Who put the Modern in Modenism....

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso

When it comes to common sense most of us believe the word modern applies to the type of life we lead in the Twenty First Century. We use the term as if this era were radically different from any preceding one and far better than the obscure past; we use it to link our ordinary lives to an abstraction of a present beget by the technocratic woumb: ipods, electronic music, video consoles, interactive television, metalic appliances, plastic surgery, ABS brakes and Louis Vuitton.
Who among the Nintendo generation would suspect that everything modern was already invented by their great grandparents?

When it comes to literature, on the other hand, Modernism refers to a specific set of writters and the work they produced, but defining Modernism becomes difficult when thinking out of the box and pulling away from any text book. Why is it such a complex period in Art History and one of the most ellusive ones to define?
Allow me to invite you on a journey through space and time. Let's imagine we are standing, not at the threshold of a second milenium in Christianity, but living in the first couple of decades of the Twentieth Century.
We look around and all we see is chaos, Paul Valéry expressed it better:

The storm has died away, and still we are
restless uneasy, as if the storm were about to break.
Almost all of the affairs of men remain a terrible
uncertainty. We think of what has disappeared and
we are alomost destroyed by what has been
destroyed; we do not know what will be born, and
we fear the future, not without reason....




When it comes to common sense most of us believe the word modern applies to the type of life we lead in the Twenty First Century. We use the term as if this era were radically different from any preceding one and far better than the obscure past; we use it to link our ordinary lives to an abstraction of a present beget by the technocratic woumb: ipods, electronic music, video consoles, interactive television, metalic appliances, plastic surgery, ABS brakes and Louis Vuitton.
Who among the Nintendo generation would suspect that everything modern was already invented by their great grandparents?

When it comes to literature, on the other hand, Modernism refers to a specific set of writters and the work they produced, but defining Modernism becomes difficult when thinking out of the box and pulling away from any text book. Why is it such a complex period in Art History and one of the most ellusive ones to define?
Allow me to invite you on a journey through space and time. Let's imagine we are standing, not at the threshold of a second milenium in Christianity, but living in the first couple of decades of the Twentieth Century.
We look around and all we see is chaos, Paul Valéry expressed it better:

The storm has died away, and still we are
restless uneasy, as if the storm were about to break.
Almost all of the affairs of men remain a terrible
uncertainty. We think of what has disappeared and
we are alomost destroyed by what has been
destroyed; we do not know what will be born, and
we fear the future, not without reason....

Written in the aftermath of World War I, this passage by Valéry captures the sentiments of many people of this day. More devastating than any war the world had previously known,
World War I forced peole to the realization that the world had irrevocably changed. In doing so it left them disconnected from the past and uncertain about the future. No longer trusting the ideas and values they had taken for granted, many people struggled desperately to find new ideas that were more applicable to the twentieth-century life.
This paradigmatic transformation had begun long before the first shots of Word War I were fired. Sparked by the work of scientists such as Edison, Graham Bell and Pasteur whose major techonological advances closed the previous century. Within a period of just a few decades, the airplane, the automobile, the radio, and the telephone were introduced, making travel and communication not only faster and easier than ever before imagined but also an abundant source for imagination. At the same time, although some discoveries and inventions such as electricity, central heating, movies, and the new medical remedies, were improving the quality of people's lives, others like the machine gun and the tank made it easier for people to destroy one another.
In addition to these technological advances, major scientific breakthroughs were also taking place that would dramatically change the way people perceive themselves and their surroundings: George Mendel and his works on heritage, Pierre and Marie Curie's discoveries in radioactivity, Pavlov's experiments about behavior and, of course, Einstein's revolution in Physics.
But of all the scientists of this period, Pavlov's contemporary Sigmund Freud made perhaps the greatest impact in Art with Psychoanalysis and the way it explained the human mind.
Encouraged by the advances in science and technology, many people became increasingly optimistic about the future of humanity. To some, it even seemed possible that people could ultimately solve all their problems and establish lasting peace. This sense of optimism was shattered by the Great War (the war that would end all wars....) and by its horrifying outcome.
With the advances in travel and communication, the various regions of the world became increasingly intertwined during the modern age. Consequently Art became more interconnected than ever before, as artists from all countries were exposed to the movements and traditions originited by cultures different from their own.
The Art of this period was also marked by the interaction bewteen the Western world and the nations of eastern Asia. Westerns literature, for example, had a dramatic impact on both Chinese and Japanese literature, and writers from both countries, such as Mori Ogai and Lu Hsun, adopted many Western literary forms and techniques. At the same time, a number of prominent Western writers (from Bertolt Brecht to Ezra Pound) were influenced by traditional Oriental literature.
Regardless of where they lived, modern artists could not escape being affected by the momentous events and developments of their time. Even before Wolrd War I, some artists were concerned with the rapid changes that were taking place and sensed that society was becoming disconnected from the values and traditions of the past. Subsequently, the devastation caused by the war caused these feelings to develop into an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, disjointedness, and disillusionment -emotions shared also by philosophers and many other people-.
Distrusting the attitudes and beliefs of the past, many people embarked on a quest for new ideas and forms. The result was a broad collection of artistic movements generally referred to as Modenism.
Although there were major differences between the numerous movements covered by the Modern wing, they share the desire to establish new approaches to art and new techniques for artistic creation. As a result, Modernism is highly experimental, symbolic, abstract and even grotesque in comparison to the classical, and fundamentally structured, traditions and periods of Art (Greek and Roman Art, the Reinassance, Neoclasicism, Realism, Naturalism...)
Also, as a response to the next to last period, Realism-Naturalism, and its cuasi-photographic depiction of life, its coarse style and blunt statments, many modern movements sought to explore the creative process itself and/or placed great importance in form (in opposition to the heavy weight content had for realists and naturalists), take for example Art Nouveau, the literature of Rubén Darío and many other latin american writters, Symbolism (in Literature as well as Painting), Expressionism (in Music or Painting), Impressionism, Cubism, the literature of Hesse, García Lorca, T. S. Elliot, Proust, Kafka, Joyce or Virgnia Woolf, and the Dramatic work of Pirandello or Brecht.

Such and wide range of artistic points of view, techniques and applications coexisted without any defined separation. Therefore, the span of time comprehended by Modernism is perhaps as ellusive a concepts as the nature of this period. We can agree, however, that by the time the Second World War was over the world had yet again changed and this new turn of the screw would result in Posmodernism, which is evidently more accurate to describe our present time as well.

Modernity and all things modern have nothing to do with the techonological develpments of our days or with our nearsighted understanding of life. Though we measure life with in contrast with the short span of our lives, there is no obscurity is the past and not much is really new. The wheel that started to spin a century ago is still turning and we bare witness to yet another hour of this long day. Wheather or not we will see the world take a real turn, a paradigmatic turn; one of epistemological nature such as the step into the Middle ages or out of it, the Renaissance phoenix raising or the blooming of Romanticism (era we are still part of) is yet to be seen. Such changes are born out of deep intrisecal forces that go beyond the invention of computers and/or global connectivity.
We will have to be patient and open our eyes widely so this flag won't pass us by without noticing....

As we come back to our time, as we end our journey, the voices of the truly moderns are still booming in our ears:

Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle.
Paul Valéry, Literature

Opinions cannot survive if no one has a chance to fight for them.
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

The most visible joy can only reveal itself to us when we've transformed it, within.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Franz Kafta, "The Metamorphosis"

Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
Boris Pasternak, "On modesty and bravery"

By means of an image we are often able to hold on to our lost belongings. But it is the desperateness of losing which picks the flowers of memory, blinds the bouquet.
Colette, Mes Apprentissages

He who longs to strengthen his spirit
must go beyond obedience and respect.
He will continue to honor some laws
but he will mostly violate
both law and custom.
Constantin Cavafy, "Strengthening of the Spirit"

I seek a form that my style cannot discover,
a bud of thought that wants to be a rose.
Rubén Darío, "I seek a Form"

At my dying hour, and over my long life
A clock strikes somewhere at the city's edge.
Rabindranath Tagore, "Poem".