The Modernist culture an introduction Valentina Tenedini ISRMA Aosta

The Modernist culturean introduction

Valentina Tenedini ISRMA Aosta

• Modernism rose and developed in Europe in the 1910s -1930s.

• It was a complex movement which involved several art forms (including the newest: photography and cinema).

• It followed WWI, as a revolt against the traditional conservative values and the philosophy of ameliorism.

The Great War had left Europe disillusioned and cynical, while artists needed and searched for new modes of expressions .

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MUSICThe composers and musicians were fascinated by the new aesthetics and techniques, as well as their cultural effects. •Stravinsky, composed music in which he introduced elements from various musical genres including jazz. •Schoemberg, founded a musical language abolishing the traditional sound hierarchy (atonalism), and developed a twelve-tone system, (dodecaphony) based on the use of a systematic series of sounds, including all twelve heights of the system.

PAINTING

Cubism, which was conceived in 1907 by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, was one of the most revolutionary artistic movements of the 20th century.

•Cubist artists believed in breaking up the subject matter, analyzing it, and then reassembling it in abstract form.

•Instead of depicting an object from one angle, cubist artists managed to paint an object from multiple viewpoints and planes at the same time – so as to imply the subjective, fragmentary and relative perception of reality.

• Georges Braque, The day (1929)

• Pablo Picasso, Bread and fruit dish on a table (1909)

LiteratureModern man saw the world as complex and relative, since common principles and beliefs were shattered by the Great War, as a consequence the modernist artists' representation of reality was fragmentary, relative, and subjective, there was no objective reality, no common framework of reference any longer. The most distinguished modernist authors (in English literature) were F. M. Ford, V. Woolf, W.B. Yeats, J. Joyce, T.S. Eliot, E. Pound.

Modern literature developed under the influence of philosophy and psychology•William James argued that consciousness could not be divided into different parts but was something that 'flows like a river a stream of consciousness'. (The principles of psychology -1890)

•Henri Bergson claimed that time was a continuous flow - which he termed “La Durée”- and could neither be broken up into units nor be conventionally measured.

•Sigmund Freud theorized that the human psyche, whose most of the activity occurred at an unconscious level, was made up of the Ego, the Superego and the Id. The deepest level, the unconscious, could be accessed through dreams . He also revealed the importance of childhood experience (and sexual drives) in the shaping of an adult's personality.

Philosophy, psychology and 20th century fiction

The most evident result of these scientists' groundbreaking principles in fiction is a narrative technique* termed interior monologue, that is to say an author's attempt to reproduce the workings of the mind (W James 's stream of consciousness) in writing. The stream of consciousness is a psychic phenomenon whereas the interior monologue is the verbal expression of the psychic phenomenon itself. Just like it happens in the human mind this "immediate speech”* reported in writing is freed from: - introductory expressions (e.g "he thought, he remembered, he said");- formal structures, logical and chronological order, so it mixes past present and future (see Bergson) and resorts to free associations (as it happens in a psychonalitic setting).

Modernist fiction and the city• Modernist fiction does focus on the city space Modernist fiction does focus on the city space

as well as the impact urban centres cause on as well as the impact urban centres cause on human relationships and communication.human relationships and communication.

The modernist representation of the city The modernist representation of the city implies that city life causes a more acute implies that city life causes a more acute consciousness of the consciousness of the relationshipsrelationships between between individuals and of the individuals and of the diversitydiversity and and multiplicitymultiplicity of of socialsocial and and cultural cultural experiencesexperiences..

So the city experience can be seen as a So the city experience can be seen as a self-self-discovery experiencediscovery experience and the and the realizationrealization of of modern man's loneliness and isolation.modern man's loneliness and isolation.

“When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart” James Joyce

Plaques on the streets of Dublin along Leopold Bloom’s trail.

• THE END

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Still Life with a Mandolin, 1924