Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Modernism is an artistic movement. This movement sought to create a new art, breaking with the dominant style of the time, responding to a need for change and innovation. In modernism technology and science are tools to create, improve and reshape the environment.
 * What is Modernism?**

Art Nouveau in Belgium and France, Liberty Style or Modern style in England, Jugendstil in German and Nordic countries, Floreale in Italy, Sezessionstil in Australia Modernisme in Cataluña and Modernism in Spain and Latin America.
 * What is it called in different countries?**

Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. Modernism is developed between the years 1880-1914. This school seeks to secede from the bourgeoisie and its materialism, through a fine art.
 * When did it start and why?**


 * What are its main characteristics?**
 * 1) An emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.
 * 2) A movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.
 * 3) A blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).
 * 4) An emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
 * 5) A tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.
 * 6) A rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.
 * 7) A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.
 * 8) Works of art can provide unity and coherence that has been lost in modern life (art can fix what human institutions have failed to do)