Modernity & Modernism 1/2

Wednesday 22nd February 

Modernity and Modernism 1/2

• John Ruskin 1819-1900: Art historian, book called modern painting- debate between old and new paintings, he drew the conclusion that old paintings were better
• favoured pre-Raphaelites: rejecting modern art styles and moving back to earlier styles 

• Paris 1900, epicentre of modernity 
• urbanisation, people condensed in small areas rather than scattered across the country, shift from village or rural town life, social alienation 
• life not dominated by natural things like sunlight and sunset, but schedules and production rotas 
• world time also becomes standardised, people wanting to move between countries via train etc
• telephone invented, people can communicate across countries and cities
• electric light invented and popularised so people no longer have to live by the sun rising and setting
• world becomes more easy to navigate and move through, but also more confusing 
• 1750- mid 20th century (1950) = MODERNITY
• process of rationality and reason- enlightenment period in late 18th C when scientific/ philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds 
• less religious thinking, more human
• the city becomes the epicentre of life and everything else seems secondary 
• aggressively pushing out the old and bringing in the new

• HAUSSMANISATION- Paris 1850’s on A new Paris
• old Paris architecture of narrow streets and run down housing is ripped out and Haussman a city architect redesigns Paris
• large boulevards in favour of modern streets to accommodate modern life, easier for police to control, a form of social control
• centre of Paris becomes gentrified, exclusive and only for the rich
• outskirts are the for the excluded and marginalised
• Caillebotte- Jeune Homme and A Balcony- being condensed but not really knowing who you live next to, being condensed, new society shifts brings affluence but makes us less human and less connected 
• ALSO the birth of PHYSCOLOGICAL SCIENCE, Sigmund Freud a rapid change in pace of life and wanting to understand the human mind
• The FLANEUR’S- walking slowly through the city in their best clothes, with modern pets and showing off how modern and finely dressed they were, a new form of social behaviour
• Seurat- Isle de la Grande Jatte 1886- pointillisme was radical because it was removing the art form of painting from making an image, removing the personality and uniqueness and expression 
• SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS 
• Degas- Absinthe Drinker 1876- drinking away the days troubles with people in a public place but also being fundamentally alone- compositionally affected by the advent of photography, cropped at either side to show just a portion of a scene
• Manet- Bar at the Folies Bergere- new forms of leisure, less high and low art, also sexuality becomes a pass time, women sexuality becomes a commodity and form of entertainment 
• Kaiserpanorama- collective place to go and view images of sunsets or landscapes etc, semi-collective but also individualised, similar to the way we now connect on the internet? 

ANTIMODERNIST: Max Nordau- Degeneration 1892

• predicted that by the end of the 20th century we’d probably see a generation who will read dozens of square yards of newspapers a day, constantly on the phone thinking about the other continents of the world, on trains or planes for half their lives and trying to find ease in a city filled with millions of other people
• Lumiere Brothers films were so radical people were scared of them, didn't understand them
• modernist things seem a bit weird or hard to understand now but they capture the feelings of the time
• “modernism emerges out of the subjective responses to the experience of modernity”
• photography invented helps to capture the modern world more objectively, and threatens to make art redundant 
• art has to become more abstract and less representational in order to stay relevant
• can be about phycology, the mind, new black and white aesthetic, movement 
• Giacomo Balla- Girl Running on a Balcony, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash 1912 = responses to the experiences of modernity
• The last page of James Joyce ‘Ulysses’ Modernist and all only about a feeling