Impact of World War 1 on Modernism

Impact of World War 1 on modernityHow would you describe the impact of the First World War on Modernist visual practices?The esthetic phenomenon of Modernism, wide-r for each oneing as that limit is, can be historically defined as a period that began around 1860, with Manet popularly certain as the first Modernist painter, and came to an end around 1940 although the murky cross-over between contemporaneousness and post-modernism, and the present nature of both terms, means that some historians see Modernism stretching to the 1970s.The term applies retrospectively to a wide range of groundss, including Futurism, atomic number 91 and Cubism, which broadly sought to distance themselves from the values and stylistics of Classicism. In a general esthetical wizard, modern stratagem is often concerned with essential properties of the effectiveness of colour and flatness, and over time a fading interest in subject matter can be witnessed. In fact, in a much specific sense, Mod ernism can be seen to refer non just to a style or styles of art, but to the philosophy of art as well.From a historical viewpoint, Modernism can be seen as the reaction of art at least of the progressive artist to the post-industrial world, a world in which the work came to be as prominent and ubiquitous as man, and indeed it was in the largest atomic number 63an metropolises, where the tensions of social modernity were or so prominent, that the earliest incarnations of Modernism in art appeared.However Modernism is a wide and watered overpower term, associated with a myriad of differing, and often fence movements. What draws them together is that they respond to the same situations of the modern world, of the industrialisation of gild and the cataclysmal watershed of the First World War.Christopher Witcombe talks of the period of enlightenment in the 18th degree Celsius, which preceded the advent of ModernismProgressive 18th-century thinkers believed that the lot of huma nkind would be greatly improved through the process enlightenment, from being shown the virtue. With reason and truth in hand, the individual would no longer be at the kindness of religious and secular authorities which had constructed their own truths and manipulated them to their own self-serving ends. At the root of this thinking is the belief in the perfectibility of humankind.1According to Witcombe, the roots of modernism lie in the ideals of the Enlightenment, and this is where we can see the peelight-emitting diode roles of the artist beat to take manikin. Essentially, the overarching goal of Modernism, of modern art, has been the creation of a develop partnership2. But as we shall see, the honorableistic idealism of the Enlightenment was non the favored form for the Modernist movement, which was dragged through the mill of the industrial revolution, and, following hot on its heels, the First World War. There was a sense from the conservative modernists that the fo cusing precedent was to be guided by existing institutions. The progressives, on the other hand were critical of institutions as restrictive of individual liberty3.In the 20th century, progressive modernism was thrust into the spotlight, leaving conservative modernism in its wake, with many people sceptical of its artistic merits. The conservative painters of the nineteenth century attempted to reflect and exemplify a kind of moral Christian virtue, and believed this to be a vital contribution from art to society the government agency of a model of social values to which everyone could aim. Conservative modernism, however, was looked down upon by progressives as an unambitious celebration of the values of the ruling class. artwork, progressives argued, should be forward thinking, challenging, as well as socially responsible, whilst conservatives offered little more than a rosy re-hashing of the sepia past.So whilst the conservatives wished to continue existing institutions and favoured a graduated development, progressives criticised ruling institutions and searched for radical upheaval.In the first 10 eld of the 20th century, a rapidly escalating political tension and a suspiciousness of and anger toward the social order began to permeate much of europiuman society. The socio-political prove of this lies in the Russian Revolution and the prominence all over Europe of aggressive radicals. In the art community, this growing unease can be seen in the trend toward a radical simplification of previous stylistics, and in some cases, complete rejection of previous practice. Young painters such as Matisse and Picasso began to drive shockwaves with their embracing of non-traditional perspectives, a re-hauling of the rules of representation as an aesthetic theme, taking risks that level off the Impressionists had not dared. At the heart of this new movement was an hition for disruption, and a progression away from Realism, and this began to give a new dime nsion to the term Modernism.Progressive Modernism was thrust into the spotlight, leaving conservative modernism in its wake, with many people sceptical of its artistic merits. The conservative painters of the 19th century attempted to reflect and exemplify a kind of moral Christian virtue, and believed this to be a vital contribution from art to society the representation of a model of social values to which everyone could aim. Conservative modernism, however, was looked down upon by progressives as an unambitious celebration of the values of the ruling class. Art, progressives argued, should be forward thinking, challenging, as well as socially responsible, whilst conservatives offered little more than a rosy re-hashing of the sepia past.So whilst the conservatives wished to continue existing institutions and favoured a gradual development, progressives criticised ruling institutions and searched for radical upheaval. Whereas painters analogous Turner had been respected members o f societys greatest intelligentsia, seen as contributors to the greater good of society, the progressive Modernist saw the deification of traditional values and social structures as stifling, and in that respect forrard the artist to a faultk on a new persona, that of the righteous revolutionary, and we can see an example of this in the movement known as Futurism, a movement which had its own questionable manifesto, published in Le Figaro, in an attempt to provoke, incite, and recruit the like-minded.Futurism, like much of 20th century Modernism, was based upon a rejection of the past, and this attitude came to the fore with progressives with the advent of World War One which represented a destructive mischance of the conservative ideals of tradition. For many progressives, the Great War presented an almighty plan of attack together of man and machine in the most morbid possible way, a futile mechanised massacre, which contrasted bitterly with the Modernist treatment of the role of the machine in beauty, and its faith in technology. This was clearly not the way to a healthier society. It has been said that World War One marked the reverse of modern art, and a watershed for the emergence of the post-modern.The artistic community took it upon itself to transmit the way, as it were, in the post-war society, given the catastrophic failure of many human beings institutions. After the war, there grew a kind of social vacuum, a sense that there was a lack of people and institutions to believe in. Many artists matte up that it was therefore the responsibility of art to orient the collective social aspiration, to shape a new spirit in the wake of such destruction, and the delegitimisation of so many hopes and values. In this way, the Modernist art of the post-war era was at once in conclusion moral, hopeful, and rooted in a deep social conscience, but overly vividly subversive and challenging in its (many) aesthetic forms like the top hat art, the best music, and the best literature, its moral heart lay in its forwardness to challenge and confront the spectator.Characterised deeply by the residing antagonism of the industrial revolution, there came about a kind of collective conviction that traditions, institutions, and social frameworks were not perpetual, but rather that they were open to continuing re-evaluation and subjugation, and this attitude can be witnessed in Tristan Tzaras movement Dada, which gave perhaps the most radical region to the post-war Modernist. The Dadaists were not content to simply make art, they wanted to affect all corners of society, to take part in the revolutionary changes which were the inevitable precede of the chaos after the War. The aims of the artist became to negate all social and aesthetic traditions, to make every work a new and marginal expression, and better to be bitterly divisive than quietly dormant. Moreover, every artistic observation was a form of didactic interaction with social and historical change.So the First World War represented a huge failure of the previous status quo, culminating in the most excruciating and fruitless deaths of millions crossways the world. A generation of young artists had witnessed men and boys, many at first-hand, extend defending slivers of earth. Machine warfare had become an accepted horror of earthly concern the dubious honours of war valour, courage, and heroism, had been sourly debased by the electroneutral brutality of the tank and the machine gun. In the face of such fundamentally unthinkable horror, the funds of Realism seemed to be empty, and the view that the human speed had been steadily climbing some moral ladder toward enlightenment became absolutely banal. As Christopher Witcombe says, The First World War, at once, fused the harshly windup(prenominal) geometric rationality of technology, with the nightmarish irrationality of myth4.And so in the 1920s and onward, Modernism became one of the defining movemen ts of the era, whereas before it had been mostly a minority taste, its luminaries more heard of than heard. As a result of its new found prominence, the mood shifted towards a replacement of the older status quo with a base of new methods. Modernism began to reach prominence in Europe in such pertinent movements as Dada and Surrealism. The tendency under the umbrella of Modernism became to form separate movements and develop systems separate to each other aside from Dada there was the International style of Bauhaus and socialist Realism. By the 1930s, Modernism had entered the Jazz Age, and labels such as modern or hyper-modern began to proliferate, and the term Modernism began to lose its resonance, like butter scraped across too much toast.After World War Two, consumer culture became the focus of the Modernist artist, as the focus shifted from the graphic, morbid horrors of the two Wars to the more palettable horrors of the popular culture invasion, and the aesthetic outrage of post-war modernism came to be replaced by an aesthetic of sanction. This combination of consumer and modernist cultures led to a total overhaul of the meaning of the term modernism, and can be seen as the beginning of the contemporary form of Postmodernism, replete with its self-referential fixation as the lines between elite culture and consumer culture had become blurred, and a movement based on the rejection of tradition had become a tradition itself.BIBLIOGRAPHYArnason, H. H., tarradiddle of Modern Art New York Harry N. Abrams, 4th edition, 1998Atkins, Robert. ArtSpoke A channelise to Modern Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1848-1944. New York Abbeville Press, 1993Chipp, Herschel B. Theories of Modern Art Berkeley University of California Press, 1968 and 1989Malcolm Bradbury, Modernism 1890-1930, capital of the United Kingdom Penguin, 1991Christopher Witcombe, What is Art?, http//witcombe.sbc.edu/modernism/artsake.html, 20001 Christopher Witcombe, What is Art?, http//witcombe .sbc.edu/modernism/artsake.html, 20002 Christopher Witcombe, What Is Art?3 Christopher Witcombe, What Is Art?4 Christopher Witcombe, What is Art?