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Modernism
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Modernism is not a term to which a single meaning can be ascribed. It may be applied both to the content and to the form of a work, or to either in isolation. It reflects a sense of cultural crisis which was both exciting and disquieting, in that it opened up a whole new vista of human possibilities at the same time as putting into question any previously accepted means of grounding and evaluating new ideas. Modernism is marked by experimentation, particularly manipulation of form, and by the realization that knowledge is not absolute. Marx, Freud, and Darwin had unsettled the human subject from its previously secure place at the centre of at least the human universe, and had revealed its unwitting dependence on laws and structures outside its control and sometimes beyond its knowledge. Historical and material determinism, psychoanalytic theories which reveal the self as a pawn in a process dominated by an inaccessible unconscious play of forces, and a conception of evolution and heredity which situates humanity as no more than the latest product of natural selection—these theories conspired to threaten humanist self-confidence and to provoke a feeling of ideological uncertainty.
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Modernism is a broad term that is given to a range of design approaches in architecture. Generally, Modern architecture in the Pacific Northwest is defined by buildings constructed from about 1930 to 1970. Most historians can agree that Modern architecture was conceived as a reaction to the perceived chaos and eclecticism of the earlier 19th Century revival of historical forms. The Modern Movement began in Europe in the 1920s as an optimistic belief that science and the new technologies of industrialization would produce a genuine “modern age” architecture of universal principles. Much of this revolutionary philosophy emanated from a core group of young designers and artists in Europe such as Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier.
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By 1930, Modernism had entered popular culture. With the increasing urbanization of populations, it was beginning to be looked to as the source for ideas to deal with the challenges of the day. As modernism gained traction in academia, it was developing a self-conscious theory of its own importance. Popular culture, which was not derived from high culture but instead from its own realities (particularly mass production) fueled much modernist innovation. By 1930 The New Yorker magazine began publishing new and modern ideas by young writers and humorists like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, E.B. White, S.J. Perelman, and James Thurber, amongst others.
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Modernism/Modernity has three editors, one appointed to five-year terms by the MSA, and two appointed by Johns Hopkins University Press. Each September issue is edited by the MSA editor and includes a selection of peer-reviewed articles from the proceedings of the prior year's annual MSA conference. From time to time, one of the other three regular annual issues of journal is a special issue guest edited by the MSA editor.
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Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art. The limitations that constitute the medium of painting -- the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of the pigment -- were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Under Modernism these same limitations came to be regarded as positive factors, and were acknowledged openly. Manet's became the first Modernist pictures by virtue of the frankness with which they declared the flat surfaces on which they were painted. The Impressionists, in Manet's wake, abjured underpainting and glazes, to leave the eye under no doubt as to the fact that the colors they used were made of paint that came from tubes or pots. Cézanne sacrificed verisimilitude, or correctness, in order to fit his drawing and design more explicitly to the rectangular shape of the canvas.
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American Modernists: Breaking the Mold, by Susan Saccoccia Modernism by Teta Collins, from AskArt.com Modernism's subjects in the United States. Art Journal, Summer, 1996 by Michael Leja from LookSmart, Ltd Subjectivist Tendencies in Early Modernist American Art: The Case of Edwin Walter Dickinson by Mary Ellen Abell, from Brickhaus.com T[H]ree Artists (Three Women): Modernism and the Art of Hesse, Krasner, and O'Keeffe, byAnne Middleton Wagner (restricted access) from California Digital Library (go to eScholarship Editons and the search for the following titles) The eScholarship Editions collection includes the full text of more than 1,400 books from academic presses. The WGBH/Boston Forum Network is an audio and video streaming web site dedicated to curating and serving live and on-demand lectures, including a number of videos on Art and Architecture. Partners include a number of Boston-area museums, colleges, universities and other cultural organizations. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston partnered with the Forum Network for Modern Art in America, (43 minutes) in which Heather Cotter, Museum of Fine Arts Gallery Lecturer, gives an overview of the roots of American modern art using examples from the Museum's collection. This talk in the galleries of the Museum of Fine Arts investigates the foundations of modern art in America, focusing on works by Georgia O'Keefe, Arthur Dove, Charles Sheeler, and Stuart Davis.
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