The terms Modernism and Modern
Art- as in the name of the New York
museum founded in 1939 - have come
to signify the innovatory arts of the late
nineteenth century and the Erst three
quarters of the twentieth. The concept
of Modernism was most clearly
embodied in the International Modern
architecture ofGropius and Le
Corbusier in the 1920s. This went far
beyond the demands made ever since
the 1820s. (see p. 662) for a distinctive
style of its own time, to a complete
negation of the concept of style itself.
Their buildings were purged of
ornament and all nostalgic references
to the past, emphasized function,
exploited new technology and, in
urban developments, proposed
solutions appropriate to the social condition of the twentieth century. The
` past and all past styles were rejected
also by avant-garde painters and
sculptors with results ranging from
, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism and
abstract or Non-Objective art to
Surrealism and Abstract Expression-
ism. For them, as for Baudelaire in the
mid-nineteenth century (see p. 67o),
the experience of modernity was the
defining challenge.
j The need felt by artists to be ‘of their
` own time' led to an approach that
stressed innovation above all, an
impulse to seek new solutions to