Making Modernism

On January 5, our class visited the Making Modernism exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Seeing the connections between our Bloomsbury lectures and the experimental techniques utilized throughout the exhibit helped me develop a further appreciation for the art. We had previously characterized modernism as a movement into the inner space with a heightened discourse of the mind. While there was not an explicit definition of modernism displayed by the exhibit, the art implied experimental concepts that demonstrate how modernism defies tradition and focuses on introspective thought. 

I was drawn to the still pictures with my favorite being Life Behind Them, by Marianne Werefkin. The picture depicts a couple with a seemingly angry disposition facing away from a cascade of mountains. As the curators describe, the pieces within this section of the exhibit. The art is incredibly aesthetically pleasing, yet also seems to have a deeper meaning. I believe the artist was attempting to convey how the couple is so disgruntled looking ahead to the future that they fail to appreciate the rich history behind them. While this is my personal interpretation, I believe the beauty in the piece is that it can have a different meaning to everyone. This is where you see the influences of Freud; the art brings out our subconscious through introspective thought.  

The still-life art form offers a wellspring of experimentation that aligns with the movements of the time and Bloomsbury. I see parallels with Mulk Raj Anand’s Little Plays of Mahatma Gandhi in which Anand shifts away from Realism through expressing his autobiography in the form of a play in a series of volumes. The emphasis on redefining literary boundaries is evident from the first scene in which Azad, Anand’s alter-ego, rhetorically challenges Ghandi when he states, “Good idea: Just do wrong! Then confess to it!”1 By reading Anand’s work we can see how he utilizes his experimental techniques to further his stance on Pacifism and the ambivalence of Gandhi’s teachings.