Dear Classier Hoeing and Natewozere,
I would first like to make the important distinction between "modern" and the modernity implied by "modernism." In my previous post, "The Mean Nurse Returns," I assert at the end that Romanticism can be considered the first modern period in the long progression of European history. By calling Romanticism "modern," I was not relating it in any way to the subsequent modernist movement; as you both have pointed out, Modernism and Romanticism are completely different animals, and any relationships between them are most likely due to the fact that one happened to follow the other chronologically. To conflate the two is a mistake, but should they have to be related to rationalize Romantic modernity?
I agree that Romanticism was not the pinnacle of artistic and social individualism; one can identify the so-called Romantic art and poetry with practiced ease. In some ways, the Romantics have become the well-known cliches of the present day--which would not be the case if Romantic artists were radically different from one another. (Perhaps the contemporary conception of the Romantic cliche is also what impedes our understanding of Romanticism as a form of the avant-garde or the modern.) Despite the inadvertent homogeneity of Romantic technique, the irrevocable shift in attitude towards the nature of the individual is ultimately what labels it as a modern movement. Prior to Romanticism (even during the Enlightenment), a philosophical assumption was made that humans are fundamentally good, rational creatures. With the advent of thinkers such as Nietzsche and Freud in the 19th century, the perception of the individual emphasized the irrational and animal in us--hence, the Id. Romanticism may not have artistically demonstrated the full potential of individualism, but the simple reconsideration of the nature of the individual pegged Romanticism as a heterogeneous movement. A modern movement, even, since it was more experimental than those that had preceded it.
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Ok that makes more sense. I associate "modern" with "modernism" because I feel the definition you propose is an empty one. If something is "modern" merely because it brings us closer to a "modern" age, then every historical period is modern. Every historical movement is experimental and avant-garde (as Bartelby's defines "modern") in that is moves beyond or responds to the ideas of what came before it.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely is hard to accept that something is avant-garde when it has been made in the past and is now accepted by pretty much everyone as a significant part of Europe's cultural history. We have to consider the context to see how ground-breaking some of these artists were.
ReplyDeleteThis is where we could start getting into an argument about modern vs. contemporary. I disagree that the term "modern" is empty when separated from the modernist movement. Not every age is modern in the scope of history, nor does modernist doctrine make this claim. (Although according to the Cult of Postmodernism, it is possible that every era since the beginning of time has been postmodern.) Classicism, for example, was in no way modern. It was a reversion to a previous artistic period, and the fact that it came to be in a revolutionary climate does not make it any more avant-garde than the technique merits. However, classicism at the time of its conception was contemporary--momentarily modern. Of course, in the scope of history, such contemporaneity is cast aside, and the more enduring traits of an era become its defining points, traits that determine the objective modernity of a time.
ReplyDeleteBut periods like Renaissance Classicism did not seek to copy antiquity. Instead it was a fusion of new media and technique with older aesthetic values. There was a novelty and newness about it that allows us to say Classicism in Renaissance Italy was not the same as in Ancient Greece or Rome. This is what I interpret by 'experimental'--moving beyond previous style periods. Even though the trend might loop back recursively to reintegrate something from its past, it is always in combination with something original or new. Isn't the point of art to leave a creative mark upon the world? How could that be achieved if each style period were not in at least one respect different from all that preceded it?
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