Faculty of philology department of english philology viktorija mi

CHAPTER 1. THE ROOTS OF MODERNISM 
 
Our knowledge of the rise and development of Modernism, especially of specific features of 
this movement, is based on many separate discoveries and conclusions made by scientists in many 
fields. Philosophers find and study original works of modernist artists that tell us a great deal about 
the beliefs the modernist outlook was based on. Linguists specialize in the literary works of 
modernist authors, study and interpret these findings, along with records and documents from 
ancient, medieval, and modern times, to compare them and to build an overall picture of the 
changing values in society before, during, and after the period of Modernism. According to 
Gertrude Stephens Brown , Ernest W. Tiegs, and Fay Adams (1983), indeed, scientists are helped 
by new techniques and methods of data analyses such as content study or comparative analysis of 
chosen pieces of art or, in particular, literature. Consequently, specialists from the areas of history, 
philosophy, psychology, and linguistics have pieced together enough evidence to develop 
convincing theories to explain the origins of Modernism and to account for the stages of its 
development. (Jean – Paul Sartre 1969: 179) 
According to linguists, the roots of Modernism can be considered as reaching back to the early 
decades of the twentieth century. However, accounting for the exact beginnings of this period is 
undeniably complicated. As Stevenson suggests (1998:3), modern art that was produced between 
the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be divided into a number of intermingled art 
movements, styles, and techniques. The main feature that unified the number of modern innovative 
ideas was the fact that different arts, literature, visual art, and architecture began to be produced 
merely for art’s sake. Marshall Berman (1988:79) supports Stevenson’s ideas and specifies them by 
saying that modernist artists such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Paul Cezanne expressed their 
feelings in their works and used them to establish the connection with the world. They sought to 
show their attitude towards life, their personal beliefs and values with the help of innovative means 
of creating art, namely: bright colourful surfaces, strong geometric shapes, and asymmetry of forms. 
What is more, these modernist innovations “were followed by an upsurge in abstract art, including 
geometric shapes and action painting, and new styles also developed in commercial design”. (Neil 
Morris et al. 2004:252). In the visual art, primary colours and straight lines were predominant. By 
comparison, before the period of Modernism, art was mainly created for religious and social 
purposes, and the main task of artists was to depict reality in the way it exists with no additional 
imaginary shapes or forms.
According to Andrew Sanders (1994:335), some historians believe that the modern period 
actually begins during the movement of Romanticism that was called the earliest modern art 

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movement. It is well known that romantic artists expressed strong feelings in their paintings of 
nature and landscapes. This kind of art was a complete break from the ancient and medieval 
traditions of images of human figures with perfect bodies but calm expressionless faces. Besides, 
romanticists rejected the ideology of the period of Enlightenment, according to which, as Sanders 
explains (1994 :337), “law, government, property, inequality, and marriage would be abolished as 
part of a gradual process by which human perfectibility, conditioned by human reason, would 
transcend existing limitations and impediments to fulfilled happiness”. Indeed, in the works of the 
romantic artists, short movements and unexpected combinations of forms and colours were used in 
order to capture the ever-changing look of natural light and shadows, beauty of nature, and mystery 
of unknown places or signs of it. According to Patrick Swinden (1973:58), in the early years of the 
twentieth century, innovative painters and other artists began questioning traditional artistic views. 
Interestingly, Swinden disagrees with Sanders and argues convincingly that in their works, 
modernists rebelled against Naturalism and Romanticism, and expressed the power and diversity of 
human emotions, aimed to break with the past and celebrated modern technology, dynamism, and 
progress. These artists produced the pieces of abstract pollysemantic art, which emphasized the 
illogical and absurd in order to overcome complacency. In Swinden’s words, modernists claimed 
that “all external actions are symbols, vivid simplifications of wishes, intentions and