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What is Modernism?

Most agree that the Modernist movement took place between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. It might be described as a period that saw a shift in the way people thought, specifically in shedding their ties to tradition in favour of progress. Up until this time, traditions were held dear and people liked things to stay the way they were.

This meant that culture and science drew their influences from the past- using tradition and religion to guide their efforts. The Modernist movement is characterised by the abandonment of old ideas and breaking established rules, enabling people to free themselves to explore new avenues of thought. Indeed, the success of a an artist or thinker once depended on their ability to demonstrate and refine their chosen craft, the Modernist movement meant that greatness depended on one’s ability to break new ground, think outside the box and work from a clean state. To some extent, this still applies today. Entertainment is still judged through a modernist eye. In music and art particularly, technical ability plays second fiddle to originality.

NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche urged people to take a step further in the development of the species by refusing to accept their animal instincts as insurmountable limitations, thus allowing each person to wipe clean his or her own personal slate. We can interpret Nietzsche’s famous words “God is dead” as a newly unlocked door to the modern world, in which people no longer see religion as their main motivator, or as something to restrict them. He felt that morals aren’t real, that they are ideas simply imposed on us by our parents, church or peers. He encourages people to write their own moral code and be faithful to that code. Nietzsche is telling people to be Modernist and avoid living by the rules of others.

FILM

Earlier in the course, we watched Citizen Kane. Considered to be one of the greatest of all time, largely due to Orson Welles’ experimentation with his cinematography. Like most modernist icons, in order to understand its brilliance we need to know what came before it. Citizen Kane may not amaze us today, because it plays much like other films. But the reason for this is that the majority of films made since Citizen Kane was released in 1941 take their artistic cues from it. Before Kane, films tended to look like stage shows, with wide, straight-on camera angles. Welles used innovations such as low-angle shots and the famous close-up of the reflection in the shattered snow globe.

Kane’s story is told in flashbacks delivered by different people, and through a newsreel. Time is distorted. But these and other storytelling innovations happened decades earlier in literature. In Ulysses, one hour may take place over the course of a few pages, the next hour may take hundreds. James Joyce looks at the world through the eyes of a normal man, an anti-hero. People engage in the idle chatter that is now the trademark of Quentin Tarantino’s films.

MUSIC

Wagner caused upset in the music world when he decided to begin breaking established conventions. He saw his music as art, introducing the concept of “gesamptkunstwerk”, or “total artwork”, where he not only wrote an opera, but took control of dramatic production as well. He rejected use of the “home key”, seeing it as stifling. This is the spirit of Modernism; casting off the shackles of tradition in order to free your creativity.

ART

Art is an excellent way to observe changes in general thinking. Renaissance art, for example, illustrates the new ways in which people viewed things like religion and human figures at the time.

Modern art was born in the late 1800s with artists such as Vincent Van Gogh. But the pace really picked up with the arrival of people like Picasso, Braque and Matisse. Modern art has its roots in Romanticism, as artists worked harder to capture emotion in a raw form. Matisse is a superb example of this.

Art became less about technical ability and more about breaking new ground. It was about using techniques that had never been used before, and about looking at the world in new ways, and deeper introspective thinking.

But as well as breaking the rules of art production, it was about breaking the rules of society and dealing with subjects most would find unacceptable or shocking.

In 1907, Pablo Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. (The Young Ladies of Avignon). Its original title was The Brothel of Avignon but the manager of its first exposition changed the title against Picasso’s wishes in an effort to make it less offensive.

For me, this is the perfect painting to accompany Circe, the 15^th episode in James Joyce’s Ulysses. It is an aggressive depiction of five naked prostitutes, and was highly controversial at the time. The women in the painting have ugly, demonic faces and angular, distorted bodies. Where nudity in art might normally be a thing of beauty or eroticism, this is a dark and nightmarish image.

LITERATURE

A seminal piece of modern literature is Ulysses by James Joyce. Circe is the chapter in which Joyce unleashes himself in terms of consciousness. This chapter is named after a Greek goddess featured in Homer’s Odyssey who used magic potions and drugs. During this chapter, Bloom becomes intoxicated and experiences hallucinations in a brothel. These hallucinations reveal Bloom’s anxieties, his subconscious. Much of this is sexual in nature and childbirth is featured. Freud would approve of this vision of a man’s subconscious. He believes that if you dug deep enough in your mind, all you would find is sex. Circe is like a novelised version of Sigmund Freud’s claims.

What Joyce did was abandon the rules of structure and plot, creating a stream-of-consciousness technique by simply writing as he thought. Sometimes this makes it difficult to decide on whether the words are those of his characters or himself. He abandoned morals, writing something deemed to be obscene at the time so that he could explore the human psyche. He refused to be limited by storytelling conventions, allowing him to demonstrate the randomness of life rather than sticking to the traditional structure and plot threading. He is literature’s Wagner, Picasso, Nietzche and Welles.

Looked at the sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion, bear children hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. It is not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It is us. only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

These words were spoken by the anti-hero named Rorschach in Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Published a century after Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, the words demonstrate that Nietzsche’s teachings are still relevant today.

“God is dead”, he wrote in Thus Spake Zarathustra, declaring the end of religion’s influence over man. Before this new push towards secularism, people’s decisions, art and even science were heavily influenced by the word of the Church. Nietzsche’s words were a modernist strike- shedding the established rules of thought in order to make personal and social development a freer process.

Fully accepting an idea like this would require some courage, or at least a certain state of mind. Most people grow up under the influence of a religion that offers them both comfort and a moral code. Of those who regard themselves as being without faith, most still have a clearly defined set of morals (which are usually rooted in religious teachings) such as the divide between good and evil, which they believe are innate.

This is all imaginary, taught Nietzsche. He even called it “slave morality”, a means by which to control people with guilt as the punishment for breaking the rules. He who has the will and the courage to look at the abyss of existence without trying to fill it with gods and comforting ideas, is on the road to becoming Ubermensch, Overman. But without God to give life meaning, we must provide our own meaning to our own lives.

Alan Moore wasn’t the first or last person to echo Nietzsche- in fact, many characters in stories and movies exhibit a Nietzschian philosophy. Protagonists and antagonists alike are often single minded and committed to achieving their personal goals, although it is usually the evildoer who will provide the purest example of Nietzschianism, as they are the ones who are acting according to their own moral code- often seen as “evil” by those who who are, Nietzsche might say, slaves to the values of others.

All overmen would be different, as an overman will live by his own rules, his own morals. He will be a leader, guided by no one but himself and following only his own example. In this way, he will be like a child again, says Nietzsche. Clean your own slate, and have a mind as unencumbered as that of an infant, unaware of the treats of law, religion and guilt, this is the ultimate goal. You might be seen as “bad” by society, but a true overman would not be concerned by this.

Is it possible to achieve this state in modern society? Well that would depend on the moral code you wrote for yourself. But if you were truly uncompromising, you would be likely to end up in trouble with the law soon enough. But if you don’t find it too distasteful to water Nietzsche down a little, then a slightly diluted overman might be a good aspiration.

But then we have an awkward word- “good”. If we accept that good and evil are simply human creations, then how can we say that the state of being an overman is a good or bad thing? Perhaps is Nietzsche had taken another step, he would have felt that attaining this higher state doesn’t matter anyway. The lives and actions of overmen will be forgotten eventually, and without heaven or hell their actions are of no consequence to themselves then their lives come to an end. Any pain they inflict will similarly be forgotten eventually, nothing matters.

Maybe Nietzsche did realise this, perhaps that is why he spend the final years of his life silently staring at a wall.