Editing Modernism (section)

=== Modernism continues: 1930–1945 ===
Modernism continued to evolve during the 1930s. Between 1930 and 1932 composer [[Arnold Schoenberg]] worked on ''[[Moses und Aron]]'', one of the first operas to make use of the twelve-tone technique,<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |entry=Schoenberg [Schönberg], Arnold (Franz Walter) |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |language=en |doi=10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.25024 |date=2001 |last1=Neighbour |first1=O.W.|title=Schoenberg &#91;Schönberg&#93;, Arnold |isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 }}</ref> [[Pablo Picasso]] painted in 1937 ''[[Guernica (Picasso)|Guernica]]'', his cubist condemnation of [[fascism]],<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-12-11 |title=Guernica {{!}} Description, History, & Facts |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Guernica-by-Picasso |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref> while in 1939 [[James Joyce]] pushed the boundaries of the modern novel further with ''[[Finnegans Wake]]''. Also by 1930 modernism began to influence mainstream culture, so that, for example, ''[[The New Yorker]]'' magazine began publishing work, influenced by modernism, by young writers and humorists like [[Dorothy Parker]],<ref>Caren Irr, "A Gendered Collision: Sentimentalism and modernism in Dorothy Parker's Poetry and Fiction" (review). ''American Literature'', Volume 73, Number 4, December 2001 pp. 880–881.</ref> [[Robert Benchley]], [[E. B. White]], [[S. J. Perelman]], and [[James Thurber]], amongst others.<ref>Catherine Keyser, "Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker 'In Broadway Playhouses': Middlebrow Theatricality and Sophisticated Humour". ''Modernist Cultures'', Volume 6, pp. 121–154.</ref> Perelman is highly regarded for his humorous short stories that he published in magazines in the 1930s and 1940s, most often in ''The New Yorker'', which are considered to be the first examples of [[surrealist humor]] in America.<ref>[[Donald Barthelme]], 1982 interview in ''[[Partisan Review]]'', Volume 49, p. 185.</ref> Modern ideas in art also began to appear more frequently in commercials and logos, an early example of which, from 1916, is the famous [[London Underground]] logo designed by [[Edward Johnston]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/server.php?show=conObject.2902 |work=Exploring 20th Century London |publisher=Renaissance London/[[Museums, Libraries and Archives Council|MLA]] |title=A full alphabet of Johnston wood letter types |access-date=28 April 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120327102633/http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/server.php?show=conObject.2902 |archive-date=27 March 2012 }}</ref>

One of the most visible changes of this period was the adoption of new technologies into the daily lives of ordinary people in Western Europe and North America. Electricity, the telephone, the radio, the automobile—and the need to work with them, repair them and live with them—created social change.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Technology Timeline (1752-1990) |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/telephone-technology-timeline/ |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=www.pbs.org |language=en}}</ref> The kind of disruptive moment that only a few knew in the 1880s became a common occurrence. For example, the speed of communication reserved for the stock brokers of 1890 became part of family life, at least in middle class North America. Associated with urbanization and changing social mores also came smaller families and changed relationships between parents and their children.

[[File:Underground.svg|thumb|right|upright=0.9|[[London Underground]] logo designed by [[Edward Johnston]]. This is the modern version (with minor modifications) of one that was first used in 1916.]]
Another strong influence at this time was [[Marxism]]. After the generally primitivistic/irrationalism aspect of pre-World War I modernism (which for many modernists precluded any attachment to merely political solutions) and the [[neoclassicism]] of the 1920s (as represented most famously by [[T. S. Eliot]] and [[Igor Stravinsky]]—which rejected popular solutions to modern problems), the rise of [[fascism]], the [[Great Depression]], and the march to war helped to radicalize a generation. [[Bertolt Brecht]], [[W. H. Auden]], [[André Breton]], [[Louis Aragon]], and the philosophers [[Antonio Gramsci]] and [[Walter Benjamin]] are perhaps the most famous exemplars of this modernist form of Marxism. There were, however, also modernists explicitly of 'the right', including [[Salvador Dalí]], [[Wyndham Lewis]], T. S. Eliot, [[Ezra Pound]], the Dutch author [[Menno ter Braak]] and others.<ref>Pericles Lewis, "Modernist Writing and Reactionary Politics" (review). ''Modernism/modernity'', Volume 8, Number 4, November 2001, pp. 696–698.</ref>

Significant modernist literary works continued to be created in the 1920s and 1930s, including further novels by [[Marcel Proust]], [[Virginia Woolf]], [[Robert Musil]], and [[Dorothy Richardson]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=McCracken |first1=Scott |last2=Winning |first2=Jo |date=November 2015 |orig-date=August 17, 2015 |title=The Long Modernist Novel: An Introduction |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282975494 |journal=Modernist Cultures |via=Research Gate}}</ref> The American modernist dramatist [[Eugene O'Neill]]'s career began in 1914, but his major works appeared in the 1920s, 1930s and early 1940s. Two other significant modernist dramatists writing in the 1920s and 1930s were [[Bertolt Brecht]] and [[Federico García Lorca]]. [[D. H. Lawrence]]'s ''[[Lady Chatterley's Lover]]'' was privately published in 1928, while another important landmark for the history of the modern novel came with the publication of [[William Faulkner]]'s ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]'' in 1929. In the 1930s, in addition to further major works by Faulkner, [[Samuel Beckett]] published his first major work, the novel ''[[Murphy (novel)|Murphy]]'' (1938). Then in 1939 James Joyce's ''[[Finnegans Wake]]'' appeared. This is written in a largely [[idioglossia|idiosyncratic language]], consisting of a mixture of standard English [[lexical item]]s and [[Neologism|neologistic]] [[multilingual]] [[pun]]s and [[portmanteau]] words, which attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams.<ref>James Mercanton (1967). ''Les heures de James Joyce''. Diffusion PUF.</ref> In poetry T. S. Eliot, [[E. E. Cummings]], and [[Wallace Stevens]] were writing from the 1920s until the 1950s. While [[modernist poetry in English]] is often viewed as an American phenomenon, with leading exponents including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, [[Marianne Moore]], [[William Carlos Williams]], [[H.D.]], and [[Louis Zukofsky]], there were important British modernist poets, including [[David Jones (artist-poet)|David Jones]], [[Hugh MacDiarmid]], [[Basil Bunting]], and [[W. H. Auden]]. European modernist poets include [[Federico García Lorca]], [[Anna Akhmatova]], [[Constantine Cavafy]], and [[Paul Valéry]].
[[File:Joyce oconnell dublin.jpg|thumb|upright=0.55|left|James Joyce statue on [[North Earl Street]], Dublin, by Marjorie FitzGibbon]]

The modernist movement continued during this period in [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Soviet Russia]]. In 1930 composer [[Dimitri Shostakovich]]'s (1906–1975) opera ''[[The Nose (opera)|The Nose]]'' was premiered, in which he uses a [[Musical montage|montage]] of different styles, including [[folk music]], [[popular song]] and atonality. Among his influences was [[Alban Berg]]'s (1885–1935) opera ''[[Wozzeck]]'' (1925), which "had made a tremendous impression on Shostakovich when it was staged in Leningrad."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.boosey.com/pages/opera/moreDetails?musicID=896|title=Dmitri Shostakovich Nose – Opera|website=www.boosey.com|access-date=27 August 2019|archive-date=30 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190330215009/http://www.boosey.com/pages/opera/moreDetails?musicID=896|url-status=live}}</ref> However, from 1932 [[socialist realism]] began to oust modernism in the Soviet Union,<ref name="Sergei V. Ivanov pp. 28">Sergei V. Ivanov, ''Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School'', pp. 28–29. {{ISBN|978-5-901724-21-7}}</ref> and in 1936 Shostakovich was attacked and forced to withdraw his 4th Symphony.<ref>Michael Steinberg, ''The Symphony: A Listener's Guide''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 541–545.</ref> Alban Berg wrote another significant, though incomplete, modernist opera, ''[[Lulu (opera)|Lulu]]'', which premiered in 1937. Berg's [[Violin Concerto (Berg)|Violin Concerto]] was first performed in 1935. Like Shostakovich, other composers faced difficulties in this period.

In Germany [[Arnold Schoenberg]] (1874–1951) was forced to flee to the U.S. when Hitler came to power in 1933, because of his modernist atonal style as well as his Jewish ancestry.<ref name="Oxford Music Online">{{Cite web|url=https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/|title=Oxford Music|website=Oxford Music Online|access-date=10 September 2021|archive-date=22 July 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230722092211/https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/|url-status=live}}</ref> His major works from this period are a [[Violin Concerto (Schoenberg)|Violin Concerto]], Op. 36 (1934/36), and a [[Piano Concerto (Schoenberg)|Piano Concerto]], Op. 42 (1942). Schoenberg also wrote tonal music in this period with the Suite for Strings in G major (1935) and the [[Chamber Symphony No. 2 (Schoenberg)|Chamber Symphony No. 2]] in E{{music|flat}} minor, Op. 38 (begun in 1906, completed in 1939).<ref name="Oxford Music Online" /> During this time Hungarian modernist [[Béla Bartók]] (1881–1945) produced a number of major works, including ''[[Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta]]'' (1936) and the ''[[Divertimento for String Orchestra (Bartók)|Divertimento for String Orchestra]]'' (1939), [[String Quartet No. 5 (Bartók)|String Quartet No. 5]] (1934), and [[String Quartet No. 6 (Bartók)|No. 6]] (his last, 1939). But he too left for the US in 1940, because of the rise of [[fascism]] in Hungary.<ref name="Oxford Music Online" /> [[Igor Stravinsky]] (1882–1971) continued writing in his [[neoclassical style]] during the 1930s and 1940s, writing works like the ''[[Symphony of Psalms]]'' (1930), [[Symphony in C (Stravinsky)|Symphony in C]] (1940), and ''[[Symphony in Three Movements (Stravinsky)|Symphony in Three Movements]]'' (1945). He also emigrated to the US because of [[World War II]]. [[Olivier Messiaen]] (1908–1992), however, served in the French army during the war and was imprisoned at [[Stalag VIII-A]] by the Germans, where he composed his famous ''[[Quatuor pour la fin du temps]]'' ("Quartet for the End of Time"). The quartet was first performed in January 1941 to an audience of prisoners and prison guards.<ref>Rebecca Rischin. ''For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet''. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003, p. 5.</ref>

In painting, during the 1920s and 1930s and the [[Great Depression]], modernism was defined by Surrealism, late Cubism, [[Bauhaus]], [[De Stijl]], [[Dada]], German Expressionism, and modernist and masterful color painters like [[Henri Matisse]] and [[Pierre Bonnard]] as well as the abstractions of artists like [[Piet Mondrian]] and [[Wassily Kandinsky]] which characterized the European art scene. In Germany, [[Max Beckmann]], [[Otto Dix]], [[George Grosz]] and others politicized their paintings, foreshadowing the coming of World War II, while in America, modernism is seen in the form of [[American Scene painting]] and the [[social realism]] and [[Regionalism (art)|Regionalism]] movements that contained both political and social commentary dominated the art world. Artists like [[Ben Shahn]], [[Thomas Hart Benton (painter)|Thomas Hart Benton]], [[Grant Wood]], [[George Tooker]], [[John Steuart Curry]], [[Reginald Marsh (artist)|Reginald Marsh]], and others became prominent. Modernism is defined in Latin America by painters [[Joaquín Torres-García]] from Uruguay and [[Rufino Tamayo]] from Mexico, while the [[Mexican muralism|muralist movement]] with [[Diego Rivera]], [[David Siqueiros]], [[José Clemente Orozco]], [[Pedro Nel Gómez]] and [[Santiago Martínez Delgado]], and [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] paintings by [[Frida Kahlo]], began a renaissance of the arts for the region, characterized by a freer use of color and an emphasis on political messages.

Diego Rivera is perhaps best known by the public world for his 1933 mural, ''[[Man at the Crossroads]]'', in the lobby of the RCA Building at [[Rockefeller Center]]. When his patron [[Nelson Rockefeller]] discovered that the mural included a portrait of [[Vladimir Lenin]] and other communist imagery, he fired Rivera, and the unfinished work was eventually destroyed by Rockefeller's staff.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Diego Rivera |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rockefellers-rivera/ |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=www.pbs.org |language=en}}</ref> [[Frida Kahlo]]'s works are often characterized by their stark portrayals of pain. Kahlo was deeply influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her paintings' bright colors and dramatic symbolism.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Frida Kahlo |url=https://www.moma.org/artists/2963 |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=The Museum of Modern Art |language=en}}</ref> Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work as well; she combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition, which were often bloody and violent.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Frida Kahlo |url=https://frida-kahlo-foundation.org/biography.html |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=frida-kahlo-foundation.org}}</ref> Frida Kahlo's Symbolist works relate strongly to surrealism and to the [[magic realism]] movement in literature.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Plessis |first=Alicia du |date=2022-03-13 |title="The Two Fridas" by Frida Kahlo - Double Self-Portrait Analysis |url=https://artincontext.org/the-two-fridas-by-frida-kahlo/ |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Art in Context |language=en-US}}</ref>

Political activism was an important piece of David Siqueiros' life, and frequently inspired him to set aside his artistic career. His art was deeply rooted in the [[Mexican Revolution]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Siqueiros Speaks |url=https://www.nga.gov/learn/teachers/lessons-activities/self-portraits/siqueiros.html |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=www.nga.gov}}</ref> The period from the 1920s to the 1950s is known as the Mexican Renaissance, and Siqueiros was active in the attempt to create an art that was at once Mexican and universal.<ref>{{Cite web |title=What Was the Mexican Renaissance? Post-Revolutionary Murals and Messages from Kahlo, Rivera, and More |url=https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/phaidon-art-in-time-mexican-renaissance-54556 |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Artspace |language=english}}</ref> The young [[Jackson Pollock]] attended the workshop and helped build [[float (parade)|floats]] for the parade.

During the 1930s, radical [[left-wing politics|leftist politics]] characterized many of the artists connected to surrealism, including [[Pablo Picasso]].<ref>Lewis, Helena. ''Dada Turns Red''. 1990. University of Edinburgh Press. A history of the uneasy relations between surrealists and Communists from the 1920s through the 1950s.</ref> On 26 April 1937, during the [[Spanish Civil War]], the [[Basque Country (autonomous community)|Basque]] town of [[Gernika]] was [[Bombing of Guernica|bombed]] by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Nazis test new air force, Luftwaffe, on Basque town of Guernica {{!}} April 26, 1937 |url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nazis-test-luftwaffe-on-guernica |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=HISTORY |language=en}}</ref> The Germans were attacking to support the efforts of [[Francisco Franco]] to overthrow the Basque government and the Spanish Republican government. Pablo Picasso painted his mural-sized ''[[Guernica (Picasso)|Guernica]]'' to commemorate the horrors of the bombing.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Pablo Picasso (Pablo Ruiz Picasso) - Guernica |url=https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=www.museoreinasofia.es |language=en}}</ref>

During the [[Great Depression]] of the 1930s and through the years of World War II, American art was characterized by social realism and [[American Scene painting]], in the work of [[Grant Wood]], [[Edward Hopper]], [[Ben Shahn]], [[Thomas Hart Benton (painter)|Thomas Hart Benton]], and several others.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-06-05 |title=America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s |url=https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/1952/america-after-the-fall-painting-in-the-1930s |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=The Art Institute of Chicago |language=en}}</ref> ''[[Nighthawks (painting)|Nighthawks]]'' (1942) is a painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night.<ref>{{Citation |last=Hopper |first=Edward |title=Nighthawks |date=1942 |url=https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks |access-date=2025-01-07}}</ref> It is not only Hopper's most famous painting, but one of the most recognizable in American art. The scene was inspired by a diner in [[Greenwich Village]]. Hopper began painting it immediately after the [[attack on Pearl Harbor]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Oehler |first=Sarah Kelly |date=2020-03-24 |title=Nighthawks as a Symbol of Hope |url=https://www.artic.edu/articles/808/nighthawks-as-a-symbol-of-hope |language=en}}</ref> After this event there was a large feeling of gloominess over the country, a feeling that is portrayed in the painting. The urban street is empty outside the diner, and inside none of the three patrons is apparently looking or talking to the others but instead is lost in their own thoughts. This portrayal of modern urban life as empty or lonely is a common theme throughout Hopper's work.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Schjeldahl |first=Peter |date=2020-06-01 |title=Edward Hopper and American Solitude |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/edward-hopper-and-american-solitude |access-date=2025-01-07 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}}</ref>

''[[American Gothic]]'' is a painting by [[Grant Wood]] from 1930 portraying a [[pitchfork]]-holding farmer and a younger woman in front of a house of [[Carpenter Gothic]] style, it is one of the most familiar images in 20th-century [[Visual art of the United States|American art]].<ref>{{Citation |last=Wood |first=Grant |title=American Gothic |date=1930 |url=https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6565/american-gothic |access-date=2025-01-07}}</ref> Art critics had favorable opinions about the painting; like [[Gertrude Stein]] and [[Christopher Morley]], they assumed the painting was meant to be a satire of rural small-town life.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2020-10-09 |title=Portraits of America: Grant Wood's American Gothic |url=https://magazine.artland.com/stories-of-iconic-artworks-grant-woods-american-gothic/ |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Artland Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref> It was thus seen as part of the trend towards increasingly critical depictions of rural America, along the lines of [[Sherwood Anderson]]'s 1919 ''[[Winesburg, Ohio]]'', [[Sinclair Lewis]]'s 1920 ''[[Main Street (novel)|Main Street]]'', and [[Carl Van Vechten]]'s ''The Tattooed Countess'' in literature.<ref name="slate">Fineman, Mia, [http://www.slate.com/id/2120494/ The Most Famous Farm Couple in the World: Why American Gothic still fascinates.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110907021557/http://www.slate.com/id/2120494 |date=7 September 2011 }}, ''[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]]'', 8 June 2005</ref> However, with the onset of the Great Depression, the painting came to be seen as a depiction of steadfast American pioneer spirit.

The situation for artists in Europe during the 1930s deteriorated rapidly as the Nazis' power in Germany and across Eastern Europe increased. ''[[Degenerate art]]'' was a term adopted by the [[Nazi]] regime in Germany for virtually all modern art.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Tate |title=Degenerate art |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/degenerate-art |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=Tate |language=en-GB}}</ref> Such art was banned because it was un-German or [[Jewish Bolshevism|Jewish Bolshevist]] in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art entirely. [[Degenerate Art Exhibition|Degenerate Art]] was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in [[Munich]] in 1937.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Degenerate Art |url=https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3868#:~:text=In%201937,%20740%20modern%20works,inferiority%20and%20society's%20moral%20decline. |access-date=2025-01-07 |website=The Museum of Modern Art |language=en}}</ref> The climate became so hostile for artists and art associated with modernism and [[Abstract art|abstraction]] that many left for the Americas. German artist [[Max Beckmann]] and scores of others fled Europe for New York.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1997-10-11 |title=Exiles and Emigrés:Artists Who Fled (Published 1997) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/11/style/IHT-exiles-and-emigresartists-who-fled.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241130184134/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/11/style/IHT-exiles-and-emigresartists-who-fled.html |archive-date=30 November 2024 |access-date=2025-01-07 |language=en |url-status=live }}</ref> In New York City a new generation of young and exciting modernist painters led by [[Arshile Gorky]], [[Willem de Kooning]], and others were just beginning to come of age.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2005-10-16 |title='New Art City' (Published 2005) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/books/chapters/new-art-city.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220620205413/https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/books/chapters/new-art-city.html |archive-date=20 June 2022 |access-date=2025-01-07 |language=en |url-status=live }}</ref>

Arshile Gorky's portrait of someone who might be Willem de Kooning is an example of the evolution of [[Abstract Expressionism]] from the context of figure painting, Cubism and Surrealism. Along with his friends de Kooning and [[John D. Graham]], Gorky created bio morphically shaped and abstracted figurative compositions that by the 1940s evolved into totally abstract paintings. Gorky's work seems to be a careful analysis of memory, emotion and shape, using line and color to express feeling and nature.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Seitz |first=William Chapin |url=https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1991_300062248.pdf |title=Arshile Gorky: paintings, drawings, studies |date=1962 |publisher=The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. |location=New York}}</ref>