Modernism And Postmodernism: Origin, Features, Art Forms

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Modernism and postmodernism were two literary movements that transformed the society of their respective periods during their development due to their revolutionary nature. In this essay, we will analyse more closely the existed differences between these two movements, starting from the literary branch and linking it to others areas such as those related to visual images or architecture. In this way, we will check how they not only marked a starting point in their respective eras, but also they became references and models to follow for everything related to arts within the current period.

Modernism in terms of literature had its beginnings in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Europe and North America and it is a movement characterised by breaking the traditional rules of writing in both poetry and prose. Its origins began to develop around the 1880s with the approach of pushing aside the traditional way of writing, which was used to study the past through contemporary techniques, to develop a more avant-garde technique where the subjective reality was given a greater importance. Philosophers such as Sigmund Freud and Ernst Mach were great influencers of the early Modernist literature while Friedrich Nietzsche, with his idea of psychological impulses, and Henri Bergson, with his work on time and consciousness, were great references for the novelists of the 20th century, especially for those who used the stream of consciousness technique, such as James Joyce or Virginia Woolf. In this way, modernism can be interpreted as a tendency to improve every aspect of life through science and technology, a reaction that emerged from industrialization and urbanization along with new technologies.

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With this new literary wave, some modernists began to encourage the concept of utopia, which supported that movements like Imagism, a new poetic style founded by Ezra Pound in 1912, gave modernism its beginning in the 20th century. This poetic style was characterised by attributing greater importance to the precision of images, brevity and free verse and it follows Ezra Pound’s idea to “Make it new”, which implied nullifying traditional forms of representation to express one’s voice in a completely different and avant-garde way. The arrival of the World War I, in addition, supposed that writers began to create cynical works through which they transmitted their mistrust of institutions of power and their rejection of the notion of absolute truths. Therefore, people’s reaction towards those horrifying events along with the technological improvement implied a calling to Modernism to find new forms of expression characterised by the individualism, experimentation, absurdity, symbolism and formalism among others.

These new forms of expression was against the conventional rules of the past and many works was written under its influence, such as Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. This novel has many modernist elements such as psychological analysis of characters, stream of consciousness, interior and exterior time, fragmented characters, be/exist figures and multiplicity of meanings that proves it a modern fiction.

One of the main modernist elements in the novel is stream of consciousness. The story is narrates, as we can see, through the character’s inner thoughts, their feelings and experiences and their remembrance of past, so the real setting and action takes place in the mind of them. For instance, when Clarissa goes to buy some lowers, she starts to remember his past when she was young and lived in Bourton along with his friends Sally and Peter. She also thinks about her presence at the time the novel takes place and understand that after her marriage, she became invisible and unknown as Clarissa for the world, but they know her as Mrs Richard Dalloway, recognising her by her husband . This event not only allows us to know that past and present plays simultaneously roles in her mind, but also the role of women at that time. The novel’s period takes place in a post-war London, a city of maturity where women had more freedom because they were allowed to attend university, but they could not get their degree. Society was ruled under a patriarchal system and it was not common that a woman went against the system, but impossible either. Nevertheless, regarding again the stream of consciousness it is also used to explain character’s inner thoughts as well as what do they think about themselves, replacing the narration and descriptions made by the author. For instance, at the beginning of the novel we think that Clarissa is a young character but later we discover that she is over fifty. This fact is supported by Peter’s thoughts when he met Clarissa for the first time after a long time. Both characters, in addition, think about the other in the same way guided by their appearances and habits, arguing that they have not changed at all. These inner thoughts show the human psychological as well as the psychological problems of the characters, what makes the novel more realistic. A sharing of experiences also takes place during the novel that creates a connection between characters through their thoughts. For instance, the moment of the aeroplane flying the air or the Big Ben’s striking link characters who have never met such as Clarissa and Septimus.

Another interesting modernist element is the concept of time in the novel, which is divided into two types: chronological and internal time. The internal time, including the stream of consciousness with it, refers to the characters’ ability to allude to the past and present time through their memory that create the novel’s story. The chronological time, on the other hand, refers to the passage of day or the real time where the novel takes place although the action of the novel as well as the setting depends on the character’s inner thoughts.

The element of fragmented character is also present in the novel. For instance, regarding the characters of Septimus and Clarissa, both are the two sides of the same coin. While Septimus avoids getting in touch with society, Clarissa is always in relation with it, what makes them opposite but complement each other. This modernist element, in addition, is related to the plurality of being, another characteristic that can reflected clearly in the character of Clarissa. At that time were men who inherited their family’s properties and had freedom to attend formal education whereas women’s future depended entirely on their husband. Marriage would be what would condition their future life and, as their functions were to take care of the house and raise children; apparently, they do not need formal education either. As Clarissa says, “she knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed” , and, talking about her current situation, she adds, “she had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen unknown; there being […] only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, […], this being Mrs Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway.” . Clarissa, linked to conventional rules after her marriage with Richard because of social status, cannot make her own choices; she only exists and lives a meaningless life. Sally Seton, by contrast, is a woman that since a young age accomplished to be her true self, going against those conventional rules and, without caring about what people could think about her, she married a man for love without caring for his low class, capturing the real meaning of her life.

The psychological study of the characters is another modernist element that study how the characters’ experiences lived can affect their lives. For instance, Clarissa’s rejection to Peter’s proposal caused a great impact on his life that led him to India where he had an affair with another woman. In the case of Septimus, World War I caused him a shell shock that changed his life completely. He does not trust anyone because he believes they want to kill him and has lost his beliefs for all institutes. His suffering ends, as it is supposed, with his suicide.

Finally, multiplicity of meanings is another characteristic of modernism that is related to the character’s inner thoughts and, depending on their perspectives, we can interpret and catch the meaning of the story in different ways. Due to the subjectivity of the story, we only can know what the characters wants us to know giving us a limited information. Nevertheless, the subjectivity can be counteracted by the different points of view, which allow us to understand aspects of the novel with omitted information that had not been shown before. For instance, the main perspective in the novel is Clarissa’s and through her memories and thoughts, we can understand the story of the novel and have an overview of the other characters. In addition, if we compare Clarissa’s life as a married woman to her youth in the past, we can recognise her as a victim of society, who had no choice but to follow the conventional rules imposed by society. However, comparing her with her friend Sally, we can think that instead of fighting for being her true self among a conservative society and enjoying the meaning of life, Clarissa becomes a passive agent from the beginning and choose an easy but unhappy life with Richard. Through Sally and Peter’s conversation, we also know that Clarissa has changed since her childhood. Through Clarissa’s example we can see how a pure-hearted girl who was generous and cared for her friends has become a snob guided by social conventions whose worries only concern those issues and has lost most of her relation with her old friends.

Regarding art, the modernist movement also approach it and gives rise to the creation of different styles such as Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism. As many artists have said, the purpose of arts in terms of modernism is about enjoying creativity without rules, using colours and lines to make something new to show and teach aspects of human beings. It is said that relativity has an important role within art and that is the reason why the truth is multiple and depends on the perspective. Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and co-founder of cubism supported that idea and assured that “we all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand…” (1923). He used to take old tradition to make it new, creating paintings that were constructions of the vision of the world. One of his most famous works is Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907), where he questioned, “why women should be painted in a certain way.” In the paintings, we can appreciate two different styles because Picasso painted it in two times. While the three women on the left have facial features in the Iberian style, the two on the right show African mask-like features. This reference of African art reflects on his work was possible thanks to French colonialism in Africa, which allowed Picasso to discover the African art as well as other new cultures and customs. Some years later, he created another of his famous works known as Guernica (1937), which is a dramatic and critical work against the bombing of Guernica by the German under the orders of General Franco. The work, in addition, became an international symbol of the genocide that was committed during wartime.

Regarding now postmodernism, it appeared after the Second World War in arts, criticism and architecture and supposed a departure from modernism. In terms of literature, it is characterised by the use of techniques such as fragmentation, experimentation, paradox, stylistic imitation and unreliable narrators. It is also considered as a style that goes against the Enlightenment thinking and modernist approaches to literature.

In comparison with modernist literature, both styles goes against the realism of the 19th century and explore subjectivism from an external reality to understand the internal consciousness, using in many cases modernist style examples of Virginia Woolf, where the element of stream of consciousness determines the story of the novel. Both postmodernism and modernist writers also reject the notion of absolute truths and use elements such as multiplicity of meanings in their works as well as fragmented characters and narrative, which are two other elements that appear in Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs Dalloway. However, whereas modern literature considers fragmentation and extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis that the artist has to solve, postmodernists consider chaos as insurmountable, so playfulness becomes central in the work pushing aside the order and meaning. For Lyotard, “modernity […] cannot exist without a shattering of belief and without discovery of the ‘lack of reality’ of reality, together with the invention of other realities.” In this way, he would “call modern the art which devotes its ‘little technical expertise’ […] to present the fact that the unpresentable exists.” Finally, he would conclude arguing that “the postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable.” (Lyotard, 1984).

Through Lyotard’s words, we can better understand what postmodernism is and what makes it different from modernism. Due to postmodernism came after modernism, it was influenced in terms of literature and because of that, both have some elements in common within their techniques as we have mentioned before. However, while postmodernism is against the use of logical thinking, modernism was based on this technique to gain knowledge, which for postmodernists meant that modernist lived in a world of rationality and objectivity whereas the rest of perspectives were placed into irrationality and subjectivity. Modernism also tries to build a coherent world-view whereas postmodernism question the distinction between high and low culture to remove it. The main difference between these two literary movements, moreover, lies in their own purpose. Modernism’s aim was to replace the past creating something completely new, while postmodernism’s aim consisted of bringing traditionalism back and combining it with modernism. Postmodernists did not believe in originality along with their judgement about the absence of language to describe the complexity of reality as well as the absence of theory to explain the complexities and burden of society. In this way, postmodernism can be seen as a reaction against modernism since postmodernist writers took modernist rules to react against them and parodying styles and forms related to modernist artists and writers.

Regarding postmodernism in terms of art, it belongs to art movements that goes against some aspects of modernism. One of the greatest works that represent it is Whaam! (1963), one of the best known works of pop art and a postmodern painting by Roy Lichtenstein whose aim was the representation of war and its style is taken from comic book. The left-hand canvas shows an American warplane firing a missile against an approaching enemy plane, which is located in the right-hand canvas. The work’s title, Whaam!, is an onomatopoeia appear over the fireball in yellow as a visual response to the words of the pilot. Lichtenstein’s work also adopts the traditional design style that comics have and, in spite of having appropriated advertising and cartoons from which his work is based on, Lichtenstein recognises that he has made a transformation of the original work: “I am nominally copying, but I am really restating the copied thing in other terms. In doing that, the original acquires a totally different texture.” (Quoted in Lawrence Alloway, Roy Lichtenstein, New York 1983, p.106) When the painting was created, the Vietnam War was taking place and, taking into account that Lichtenstein attended military service in 1943 and the following three years, we can interpret his work as a statement on the nonsense of war through the deconstruction of military heroism (Goodwin, 2018).

Another important figure who leaded the postmodern movement of Pop Art was Andy Warhol, an American artist whose works were characterised by exploring the relationship between celebrity culture, artistic expression and advertising. Some of his most famous works are Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962).

On the one hand, Marilyn Diptych is a silkscreen painting created with fifty images of Marilyn based on the same photograph from the film Niagara (1943). Warhol’s work was completed after Marilyn Monroe’s death and the piece shows two side: the left contains twenty-five images painted in colour whereas the twenty-five images of the right are painted in black and white. This contrast between colours used by Warhol symbolise the relationship between Monroe’s life and death, showing the multiplicity of meanings in her life and legacy. In addition, Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portfolios in 1967 was an extension of his initial silkscreen painting and show ten images with vibrant colours to show her personality. He highlighted with these colours different parts of her body in the images such as her lip, her blonde hair…And the ones which have darker colours not only show her persona as an actress on the screen in black and white, but also her passed away. Therefore, this collage of layers of repeated images in different tonalities not only shows the deconstruction of Marilyn as an actress as her fame increased, but her ubiquitous status as a celebrity.

On the other hand, Campbell’s Soup Cans is a work of art created with thirty-two canvases where each painting represents a variety of soup can the Campbell’s Soup Company offered at that time. Warhol used another method to produce each of the paintings that form the collages and it is based on the semi-mechanised screen printing process, using a non-painterly style. When Warhol exhibited his work for the first time in 1962, each of the paintings were hanging on the wall simultaneously and displayed on shelves, simulating groceries in a store, and he also assigned to each one of the canvases a different flavour to allude to the products supplied by Campbell Company. The paintings were all made using the same process but there are some differences between them such as different shades of red or white from one canvas to another and the gold fleur-de-lis imprints differs one from another, symbolising a “‘high’ art dwelling on a ‘low’ — everyday, readily available or seemingly mundane — subject”, which is the very essence of Pop Art itself . (Dean, 2018) Equally, “repeating the same image at the same scale, the canvases stress the uniformity and ubiquity of the Campbell’s can. At the same time, they subvert the idea of painting as a medium of invention and originality.” (MoMA, 1999) Warhol’s aim was to show a complacent abundance instead of an energetic competition through his painting Campbell’s Soup Cans but these techniques were also widely used during postmodernism because the life of society was based on capitalism, so brands and companies used them in their advertisements to draw public attention.

To conclude, modernism was a movement whose cultural origin is linked to the industrial revolution, so science and technology began to take an active role in society. In terms of literature, modernists broke with traditional rules and experimented with new forms of literary representations and expressions to create something completely new. As Saphiro argued, “modernism was a positive response to our growing complex world, a first try to make sense of the changes that were occurring and needed to occur. While it involved a turning away from the expected, it included a turning to-wards another way of self-definition.” (Saphiro, 1992) There was a boom in the creation of new styles, both literary and artistic, and with the passing of the First World War, many modern artists adopted a critical attitude against the institutions of power through works that were more cynical. The arrival of postmodernism, on the other hand, meant the end of the modernist era. This movement appeared after Second World War and, although it shared several elements with modernism, it was seen as a reaction against that period. Saphiro also adds, “after having seen violence, chaos, and other symptoms of decline in this century, the result is no acceptable, coherent solution, and thus, this movement professes an anti-form approach.” (Saphiro, 1992) In terms of literature and art, postmodernism based his techniques on the traditionalist to redefine it and provide a multiplicity of new perspective since postmodernist believed that originality did not exist. In this way, we can distinguish how modernism is governed by a system of rules established by themselves where styles are defined and show what is right and what is not, while postmodernism provides more freedom to the artist regarding the creation of content as long as their works start from a pre-modernist or traditionalist base.

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