Modernism

French modernisme, from moderne – the latest, modern

Definition applied to a number of arts. currents of the 20th century, a common feature of which is a more or less decisive break with the aesthetic. classical norms and traditions. lawsuit. At the historical stages in the concept of M. was invested decomp. meaning. At the end of 19 – early. In the 20th century, when this definition began to come into use, it was applied to the work of such composers as Debussy, Ravel, R. Strauss. From Ser. 20th century under M. usually understand the phenomena of modern. music “avant-garde” (see. Avant-gardism), representatives of which reject not only Debussy and Strauss, but also Schoenberg and Berg as belated spokesmen for the “romantic worldview.” Some owls. art critics suggested abandoning the term “M.” due to its excessive breadth and extensibility. Nevertheless, it is preserved in owls. and zarub. theoretical lit-re about the claim; in the 60-70s. A number of attempts have been made to clarify and concretize its meaning.

In the pre-revolutionary Russian criticism of the word “M.” would be interpreted. hours in direct etymological. meaning as “the power of fashion”, dictating striving. change of tastes and arts. currents, discontinuity, neglect of the past. N. Ya. Myaskovsky opposed M. as a superficial adherence to a transient fashion to a genuine, organic. innovation. Myaskovsky and other opponents of M. were able to correctly notice some negative trends that are manifested in the bourgeois. claim-ve from the beginning. 20th century X. Stuckenschmidt elevated the continuous pursuit of formal innovations, which go out of fashion as quickly as they come into being, into a certain universal mandatory principle for the development of music: “Of all the arts, music seems to be the most ephemeral … Hearing more than other feelings the need to be constantly delighted with new baits, and such finds that attract him today will already disappoint tomorrow.

But these instability and inconstancy of the aesthetic. criteria that cause a feverish change in formal techniques and methods of composition serve only as an external manifestation of deeper ideological processes. In Marxist-Leninist art history, art is viewed as a phenomenon associated with the crisis of the bourgeoisie. culture in the period of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. Main a feature of modernist art is the disunity of the artist and society, separation from the forces that create history and actively transform modern art. reality. On this basis, there are tendencies of elitism, subjectivism, pessimism. skepticism and disbelief in social progress. It is impossible to consider all modernist artists as direct and conscious spokesmen for the bourgeoisie. ideology, to attribute to them such qualities as misanthropy, immorality, a cult of cruelty and violence. Among them there are subjectively honest people who are critical of a number of aspects of the bourgeoisie. reality, condemning social lawlessness, the hypocrisy of “those in power”, colonial oppression and militarism. However, their protest takes the form of passive alienation or anarchism. personality rebellion, leading away from active participation in social struggle. For M. in decomp. its manifestations are characterized by the loss of the integrity of the worldview, the inability to create a broad, generalizing picture of the world. This feature was already characteristic of such arts. directions con. 19 – beg. 20th century as impressionism and expressionism. The growing alienation of the individual in modern. capitalist society often leads to the emergence of painfully ugly creations of modernist pseudo-art, in which the collapse of consciousness entails the complete collapse of the arts. forms.

At the department artists, modernist features can be combined with positive, progressive elements. Sometimes these traits are overcome by the artist in the course of development, and he takes the position of an advanced realist. lawsuit. During the period of dogmatic errors in owls. art history often did not take into account the inconsistency of the ways of modern. lawsuit, which led to the indiscriminate denial of many means. pioneering achievements of the 20th century. Certain major artists were unconditionally enrolled in the camp of reactionary modernists, whose work represents undeniable art. value despite the inconsistency of its ideological and aesthetic. basics. It is also a mistake to determine belonging to M. on purely formal grounds. Separate techniques and means of art. expressiveness can serve different purposes and acquire decomp. meaning depending on the context in which they are applied. M. is the concept of an aesthetic and ideological order, which is based primarily on the attitude of the artist to the world, to the reality surrounding him. The hypertrophy of the formal beginning, inherent in a number of modern. music currents in the west, is a consequence of the degradation of the synthesizing ability of the arts. thinking. A private technique, isolated from a general connection, becomes the basis for creating far-fetched, rationalistic. compositional systems, as a rule, are short-lived and quickly replaced by others, just as artificial and unviable. Hence the abundance of all kinds of small groups and schools of modern. “avant-garde”, characterized by extreme intolerance and exclusivity of positions.

The most prominent exponent of the ideology of the Muses. M. in the middle. 20th century was T. Adorno. He defended the positions of a narrowly elitist, alienated art, expressing a state of deep loneliness, pessimism and fear of reality, arguing that in our time only such an art can be “true”, which conveys a feeling of confusion of an individual in the world around him and completely fenced off from any social tasks. Adorno considered the work of the composers of the “New Viennese school” A. Schoenberg, A. Berg, A. Webern to be a model of such a claim. From Ser. 60s in the theoretical declarations and creativity. practice zarub. music “avant-garde” more and more definitely asserts the opposite trend – to eliminate the “distance” separating art from life, to direct, active influence on the audience. But this “intrusion into life” is understood externally and mechanically, as the introduction of elements of “theatricalization” into the performance of music, the blurring of the line between musical and non-musical sounds, etc. Such “art” remains essentially just as detached and far from the urgent tasks of our time. . The way out of the vicious circle of modernist ideas is possible only on the way of approaching the real vital interests of the broad people. masses and actual problems of our days.

References: Questions of modern music, L., 1963; Shneerson G., About music alive and dead, M., 1964; Modern problems of realism and modernism, M., 1965; Modernism. Analysis and criticism of the main directions, M., 1969; Lifshitz M., Modernism as a Phenomenon of Modern Bourgeois Ideology, Kommunist, 1969, No 16; The Crisis of Bourgeois Culture and Music, vol. 1-2, M., 1972-73.

Yu.V. Keldysh

The concept denoting the totality of the decadent-formalistic. currents in the art of con. 19th-20th centuries Originally arose in the image. art to refer to such trends as expressionism, cubism, futurism, surrealism, abstractionism, etc. Art is characterized by subjectivism and individualism, formalism and the decay of art. image. In the ballet, the features of M. found expression in dehumanization and formalism, in the denial of the classical. dance, perversion of nature. human movements. body, in the cult of the ugly and base, in the disintegration of the dance. figurativeness (in particular, in attempts to create pretentiously ugly dances without music). Noting the “unnaturalness” of modernist dances, M. M. Fokin wrote: “Those who want to pass themselves off as innovators dance, to be a modernist, who are driven by one impulse – to be different from others … This is a terrible danger of distorting a person, assimilating painful skills, losing feelings of truth” (“Against the Current”, 1962, pp. 424-25).

Denying realism and classic. traditions, destroying the classical system. dance, M. in its pure form can lead to the withering away of art, the emergence of anti-art. Therefore, the work of major and talented artists who have experienced the influence of M., is not limited to these influences, they do not exhaust its essence.

The concepts of M. and modern dance are not identical, although they are in contact. Some representatives of modern dance were influenced by modernist trends: expressionism, abstractionism, constructivism, surrealism. Despite these influences, their art, in its best examples, remained faithful to the truth of life. Therefore, within the modern dance, some private plastic dances were made. conquests that can be combined with the system of classical dance and enrich it on the basis of the creation of truthful arts. images.

Ballet. Encyclopedia, SE, 1981