.O.O.Q. , a print of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with a mustache penciled over it, both turn their back on the very idea of creating art. In doing so, Duchamp predicted Post-Modernism.

Abstract Expressionism

Modernism reached its peak with Abstract Expressionism, which began in the late 1940s in the United States. Moving away from commonplace subjects and techniques, Abstract Expressionism was known for oversized canvasses and paint splashes that could seem chaotic and arbitrary.

Each Abstract Expressionist work functioned as both a document of the artist’s subconscious and a map of the physical movements required to create the art. Painter Jackson Pollack became famous for his method of dripping paint onto canvas from above.

NEO DADA AND POP ART

The transition period between Modernism and Post-Modernism happened throughout the 1960s. Pop Art served as a bridge between them. Pop Art was obsessed with the fruits of capitalism and popular culture, like pulp fiction, celebrities and consumer goods.

Begun in England in the late 1950s but popularized in America, the movement was informed by former Abstract Expressionists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg , who had metamorphosed into the Neo-Dada movement of the late 1950s.

Rauschenberg’s 1960 sculpture of Ballantine Ale cans pre-dated Pop artist Andy Warhol ’s famous Campbell’s Soup cans. Warhol gained further fame from his haunting silkscreen portraits, most famously of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe , while Pop Art compatriot Roy Lichtenstein plundered comic book panels for his paintings.

POST-MODERNISM

Post-modernism, as it appeared in the 1970s, is often linked with the philosophical movement Poststructuralism, in which philosophers such as Jacques Derrida proposed that structures within a culture were artificial and could be deconstructed in order to be analyzed.

As a result, there was little to unite Post-Modern art other than the idea that “anything goes” and the preponderance of unusual materials and mechanical processes for expression that feel impersonal, though often employing humor.

At the heart of Post-Modernism was conceptual art, which proposed that the meaning or purpose behind the making of the art was more important than the art itself. There was also the belief that anything could be used to make art, that art could take any form, and that there should be no differentiation between high art and low art, or fine art and commercial art.

Post-modern work in the 1970s was sometimes derided as “art for art’s sake,” but it gave rise to the acceptance of a host of new approaches. Among these new forms were Earth art, which creates work on natural landscapes; Performance art; Installation art, which considers an entire space rather than just one piece; Process art, which stressed the making of the work as more important than the outcome; and Video art, as well as movements based around feminist and minority art.

The 1980s saw the rise of appropriation as a much-used practice. Painters like Jean-Michael Basquiat and Keith Haring directly mimicked graffiti styles, while artists like Sherrie Levine lifted the actual work of other artists to use in their creations. In 1981, Levine photographed a Walker Evans photo and represented it as a new work questioning the very idea of an original photo.

Post-modern art has since become less defined by the form the art takes and more determined by the artist creating the work. American artist Jenny Holzer, who came to prominence in the 1970s with her conceptual art made from language, embodies this model.

Holzer’s “Truisms” are deceptively simple sentences that communicate complicated, often contradictory, ideas, such as “Protect me from what I want.” She has also produced a body of work on the American government’s use of torture during the Iraq War. Holzer’s curation of text, rather than any visual motif, is the consistent aspect uniting her work.

Some art historians believe the Post-Modern era ended at the beginning of the 21st Century and refer to the following period as Post Post-Modern.

History of Modern Art. H.H. Arnason and Marla F. Prather . Modern Art: Impressionism To Post-Modernism. Edited by David Britt. Art of the Western World. Michael Wood. What Is Modern Art? Metropolitan Museum of Art . Modernism. Tate .

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › The Poetics of Modernism: Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot

The Poetics of Modernism: Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on January 28, 2018 • ( 3 )

Modernism comprised a broad series of movements in Europe and America that came to fruition roughly between 1910 and 1930. Its major exponents and practitioners included Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Ezra Pound , T. S. Eliot , William Faulkner , Virginia Woolf , Luigi Pirandello , and Franz Kafka . These various modernisms were the results of many complex economic, political, scientific, and religious developments over the nineteenth century, which culminated in World War I (1914–1918). The vast devastation, psychological demoralization, and economic depression left by the war intensified the already existing reactions against bourgeois modes of thought and economic practice. Rationalism underwent renewed assaults from many directions: from philosophers such as Bergson, from the sphere of psychoanalysis , from neoclassicists such as T. E. Hulme , the New Humanists in America, and neo-Thomists such as Jacques Maritain . These reactions were often underlain by a new understanding of language, as a conventional and historical construct. The modernist writer occupied a world that was often perceived as fragmented, where the old bourgeois ideologies of rationality, science, progress, civilization, and imperialism had been somewhat discredited; where the artist was alienated from the social and political world, and where art and literature were marginalized; where populations had been subjected to processes of mass standardization; where philosophy could no longer offer visions of unity, and where language itself was perceived to be an inadequate instrument for expression and understanding.

Hence, over the last fifty years or so, we have come to appreciate more fully the complexity and heterogeneity of literary modernism, in its nature and genesis. It is no longer regarded as simply a symbolist and imagistic reaction against nineteenthcentury realism or naturalism or later versions of Romanticism . It is not so much that modernism, notwithstanding the political conservatism of many of its practitioners, turns away from the project of depicting reality; what more profoundly underlies modernistic literary forms is an awareness that the definitions of reality become increasingly complex and problematic. Modernists came to this common awareness by different paths: Yeats drew on the occult, on Irish myth and legend, as well as the Romantics and French symbolists . Proust drew on the insights of Bergson ; Virginia Woolf , on Bergson , G. E. Moore , and others; Pound drew on various non-European literatures as well as French writers ; T. S. Eliot, whose poetic vision was profoundly eclectic, drew on Dante, the Metaphysical poets, Laforgue , Baudelaire , and a number of philosophers.

In general, literary modernism was marked by a number of features: (1) the affirmation of a continuity, rather than a separation, between the worlds of subject and object, the self and the world. The human self is not viewed as a stable entity which simply engages with an already present external world of objects and other selves; (2) a perception of the complex roles of time, memory, and history in the mutual construction of self and world. Time is not conceived in a static model which separates past, present, and future as discrete elements in linear relation; rather, it is viewed as dynamic, with these elements influencing and changing one another. Human history is thus not already written; even the past can be altered in accordance with present human interests, motives, and viewpoints; (3) a breakdown of any linear narrative structure following the conventional Aristotelian model which prescribes beginning, middle, and end. Modernist poetry tends to be fragmented, creating its own internal “logic” of emotion, image, sound, symbol, and mood; (4) an acknowledgment of the complexity of experience: any given experience is vastly more complex than can be rendered in literal language. For example, the experience of “love” could be quite different from one person to another, yet language coercively subsumes these differing experiences under the same word and concept. Modernist poetry tends to veer away from any purported literal use of language which might presume a one-to-one correspondence between words and things; it relies far more on suggestion and allusion rather than overt statement; (5) a self-consciousness regarding the process of literary composition. This embraces both an awareness of how one’s own work relates to the literary tradition as a whole, and also an ironic stance toward the content of one’s own work; (6) finally, and most importantly, an awareness of the problematic nature of language. This indeed underlies the other elements cited above. If there is no simple correspondence between language and reality, and if these realms are mutually constituted through patterns of coherence, then a large part of the poet’s task lies in a more precise use of language which offers alternative definitions of reality. Eliot once said that the poet must “distort” language in order to create his meaning.

Of all the Western modernists, T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) has been the most pervasively influential through both his poetry and his literary criticism. He was initially influenced by the American New Humanists such as Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer , and his early ideas owed a great deal to their emphasis on tradition, classicism, and impersonality. Eliot was also indebted to later nineteenth-century French poets and particularly to Ezra Pound and the imagist movement. Pound assumed a broad range of critical roles: as poet-critic, he promoted his own work and the works of figures such as Frost, Joyce, and Eliot; he translated numerous texts from Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Greek, and Chinese; and, associating with various schools such as imagism and vorticism, he advocated a poetry which was concise, concrete, precise in expression of emotion, and appropriately informed by a sense of tradition. As a result of his suggestions, Eliot’s major poem The Waste Land was radically condensed and transformed.

Eliot took his so-called theory of “tradition” from both Babbitt and Pound, though it had political precedents in conservative theories of tradition such as that of Edmund Burke. Eliot’s theory claimed that the major works of art, both past and present, formed an “ideal order” which is continually modified by subsequent works of art. The central implication here was that contemporary writers should find common ground with that tradition even as they extended it. Eliot effectively succeeded in redefining the European literary tradition, continuing the humanists’ onslaught against the Romantics , and bringing into prominence Dante, the Metaphysical poets, and the French symbolists . Eliot also advanced an “impersonal” notion of poetry, whereby the poet expresses not a personality but a precise formulation of thought and feeling such as is lacking in “ordinary” experience. The poet, according to Eliot, employs an “objective correlative,” whereby objects and events in the external world are used to express complexes of thought and emotion.

In terms of literary history, Eliot held that a “dissociation of sensibility” had set in after the seventeenth century that entailed a disjunction of various human faculties such as reason and emotion which had previously been integrated within a unified sensibility. Eliot’s ideas bore an ambivalent relationship with the claims of the New Criticism. On the one hand, he believed that the aesthetic dimension of works of art is irreducible; on the other, he believed, with increasing insistence throughout his career, that art is irreducibly bound to its social, religious, and literary context. The ideas of Pound and Eliot have had a lasting influence but their most forceful impact occurred between the 1920s and the 1940s.

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What is modernism.

Many Modernists wrote in free verse and they included many countries and cultures in their poems. Some wrote using numerous points-of-view or even used a “stream-of-consciousness” style. These writing styles further demonstrate the way the scattered state of society affected the work of writes at that time.

Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are thought to be the mother and father of the movement because they had the most direct influence on early Modernists. Some time after their deaths, the Imagist poets began to gain importance. The University of Toledo’s Canaday Center has a rich collection of poetry and critical work from that era.

Imagist poets generally wrote shorter poems and they chose their words carefully so that their work would be rich and direct. The movement started in London, where a group of poets met and discussed changes that were happening in poetry. Ezra Pound soon met these individuals, and he eventually introduced them to H.D. and Richard Aldington in 1911. In 1912, Pound submitted their work to Poetry magazine. After H.D.’s name, he signed the word "Imagiste" and that was when Imagism was publicly launched. Two months later, Poetry published an essay which discusses three points that the London group agreed upon. They felt that the following rules should apply when writing poetry: 

• Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.
• To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
• As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

In the following month’s issue, Pound’s two-line poem “In a Station at the Metro” was published. In addition to the previously published works of Aldington and H.D., it exemplifies the tenets of Imagism in that it is direct, written with precise words, and has a musical tone which does not depend on a specific rhythm:

In a Station at the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

World War I broke out soon after the height of Imagism. Some poets, like Aldington, were called to serve the country, and this made the spread of Imagism difficult—as did paper shortages as a result of the war. Eventually, war poets like Wilfred Owen grew in popularity as people shifted their attention to the state of the world. 

After the war ended, a sense of disillusionment grew, and poems like T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” showed the way poetry had shifted. This infamous poem contains various narratives and voices that change quickly from one topic to another. This style of poetry differed greatly from the slow and focused poetry of the Imagists. Visit this link to read the poem in its entirety.

Within a few years, many Modernist writers moved overseas. There was an exciting expatriate scene in Paris which included Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein,and Mina Loy. These writers held and attended literary salons. Poets such as E.E. Cummings, Hart Crane, and William Carlos Williams also attended these salons at times.

Not all Modernist poets followed the writers who were making revolutionary changes to the world of poetics. Marianne Moore, for example, wrote some form poetry, and Robert Frost once said that writing free verse was "like playing tennis without a net." Additionally, writers who had gained popularity toward the end of the Modernist era were inspired by less experimental poets such as Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats.  

By the 1950s, a new generation of Postmodern poets came to the forefront. Adding “post” in front of the word "Modern" showed that this new period was different than the one before it, yet was influenced by it. The Modernist ideas of Imagism and the work of William Carlos Williams, for example, continue to have a great influence on writers today.

Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — Modernism — The Origin and Development of Modernism in Art and Literature

The Origin and Development of Modernism in Art and Literature

• Categories: Modernism Ulysses

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Published: Jun 29, 2018

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Table of contents

Introduction, the origin and essence of modernism, modernist literature and art.

• Armstrong, T. (2005). Modernism: A Cultural History. Polity.
• Joyce, J. (1922). Ulysses. Shakespeare and Company.
• Beckett, S. (1953). Waiting for Godot. Faber and Faber.
• Pierce, W. (n.d.). Paintings. [Online Image Gallery]. Retrieved from [URL]
• Stein, G. (1935). Lectures in America. Random House.
• Garde, F. (2002). The Culture of Modernism. V&R Unipress.
• Benton, T. (2003). Modernism: Challenges and Debates. The University of Chicago Press.

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Margaret Samu Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

October 2004

In 1874, a group of artists called the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. organized an exhibition in Paris that launched the movement called Impressionism. Its founding members included Claude Monet , Edgar Degas , and Camille Pissarro, among others. The group was unified only by its independence from the official annual Salon , for which a jury of artists from the Académie des Beaux-Arts selected artworks and awarded medals. The independent artists, despite their diverse approaches to painting, appeared to contemporaries as a group. While conservative critics panned their work for its unfinished, sketchlike appearance, more progressive writers praised it for its depiction of modern life. Edmond Duranty, for example, in his 1876 essay La Nouvelle Peinture (The New Painting), wrote of their depiction of contemporary subject matter in a suitably innovative style as a revolution in painting. The exhibiting collective avoided choosing a title that would imply a unified movement or school, although some of them subsequently adopted the name by which they would eventually be known, the Impressionists. Their work is recognized today for its modernity, embodied in its rejection of established styles, its incorporation of new technology and ideas, and its depiction of modern life.

Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris) exhibited in 1874, gave the Impressionist movement its name when the critic Louis Leroy accused it of being a sketch or “impression,” not a finished painting. It demonstrates the techniques many of the independent artists adopted: short, broken brushstrokes that barely convey forms, pure unblended colors, and an emphasis on the effects of light. Rather than neutral white, grays, and blacks, Impressionists often rendered shadows and highlights in color. The artists’ loose brushwork gives an effect of spontaneity and effortlessness that masks their often carefully constructed compositions, such as in Alfred Sisley’s 1878 Allée of Chestnut Trees ( 1975.1.211 ). This seemingly casual style became widely accepted, even in the official Salon, as the new language with which to depict modern life.

In addition to their radical technique, the bright colors of Impressionist canvases were shocking for eyes accustomed to the more sober colors of academic painting. Many of the independent artists chose not to apply the thick golden varnish that painters customarily used to tone down their works. The paints themselves were more vivid as well. The nineteenth century saw the development of synthetic pigments for artists’ paints, providing vibrant shades of blue, green, and yellow that painters had never used before. Édouard Manet’s 1874 Boating ( 29.100.115 ), for example, features an expanse of the new cerulean blue and synthetic ultramarine. Depicted in a radically cropped, Japanese-inspired composition , the fashionable boater and his companion embody modernity in their form, their subject matter, and the very materials used to paint them.

Such images of suburban and rural leisure outside of Paris were a popular subject for the Impressionists, notably Monet and Auguste Renoir . Several of them lived in the country for part or all of the year. New railway lines radiating out from the city made travel so convenient that Parisians virtually flooded into the countryside every weekend. While some of the Impressionists, such as Pissarro, focused on the daily life of local villagers in Pontoise, most preferred to depict the vacationers’ rural pastimes. The boating and bathing establishments that flourished in these regions became favorite motifs. In his 1869 La Grenouillère ( 29.100.112 ), for example, Monet’s characteristically loose painting style complements the leisure activities he portrays. Landscapes , which figure prominently in Impressionist art, were also brought up to date with innovative compositions, light effects, and use of color. Monet in particular emphasized the modernization of the landscape by including railways and factories, signs of encroaching industrialization that would have seemed inappropriate to the Barbizon artists of the previous generation.

Perhaps the prime site of modernity in the late nineteenth century was the city of Paris itself, renovated between 1853 and 1870 under Emperor Napoleon III. His prefect, Baron Haussmann, laid the plans, tearing down old buildings to create more open space for a cleaner, safer city. Also contributing to its new look was the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), which required reconstructing the parts of the city that had been destroyed. Impressionists such as Pissarro and Gustave Caillebotte enthusiastically painted the renovated city, employing their new style to depict its wide boulevards, public gardens, and grand buildings. While some focused on the cityscapes, others turned their sights to the city’s inhabitants. The Paris population explosion after the Franco-Prussian War gave them a tremendous amount of material for their scenes of urban life. Characteristic of these scenes was the mixing of social classes that took place in public settings. Degas and Caillebotte focused on working people, including singers and dancers , as well as workmen. Others, including Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt , depicted the privileged classes. The Impressionists also painted new forms of leisure, including theatrical entertainment (such as Cassatt’s 1878 In the Loge [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]), cafés, popular concerts, and dances. Taking an approach similar to Naturalist writers such as Émile Zola, the painters of urban scenes depicted fleeting yet typical moments in the lives of characters they observed. Caillebotte’s 1877 Paris Street, Rainy Day (Art Institute, Chicago) exemplifies how these artists abandoned sentimental depictions and explicit narratives, adopting instead a detached, objective view that merely suggests what is going on.

The independent collective had a fluid membership over the course of the eight exhibitions it organized between 1874 and 1886, with the number of participating artists ranging from nine to thirty. Pissarro, the eldest, was the only artist who exhibited in all eight shows, while Morisot participated in seven. Ideas for an independent exhibition had been discussed as early as 1867, but the Franco-Prussian War intervened. The painter Frédéric Bazille, who had been leading the efforts, was killed in the war. Subsequent exhibitions were headed by different artists. Philosophical and political differences among the artists led to heated disputes and fractures, causing fluctuations in the contributors. The exhibitions even included the works of more conservative artists who simply refused to submit their work to the Salon jury. Also participating in the independent exhibitions were Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin , whose later styles grew out of their early work with the Impressionists.

The last of the independent exhibitions in 1886 also saw the beginning of a new phase in avant-garde painting. By this time, few of the participants were working in a recognizably Impressionist manner. Most of the core members were developing new, individual styles that caused ruptures in the group’s tenuous unity. Pissarro promoted the participation of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, in addition to adopting their new technique based on points of pure color, known as Neo-Impressionism . The young Gauguin was making forays into Primitivism. The nascent Symbolist Odilon Redon also contributed, though his style was unlike that of any other participant. Because of the group’s stylistic and philosophical fragmentation, and because of the need for assured income, some of the core members such as Monet and Renoir exhibited in venues where their works were more likely to sell.

Its many facets and varied participants make the Impressionist movement difficult to define. Indeed, its life seems as fleeting as the light effects it sought to capture. Even so, Impressionism was a movement of enduring consequence, as its embrace of modernity made it the springboard for later avant-garde art in Europe.

Samu, Margaret. “Impressionism: Art and Modernity.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Bomford, David, et al. Art in the Making: Impressionism . Exhibition catalogue.. New Haven and London: National Gallery, 1990.

Herbert, Robert L. Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

House, John. Monet: Nature into Art . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

Moffett, Charles S., et al. The New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886 . San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1986.

Nochlin, Linda, ed. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, 1874–1904: Sources and Documents . Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966.

Rewald, John. The History of Impressionism . Rev. and enl. ed. . New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1961.

Tinterow, Gary, and Henri Loyrette. Origins of Impressionism . Exhibition catalogue.. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. See on MetPublications

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