His poems enforced what he felt was a necessary shift away from the dreaminess of Romanticism. Citizens were overcome with their own futility. Oil on canvas, 41.28 cm × 33.34 cm., Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. Sullivan's follower Frank Lloyd Wright absorbed from his 'lieber Master' (dear master) the German romantic tradition of organic architecture. The regionalists focused on the colorfulness of the American landscape and the complexities of country life, whereas the social realists went into the subjects of the Great Depression, poverty, and social injustice. Modernist poetry refers to poetry written, mainly in Europe and North America, between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the biases of the critic setting the dates. There is a critical tradition associated with Rubén Darío, the leading modernist figure, who effectively inaugurated the movement with his collection of poems and stories, Azul (1888), a radical departure from previous traditions. There is no single date for the beginning of the modern era in America, as dozens of painters were active at the beginning of the 20th century. Like their British contemporaries, American Modernists rejected traditional institutions and forms. Douglas influenced African-American visual arts especially during the Harlem Renaissance. The lives of the disillusioned and outcasts became more focal. "On or about 1910," just as the automobile and airplane were beginning to accelerate the pace of human life and Einstein's ideas were transforming our perception of the universe, there was an explosion of innovation and creative energy that shook every field of artistic endeavor. His mature work, Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905), incorporates his heightened awareness of world events. The movement was connected to a vogue for African American culture, as seen too in the popularity of Jazz music, with many writers financed by white patrons. It is much easier to "show" than to "tell" what Modernism brought to poetry. Foreign-born architects as Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, and William Lescaze during the 1920s played a great role in development of American architecture performing later a style, which got the name of international style and was reflected in the design of corporate office buildings after World War II. Known as “The Lost Generation,” American writers of the 1920s brought Modernism to the United States. A related issue is the loss of self and need for self-definition, as workers faded into the background of city life, unnoticed cogs within a machine yearning for self-definition. $1,000+ Pace. Learn more about the history of Modernism and its various manifestations. Modernism was an important era in literature that showcased seminal work and changed the way literature was viewed by people. Stevens, the aesthete par excellence, exalted the imagination for its ability to "press back against the pressure of reality. The importance of the individual was emphasized; the truly limited nature of the human experience formed a bond across all bridges of race, class, sex, wealth or religion. How Modernism arose The literary movement we call Modernism rejected Romantic ideas. T.S. The early part of the period lasted 25 years and ended around 1935, when modern art was referred to as, what Greenberg called the avant-garde. Modernism, in the fine arts, late 19th to mid-20th century, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. The victory in World War I confirmed the status of the U.S. as an international player and gave the people self-confidence and a feeling of security. The Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist paintings startled many American viewers who were accustomed to more conventional art. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz described it as: "Artists who saw my earlier photographs began to tell me that they envied me; that they felt my photographs were superior to their paintings, but that, unfortunately, photography was not an art. T.S. "High modernism", like similar names designating intellectual and artistic eras such as "the high Middle Ages" or "the high Baroque", presumably is meant to specify the most characteristic, developed, consistent, or florid manifestation of modernism. Clement Greenberg argues that modernist art excludes "anything outside itself". The unity found lay in the common ground of the shared consciousness within all human experience. 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