Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction , and subjective experience. Modernism centered around beliefs in a "growing alienation " from prevailing " morality , optimism , and convention " [ 2 ] and a desire to change how " human beings in a society interact and live together ".
The modernist 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 by a self-conscious rejection of tradition and the search for newer means of cultural expression.
Modernism was influenced by widespread technological innovation , industrialization, and urbanization, as well as the cultural and geopolitical shifts that occurred after World War I. Modernism took a critical stance towards the Enlightenment concept of rationalism. The movement also rejected the concept of absolute originality β the idea of "Creatio ex nihilo" creation out of nothing β upheld in the 19th century by both realism and Romanticism , replacing it with techniques of collage , [ 6 ] reprise , incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation , revision, and parody.
Modernism was a cultural movement that impacted the arts as well as the broader Zeitgeist. It is commonly described as a system of thought and behavior marked by self-consciousness or self-reference , prevalent within the avant-garde of various arts and disciplines. Modernists analyze topics to find the ones they believe to be holding back progress , replacing them with new ways of reaching the same end. According to historian Roger Griffin , modernism can be defined as a broad cultural, social, or political initiative sustained by the ethos of "the temporality of the new".
Griffin believed that modernism aspired to restore a "sense of sublime order and purpose to the contemporary world, thereby counteracting the perceived erosion of an overarching ' nomos ', or 'sacred canopy', under the fragmenting and secularizing impact of modernity".
