A broadly defined multinational cultural movement (or series of movements) that took hold in the late 19th century and reached its most radical peak on the eve of World War I. It grew out of the philo [..]

1737, "deviation from the ancient and classical manner" [Johnson, who calls it "a word invented by Swift"], from modern + -ism. From 1830 as "modern ways and styles." Use [..]

Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850, and is characterised by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasising instead [..]

A vague, amorphous term referring to the art, poetry, literature, architecture, and philosophy of Europe and America in the early twentieth-century. Scholars do not agree exactly when Modernism began- [..]

The term Modernism usually refers to the early part of the twentieth century — sometimes beginning with the First World War in 1914, and continuing through the 1930s or so — perhap [..]

A style of art, architecture, literature, etc., that uses ideas and methods which are very different from those used in the past. A self-conscious break from the past.

  modern writing is marked by a strong and conscious break with traditional forms and techniques of expression; it believes that we create the world in the act of perceiving it.  Modernism implies historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, of loss, and of despair.  It elevates the individual and his inner being over social man and prefers the [..]

Belief that through an arduous process of making/understanding "art" one can discover full humanity and even a kind of divinity. In language, one comes (through process) to acknowled [..]

 – a literary movement beginning in the early 1900s spurred by the industrial age, a first World War I, and challenges to established Christianity which characterized by feelings of loss of “old ways” [..]

International cultural movement after World War I expressing disillusionment with tradition and interest in new technologies and visions. Motif

Term referring to art, literature, and music of the late 19th and the 20th century; a form of protest against the industrialized, militaristic, business-oriented, mechanical, bureaucratic, and technol [..]

is a term used widely amongst a huge range of topics. For example in the context of philosophy, modernization is the entire transition from the 17th century to the current day and the characteristics [..]

Literary movement that occurred from c.1890 until the beginning of World War II and sought to challenge traditional forms. In poetry, the three main exponents of modernism were T.S.Eliot, Ezra Pound a [..]

Post-Modernism

A mode of thinking characterized by a belief in universal progress through scientific analysis together with the notion that social problems can be solved by the application of rational thought. See e [..]

  In art and culture, general term for the various non-traditional styles and outlooks  embraced by the avant-garde from the late-nineteenth to the late-twentieth century.  In recent years, various “p [..]

Modernism is a mutilayered concept that refers to developments in art, literature architecture, philosophy, politics, ethics and culture in the century up 1970.

A type of revitalization movement intended to adopt the characteristics of a foreign and “modern” society, in the process abandoning some or all of the “traditional” characteristics of the society und [..]

(n) genre of art and literature that makes a self-conscious break with previous genres(n) the quality of being current or of the present(n) practices typical of contemporary life or thought

A philosophical school which views modernization (essentially westernization) as a type of universal social solvent that will transform all societies it contacts into something resembling a modern wes [..]

Within the Catholic Church, Modernism denotes the attempt of scholars and theologians to bring religious thought into harmony with the scientific findings and secular philosophies of the day. Coming into prominence around the same time as Protestant Liberalism, Catholic Modernism had many of the same goals: to strip religion of its supernatural ele [..]

Focused on a period in western art from the 1860s through the 1970s, it is elusive to define because of pertaining to being non-traditional, which meant a variety of emerging styles especially if it w [..]

As an art-history term of art, Modernism is focused on a period in western art from the 1860s through the 1970s. The word is difficult to define because it embraced the state of mind of being non-trad [..]

The deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century. Modernis [..]

Ushered into Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Modernism in the visual arts rejected the old standards of how art should be made, viewed, and what it should mean. Mod [..]

An art movement that is perhaps the broadest of its kind. In fact you might want to consider it an umbrella term for much thinking and manifestation of thought from the 1900 and onwards. Some would ar [..]

A movement extending from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in all the arts, modernism rejected academic traditions in favour of innovative styles developed in response to contemporary i [..]

An Art style that breaks with traditional art forms and searches for new modes of expression (early 20th century).

A broad term used to describe the various movements in art, architecture, literature and music from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s. Modernism in visual art involved a break from traditional values and styles, and the development of new forms in art and society believed to be more suitable to the industrial age.

A term covering the many movements in arts and design from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day that aim to reflect the realities of the industrial age, without reference to any tradit [..]

A deliberate philosophical and practical divergence from the past in the arts and literature, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through the first half of twentieth century, and t [..]

Fair warning, fair Shmoopers: this one's a doozy. The word modern has a whole boatload of different meanings, and what constitutes modernism has been hotly debated for decades. Let's start a [..]