HERE is the common notion of Modernism as something hectic,
heated. Thus Irving Howe lists among the "formal or literary attributes of modernism" the fact that "Perversity-Which Is to Say: Surprise, Excitement, Shock, Terror, Affront-Becomes a Dominant Motif" (Introduction to a collection of essays by various hands called The Idea of the Modern [New York, 1967]). A related notion is that Modernism can be understood as an extreme version of Romanticism. But a long look at Modernism doesn't bear out either notion as a covering one. Modernism is as specific a historical phenomenon as Romanticism was, but it doesn't represent nearly so specific an attitude, position, or outlook. Modernism may continue certain aspects of Romanticism, but it also reacts against Romanticism in general-just as in reviving certain aspects of Classicism it reacts against Classicism in general. In the context of what is signified by terms like Romanticism and Classicism when they are used unhistorically, Modernism as a whole distinguishes itself by its inclusiveness, its openness, and also its indeterminateness. It embraces the conventional polarities of literary and art history; or rather it abandons them (and in doing so exposes their limited usefulness). Modernism defines itself in the long run not as a "movement," much less a program, but rather as a kind of bias or tropism: towards esthetic value, esthetic value as such and as an ultimate. The specificity of Modernism lies in its being so heightened a tropism in this regard. This more conscious, this almost exacerbated concern with esthetic value emerges in the mid-19th century in response to an emergency. The emergency is perceived in a growing relaxation of esthetic stand- ards at the top of Western society, and in the threat this offers to the serious practice of art and literature. The Modernist response to this emergency becomes effective because it takes place in actual production rather than in discourse; in fact, it is more conscious in the practice of art than it is in discourse or criticism. This response begins to make a break with many well-tried conventions and habits, ostensibly a
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radical break. But for the mo
and only ostensibly radical works to maintain or restor continuity with the highest e ticular past styles, manners, stored, but standards, leve preserved in the same way i place: by constant renewal The emergency has proved lasting response to it. And s response. The higher stand in production, which does not been matched in quality in a best of Modernist productio The Modernist preoccupati ultimate is not new in itself. self-consciousness, and its in tensity (together with the i9th means to ends) could not but with the nature of the med nique." This was also a questi on in practice by artists, poets it could not but become an mean the same thing as a " of Modernism has shown th it's this, the artisanal concer proved to be its covering em one-the one that again and Its artisanal emphasis is wh the hard-headed, sober, "co what makes it react against Romanticism was to take med and to consider them as mor say that this was a decisive fa it was a symptom of that det ness of Romanticism popul hard-headed reaction of the f professionalism. I don't for a moment cont affair of hard-headedness saying that it distinguishes i temper and attitude. And I s
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feel is too one-sided a view. Yet this view almost invites demolition when it comes to Modernist painting and sculpture (and maybe to Modernist music too). For these exhibit Modernism as almost crucially a concern in the first place with medium and exploratory technique, and a very workman-like concern. Manet and the Impres- sionists were paragons of hard-headed professionalism; so was Cezanne in his way, and so were Seurat and Bonnard and Vuillard; so were the Fauves-if ever there was a cool practitioner, it was Matisse. Cubist was overwhelmingly artisanal in its emphasis. And this emphasis remains a dominant one, under all the journalistic rhetoric, in Abstract Expressionism and art informel. Of course, Apollonian tempera- ments may produce Dionysian works, and Dionysian temperaments Apollonian works. Nor does artisanal hard-headedness exclude pas- sion; it may even invite and provoke it. And of course, there were notable Modernist artists like Gauguin and Van Gogh and Soutine who were anything but soberly artisanal in outlook; but even they occupied themselves with questions of "technique" to an extent and with a consciousness that were uniquely Modernist. Artisanal concerns force themselves more evidently on a painter or sculptor than on a writer, and it would be hard to make my point about the artisanal, the "formalist" emphasis of Modernism nearly so plausible in the case of literature. For reasons not to be gone into here, the medium of words demands to be taken more for granted than any other in which art is practiced. This holds even in verse, which may help explain why what is Modernist and what is not can- not be discriminated as easily in the poetry of the last hundred years as in the painting . . . . It remains that Modernism in art, if not in literature, has stood or fallen so far by its "formalism." Not that Modernist art is co- terminous with "formalism." And not that "formalism" hasn't lent itself to a lot of empty, bad art. But so far every attack on the "formalist" aspect of Modernist painting and sculpture has worked out as an attack on Modernism itself because every such attack developed into an attack at the same time on superior artistic stand- ards. The recent past of Modernist art demonstrates this ever so clearly. Duchamp's and Dada's was the first outright assault on "formalism," that came from within the avant-garde, or what was nominally the avant-garde, and it stated itself immediately in a lower- ing of aspirations. The evidence is there in the only place where artistic evidence can be there: in the actual productions of Duchamp and most of the Dadaists. The same evidence continues to be there in the neo-Dadaism of the last ten years, in its works, in the inferior
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quality of these works. From
Modernism remains a necessary as it has been of the best ar "formalism," apparently, rem the sole and sufficient justificati And if "formalism" derives f Modernism, then this must be case of painting and sculptu and looks more than ever righ keep on looking that way in t will continue to stand or fall b Modernism has been a failing years and more; it's not yet a but I can imagine its turnin sculpture, which seems to have ing does). If so, this may co come about, as it seems to me of Modernism's "hot" side, th the one that middlebrows have There have, of course, to be the ambiguous difference b sides. If Modernism's "hot" s years, this is a symptom, not sought outside Modernism and
Postscriptum
Art is, art gets experienced, fo
recognized in identifying esth doesn't mean that art or the e The neglect of this distinction most of whom were not Mo perception.
Post-Postscriptum
My harping on the artisanal and "formalist" emphasis of Modernism
opens the way to all kinds of misunderstanding, as I know from tiresome experience. Quality, esthetic value orginates in inspiration, vision, "content," not in "form." This is an unsatisfactory way of
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putting it, but for the time being there seem
able. Yet "form" not only opens the way to as means to it; and technical preoccupations and compelled enough, can generate or di work of art or literature succeeds, when it so ipso facto by the "content" which it con cannot be separated from its "form"- Mallarmd's case, no more in Goya's than i Verdi's than in Schoenberg's. It embarasses but I feel I can count here on the illiteracy o the matter of what can and what can't be l about works of art.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
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