Modernism

Modernism as an artistic and cultural movement is generally defined as the advent of new forms of art, architecture, music and literature emerging in the decades before 1914 as artists rebelled against late 19th century artistic traditions.

Modernism outside the West

Modernism, while a Western movement, has been both influenced by, and influential upon, other societies. One example is the absorption of the styles of Japan towards a taste for horizontality in domestic structures, functionalism, and tectonicity, as well as spareness of vocabulary and the use of line rather than ornament to create style. The translations of Japanese and Chinese literature showed to many Western artists that there was a long, continuous and consistent tradition which was not based on the norms they were used to. Artists such as Vincent van Gogh were inspired directly by models from Japan and China, such as woodblock prints. Ezra Pound's long relationship with Chinese poetry, beginning in 1913, would lead to his translating some of Li Bai and publishing haiku in English.

Related Topics:
Japan - Vincent van Gogh - Woodblock - Li Bai - Haiku

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This absorption of Eastern philosophy and style went beyond the surface, and included re-examination of such Western ideas as Christianity from the perspective of Eastern values and concepts. Composers such as Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy, poets such as Rainer Maria Rilke and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright would all find aspects of the Eastern traditions of art that would be congenial to their own ideas.

Related Topics:
Christianity - Gustav Mahler - Claude Debussy - Rainer Maria Rilke - Frank Lloyd Wright

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At the same time, trade, mechanisation, and "modernisation" plunged the world outside of the West into a different kind of turmoil. Western powers overran or pressured cultures and states that had existed for centuries or even millennia, and the need for resources created new trade and power structures. Many nations were forced to Westernise and modernise their economies and armed forces. This brought with it a different kind of Modernism which was based on adoption of Western forms and norms on to pre-existing cultures. The result was an explosion which, while clearly related to modernity and modernism, was not specifically Western, nor directed at being a mere extension of Western modernism.

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One example of this is the rise of a generation of architects, artists and writers who studied in the West, but returned to their native countries to produce work in the expanding tradition of Modernism. Maekawa Kunio, an architect from Japan, for example, studied in Paris, but returned to Tokyo in the 1930s to become a leading advocate for Modernism in his native land.

Related Topics:
Maekawa Kunio - Japan

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Bali's gamelan gong kebyar provides a example of homegrown musical modernism featuring explosive changes in tempo and dynamics that are comparatively modern in relation to traditional Balinese music as European influenced modernism is to traditional European influenced culture.

Related Topics:
Bali - Gamelan gong kebyar - Tempo - Dynamics

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