"Only connect! . . .Live in fragments no longer.”
E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910), ch. 22
‘One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep, ‘Hammer your thoughts into unity’. For days I could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence [...]” William Butler Yeats (cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.51 )
MODERNISM
1. A usage, mode of expression, peculiarity of style, etc., characteristic of modern times. Later more generally: an innovative or distinctively modern feature. …
4. Any of various movements in art, architecture, literature, etc., generally characterized by a deliberate break with classical and traditional forms or methods of expression; the work or ideas of the adherents of such a movement….Now often used spec. with reference to the early 20th cent., esp. in the visual arts. OED
In ARCHITECTURE A broadly used architectural term and movement, tracing its origins to Le Corbusier's (1887–1966) designs such as that for the ‘floating box’ (i.e. it was on stilts) Villa Savoye, Paris 1933, ....In Modernist architecture there are no projecting features such as cornices, mouldings, architraves, or skirting boards. By the 1970s, however, Modernism had come to mean squat concrete blockhouses and impersonal skyscrapers. …
"Modernism" The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Michael Clarke. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online.
Modern Movement. C20 architectural movement (also called Modernism) that sought to sunder all stylistic and historic links with the past…..Early C20 movements such as Futurism and Constructivism sought answers in machinery, technology, and the expression of industrialized power, while the search for a Machine Aesthetic became at times an end in itself..… The aims of Modernism were radical, concerned with the suppression of all ornament, historical allusions, and styles, counterbalanced by the elevation of Sachlichkeit (objectivity) and the evolution of industrialized methods of building. Some groups within the Modern Movement, such as De Stijl, advocated abstractions …but virtually all were agreed on the need for rational responses to contemporary needs using modern materials, mass-produced building components, and experimental, industrial methods of construction …. Functionalism was widely held to be ground on which all agreed, but even that faced objections in the search for an architecture freed from the constraints not only of the past and aesthetics, but from use as well….By 1927 International Modernism had arrived, and the white rectilinear flatroofed building with strip-windows in metal frames (as in … Le Corbusier's designs) became the exemplar of what Modern Movement architecture should aim to be. Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye
"Modern Movement" A Dictionary of Architecture. James Stevens Curl. Oxford University Press 1999. Oxford Reference Online.
modernism Twentieth-century movement in art, architecture, design and literature that, in general, concentrates on space and form, rather than content or ornamentation. In architecture and design, … modernism developed the use of new building materials, such as glass, steel, and concrete. …. See also abstract art; abstract expressionism; Blaue Reiter; Brücke; constructivism; cubism; deconstruction; fauvism; futurism; International style; post-modernism; suprematism; vorticism
"modernism" World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2005. Oxford Reference Online
