what is modernism: Google definitions:

1.modern character or quality of thought, expression, or technique.”a strange mix of nostalgia and modernism”

2.a style or movement in the arts that aims to depart significantly from classical and traditional forms.”by the post-war period, modernism had become part of art history”

3.a movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Time period : The first half of the 20th century

Key characteristics/connections: Published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917, the photographic journal Camera Work featured some of the most important modernist photographers of the early twentieth century. Stating that he wanted to create ‘the best and most sumptuous of photographic publications’, Stieglitz published the journal with the aim of promoting photography as an art form in its own right. The final issue celebrated photography as the ‘first and only important contribution thus far of science to the arts’.

The effects of the First World War saw a dramatic change in attitudes towards the human body. Previously depictions of the human body were largely either for academic study, used as reference points for painters and draughtsmen, or in pictorialist compositions in which the female body was typically highly aestheticised. 

This was reflected in artists’ and photographers’ depictions of the human form. Modernist photographers experimented with cropping and framing a single body part, distorting and accentuating its curves and angles. In 1936, the philosopher Walter Benjamin compared the camera to a surgeon’s knife, able to permeate the body by splicing it into fragments. As a result the body was often depersonalised, instead appearing as something unfamiliar, often almost plant or landscape-like

Modernist photographers enjoyed bringing together objects to reveal or create relationships between them. This can be seen in Tina Modotti’s Bandolier, Corn and Sickle 1927 or Margaret de Patta’s Ice Cube Tray with Marbles and Rice 1939. The result creates jarring or stricking compositions and heightens the texture and surface of each object.

Artists associated: Photographer, art dealer and publisher, Alfred Stieglitz is credited as one of the leaders of American modern photography in the early twentieth century. Revolutionary in his portrayal of still life and technical mastery of tone, Stieglitz called for photography’s acceptance as an art form, as well as introducing Avant-garde. European artists such as Pablo Picasso, constantin Brancusi and Francis Picabia to America’s art scene. Influenced by new developments in art, Stieglitz moved away from a more decorative, soft-edged ‘pictorialist’ style. His work The Steerage 1907, with its sharp focus and striking angles is often considered as a benchmark for the beginnings of modernist photography.

The 1920s and 1930s saw a close relationship between celebrity portraits and fashion. Modernist photographers including Irving Penn, Man Ray, George Platt Lynes and Edward Steichen, photographed artists, writers, musicians and Hollywood stars including Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Jean Cocteau. Featuring in magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar, these portraits were instrumental in shaping the celebrity’s public image. Rather than focusing on the sitter’s occupation and status, the images were innovative in their pose, composition and cropping, as seen with Penn’s corner portraits. Presenting well-known figures in unexpected or even abstract ways created iconic images rather than mere likenesses

Man Ray’s artistic career spanned painting, sculpture, film, prints and poetry, working in styles influenced by cubism, futurism, dada and surrealism. In 1930 he said that ‘painting is dead, finished’, and moved towards photography. He is perhaps most recognised for his use of the photographic method, solarisation and using photograms (developing directly onto photographic paper rather than onto film) which he dubbed as ‘rayographs’. Creating surreal and experimental work, often of famous figures such as Lee Miller and Dora Maar, Man Ray became a key figure within modernist photography.

Associations / business associated: The Bauhaus was one of the most influential art and design schools in the twentieth century, a seedbed of nearly all the art forms we now think of as modernist. The Bauhaus existed in three cities: Weimar 1919–1925, Dessau 1925–1932 and Berlin 1932–1933, where it closed due to pressure from the Nazis. Its aim was to bring art back into contact with everyday life, so design and craft were emphasised as much as fine art. 

The Bauhaus embraced new technologies. This was particularly evident in the photography department, where the celebrated artists laszlo Moholy-Nagy. and Walter Peterhans encouraged students to use their cameras to imagine new worlds and focus on experimentation such as close-ups and photomontage. As Moholy-Nagy stated ‘everyone is equal before the machine … there is no tradition in technology, no class-consciousness’.

Methods/ techniques/ Proceses: Mounting a false brass lens to the side of his camera, American photographer Paul Strand would photograph his subjects using a second working lens hidden under his arm. Known as the candid camera technique, this allowed him to capture people without their knowledge. As the photographer describes, he wanted to make ‘portraits of people the way you see them in New York parks – sitting around, not posing, not conscious of being photographed’. From Jewish patriarchs to Irish washerwomen, Strand’s street photography offered a drastic alternative to posed and formal studio portraits.

Published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917, the photographic journal Camera Work featured some of the most important modernist photographers of the early twentieth century. Stating that he wanted to create ‘the best and most sumptuous of photographic publications’, Stieglitz published the journal with the aim of promoting photography as an art form in its own right. The final issue celebrated photography as the ‘first and only important contribution thus far of science to the arts’

Quotes:

Here are a few quotes by modernist photographers:

It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realise them
Man Ray 

The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man
Edward Steichen

PostModernism

Postmodernism is one of the most controversial movements in art and design history. Over two decades, from about 1970 to 1990, Postmodernism shattered established ideas about art and design, bringing a new self-awareness about style itself. An unstable mix of the theatrical and theoretical, Postmodernism ranges from the ludicrous to the luxurious – a visually thrilling, multifaceted style.

Postmodernism was a drastic departure from the utopian visions of modernism, which had been based on clarity and simplicity. The Modernists wanted to open a window onto a new world; Postmodernism’s key principles were complexity and contradiction. If Modernist objects suggested utopia, progress and machine-like perfection, then the Postmodern object seemed to come from a dystopian and far-from-perfect future. Postmodern designers salvaged and distressed materials to produce an aesthetic of urban apocalypse.

Postmodernism had begun as a radical fringe movement in the 1970s, but became the dominant look of the 1980s, the ‘designer decade’. Vivid colour, theatricality and exaggeration: everything was a style statement. Whether surfaces were glossy, faked or deliberately distressed, they reflected the desire to combine subversive statements with commercial appeal. Magazines and music were important mediums for disseminating this new phase of Postmodernism. The work of Italian designers – especially the groups Studio Alchymia and Memphis  – was promoted across the world through publications like Domus . Meanwhile, the energy of post-punk subculture was broadcast far and wide through music videos and cutting-edge graphics. This was the moment of the New Wave: a few thrilling years when image was everything.

Modernisum VS Postmodernisum

Modernism	Postmodernism
Modernism began in the 1890s and lasted till about 1945.	Postmodernism began after the Second World War, especially after 1968.
Its aim was criticism of the bourgeois social order of the 19th century and its world view. Modernist painting is considered to have begun with the French painter Édouard Manet.	The first use of the term postmodernism dates back to the 1870s. John Watkins Chapman referred to a postmodern style of painting which differed from French Impressionism. J.M. Thompson used the term to refer to changes in attitudes and beliefs in religion.
Low forms of art were a part of modernism. Simplicity and elegance in design are the characteristics of modern art.	Postmodern art brought high and low culture together by using industrial materials and pop culture imagery. Postmodern art is decorative.
Modernism was based on using rational and logical means to gain knowledge. It rejected realism. A hierarchical, organized, and determinate nature of knowledge characterized modernism.	Postmodernism denied the application of logical thinking. Rather, the thinking during the postmodern era was based on an unscientific, irrational thought process, as a reaction to modernism.
Modernism is based on European and Western thought.	Postmodernists believe in multiculturalism.
Modernist approach was objective, theoretical, and analytical.	Postmodernism was based on an anarchical, non-totalized, and indeterminate state of knowledge.
Modernist thinking is about the search of an abstract truth of life.	Postmodernist thinkers believe that there is no universal truth, abstract or otherwise.
Modernism attempts to construct a coherent world-view.	Postmodernism attempts to remove the difference between high and low.
Modernist thinking asserts that mankind progresses by using science and reason. It believes in learning from past experiences and trusts the texts that narrate the past.	Postmodernists believe that progress is the only way to justify the European domination on culture. They defy any truth in the text narrating the past and render it of no use in the present times.
Modernist historians believe in depth. They believe in going deep into a subject to fully analyze it.	Postmodernist thinkers believe in going by superficial appearances, they believe in playing on surfaces and show less or no concern towards the depth of subjects.
Modernism considers the original works as authentic.	Postmodernist thinkers base their views on hyper-reality; they get highly influenced by things propagated through media.
Modernists believe that morality can be defined.	Postmodernists believe that morality is relative.
The year 1939 is considered to have marked the end of modernism. In the 1970s, postmodern movement entered music. In art and architecture, it began to establish itself in the early 1980s. The exact year when modernism ended, and whether it ended in the real sense is debatable.	It is considered that postmodernism started going out of fashion around the late 1990s, and was replaced by post-postmodernism which has developed from and is a reaction to postmodernism. Metamodernism is a related term that was first used by Zavarzadeh in 1975 to describe aesthetics and attitudes emerging in the American literature in the mid-1950s.

During the modernist era, art and literary works were considered as unique creations of the artists. People were serious about the purpose of producing art and literary works. These works were believed to have a deep meaning, and novels and books predominated society. During the postmodernist era, with the onset of computers, media, and advancements in technology, television and computers became dominant in society. Art and literary works began to be copied and preserved by means of digital media. People no longer believed in art and literary works bearing one unique meaning; they rather believed in deriving their own meanings from works of art and literature. Interactive media and the Internet led to distribution of knowledge. Music by those like Mozart and Beethoven, which was appreciated during modernism, became less popular in the postmodern era. World music, Djs, and remixes characterized postmodernism. The architectural forms that were popular during modernism were replaced by a mix of different architectural styles in the postmodern times.