modernism

Also found in: Thesaurus, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

Related to modernism: postmodernism, Modernism and postmodernism, Post Modernism

mod·ern·ism

(mŏd′ər-nĭz′əm)

a. Modern thought, character, or practice.

b. Sympathy with or conformity to modern ideas, practices, or standards.

2. A peculiarity of usage or style, as of a word or phrase, that is characteristic of modern times.

3. often Modernism The deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the 1900s.

4. often Modernism A Roman Catholic movement, officially condemned in 1907, that attempted to examine traditional belief according to contemporary philosophy, criticism, and historiography.

mod′ern·ist n.

mod′ern·is′tic adj.

modernism

(ˈmɒdəˌnɪzəm)

1. modern tendencies, characteristics, thoughts, etc, or the support of these

2. something typical of contemporary life or thought

3. (Art Movements) a 20th-century divergence in the arts from previous traditions, esp in architecture. See International Style

4. (Architecture) a 20th-century divergence in the arts from previous traditions, esp in architecture. See International Style

5. (Roman Catholic Church) (capital) RC Church the movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries that sought to adapt doctrine to the supposed requirements of modern thought

ˈmodernist n, adj

ˌmodernˈistic adj

ˌmodernˈistically adv

mod•ern•ism

(ˈmɒd ərˌnɪz əm)

n.

1. modern character, tendencies, or values.

2. a modern usage or characteristic.

3. (cap.)

a. the movement in Roman Catholic thought that interpreted the teachings of the Church in the light of modern philosophic and scientific thought.

b. the liberal theological tendency in 20th-century Protestantism.

4. (sometimes cap.) estrangement or divergence from the past in the arts and literature occurring esp. in the course of the 20th century and taking form in any of various innovative movements and styles.

[1730–40]

mod′ern•ist, n., adj.

mod`ern•is′tic, adj.

modernism

a mode of expression or practice characteristic of modern times. — modernist, n. — modernistic, adj.

modernism

[ˈmɒdənɪzəm] N → modernismo m

modernism

n → Modernismus m

modernism

[ˈmɒdənɪzəm] n (Art) → modernismo

References in classic literature ?

She was expressing in her own native phrases--assisted a little by her Sixth Standard training--feelings which might almost have been called those of the age--the ache of modernism. The perception arrested him less when he reflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition--a more accurate expression, by words in LOGY and ISM, of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries.

View in context

On his study table--a curious note of modernism where everything seemed to belong to a bygone world--was a cablegram.

View in context

To explore elements of modernism in Chinese poetry, scholars of Chinese literature discuss toward an origin of Chinese poetic modernisms, modernist poetry from Taiwan, bridging borders in contemporary poetry, and reconceptualizations of poetry in the post-Mao era.

Chinese Poetic Modernisms

'Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designer.

Past in Perspective

But as American modernism evolved during the 1950s and 1960s, the art world likewise changed, narrowing its vision toward large coastal cities such as New York and Los Angeles.

Centering Modernism

The closure of the Bauhaus, the prohibition of Jazz and atonal music as "cultural Bolshevism," the touring Exhibition of Degenerate Art, and the burning of modernist paintings by the Berlin Fire Brigade (an uncanny adumbration of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451) all signaled to observers that the express train of Weimar modernism hit the buffers in 1933 with disastrous personal consequences not just for art, but also the artists who created it and the liberal intelligentsia who appreciated it.

From Weimar modernism to Nazi modernism?

At the moment, it appears that pre-modern (to 1650) was contested by modernism (until 1950) and at the moment we live in a post-modern society and this last one is now becoming undone in 2015 or slightly before.

Meta modernism: an introduction

Scholars of Modernist Studies recognise an increasing, marked interest in the subject area of Modernism. The trend is to pluralise Modernism, to revise its rubrics, to identify new features in an effort to understand this very unusual turn of the literature.

Maren Tova Linett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Women Writers

Migrant Modernism: Postwar London and the West Indian Novel.

Brown, J. Dillon. Migrant Modernism: Postwar London and the West Indian Novel

Roman Catholic Modernism was more than a number of intellectual and political tendencies that surfaced in the Church during the belle epoque and less than the consciously coordinated movement asserted by the Vatican condemnation in the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis (1907).

Divided Friends: Portraits of the Roman Catholic Modernist Crisis in the United States

The major theoretical overhaul to modernism's conception of space has been the global turn known as 'New Modernist Studies'.

Neal Alexander and James Moran (eds), Regional Modernisms

First, in the wake of the global turn in literary and cultural studies, modernism cannot be treated as one any more.

Noun	1.	modernism - genre of art and literature that makes a self-conscious break with previous genres genre - a class of art (or artistic endeavor) having a characteristic form or technique
	2.	modernism - the quality of being current or of the present; "a shopping mall would instill a spirit of modernity into this village" contemporaneity, contemporaneousness, modernity, modernness currentness, up-to-dateness, currency - the property of belonging to the present time; "the currency of a slang term"
	3.	modernism - practices typical of contemporary life or thought practice, pattern - a customary way of operation or behavior; "it is their practice to give annual raises"; "they changed their dietary pattern"