Modernism

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Modernism is an early 20th-century movement in literature, philosophy, music, and the visual arts. It emphasizes experimentation, abstraction, and subjective experience. The movement emerged during the late 19th century in response to significant changes in Western culture, including secularization and the growing influence of science. It is characterized as a rejection of tradition and the hunt for newer and original ways of artistic expression. Modernism was influenced by widespread technological innovation, industrialization, and urbanization, as well as cultural and geopolitical shifts that occurred after World War I.^[2] Artistic movements and techniques associated with modernism include abstract art, stream of consciousness in literature, cinematic montage, atonal and twelve-tone music, and modern architecture.^[3]

The movement rejected both 19th-century realism and Romanticism's concept of absolute originality - the idea of "creation from nothingness" – with its techniques of collage,^[4] reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, and parody.^[a][b][5] It took a critical stance towards Enlightenment rationalism. Another feature of modernism is reflexivity about artistic and social conventions, which led to experimentation that highlighted how works of art are made and the material from which they have been created.^[6] Debate continues about the timeline of modernism, with some scholars arguing that it evolved into late modernism or high modernism.^[7] Postmodernism rejects many of the principles of modernism.^[8][9][10]

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