Modernism Facts for Kids

Franz Marc, The fate of the animals, 1913, oil on canvas. Shown in the exhibition of Degenerate art (Entartete Kunst) in Munich, Nazi Germany, 1937

Eric Gill's modernist North Wind, 1928, for the London Underground's headquarters, at 55 Broadway

The Rocket by Edward Middleton Manigault. It shows fireworks on Hudson River in 1909. Edward Middleton Manigault (1887–1922) was a modernist painter who in a short life (he died at 35) succeeded as a painter, ceramicist and furniture maker

Modernism was a cultural movement of the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. It changed art, literature, music, architecture and drama.

Modernism rejected tradition. It was interested in new ways of doing old things. Also, there was a belief that science and technology could change the world for the better. The details differ greatly, and the term covers some movements which are somewhat contradictory.

Art
Music
Dance
Literature
Architecture
Criticism
Images for kids
See also

Art

Modern art replaced classical art. It included abstract art, cubism, pop art, minimalism, and Dadaism. It affected sculpture quite strongly, though at the beginning sculptors like Rodin and Epstein made both traditional and modernist works. Henry Moore is one of the most famous modernist sculptors.

Typical modernist painters were Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Kandinsky and Mondrian.

Music

Composers such as Stravinsky, George Antheil and Schoenberg are modernists. Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps) is a landmark work.

Dance

Ballets such as The Rite of Spring and Les Noces (The Wedding) mark the arrival of modernism into this traditional dance form. Modern dance outside of ballet started with Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller and Ruth St. Denis.

Literature

James Joyce's Ulysses is the classic example of modernism in the novel. Ulysses (1922) has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire Modernist movement". Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1925) and T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922) are also prime examples. Looking back, it is clear that: Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) had a great influence on other writers.

The arrival of magic realism is part of modernism. The novels and short stories of Mikhail Bulgakov such as Diabolidad and The Master and Margarita are examples.

Architecture

Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, by Frank Lloyd Wright

Modernism in architecture is found in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius the founder of Bauhaus, and Mies van der Rohe. Le Corbusier's famous remark "A building is a machine for living in" shows how different his thinking was to architects of the 19th century. The skyscraper, such as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York (1956–1958), became the archetypal modernist building.

"Wassily" chair by Marcel Breuer is an example of Modernism

Criticism

A criticism of the modern movement is that it does not value tradition, and goes in for change for the sake of change. What modernists want most is freedom of expression, or, perhaps, freedom of experimentation. This is why many modern paintings avoid making visual copies of real things. In modernist literature, an author may leave out plots or narrative or characterization in books.

These experiments were not random. They drew on the ideas of their day: mass media, science and technology, Marxism, Freudian psychology, and so on. There was a general search for new materials, new methods and new ideas. There was often a rejection of elitism, and a love of populism and popular culture.

Another criticism was of the connection between modernism and socialism. Certainly many modernists were also socialists. In the early days of socialism it seemed to offer hope of a new future without the baggage of the past. This also explains their rejection of tradition.

Images for kids

Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon Guggenheim Museum completed in 1959
A Realist portrait of Otto von Bismarck. The modernists rejected realism.
Palais Stoclet (1905-1911) by modernist architect Josef Hoffmann
Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, Art Institute of Chicago
Piet Mondrian, View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers, Domburg, 1909, oil and pencil on cardboard, Museum of Modern Art, New York City
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art, located in Madrid. The photo shows the old building with the addition of one of the contemporary glass towers to the exterior by Ian Ritchie Architects with the closeup of the modern art tower.
Portrait of Eduard Kosmack (1910) by Egon Schiele
Le Corbusier, The Villa Savoye in Poissy (1928–1931)
Jean Metzinger, 1913, En Canot (Im Boot), oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm (57.5 in × 44.9 in), exhibited at Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes, Prague, 1914, acquired in 1916 by Georg Muche at the Galerie Der Sturm, confiscated by the Nazis circa 1936–1937, displayed at the Degenerate Art show in Munich, and missing ever since.
André Masson, Pedestal Table in the Studio 1922, early example of Surrealism
James Joyce statue on North Earl Street, Dublin, by Marjorie FitzGibbon
Samuel Beckett's En attendant Godot, (Waiting for Godot) Festival d'Avignon, 1978
Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles, 1952, National Gallery of Australia
Henry Moore, Reclining Figure (1957). In front of the Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland.
Smithson's Spiral Jetty from atop Rozel Point, Utah, US, in mid-April 2005. Created in 1970, it still exists although it has often been submerged by the fluctuating lake level. It consists of some 6500 tons of basalt, earth and salt.
Brice Marden, Vine, 1992–93, oil on linen, 240 by 260 cm (8 by 8+1⁄2 ft), Museum of Modern Art, New York

Modernism facts for kids

Contents

Art