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 โ the idea of "Creatio ex nihilo" creation out of nothing โ 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.
