Modernism




 * What is Modernism?**

Modernism is an internationally recognized style, an urban and bourgeois manifestation. Middle-class opens his mind and became cosmopolitan. Fashion is shown in illustrated magazines that spread over Europe. A new necessity of change and innovation is created everywhere. Artists try to create a new style without references to tradition in its ways or subjects. It involved an abrupt rupture (in arts) with the past and represented the beginning of new forms of expression and structure of everyday objects, mostly furniture. This period began in the late nineteenth century and ended in mid-twentieth century.


 * How did it start and how is it called in different countries?**

First manifestation of Modernism can be seen in furniture and objects of common use. They get a strong ornamental component. It is inspired in delicate flowers and animals in a process that almost comes to abstraction. Decoration must never be something added to objects, but a part of them intimately connected to its structure. Symmetric systems will be rejected, searching for undulations called little whip line suggesting liveliness or strength rather than symmetry and regularity. A touch of optimism according to its social class is expressed. Scholars say that Modernism is young, new, blooming... That is why it has received different names: Art Nouveau (French for 'new art'), Liberty Style (from the department store in London, Liberty & Co.), Jugendstil (German for 'youth style').


 * What are its main characteristics?**

Art Nouveau is an international movement and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that peaked in popularity at the turn of the 20th century (1890–1905). A reaction to academic art of the 19th century, it is characterized by organic, especially floral and other plant-inspired motifs, as well as highly-stylized, flowing curvilinear forms. Art Nouveau is an approach to design according to which artists should work on everything from architecture to furniture, making art part of everyday life.

Although Art Nouveau fell out of favor with the arrival of 20th-century modernist styles, it is seen today as an important bridge between the historicism of Neoclassicism and modernism.