Modernism, A History in Brief

"Make it New!" This simple three-word slogan was introduced by the poet Ezra Pound following World War I. It succinctly summed up the aspirations of a generation of artistically minded individuals. What did Pound mean? Professor Peter Gay attempts to define this epigram in his wonderful chronicle of Modernism, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond (2008, W.W. Norton and Company). In this text, Professor Gay looks at the history of the modern arts, painting, architecture, literature, music and dance, et cetera and how their makers pushed and went beyond the established academic boundaries to create something that was completely innovative. Right of the bat, Gay admits that modernism is far easier to exemplify than to explain. He further states that any all attempts to present a cohesive history has been muddled by commentators and scholars. Gay expresses a lack of surprise over the fact that cultural historians have been cowed by the ever evolving concept resulting in reducing the idea to the plural "modernisms." Therefore, the point of the book is to show that a substanial body of evidence has been gathered from across the scope of high culture providing unity of a single aesthetic-modernism. So what is the author's criteria for modernism?

Modernism, according to Gay, share two distinct attributes: the lure of heresy and they confront convention and a commitment to principles self-examination. The lure of heresy is no big mystery. The architect who strips away all superfluous ornament or the composer who deliberately violates rules of harmony and composition. In each case, they and their contemporaries have drawn real satisfaction in tweaking convention so hard until it screams, a recurring theme in the book

Modernism was not something exclusive to the early twentieth century. Professor Gay begins his tome with a brief look at the

professional outsider.

These were writers such as Charles Baudelaire who was active in the mid-nineteenth century. Baudelaire lived during a time of upheaval in France. Twice the monarchy was restored promising freedoms and moderate policies not seen during the previous monarchical periods and twice they failed. The failed Revolution of 1848 permanently soured Baudelaire on politics however it was his writing that saved him. His scandalous Les Fleur du mal took aim at the corruption and libertinism that permeated high society. This volume of poems so shocked Paris that the author was put on trial for blasphemy and obscenity. Gay speculates that Baudelaire's trial was more of a preemptive strike. Baudelaire was not alone in shocking

proper Parisiennes.

Eduard Manet's Olympia, an Impressionist take on Titian's Venus of Urbino, presented, not a chaste, idealized nude but a prostitute matter-of-fact staring out at the viewer. It should come as no surprise to the reader that Baudelaire and Manet were friends and that their respective works were intended as commentary on the decadence of French society.

The art and architecture of the nineteenth century could be characterized as a search for defining images. The fifteenth century was characterized by the art and architecture of Leonardo Da Vinci and Fillipo Brunelleschi. The eighteenth century was defined, first by the Rococo then the Neo-Classical. The nineteenth century was a period in search of an artistic movement. The Industrial Revolution had the most impact on the nineteenth century and created new building types: the train stations, high-rises, and factories. This left architects and planners in a quandary. Do they continue to fall back on academic styles, strongly advocated by the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts or create something new. Additionally, the invention of the Bessemer steel process made it possible to create steel framed buildings-i.e. the high rise- which could accomendate the influx of new urban dwellers and businesses.

In chapter six,

Architecture and Design,

A New Factor In Human Affairs,Professor Gay provides a concise yet detailed summary of the direction of architecture and design from the late nineteenth century through the nineteen thirties. Here, he emphasizes the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, no doubt a giant in the field. Interwoven into his summary of Wright's career, is the work of another giant, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Gay touches on the work of William Morris and the Arts and Craft movement and its Viennese counterpart the Werkstatte, who are given a good amount space. Perhaps the most fascinating discussion is that of Futurists.

The Futurists were a group of Italian modernists who advocated a total rejection of the classics, unlike their German and Austrian counterparts who admired them. The leader of the Futurists, Antonio Sant'Elia saw architecture, for all of its utilitarian qualities, as art. He declared the recent technological inventions were suitable for aesthetic judgment. Interestingly it was Sant'Elia, not Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who first declared the house a machine for living. There is no doubt that, the modern movement in architecture fulfilled Gay's criteria for modernity by stripping away the superfluous ornament as Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffman and their successors did. They challenged the norms of conventional architecture and continuously created work that has withstood the test of time.

Professor Gay continues the theme of tweaking convention and self-examination throughout the book. Perhaps less effectively in the chapter dealing with dance and music. True, Igor Stravinsky's

Rites of Spring

and Arnold Schoenberg's work with atonal music were complete breaks from the norm of fluffy orchestrations but there seems to less self-examination on the part of musicians, composers, and dancers than their artistic contemporaries. Although the work of Schoenberg deserves some discussion. Schoenberg's music had impact on the paintings of Vladimir Kandinsky. In fact it was following a concert in December 1908 that they painter began work on Impression III (Concert), an ode on canvas to the atonal compositions of Schoenberg. The painting owes its black splotch to the piano and the cluster of primitive shapes to the audience. Schoenberg went on to inspire other painters such as Franz Marc who painted Tower of Blue Horses and then collaborated with the composer on a volume of essays, photographs, scores, and compositions The Blue Rider Alamanc.

As a counterpoint, we have the chapter

Eccentrics and Barbarians,

individuals who were modernists but less radical, anti-modernist modernists. The eccentrics also challenged the conventions of their professions as well as most of contemporary culture they found objectionable. By contrast, the Barbarians practiced their version of modernism with the idea of creating a better society. T.S. Elliot was one example of an anti-modernist, too radical for the conservatives and to conservative for the radicals. In lectures, Elliot often used derogatory racial and ethnic slurs as code for his fundamental truth, the United States had fallen victim to

worm-eaten liberalism.

His poetry, according to Gay, was a mix of unimpeachable modernism and intense anti-modernism. The Barbarians, according to Gay, were the National Socialists, the Communists, and Fascists, who co-opted art and design to serve the nefarious state purpose.

In Germany, the National Socialists were the most consistent in their efforts to suppress any independent thought and taste and link it to its leader. In one of its first acts, the National Socialists attempted to

purify

German society by labeling anything it found offensive as

Jewish

collapsing it into the term entarte-i.e. degenerate. This meant that the majority of the canon of modernity was considered unacceptable and the causation of cultural depravity. Soon, scholars, musicians, architects, and so forth were summarily dismissed from their positions and were forced to flee. conversely, the National Socialists did make use of modern technology to rearm itself and re-orient German industry towards war.

The final section

Coda

looks at modernity in the late twentieth century. Much space is devoted to Frank Gehry's stunning Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In a prior chapter

Life after Death?

Gay examines late twentieth century modernism and its emergence outside the West. The question mark in the chapter title implies the question whether or not modernity died with World War II. The answer is not at all, rather it reinvented itself not only in Europe and the United States but also in South America with architect Oscar Niemayer and author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. They and their contemporaries adapted modernism to suit their needs and locals giving new life to the movement.

In all an enlightening read that encompasses the canon of modernity that informs without being condescending. Professor Gay does an admirable job in distilling the libraries' worth of information into a volume that would be a great addition to anyone's book shelf. This book is for both the art patron and lay man who is interested in a cultural history of the twentieth century.

This is must read

This is a must read for everyone regardless of political leanings, The American Future by Simon Schama. The American Future is an excellent, well written cultural history of the United States framed within the context of the 2008 presidential election. Schama, a professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, looks at the culture of "god, guns, and country". "God" is defined as the history of religion in America, "guns" is our warrior culture, and "country" is a concise summary of the history of immigration and "America as the land of plenty". Although Schama takes a decidedly secular liberal approach, nonetheless, your intrepid reviewer would ask the intelligent reader to set that aside and read this book with an open mind.

As a latter day Alexis de Tocqueville, Schama opens his book with the Iowa Caucus, held January 3, 2008. It is at this caucus, where Schama pronounces the return to American democracy to the living. Taking his position at a the Theodore Roosevelt High School gym, he observes the comings and going to the town as they cast ballot for one of the half dozen candidates for the Democratic and Republican nominations. At the caucus, Schama introduces the reader to Jack Judge, a farmer from nearby Melrose Iowa. Judge, a life long Democrat, was first introduced to the political process when John Kennedy came through the town in 1960. Here Schama begins a recurring theme in his book, the introduction of an American, who is/wasn't well-known, but has impact on the cultural landscape. What kind of impact does a farmer from Iowa have on the cultural landscape? In the macro-sense, not much at all, but in the micro-sense, Jack Judge is the very embodiment of what Thomas Jefferson had in mind; the farmer-citizen. A person connected to the land yet active in the political sphere.

Professor Schama continues this motif in the section titled "American War" where he examines America's warrior culture. Here, we are acquainted with the Meigs family. This chapter is a discussion of the contrasting views of the necessity of a standing army as posited by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson believed that the United States did not need a standing army, rather a corp of engineers dedicated to nation building. On the opposite side, Hamilton believed that the United States required a standing army. It is within these antipodes that we have the story of the Meigs family, who have had a member fight in every war since the Revolution. This family symbolized both the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian position on the primary job of the soldier. Perhaps no one member of the Meigs family captured this than Montgomery Meigs.

Montgomery Meigs was both a soldier and engineer. It was he that re-built the Capitol Dome following its destruction in the War of 1812. Meigs also served as Union quarter master during the Civil War. His sons fought on both sides of that conflict and Meigs senior was a class mate of Confederate general Robert E. Lee at West Point. A quick digression on West Point, Jefferson believed that West Point would be the place where liberalism would trump militarism and deny America its Caesars (Jefferson suspected Hamilton of aspiring to such). On the one hand, Meigs was the type of soldier that Thomas Jefferson envisioned, an engineer dedicated to nation-building. On the other, he held fast to the West Point creed "Duty, Honor, Country." It was this steadfastness to the creed that led him to join the Union cause and view his life-long friend Lee as a traitor. This section is a fascinating read not only because of the Meigs family history but also the way the reader can take the lessons of the past and apply them to future direction of the warrior culture.

Perhaps the section most applicable to the 2008 election is "Part Two: American Fevor." Here, we have a nice summary of the history of not only religion in the United States but of the rise of the African American churches and the conditions that made it possible for Barack Obama to even consider running for President of the United States. It was from slavery, "The National Sin" according to Charles Gandison Finney, that the African American churches arose. Finney believed that slavery was a hindrance to the Christain revival of America. In his Lectures on Revivial, Finney refers to slavery as "pre-eminently the sin of the church and thus denied Communion to slave owners. It was ministers such as Finney and John Rankin who preached a brotherhood of white Americans and the persecuted slaves. Their abolitionist evangelicalism crossed the line between religion and politics and directly appealed to the Christian conscience of a nation.

The African American church movement began with itinerant preacher. Both men and women, such as Jarena Lee whose diary Schama excerpts, traveled a circut spreading the gospel in tents or the open air, in all conditions and in the face of white hostility. Following the Civil War, these churches, now in a more settled situation, preached self-determination in direct opposition to the white churches which were fonts of despair. It was from black churches that the Civil Rights movement began to take substance and form. Out of all this not only did the iconic figures of the movement such as Martin Luther King evolve but also less known figures such as Fannie Lou Hamer, a delegate to the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, NJ evolve.

Hamer was a member of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Here, Schama brings in his own recollections of being a nineteen-year old reporter for the Cambridge Opinion on assignment in America to cover the convention. Hamer had traveled from the Delta to Atlantic City to demand the right to be seated as delegate at the convention. She stood before the Credentials Committee and publicly demanded that Freedom Party be seated. Although the Freedom Party was denied a seat, their under taking would not been possible with the support of the churches. It was through the churches that African Americans raised their voices in support of Civil Rights and it was because of the churches that Barack Obama came under fire for his association with Jeremiah Wright.

Here Schama connects Wright to the resolve set down by King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Joseph Lowery. This ministers refused to run or hide even in the face of threats or fire bombings. They were determined that they should be a "staunch for freedom." They saw themselves as the inheritors of the clandestine churches on the plantations. These churches were/are places where one could celebrate without shame, where religion and politics were inseparable, where the Reverand Wright refused to step away from the issue. In summarizing Obama's April 2008 speech on race and religion, Schama cites Obama's epiphany from the shouts and the clapping and the "reclamation of a 'moment we didn't need to feel shame';..." The anger was still there but often unproductive. Again quoting Obama, "To wish it away...without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races." Dear reader, please understand this, the rage is there and Professor Schama's book only provides a historical summary. Please do not walk away thinking that now that Barack Obama is president all is well. There is still much work to be done and the lessons of the Civil Rights movement apply to the current issues surrounding immigration as well.

Immigration and nativism is another subject taken up by Schama. Professor Schama chronicles Ammerica's ambivalent history with immigrants from before the revolution to the present. In an attempt to define what an American is the reader is left with the impression that there is no real definition of what an American is. There is no ethnicity called American. Rather we are the sum of our ancestors and their experiences. Yet, in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries there have been attempts to create an American identity through the shedding of previous customs, mannerism, dress, language, and religion and the adaptation of a fluxuating definition of American. Professor Schama goes on elaborate how an American was defined in the previous centuries but the common thread is the adaptation of the English language. As someone who grew up bilingual, your blogger can attest to the fact that language is an an important way to keep a culture alive but English is the native tongue. What is perhaps the most cringe inducing passages is the attempts by individuals to force immigrants into conforming to the accepted definition of what an American is. It is a lesson worth heading during the contemporary debate on immigration.

In short, The American Future is a book worthy of any individual who would like to enlighten him/her self about the cultural history of the United States. It is clearly and intelligently presented without being smug or condescending. For those of you of the conservative mind set, again, I urge you to keep an open mind. If there is one conclusion to be drawn it is that nothing in our history is black or white. Our history is in the shades of gray.