Modernism was a movement in the early 20th century that affected literature, visual arts, performing arts, and music. It focused on trying new ideas, using abstract styles, and exploring personal feelings. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and social problems were also connected to this movement. Modernism believed that people were becoming more separated from traditional ideas about morality, happiness, and rules. It aimed to change how people in society interact and live together.

This movement began in the late 19th century because of major changes in Western culture, such as less religious influence and the increasing importance of science. Modernism rejected old traditions and sought new ways to express culture. It was shaped by technological progress, industrial growth, city life, and changes in the world after World War I. Artistic styles linked to modernism include abstract art, writing that shows thoughts as they happen, film techniques that use quick cuts, music without traditional scales, modern dance, and new styles of buildings and city planning.

Modernism criticized the Enlightenment idea that reason alone could solve problems. It also disagreed with the belief in creating something completely new from nothing, a view held by realism and Romanticism in the 19th century. Instead, modernism used methods like combining different materials, repeating ideas, and reworking previous works. Another key idea was examining how art is made and the materials used in it. Scholars still debate when modernism ended, with some saying it became late modernism or high modernism. Postmodernism, which came later, opposed many modernist ideas.

Overview and definition

Modernism was a cultural movement that influenced the arts and the overall mood or spirit of the time. It is often described as a way of thinking and acting that focuses on being aware of how people think or act, especially among artists and thinkers who led the way in new ideas. In the West, modernism is also seen as a movement that supported progress by believing people could improve their lives through experiments, science, or technology. From this view, modernism encouraged people to rethink all parts of life. Modernists looked for things they believed were slowing progress and replaced them with new methods to achieve the same goals.

Historian Roger Griffin said modernism was a large cultural, social, or political effort driven by the idea that "the new" is always important. He believed modernism aimed to restore a feeling of order and purpose in the world, countering what some saw as a loss of a greater sense of meaning due to changes in society. This included movements like Expressionism, Futurism, Vitalism, Theosophy, Psychoanalysis, Nudism, Eugenics, Utopian town planning, modern dance, Bolshevism, Organic Nationalism, and even the self-sacrifice seen during World War I. These all shared a common goal of seeking a deeper understanding of reality, where people hoped to move beyond their limits and become creators of history instead of its victims.

Religion was also affected by new scientific, philosophical, and political changes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to the development of Catholic modernism. T.S. Eliot was influenced by this movement.

In 1911, Arthur Vermeersch, a Jesuit writer, described modernism in the context of Catholic teachings as a movement that sought to change how people think about God, humans, the world, and life, both in the present and the future. This change was influenced by earlier ideas from Humanism and 18th-century philosophy, as well as events like the French Revolution.

Modernism, Romanticism, Philosophy and Symbol

Literary modernism is often described using a line from the poet W. B. Yeats: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" (from his poem "The Second Coming"). Modernist writers and artists often look for a deep, central truth or meaning in the world but find that such a center is unstable or missing. In contrast, postmodernism celebrates this breakdown, showing how ideas about deep truths, like those explored by philosopher Jacques Derrida, can fail to hold up.

Philosophically, the idea that deep truths cannot be known clearly began with the Scottish thinker David Hume (1711–1776). Hume argued that people never actually see one event cause another, and that we can never truly know ourselves as an object, only as a subject. He also believed that if knowledge comes only from things we can see, touch, or feel, then we cannot claim to know deep truths about the world.

Modernism can be driven by a strong emotional desire to find these deep truths, even while recognizing that they may not be real. For example, some modernist novels, like Heart of Darkness and The Great Gatsby, include characters who believe they have discovered important truths about nature or human character. However, the novels themselves often treat these beliefs as jokes or show simpler, more ordinary explanations instead. Similarly, poems by Wallace Stevens often explore whether nature has meaning, but the meaning either disappears by the end of the poem or is shown to be uncertain.

Modernism often rejects the realism of the 19th century, which focused on creating realistic, naturalistic scenes that seemed to carry clear meaning. Instead, some modernists aim for a more "real" kind of realism that does not rely on a central point of view. For example, in Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), the subjects are shown from many different angles at once, not from a single perspective. Another painting, The Poet (1911), also shows the body from multiple viewpoints, combining them into one image. As the Peggy Guggenheim Collection website explains, Picasso’s work presents many views of objects, as if he had walked around them and combined them into a single picture.

Modernism, with its focus on the idea that "things fall apart," can be seen as the height of romanticism, if romanticism is understood as the search for deep truths about people, nature, a higher power, and meaning in the world. Modernism often longs for such truths but later sees them collapse.

This difference between modernism and romanticism also appears in how each treats symbols. Romantic writers sometimes believed there was a clear connection between a symbol (like a word or image) and its meaning. For example, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge described nature as "that eternal language which thy God / Utters." However, other romantic thinkers saw nature and its symbols as mysterious and hard to understand. The writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (not a romantic himself) said that meaning "remains eternally and infinitely active and inaccessible in the image." Modernist writers, influenced by earlier symbolist artists, often focused on the difficulty of finding meaning in symbols and metaphors. For example, Wallace Stevens tried to find meaning in nature but often failed, even when he seemed close to doing so.

Because of this, modernist metaphors may feel strange or unnatural. For instance, T.S. Eliot described an evening as "spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table." Similarly, many modernist poets portrayed nature in ways that felt mechanical or disconnected from the natural world. For example, the poet Stephen Oliver described the moon as "busily 'hoisting' itself into consciousness," giving it a strange, unnatural action.

Origins and early history

Modernism came from Romanticism’s reaction against the changes caused by the Industrial Revolution and the values of the middle class. Literary scholar Gerald Graff said, "The main idea of modernism was to criticize the 19th-century middle-class society and its beliefs; the modernists carried on the ideas of Romanticism."

J. M. W. Turner, a famous 19th-century landscape painter and part of the Romantic movement, helped start new ways of using light, color, and atmosphere in art. His work "anticipated the French Impressionists" and modernism by breaking away from traditional ways of showing things. However, Turner believed his art should always tell a story about history, myths, or literature. Modernists, though, disagreed with Romantics’ belief that art shows the true nature of reality. They argued that since each person sees art differently, it cannot reveal the ultimate truth Romantics wanted. Still, modernists did not completely reject the idea that art helps people understand the world. To them, art was a way to challenge how people see things, not to show a higher reality.

Modernism often avoids 19th-century realism, which focuses on showing meaning through realistic pictures. Instead, some modernists aim for a different kind of realism, one that is not centered on a single view. For example, Picasso’s 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon shows its subjects from many angles, creating a flat, two-dimensional image. Similarly, Picasso’s 1911 painting The Poet shows the body from multiple viewpoints. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection said, "Picasso shows many views of each object, as if he had moved around it, and combines them into one image."

Modernism, which feels like "things fall apart," is often seen as the highest point of Romanticism. August Wilhelm Schlegel, an early German Romantic, said Romanticism looks for truths about people, nature, and the meaning of life. Modernism, while also searching for such truths, only finds their collapse.

During the Industrial Revolution (about 1760–1840), important changes included steam-powered machines, especially railways that began in Britain in the 1830s. These led to progress in physics, engineering, and architecture. A major achievement was the Crystal Palace, a huge building made of cast iron and glass built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. Similar styles were used in railway stations like King’s Cross (1852) and Paddington (1854). These technological advances spread worldwide, leading to structures like the Brooklyn Bridge (1883) and the Eiffel Tower (1889), which was the tallest man-made structure at the time. These changes transformed cities and daily life. The electric telegraph, developed in 1837, and the use of "standard time" by British railways starting in 1845 also changed how people experienced time.

Despite technological progress, ideas that history and civilization always improve and that advances are always good faced criticism in the 19th century. Some argued that artists and society had different values, and that society’s current values might stop progress. The philosopher Schopenhauer (1788–1860) questioned earlier optimism in his work The World as Will and Representation (1819/20). His ideas influenced later thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Similarly, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and Nietzsche both rejected the idea that reality can be fully understood through objective observation. This rejection helped shape existentialism and nihilism.

Around 1850, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (a group of English artists and critics) challenged the trends of industrial Victorian England. They opposed technical skill without creativity. They were influenced by John Ruskin (1819–1900), who believed art could improve the lives of working people in industrial cities. Art critic Clement Greenberg called the Pre-Raphaelites "proto-modernists," saying they influenced artists like Manet (1832–1883), with whom modernist painting began. They were unhappy with how realistic painting was done at the time, believing it was not truthful enough.

Two important thinkers of the mid-19th century were biologist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who wrote On the Origin of Species through Natural Selection (1859), and political scientist Karl Marx (1818–1883), who wrote Das Kapital (1867). Both challenged the ideas of their time. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection questioned religious beliefs and the idea that humans are unique. Marx’s ideas about contradictions in capitalism and the lack of freedom for workers led to Marxist theory.

African art influenced modernist art, which was interested in abstract ways of showing things.

Art historians suggest different dates for when modernism began. Historian William Everdell said modernism started in the 1870s, when ideas about continuity changed with mathematician Richard Dedekind’s work and physicist Ludwig Boltzmann’s theories. Everdell also said modernist painting began in 1885–1886 with artist Georges Seurat’s use of small dots in A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Visual art critic Clement Greenberg called German philosopher Immanuel Kant "the first real modernist." He also said modernism in literature and painting began in France with Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) and Édouard Manet (1832–1883), and in writing with Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880). Baudelaire’s book Les Fleurs du mal (1857) and Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (1857) were important. Baudelaire’s essay The Painter of Modern Life (1863) inspired artists to break from tradition and create new ways of showing the world.

Starting in the 1860s, two different approaches in art and writing developed in France.

Modernism emerges

In the early 1900s, a new style of art and writing called modernism began. This style grew from ideas of the Romantic period and from efforts to understand things that were not yet known. At first, modernist works were seen as part of older art trends, but they changed how people thought about art. Before modernism, artists were seen as people who showed the ideas and culture of the middle class. Modernist artists, however, broke this idea. Important modernist works include Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, which ended without a traditional musical key in 1908; Wassily Kandinsky’s Expressionist paintings starting in 1903, including his first abstract painting and the founding of the Blue Rider group in 1911; and the development of Fauvism and Cubism by artists like Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque between 1900 and 1910.

Modernism often used older artistic traditions in new ways. This included techniques like repeating earlier ideas, combining old and new styles, and changing or reworking older works. T.S. Eliot, a poet, said that the best parts of a poet’s work often show the influence of earlier poets. However, modernism’s relationship with tradition was complicated. Some artists wanted to break with the past, while others looked to it for inspiration. Literary scholar Peter Child noted that modernism had both forward-looking and backward-looking ideas, sometimes causing confusion.

Arnold Schoenberg’s music is an example of modernism blending old and new. He rejected traditional tonal harmony, a system of organizing music that had been used for over 150 years. Instead, he created a new method using twelve-note rows. Though this was new, it had roots in the work of earlier composers like Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner.

In the early 1900s, artists like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse challenged traditional ways of painting, such as using perspective to show depth. Their work caused controversy. Around the same time, Oskar Kokoschka wrote Murderer, Hope of Women, the first Expressionist play, and Schoenberg composed his String Quartet No. 2 in 1908.

Cubism, a modernist art style, was influenced by Paul Cézanne’s later paintings, which showed three-dimensional forms. In Cubist art, objects are broken into pieces and shown from many angles. Cubism became famous in 1911 at an art show in Paris, where artists like Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes displayed their work. That same year, Wassily Kandinsky painted Picture with a Circle, which he later called his first abstract painting. In 1912, Metzinger and Gleizes wrote a Cubist manifesto, and artists like Robert Delaunay created large Cubist paintings.

In 1905, four German artists formed a group called Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden, which helped start the German Expressionist movement. A similar group, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), was formed in 1911 in Munich. The term "Expressionism" became widely used in 1913. Though Expressionism began in Germany, it had influences from other countries and included writers, not just painters. Expressionism focused on showing strong emotions and reacting to the effects of industrialization and city life. It rejected realism, a style that aimed to show life as it was. Expressionist plays, like Murderer, Hope of Women by Oskar Kokoschka, used simple characters, loud dialogue, and intense emotions.

Futurism was another modernist movement. In 1909, the Italian poet F.T. Marinetti published a manifesto in a French newspaper, Le Figaro. Soon after, a group of artists signed a Futurist Manifesto, inspired by Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. This movement celebrated speed, technology, and the modern world.

After 1945

The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature says that modernism in British and American literature ended around 1939. However, there is disagreement about when modernism ended and when postmodernism began, just like there was disagreement about when modernism started after the Victorian era. Clement Greenberg believed modernism ended in the 1930s, except in visual and performing arts. In music, Paul Griffiths notes that modernism seemed to lose strength by the late 1920s, but after World War II, a new group of composers, such as Boulez, Barraqué, Babbitt, Nono, Stockhausen, and Xenakis, brought modernism back. Many literary modernists lived into the 1950s and 1960s, but they usually stopped creating major works. The term "late modernism" is sometimes used for modernist works published after 1930. Some modernists or late modernists who continued writing after 1945 include Wallace Stevens, Gottfried Benn, T. S. Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, William Faulkner, Dorothy Richardson, John Cowper Powys, and Ezra Pound. Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published his most important modernist poem, Briggflatts, in 1965. Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil was published in 1945, and Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus in 1947. Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989, is sometimes called a "later modernist." Beckett’s work began in the 1930s and continued until the 1980s, including Molloy (1951), Waiting for Godot (1953), Happy Days (1961), and Rockaby (1981). Some critics describe his later works as "minimalist" or "post-modernist." Poets Charles Olson (1910–1970) and J. H. Prynne (born 1936) are also described as late modernists.

More recently, some critics have redefined "late modernism" to mean works written after 1945, not 1930. This change reflects the idea that the ideas of modernism were greatly changed by events during World War II, such as the Holocaust and the use of the atomic bomb.

After World War II, European cities faced major challenges, including rebuilding and regrouping politically. In Paris, once a center of culture and art, the situation for artists was very difficult. Many collectors, dealers, and modernist artists, writers, and poets left Europe for the United States. Some artists, like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Pierre Bonnard, stayed in France and survived.

In the 1940s, New York City became a hub for American Abstract Expressionism, a modernist art movement influenced by artists like Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Surrealists. American artists were also helped by the presence of artists like Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger, Max Ernst, and the André Breton group, as well as galleries like Pierre Matisse’s and Peggy Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century.

Paris regained its cultural importance in the 1950s and 1960s as a center for machine art, with artists like Jean Tinguely and Nicolas Schöffer creating works there. This movement may have a lasting influence because it reflects the technological focus of modern life.

The term "Theatre of the Absurd" describes plays, mostly written by Europeans, that show the belief that life has no meaning or purpose, leading to broken communication. These plays often use illogical speech and end in silence. While earlier artists like Alfred Jarry influenced this style, the Theatre of the Absurd is generally seen as beginning in the 1950s with Samuel Beckett’s plays. Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay, comparing it to Albert Camus’s ideas about the absurd in The Myth of Sisyphus. These plays often mix comedy with tragic or horrific images, show characters trapped in hopeless situations, and use dialogue filled with clichés and nonsense. Some playwrights associated with the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Alexander Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fernando Arrabal, Václav Havel, and Edward Albee.

In the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock’s painting style changed how art was created. He believed the process of making art was as important as the finished piece. Like Pablo Picasso’s innovations in the early 20th century, Pollock redefined art by moving away from traditional methods, such as using unstretched canvas on the floor and applying paint in unique ways. His work inspired other artists to explore new possibilities in art. Other Abstract Expressionists, such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and others, also made important contributions. Historians like Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, and Catherine de Zegher have highlighted the contributions of women artists who were overlooked in traditional art history.

Henry Moore became Britain’s leading sculptor after World War II. He is known for his large, abstract bronze sculptures, often showing mother-and-child or reclining figures. These sculptures are usually hollow or have open spaces. In the 1950s, Moore received major commissions, such as a reclining figure for the UNESCO building in Paris in 1958. His public works are found around the world.

Modernism in Asia

Scholar William J. Tyler says that the terms "modernism" and "modernist" have only recently been used in English discussions about modern Japanese literature. Some people still question if these terms accurately describe Japanese modernism compared to Western European modernism. Tyler finds this surprising because well-known Japanese writers like Kawabata Yasunari, Nagai Kafu, and Jun'ichirō Tanizaki wrote in a very modern style. However, scholars in visual arts, architecture, and poetry quickly accepted "modanizumu" as an important term to describe Japanese culture during the 1920s and 1930s.

In Japanese photography, a modernist movement called Shinkō shashin ("New Photography") began around 1930. It was influenced by Germany's Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) and Surrealism. Kansuke Yamamoto, a poet-photographer, created work that combined Surrealism with international modernist ideas. In 1924, young Japanese writers like Kawabata and Riichi Yokomitsu started a literary journal called Bungei Jidai ("The Artistic Age"). This journal was part of the "art for art's sake" movement, which was influenced by European styles like Cubism, Expressionism, and Dada.

Japanese modernist architect Kenzō Tange (1913–2005) was one of the most important architects of the 20th century. He combined traditional Japanese styles with modernism and designed major buildings on five continents. Tange supported the Metabolist movement. He said he started thinking about what he later called structuralism around 1959 or the early 1960s. He was influenced early in life by Swiss modernist Le Corbusier. In 1949, he gained international recognition for winning the competition to design Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

In China, the "New Sensationists" (新感覺派, Xīn Gǎnjué Pài) were a group of writers in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s. They were influenced, to different extents, by Western and Japanese modernism. Their stories focused more on the unconscious mind and aesthetics than on social or economic issues. Writers like Mu Shiying and Shi Zhecun were part of this group.

In India, the Progressive Artists' Group was a group of modern artists formed in 1947, mainly based in Mumbai. While they didn't have a single style, they combined Indian

Modernism in Africa

Peter Kalliney states that "Modernist ideas, particularly the concept of artistic independence, were important in the literature of countries in Africa that were gaining freedom from colonial rule in anglophone Africa." He believes that writers such as Rajat Neogy, Christopher Okigbo, and Wole Soyinka used modernist ideas about artistic independence to show their freedom from colonial control, from systems that practiced racial discrimination, and even from the new governments that ruled their countries after independence.

Relationship with postmodernism

By the early 1980s, the postmodern movement in art and architecture started to gain recognition through different types of art and media. Postmodernism in music and literature appeared earlier. In music, one source says the term "postmodernism" was first used in the 1970s. In British literature, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of British Literature notes that modernism began to lose its main role to postmodernism as early as 1939. However, exact dates are debated, as noted by Andreas Huyssen, who said, "one critic's postmodernism is another critic's modernism." Some people argue that modernism and postmodernism are not clearly separate but are instead parts of the same movement, with late modernism continuing into later periods.

Modernism is a broad term that covers many cultural trends. Postmodernism is a movement that named itself and was influenced by ideas about society and politics. Today, the term is used more broadly to describe activities from the 20th century onward that show awareness of modern ideas and reinterpret them.

Postmodern theory argues that trying to define modernism after it ended leads to problems and contradictions. Postmodernism also challenges the idea that there is one clear truth. Modernists use different theories to explain truth (such as correspondence, coherence, and pragmatism), while postmodernists argue that truth itself does not exist in a way that can be clearly understood.

In a more specific sense, not everything that was modernist was also postmodernist. Parts of modernism that focused on the benefits of reason and technological progress were only modernist.

Some modernists responded to postmodernism by creating a movement called remodernism, which rejects the negative and confusing aspects of postmodern art and instead supports early modernist artistic styles.

Criticism of late modernity

Although modernist art often did not support capitalist ideas like buying many goods, society in the 20th century accepted large-scale production and the wide availability of affordable items. This time in history is called "late or high modernity" and began in advanced Western countries. A German sociologist named Jürgen Habermas, in his book The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), wrote the first major analysis of the culture of late modernity. Another important early analysis came from American sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993). Ritzer explained how late modernity became filled with fast food culture. Other writers showed how modernist styles appeared in movies and later in music videos. Modernist design became popular in everyday culture, as simple and stylized designs were widely accepted, often linked to ideas of a futuristic, high-tech space age.

In 2008, Janet Bennett published Modernity and Its Critics in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory. The mixing of consumer-friendly and high-quality modernist culture changed the meaning of "modernism." First, it showed that a movement that once rejected tradition had itself become a tradition. Second, it showed that the difference between modernist art for experts and modernist art for the general public was no longer clear. Modernism became so common that it was called "post avant-garde," meaning it no longer had the power to cause major change. Many people see this change as the start of a time called postmodernism. Others, like art critic Robert Hughes, believe postmodernism is a continuation of modernism.

"Anti-Modern" or "Counter-Modern" movements focus on ideas like unity, connection, and spirituality as solutions to problems caused by modernism. These movements view modernism as overly simplified, making it hard to understand complex or unexpected effects.

Some traditional artists, like Alexander Stoddart, reject modernism entirely, calling it a product of "a time of false money connected to false culture."

In some areas, the influence of modernism has lasted longer than in others. Visual art has changed the most from its past. Major cities now have museums that display modern art separately from art made after the Renaissance (around 1400 to 1900). Examples include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Tate Modern in London, and the Pompidou Center in Paris. These museums do not separate modernist and postmodernist works, seeing both as parts of modern art.