African child in tree with snake () Carlo or Sofia Chiostri
Image sourced here, from a series entitled ‘Modernism from the masses‘ dedicated to art deco postcards.
“It appears to me that Topor is the last representative of the great illustrators who, like Blake and Daumier, Doré and Carlo Chiostri (1863 – 1939), are capable of creating complete universes described in minute detail.” – Fellini quoted in Topor (1985) – Gina Kehayoff and Christoph Stölzl.
More on the notion of ‘modernism for the masses’ and the notion of modernism itself:
The very definition of Modernism has always been contentious. Did it begin with the advent of photography, which liberated the visual arts from the obligations of realism, or was its starting point the experiments in the application of color by such Post-Impressionist painters as Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin? Did Claude Debussy’s gradual abandonment of tonality, the cornerstone of Western musical composition since J.S. Bach, lead inevitably to Arnold Schoenberg’s polytonality and the sound experiments of Webern, Stockhausen and Cage? Do the honors of introducing non-representational theatre belong to Pirandello, to the German Expressionists or to the Italian Futurists? And where do Kafka, Musil, Svevo and Joyce fit in? –Anthony Guneratne via http://www.co.broward.fl.us/library/bienes/postcard/modernism.htm [Nov 2006]
See also: modernism – low modernism – mass culture
I think the trait that exemplifies modernism is not a stylistic trait such as a flat painting, the absence of rhythmic structure, etc… These are all traits indicative of the period, but the major element which differentiates modernism from anything that had come before was that for the first time in recorded history, an entire international society was looking forward. For much of human history, the focus was on the canons of the past. In the beginning of the 19th C, the Avant Garde began to focus on the present, yet spurred by the writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others, the modernists especially believed that they could change the future of mankind. They had an optimistic dream of happy progress – rational evolution. Unfortunately this optimism was largely crushed by the decimation of two world wars, leading to the Post-modern era. But their legacy to us lives, I think. We still look forwards, only with a more pessimistic view.
Thanks Richard,
Yes, novelty, progress and neophilia were central to Modernists, but the term itself remains a muddled concept.
For one, each avant-garde creates its own precursors and secondly, when did this notion of progress start in the Anglo-Saxon world? In France it started around 1825 with Henri de Saint-Simon, see here.
Jan