Modernism's Empty Empty Spaces- Michael Brenner

Modernism is something that we all grew up with.  It’s in our aesthetic bloodstream.  We tend to take its forms and modes of expression as natural; after all, it has been the dominant aesthetic motif for a century.  Some of its features are more pronounced, and obvious, than others.  In literature, music, and much painting the common trait that our senses perceive is its jagged, disconnected, and fragmented nature.  Those are also features of our current lives – a case of art anticipating life?  For the artists who were the fountainheads of modernism actually lived in social settings quite coherent and orderly by today’s standards.

The motor force of the modernist movement was freedom of self expression, the rebellion against the constraints of all formalisms.  Rules were the enemy.  The society and the culture that insisted on fixed norms imprisoned the self.  Modern art was at once an act of liberation and an assault on the established order.  Disorder became seen as virtuous by its very apposition to all convention. There is an intriguing connection between modernism’s claim to unbridled liberty and the way that it has shaped the physical environment in which we live.

That trait stands out when our attention turns to architecture and décor.  It this sphere, disorder gave way to clarity; complexity to simplicity.  Uncluttered, clean, spare are the words that come to mind.  For some, such a setting provides maximum room for a rationally organized and directed existence.  Ludwig Wittgenstein, the renowned positivist philosopher, designed and minutely supervised the construction of a house in Norway that was an exemplar of the modernist philosophy.  Every linear specification was realized with exactitude.  Austerity of décor matched the architectural precision.  Its interior was occupied by little more than the philosopher himself.  There are more recognizable exemplars. 

  

Think of Bauhaus design that has so profoundly influenced modern visual sensibility.  Think of Le Corbusier and the regular lines of the omnipresent office block or commercial park that is its derivative.  Think of the bleakly functional Pompidou Centre in Paris.  Think of up-scale Italian décor. The physical environment they have modeled for us is sleek and unencumbered.  It is pale.  The living habitat emphasizes open space.  It invites us to do what we will within that space.  It’s almost as if the modernist motto in this domain is: “it’s up to you.”  There is no dictation of what to pay attention to since there is so little to look at.  The stark geometric alignments offer only bare hints as to how we may arrange the space they compose.  We are encouraged, in fact, not to fill the space with things.  A spare abstract painting here, a bit of fabric there, a slight modulation of color tones.  That is about it.  The unstated message is a powerful one: this is about you – only you.  

This is narcissism friendly terrain – no threat, no challenge, no contender or contention for the imperial self.  The narcissistic personality implicitly rejects all claims on it by opinion, by custom or even by visual obstruction.  The absence of a defined aesthetic order, like a nihilistic public disorder, offers a convenient blank canvas for the socially disengaged.

The age of modernism is the age of self-conscious individualism.  That strong affinity is mutually reinforcing.  The very fact of whom and what a person is takes precedence over how he participates in a social environment.  The ‘authentic’ individual self is somehow detached from any intense social interaction.  Whatever comes out of that pristine self is thereby privileged as being truest and most genuine.  It is sacrilized.  Minimalism is taken as an implicit virtue since it does not ask us to express anything deep or complicated - feelings, thoughts or emotions.  For just trying to plumb those depths can interfere with what really counts: the self-absorbed, self-referential and restless individual doing his thing – however superficial and fleeting that thing may be.  From the outset, the modernists’ envisaged community of free spirits risked materializing as an assemblage of narcissists.  So it has.

(Prior publishing 9/22/10, Huffington Post)

 

Comments

[rjj]

Though by the sixties modernism had degenerated into a wallowingly self-conscious dogmatic cult, we ARE indebted to it:

Its architectural masterpieces, after initial construction cost overruns, within a quarter of a century became maintenance money pits.

Without it we would not have Frank Gehry's post-functionalist travesties.

etc.

Given that art is a zeitgeist meter any haruspex worth his wages might have anticipated the financial sector correlates - from junk bonds to hedge funds to derivatives via bubbles.

[rjj]

A word akin to religiosity is needed to characterize the modernist cult. Too bad "rationalisticism" is so cumbersome.

[LeaNder]

On second thought I cut a longer comment on modernism, but this will not hinder my outing as a narcissist/individualist/existentialist.

Bauhaus: I am not exactly a fan of minimalism, but I surely am a fan of Bauhaus architecture, not since I think they designed space for narcissists, but since it feels they designed very, very human space, with much attention on needs of and convenience for the people that would inhabit it. Compared to the more frequent habit of space that is created for people with the humans that will live in it as an afterthought at that time. That's my experience from living in a Bauhaus flat in Vienna twice as a guest of the Bank of Austria.

Besides, what I like about Bauhaus architecture is pretty close to what I like about Cistercian architecture. The simplicity opens your eyes for the details.

Concerning individualism, would you agree that both Boccaccio and Shakespeare were early victims of the individualism virus? Man versus man made rule. An example of an individualist in painting, a painter against the rules of his time, would be Rembrandt. The purists in art history don't like the argument, but modernist painting is partly the result of a competitor: photography.

[Roy G]

Thank you once again, Dr. Brenner, for posting such though provoking material! I am now going to disagree with much you have said here, and I hope it is taken in the spirit in which it was intended, not as an argument, but a deeper understanding:

The concept of modernism can be taken colloquially, as the eternal now, as in 'we are the most modern of people,' however, formally, the Modern period was roughly 1890–1980, with avant-garde ideas of Modernism gaining popular traction after the mechanized horror of WWI. Modernism was a recognition of the change that technology was bringing to society, and a desire to create forms of expression appropriate for a new age, just as cars require a different form of expression than donkey carts.

Artistically, Modernism was concerned with new forms of expression that were more appropriate for the age, rejecting the classical Academy, and seeking forms that represent the forces that underly the surface, which are simultaneously more fundamental and less aesthetic. In more practical arts, such as architecture, it became concerned with function, as opposed to ornamentation, and was indeed a reaction against the flourishes of the Renaissance and more recent flowery styles, such as the Arts & Crafts movement.

This movement away from representation and the rococo was indeed hard to accept by many. Dr. Brenner's leading statement is telling of this viewpoint: "In literature, music, and much painting the common trait that our senses perceive is its jagged, disconnected, and fragmented nature." From the surface, this is indeed true, as best seen in Modern music, which broke from Classical music by engaging in atonality and dissonance. A quick read of a Cubist painting may also yield this reaction. The same can be said for the Modern Jazz of Parker, Coleman and Miles Davis. The chief aim of Modernism was to look deeper into the nature of things, especially our own perception. By engaging at this level, an expanded understanding of order can indeed be found beneath something that, on the surface at least, appears to be jagged, disconnected and fragmented.

While the rejection of conservative forms has come to be seen as mindless destruction (and indeed, there have always been artists who have abused Modernism to burnish their own aims), it is helpful to remember where it came from originally. A fine example is Goya, called by Robert Hughes the 'last of the classicists and the first of the modernists.' As a court painter for Spanish Royals, Goya's early work is Classical, firmly in the tradition and conventions of Academy painting, as well as subject matter, which was mainly the glorification of the Royal Family and its perpetuity. Later in his career, and in response to the Spanish Civil War, Goya evolved away from this artistic hagiography, and towards what would become modernism, specifically in applying his eye to every day life, and unstintingly at the horrors of the world, as seen in his masterpiece, "The Third of May, 1808", which was the opposite of triumphalist war portraiture. His power grew even as his style relaxed towards abstraction, as the power of "Saturn Devouring His Son" attests to.

Regarding architecture, once again, Modernism was a reaction against the rococo, the embellishment of form that has no function beyond the decorative. From the Gothic period onward, architectural forms were embellished to provide surface detail that provided some visual interest, but not function. Indeed, the Bauhaus cum Internationalist style of architecture is guilty of turning too severely towards asceticism, however, as a corrective, it must be remembered that Frank Lloyd Wright was a leading Modernist, and his buildings display clean economy, but without being overly austere. My take is that Dr. Brenner is actually criticizing Postmodernism, not Modernism; one clue is that the Pompidou Centre is actually considered to be postmodern architecture, not modern.

Interestingly, per the topic of Dr. Brenner's previous post here, the roots of spare and clean Modernist aesthetic come in part from the Japonisme movement in Europe, specifically in France in the late 19th century; the austerity and simplicity of Japanese arts and crafts had a tremendous impact, both popular and avant garde, tremendously influencing the early Modern painters, specifically Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, Whistler, and Gauguin, among others.

I would argue that Modernism is actually a universal viewpoint, and Modern Art, especially Minimalism, has been widely misunderstood. From abstraction, Minimalism took the maxim of 'amplifying the essential by eliminating the irrelevant.' I would argue that Modernism is actually a universal viewpoint, that Modern Art compels us to contemplate it from a universal viewpoint, that is, forgetting our individual Selves and focusing on understanding what is in front of us. In this context, one's own feelings, thoughts or emotions are not actually deep, but rather, on the surface, a personality that must be overcome, in order to arrive at the unspeakable universal. Rothko's works are instructive in this regard; we all stand before them equally, simply as human beings, and our social identities are unimportant to the experience. We are invited to feel emotions, but they are meant to be personal. The ineffable equals the universal.

Contrast that with postmodern art, say a Koons or Murakami, whose works appeal more to some subgroups than others, which places them opposite universality. Postmodernism truly represents the fragmentation of viewpoints, by denying the universal characteristics of man in favor of pecific viewpoints, often based on culture or gender. In its positive aspect postmodern works can help us to identify and empathize with minority viewpoints. Unfortunately, the negative aspect of postmodernism is a retreat inside the 'in' group, and an insular superiority that separates instead of unites.

I would say that Dr. Brenner's j'accuse should really be aimed at postmodernism, and also at mass, or 'pop' culture. The role and form of the arts as a public intellectual discourse was severely impacted by the advent of mass media. Entertainment started to displace the Arts, and the response of the art world was to become increasingly opaque to the uninitiated. Some Modern Art simply isn't meant to play in Peoria, and requires a level of education in order to be understood – in the same way as Opera, perhaps. Although there is blame on both sides, some of the most criticized art has proven to be the most valuable, and the fact that Joe in Peoria thinks Duchamp's "Fountain" is just a toilet does not dilute its importance; it is Joe's shortcoming, after all, that causes him to pass judgement and forego any deeper inquiry. The Modern period never ended per se, but still exists in a reduced form, alongside postmodernism. What was once avant garde has now been fully assimilated into the canon, and what was once cultural currency is now a hothouse flower, to be seen in rarified materialist circumstances. The gallery and the museum have sanitized and distanced what were once vital pieces of cultural communication.

The broadsides against Modern Art are many (I don't take Dr. Brenner's post too far in that regard, seeing it more as a 'think' piece than an attack); attacking 'degenerate' art and closing the Bauhaus were Nazi obsessions. In the modern incarnation, the conservative movement has been engaged in a culture war with art for generations. While there are admittedly egregious examples of exhibitionism and outrage that are passed as art, those examples are sensationalized beyond their importance (many of the Right's bete noirs are actually very minor art world figures). Furthermore, I would argue that the Right has adopted postmodernism as a strategy, and we see it in play as Identity Politics, anti-intellectualism, and the denial of authority in such matters as science and schooling.

Forgive me for going on so long; as the saying goes, I didn't have time to make it shorter!

[Michael Brenner]

Roy G.

I much appreciate your comments that are both thoughtful and thought provoking. This sort of exchange is valued all the more for being so rare.

You are quite right that my essay is more the elaboration of an impression than a systematic appraisal of the multiform phenomenon that is modernism in the arts. I have neither a theory of aesthetics nor a comprehensive knowledge of modernist schools and tendencies. My principal point of departure is deformed mode of individualism we call narcissism. While the term, strictly used, refers to a well defined clinical syndrome, many of its manifest traits have become commonplace in the general society of western societies - with the US as always in the vanguard. (I have done a monograph on the topic of 'The Narcissistic Public Personality In Our times' and I'd be glad to send you a copy). One of those traits is the compulsion to fight free of all constraints - socio-cultural or behavioral norms and aesthetic standards. That points to the link I've made with the 'liberation' promised by modernist aesthetics.

You are quite right that much modernist art aims to encourage individua's to probe the fundamental nature of things and themselves. It intentionally does so, as you say, by 'amplifying the essential by eliminating the irrelevant.' That essential is taken to be universal. And you are quite right that this is the spirit animating oriental art. I have only a slight familiarity with the wave of interest in Chonoiserie and Japanaise in Europe. As I recall, it was mainly fixed on decorative motifs and only later exercised some influence on individual artists - but that is only an impression. One thought I have is that there was a differentiating element between Oriental minimalism (especially Japanese) and Western modernism generally(more particularly in European minimalism). It is that the former never disengaged from the real world (natural especially) to the extent that the latter did. That conforms, of course, with the eschatology of the Asian religious tradition whereby the ultimate identity and meaning of the inner self is to be found in unity with all of creation – and what supersedes creation. Daoism is the clearest expression of this. Moreover, I feel that minimalism a la Haiku poetry is designed to offer subtle hints as to what those realities are. The emptiness of modernity, in architecture and décor, by contrast supposes that self enlightenment is strictly an interior matter. Hence the danger that it degenerates into vapid navel-gazing. Or worse, gazing into the workings of the body behind the navel. I guess that is my take on post-modernism a la the Pompidou Center or the paintings of Max Ernst – or an awful lot of me incoherent literature..

Since this is becoming close to free association, permit me a few further more or less stray thoughts on the evocative references you make.

1. I’ve always read Impressionism as the first self-conscious break of modern sensibility with formalism of style – with only an inchoate sense the path to ‘essence’. It never quite made it to the minimalist stage a la Haiku, though. The one exception perhaps is Matisse in his later years.

2. Post-modernism is, to my mind, is the acknowledgement of failure in the modernist project as you have so well described it. Its motto: anything goes – in expression, interpretation and appreciation. The implicit message to persons: your are on your own and one mode of expression is as ‘good’ as any other. Hence, deconstructivism which is a fancy word for nihilism and aesthetic anarchy.

3. As to abstract painting, I’ve never been able to make any sense out of it. I have no reaction – intellectual or emotional – whatsoever. In short, it bores me. I offer this not as a judgment but rather as further explanation of where I’m coming from. I have the same reaction to most abstract sculpture, other than that which is simply pretty. Last year in Paris, I went to the small Zadkine museum. I had seen photos of some of the quite remarkable ‘traditional’ sculpture that he’d done in Russia before emigrating. What a letdown. Dull in an extravagantly self-conscious way; he’d plumbed his depths and come up with the personalized version of the commonplace.

4. Jazz is a favorite pastime and interest of mine. Here you pose the question that jazz buffs have been arguing over for some time: ‘cool’ jazz as an advance in sophistication, self discovery and artistic expression or self indulgent preoccupation with self. I guess where one comes down on this depends on how one interprets self-indulgent. After all, all the great artists were self-indulgent. Perhaps we should say that its value turns on what has been discovered – does it reach to the essence and is it communicated in a way that is universally accessible. I admit that Miles Davis and John Coltrane never reached me – but that may be explicable in terms of my own deficiency. I will defend the not antithetical proposition that classic jazz could be much more than entertaining or dance music. I think of Ellington’s album with Johnny Hodges: Back to Back. Then there is the best blues that I think meets the essence and universal standards.

I think that I’d better cease and desist at this point since I’m exposing my limited sense of aesthetics along with my limited knowledge of those large swaths of the modern arts from which I’m estranged. I hope that we’ll be able to continue this exchange.

Michael Brenner
mbren@pitt.edu