An international artistic movement, encompassing all the arts from architecture to arts and crafts, film, and literature, that began in the latter part of the nineteenth century and finished in the middle of the twentieth century. It falls between realism, which it repudiated, and postmodernism, which was faced with the task of trying to find something new and interesting to do after apparently every possible experiment had already been performed by its predecessor. And it encompasses, albeit uncertainly, a range of artistic movements, including: Abstractionism, avant-garde, constructivism, cubism, Dada, Futurism, Surrealism, and even Situationism (to list only a few of the many creative factions that flourished during this period). Its defining characteristic is captured by two famous phrases: Arthur Rimbaudâs âIl faut ĂȘtre absolument moderne!â (One must be absolutely modern!) and Ezra Poundâs âMake it newâ, both of which enjoin artists to jettison tradition and experiment with the possibilities inherent in every medium, regardless of the apparent senselessness or indeed ugliness of the outcome. Poundâs fellow American modernist Gertrude Stein thought that it was the duty of the work of art to strive for ugliness because only in that way could it be assured of being truly new (beauty being a lingering trace of past traditions). The stem word âmodernâ, which derives from the Latin âmodoâ (meaning currently or at the moment), has been in use for nearly two thousand years. Its usage until the middle of the nineteenth century was generally unmarked, signalling no particular privilege or significance save that of currency. In A Singular Modernity (2002), Jameson, Fredric lists fourteen different uses of the term âmodernâ from the Classical period up until the 1960s. The real question, then, he argues, is when and how did modern become the demand for the new? There is no straightforward answer to this question, but it is generally thought (although the details are hotly disputed) that modernism is the aesthetic complement of modernity (change in the social sphere) and that its drive for change is rooted in the disruptions to social life brought about by modernization (change in technology). That is to say, it was the changes in the conditions of daily life that enabled modernism to blossom. This argument, which was presented powerfully and persuasively by Marshall Berman in All that is Solid Melts into Air (1982), reflects certain historical facts: modernism was an urban aesthetic---it celebrated and agonized over the new forms of life (and the various problems they entail) that the crowded cities of industrializing Europe afforded. The key change was the alienation of individuals from their families, their villages, and their connection to the land: factory workers moved to the city to become wage-earners, but in doing so became separated from everything that they knew and took for granted. Industrialization was thus a powerful force of change: it changed the structure of cities, it created a new class of people (the proletariat) and new things to spend money on (commodities). Ultimately, though, it was the First World War which brought about the most sweeping changes: it literally killed off the hidebound traditionalism of the Victorian era and introduced a new sense of urgency about the need to live life for all that it had to offer. Freud, Sigmundâs theory of sexual repression struck a powerful chord with the post-war generation for precisely this reason: it sensed personal, social, and cultural constraints it was no longer prepared to accept or tolerate. It was in this flux that the first artists began to think of themselves as modernists and their art as modernism emerged. Modernism was not a singular enterprise: it varied according to history and geography, or to put it another way it did not occur in the same way or at the same time in all countries. It was inspired and repulsed by the political experiments of the period: communism, fascism, Nazism, and socialism. Paris led the way, through the work of its poets Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, and its painters Edouard Manet and Paul CĂ©zanne, and because of them expatriates like James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, and Igor Stravinsky flocked there, further enhancing its reputation. But modernism was a properly global phenomenon, if predominantly a white Anglo-Saxon male phenomenon, and variants of it occurred on virtually every continent. The highpoints of modernism are for the most part still revered and avidly studied today. Further Reading: M. Calinescu Five Faces of Modernity (1987). A. Compagnon The Five Paradoxes of Modernity (1994). P. Childs Modernism (2000). F. Jameson The Modernist Papers (2008). T. J. Clark Farewell to an Idea (1999).