MODERNIST LONDON

VIRGINIA WOOLF, “MR BENNETT AND MRS BROWN” (1924)

“On or about December 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910.”

Reference: first Post-Impressionist Exhibition (November 8, 1910 )

Georges-Pierre Seurat - Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande

Jatte, 1884–1886

Paul Cézanne - Les Grandes Baigneuses - 1898-1905

Paul Gauguin –Woman Holding a Fruit - 1893

Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night - 1889

REALISM, NATURALISM, MODERNISM

Key features of Realism and Naturalism:http://faculty.scf.edu/jonesj/LIT2012/realism.htmKey features of Modernism:http://www.sprog.asb.dk/tt/giddens/lectures/some_characteristics_of_modernism.htm

MODERNIST SUB-MOVEMENTS

IMAGISMVORTICISMCUBISMSURREALISMDADAISM

CULTURAL FORMATIONS(RAYMOND WILLIAMS)

Cultural formation = the super-structural manifestation of a structural social and economic (class) formation → a cultural sub-system, kept together by a fairly coherent structure of relationships between issues and preoccupations, on the one hand, and ways of expression, on the other

Dominant: expression of the dominant class (19°-century realist novel as expression of the Weltanschauung of the bourgoisie)

Residual: expression of a waning class (early 19°-century neo-classical art as a nostalgic expression of aristocracy)

Emergent: expression of a rising class (late 18°-century romanticism as expression of the revolutionary ambitions of the middle class)

Modernism = blending of the residual and the emergent

IMAGIST LONDONFirst English Modernist literary movement:

Imagism (T.E. Hulme, “Autumn” and “A City Sunset”, January 1909, showing how Hulme shared the late Victorian and Edwardian revival of interest in Chinoiserie and Japonism)

Main imagist poet: Ezra Pound, an admirer of the condensed, direct expression he detected in Arnaut Daniel, Dante, Guido Cavalcanti and in Japanes art and verse forms; influence of the French Symbolistes

EZRA POUND AND IMAGISM

1911: Pound introduces two other poets to the Eiffel Tower group: his former fiancée Hilda Doolittle (who had started signing her work H.D.) and her future husband Richard Aldington, both interested in exploring Greek poetic models, especially Sappho

Search for a compression of expression (Greek example + Japanese haiku poetry)

1912: Pound “invents” the word “Imagistes”

EZRA POUND, “IN A STATION OF THE METRO” (1913)

Poetry’s April 1913 issue published what came to be seen as Imagism’s exemplary text, the haiku-like poem by Ezra Pound entitled “In a Station of the Metro”:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

EZRA POUND, “IMAGISME” (1913)

The March 1913 issue of Poetry contained Pound’s “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” and the essay “Imagisme”

“Imagisme”:• Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective

or objective.• To use absolutely no word that does not contribute

to the presentation.• As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the

musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

EZRA POUND“A FEW DON’TS” (1913)

An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. […]It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.To begin with, consider the three propositions (demanding direct treatment, economy of words, and the sequence of the musical phrase), not as dogma - never consider anything as dogma - but as the result of long contemplation, which, even if it is some one else's contemplation, may be worth consideration.

LANGUAGEUse no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal

something.Don't use such an expression as “dim lands of peace”. It dulls the

image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.

Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths.[… ]

Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it.

A DYNAMIC IMAGE

Already in 1913, Pound thought Imagism had to develop in a more dynamic way, and began collaborating with the Rebel Art Centre established by Wydham Lewis

The style of this group grew out of Cubism but was more closely related to Futurism in its embrace of dynamism, the machine age and all things modern

The label Vorticism, invented by Pound, described the artists’ attempt to paint modern life as an array of bold lines and harsh colours drawing the viewer’s eye into the centre of the canvas, as it were attracted into a vortex

CUBISM

Early-20th-century avant-garde art movement pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso

In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context

Pablo Picasso, Seated Figure (1909-10)

Georges Braque, Violin and Candlestick (1910)

VORTICIST MANIFESTO (BLAST, JUNE 1914)

BLAST, WAR NUMBER (JULY 1915)

Wyndham Lewis, Timon of Athens (1913)

Wyndham Lewis, Composition (1913)