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In addition to this basic orientation, the intellectual historian Eugene Lunn has articulated four broad dimensions to the

modernist aesthetic: self-reflexivity, simultaneity, uncertainty of meaning, and dehumanization.1 Through self-reflexivity, modernist art simultaneously draws attention to both the work itselfits media materials, as well as the rules and form of its constructionand to the artist who created it. By doing so, artists self-consciously emphasize the direct relationship between the work of art and its creator. One can instantly recognize, for example, a painting as a Picasso or a short story as Kafkaesque. In this regard, modernist art and literature are often more about the material expression of the subjective reality of the artist, than a description of the objective world. Interestingly, modernists tended to believe this process is reproduced within the consumer of the work of art as well. The viewer, reader, or audience is encouraged to find meaning through a direct, subjective response to the work of art, rather than through judging whether the piece conforms to some set of external aesthetic standards. The second dimension of modernist aesthetics concerns simultaneity in the construction of the work of art. Rather than seeking mimesis or naturalistic representation, the work of art becomes a kind of montage in which form is achieved through the juxtaposition of media elements, images, words, and objects within the same space. Three-dimensional perspective and linear development in time give way to a sense of saturated, synchronic time (i.e., the arrangement of multiple things at the same time, or a rapid succession of images or words through time). While the effect of the work of art may produce a sense or feeling of unity, in fact the elements have only been placed together (the way, for example, an overwhelming number of still images are imprinted upon celluloid film, juxtaposed through montage editing, and threaded through a projector to produce the unifying illusion of moving pictures). Dreams are perhaps the best lived experience of this (Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams inspired many modernist artists and writers). Stream of consciousness in literature, cubism and collage in visual art, and atonality and multitonality in music, are common examples of simultaneity in modernism. The third dimension of modernist aesthetics emphasizes the uncertainty of meaning. In contrast to nineteenth-century positivismthe optimistic belief that scientific knowledge and social progress would produce a more enlightened humanitymodernists were attuned to the paradoxes, ambiguities, and uncertainties of contemporary life. Such a revolt against positivism had already been in preparation by such prominent intellectuals as Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud, and was fueled by more widespread fears about the masses, biological regression, and moral decadence at the end of the nineteenth century. Modernists, in various ways, tended to be against nature. One of the goals of modernism became to defamiliarize the world, to draw attention to the realization that modern life is not natural, but is historically constructed and is continually undergoing transformation. Rather than systematically build up knowledge in methodical fashion, the modernist project was to reassemble the fundamental elements of art, literature, and music in ways that demanded the active participation of viewers, readers, and audienceswho would be provoked to reexamine the world and to perceive it differently. The final dimension in modernist aesthetics proposed by Lunn is dehumanization, meaning that man is no longer the measure of all things, but that human identity is the composite effect of a tremendous number of external forces upon a fragile human psyche. For modernists, personality is not integrated and human nature is not fixed or natural. Rather, humans experience the world

subjectively through a psychic field of external sensations, perceptions, images, and objects. The depiction of humans in modernist visual art is often expressed through distortions of the human body, or simply by treating disembodied body parts as montage elements in some larger image. In modernism, humans have characteristics, but no longer an organic core. It was precisely this belief in the constructed and composite view of human identity that led modernists to believe they possessed a mission as an elite avant-garde. A modernist civilization of their creation, they held, could transform human nature itself. Modernist art was not only about aesthetics, it offered a path toward social engineering. A Companion to Europe : 1900-1945 Chapter 4 Mondernism Robin Waltz

Self-Reflexivity: - Mitchells lyrical style? Simultaneity: - The novel is narrated from many points of view-Brian, The Ben, Maggie, Gerald, etc. -Stream of consciousness Did God sleep? What had made him ask that? Did they say whatever came into their heads (111) Uncertainty of Meaning: -Brian trying to understand God the frightening conception of an avenging God had been replaced by a friendlier image borrowing its physical features from Santa Clause, its spiritual gentleness from his father (108/9) God could be like a flame, Brian was thinking, not a real flame, but like a flame. Perhaps He was a great person made entirely of flame- with a flame beard and flame lips licking out to change the shape of His mouth. (109) Maybe God looked like Mr.Powelly, thought Brian (122) Dehumanization:

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