Introduction 4 chapter I. The age of modernism

The structure of the course work. This course work consists of an introduction, two chapters, four paragraphs, a conclusion, and a list of references .

CHAPTER I. THE AGE OF MODERNISM.

1.1.History of modernism

Early in the early twentieth century, modernism emerged from a rebellious mood and was a radical approach to reviving modern civilization's views on life, art, politics, and science. This rebellious attitude, which flourished in the 1900s and 1930s, was based on the rejection of European culture as extremely corrupt, self-satisfied, and indifferent, sick, because it was associated with the artificiality of society. changes Dissatisfaction with the moral bankruptcy of everything in Europe has prompted modern thinkers and artists to explore other alternatives, especially primitive cultures. The result will be disastrous for the organization; the emerging culture destroys tradition and power in the hope of changing modern society.¹
The first feature associated with modernism is nihilism, the rejection of all religious and moral principles as the only means of achieving social progress. In other words, modernists rejected the moral codes of the society in which they lived. The reason they did so was that even though most of them were atheists, they did not have to believe in God or have great doubts about the meaninglessness of life. On the contrary, their rejection of traditional morality was based on his arbitrariness, conformity, and desire to control human emotions. In other words, the rules of behavior were a limiting and limiting force on the human spirit. Modernists believed that in order for man to feel whole and to share in the revival of the social process, he must be free from all the heavy burdens of hundreds of years of hypocrisy.
The rejection of moral and religious principles has been complicated by the rejection of all belief systems, whether in art, politics, science, or philosophy. The most important reason for the question to arise was no doubt. One of the reasons for this iconoclasm was that the culture of the early 20th century was renewing itself every day. With so many scientific discoveries and technological innovations, the world was changing so rapidly that culture was forced to constantly redefine itself in order to keep pace with modernity so as not to look like an anachronism. When a new scientific or philosophical system or artistic style was adopted, each of them was soon questioned and abolished in favor of an even newer one. Another reason for this inconsistency is that people have always felt the great creative energy that emerges in the background, as if announcing the birth of some new invention or theory.
As a result of the new technological dynamics, modernists had a constant sense of anticipation and did not want to cling to any system that limited creativity and ultimately limited and destroyed it. Thus, in art, for example, in the early 20th century, artists questioned academic art for lack of freedom and flirted with many “isms”: secessionism, fascism, expressionism, cubism, futurism. , constructivism, dadaism and others. surrealism. . Pablo Picasso, for example, went so far as to try a few of these styles and never wanted to be too comfortable with any of them.
The struggle with all new ideas about reality and culture has given rise to new permissions in the field of art. Art has now begun to break all the rules, trying to keep up with all the theoretical and technological advances that are changing the whole structure of life. Thus, artists broke down and invented everything that was taught as sacred, and experimented with new artistic languages that could more accurately express the meaning of all the new changes that were taking place. The result was a new art that seemed strange and radical to those who encountered it, because the artistic norm has always been to literally imitate or depict the image of mimesis, nature, people, and society. In other words, art had to be judged by the norm of how realistically it represented any appearance or sound.
This tradition of mimetics dates back to ancient Greece, was perfected during the Renaissance and gained popularity in the 19th century. But for modern artists, this old norm was very restrictive and did not reflect the current perception of life. Freud and Einstein radically changed the perception of truth. Freud asked us to look at ourselves, the previously oppressed personal world, and Einstein taught us that relativity is everything. Thus, it was necessary to find new artistic forms to express this new subjectivity. Artists have objected so much to personal works that they have distorted the natural look of things and fundamentally. Each individual case was asked to be evaluated as a self-sufficient unit that was subject to its own internal laws and internal logic and thus had its own character. There are no other traditional formulaic forms for applying human expression.
What artistic beliefs did the modernists adopt? Most importantly, they fought for freedom and found it in the artistic forms and sentiments of the primitive cultures of Africa, the East, America, and Oceania. The move was a rejection of all the stylistic subtleties that formed the basis of 19th-century artistic activity. On the one hand, primitivism represents the simplification of a form that should become one of the hallmarks of modernism. This abstraction of form showed the emergence of some important structures previously hidden by real techniques. Art, according to modernists, was very preoccupied with inappropriate subtleties and conventions that distract from the main goal of art - the discovery of truth. Primitivism, on the other hand, was the expression of everything that a civilized man had to suppress in order to make a deal with society. According to Sigmund Freud’s book, Civilization and Its Protests, in order for a person to participate in the life of a civilized society, he had to give up many uncultured desires within him, such as natural inclination to adultery, kinship, murder, murder; . homosexuality and others were considered taboo. It is the suppression of such natural desires, Freud argues, that is the source of modern neuroses. As a Jew, Freud was very familiar with the "MUST MAN" of the Ten Commandments.
Symbolically, the acceptance of primitivism is a denial of the specific principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition and an affirmation of the true expression of the hidden identity that finds its expression only in our dreams.
The modernist interest in primitivism is also expressed in its correlation, the study of disorder. This temptation to forbidden and evil things was tantamount to a rediscovery of passion, a way of life that many artists at the time believed was repressed or asleep. Friedrich Nietzsche accuses this inaction of being obsessed with form in the 19th century. In his major work, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche linked the emergence and development of drama in ancient Greece to the balance between two opposing gods, Apollo and Dionysius. Apollo embodied the essence of light, rationality, culture, culture, and serenity. On the contrary, Dionysius offered wine, primitive impulses, everything without culture. Although these two gods were opposed to each other, they were both equally revered and established a balance between form (Apollin) and the creative impulse (Dionysius). . Modernists joined Nietzsche because art was in decline because it was so closely tied to the rules of form and not enough with the creative energy hidden under the surface.
It is very interesting for modernists to study what lies beneath this very place, and there is a better way than to carefully study the true aspirations, feelings, and actions of man. A new honesty was revealed in this image: decay, insanity, suicide, sexual immorality, weakness, disease, lying. Many call this image a moral decline; and modernists defend it by calling it freedom.
Surprisingly, the modernist depiction of human nature takes place in an urban context, not in nature, which occurred during the 19th century. In the early 19th century, the Romantics idealized nature as evidence of the transcendent existence of God; by the end of the century, it had become a symbol of a chaotic, random being. For modernists, nature becomes insignificant and outdated because the city squeezes out nature as a life force. Why did the modernists shift their interest from nature to the city? The first reason is clear. A new capital of culture and technology, a time when many left the countryside to make a fortune in a new artificial paradise city. But most importantly, the city is a place where humanity is deprived of humanity by so many degenerate forces. Thus, the city becomes a place where modern man is microscopically oriented and fragmented. Eventually, the city becomes a “ruthless winner,” a graveyard of lost spirits.
The forces that shaped modernism
The year 1900 ushered in a new era that changed our way of perceiving and depicting reality. Years later, this revolutionary new era became known as modernism, and in art, science, medicine, philosophy, etc., artists and thinkers revolted against any doctrine widely accepted by the regime. 'will last forever as time goes on. although modernism was short-lived from 1900 to 1930, we still get rid of its influence sixty-five years later.
How did modernism turn out to be such a radical retreat from what had happened in the past? Modernists have militarily distanced themselves from all traditional ideas that are sacred to Western civilization, and perhaps we can go so far as to call them intellectual anarchists who are ready to destroy everything connected with the established order. To better understand this modernist iconoclasm, let’s go back in time to learn how and why the human landscape changed so rapidly.
By 1900, all the new discoveries, inventions and technological advances aimed at world civilization: electricity, internal combustion engines, incandescent bulbs, automobiles, aircraft, radio, X-rays, fertilizers, etc. revolutionized in two different ways. First, they created an optimistic aura of worldly paradise, a new technology that should transform man into moral perfection. In other words, technology has become a new religious cult that holds the key to a new utopian dream that can change human nature. Second, new technology has accelerated the pace of people’s daily lives. For example, innovations in transportation and communications have accelerated human daily life. If previously human life was limited by the lack of available mechanical resources, now man has been able to expand the scope of his daily activities due to the new liberating power of the machine. Man was now literally energized by all this scientific and technological innovation, and most importantly, he felt the wave coming from his sense of invincibility, that it could not be stopped.
However, modernity has only been shaped by this new technology. Several theoretical philosophers have been forced to change the way modern man perceives the external world, especially in rejecting Newton's principle that reality is a separate, absolute, unconditional existence from those who observe it. FX Bradley was the first to do so, believing that the human mind is a fundamental feature of the universe rather than matter, whose purpose is to seek truth. In his most glorious work, Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Sketch (1893), he introduced the notion that an object in reality cannot have absolute contours, but that it changes depending on the angle of view. Thus , Bradley defines the specificity of things as the observer’s view of them. The effect of this work was to motivate rather than dispel suspicions. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity was one of the most effective works of this century, entitled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." as long as both time and effort belong to the observer. In other words, there is no such thing as universal time, so experience flows from person to person in a completely different way. Alfred Whitehead was another who redefined the ideas of time, space, and motion as the basis of man’s perception of the external world. He regarded reality as a living geometry and believed in the essential relation of each object to all other objects: includes z ". For all these thinkers, subjectivity was now in the spotlight.
Several theoretical psychologists have radically changed the view of modern man on his inner reality, the unknown heart of darkness.
Sigmund Freud was the first to look into it and discover the inner world that dynamic, often opposing forces shape, the human psyche and personality. To explain this inner world within each of us, he developed a complex theory of the unconscious that shows the importance of unconscious motivation in behavior and the assumption that psychological events can occur outside the conscious mind. So, according to Freud, dreams, aspirations, and reserves are the appearance of unconscious motives. Furthermore, in explaining personality development, Freud expanded the male definition of sex to include verbal, anal, and other bodily sensations. Thus , his legacy to the modern world was to expose the dark side of man hidden from view by the hypocrisy of 19th century society.
Freud was not the only theoretical psychologist who asked us to look at ourselves to better understand the human psyche. His student, Carl Jung, also had to develop another theory of the unconscious, which studies the nature of irrational identity and explains the commonalities between many cultures. Yung’s theory of collective unconsciousness applies to a field of consciousness that he considers common to all, which he calls archetypes and claims that there are models of behaviors or actions and reactions of the psyche that are determined by race. These instinctive, universal patterns are manifested in dreams, visions, and fantasies, and are reflected in myths, religious beliefs, fairy tales, and works of art.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson also looked to the unconscious to study the nature of the memories he is currently experiencing. Bergson’s “Time and Free Will” was an attempt to create a concept of continuity or lived time, as opposed to the concept of spatial time, which is measured in hours and is commonly referred to as chronological time. According to Bergson, conscious memory states are stored unconsciously, just as “ golden old people ” are stored in a jukebox. An emotional impression, such as the smell of cologne or the taste of a sweet potato pie, can make the mind remember one of these memories, just as the coin triggers the execution of the chosen note. Once the hidden memory occurs in the mind, the “I” ceases, a spontaneous perception of the past can emerge, and perhaps this notion shifts to a kind of understanding of the present moment. Isn’t it true that when we listen to an old song, forget the present, remember the past, and suddenly apply it to our present life? Thus, intuition leads to knowledge.
Politics and economics also change the way modern man views himself and the world in which he lives. Science and technology have radically changed the means of production. If in the past the worker was involved in production from beginning to end, by 1900 he had made a trivial contribution to the production chain and had simply become a gear. Thus, the division of labor felt its disintegration, alienated not only from the rest of society, but also from itself. One of the consequences of this fragmentation was the unification of workers into political parties that threatened the upper classes. Thus, a new political idealism that culminated in the Russian Revolution that engulfed Europe.¹