Modernism in Europe
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
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Intellectual Currents
This section focusses on the historical, sociological, philosophical, economic, political, and scientific context of modernism. Entries cover individuals, coteries, movements, and events. The primary criterion…
Expressionism
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Modernism in Latin America
In Latin American intellectual history, modernism is a term that can be usefully and accurately applied to at least two distinct intellectual movements: a clearly…
Surrealism Overview
Soupault’s publication of Manifeste du Surréalism in 1924. Rising in the wake of the First World War, Surrealism revolted against a world that had become…
Montage
As an aesthetic principle, montage, defined as the assemblage of disparate elements into a composite whole often by way of juxtaposition, is most often associated…
Cubism
Cubism is an influential modernist art movement that emerged in Paris during the first decade of the twentieth century. The term was established by Parisian…
Constructivism
Prior to World War II, Constructivism attracted little interest from British artists apart from the few involved with Circle in 1937. Circle consisted of a…
Münsterberg, Hugo (1863–1916)
Hugo Münsterberg was a German American psychologist whose pioneering work in applied psychology led him to investigate such topics as forensic psychology, industrial efficiency, and…
Stream of Consciousness
The term ‘stream of consciousness’ was first coined by psychologist William James in The Principles of Psychology in 1893, when he describes it thusly: “consciousness…
Bernays, Edward (1891–1995)
Edward Louis Bernays retains a place in the history of modernity for synthesizing Freudian psychology, political communication (or propaganda) and the media. The fruit of…
Le Bon, Gustave (1841–1931)
Gustave Le Bon was a French doctor and sociologist and a pioneering figure in social psychology. After completing medical studies in Paris he traveled extensively…
Hamsun, Knut (1859–1952)
Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun’s novels anticipated modernist psychological fiction and influenced a generation of major European figures. Winner of the 1920 Nobel Prize in literature,…
Mauriac, François (1885–1970)
François Mauriac was a French novelist, essayist, poet, playwright and journalist. He was born in Bordeaux, France. He is best known for depicting trenchant psychological…
Acting
Acting on the modern stage ranges from the psychological realism of Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) to the sensory assault of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) to the didactic…
Piaget, Jean (1896–1980)
Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Jean William Fritz Piaget pioneered the field of cognitive developmental psychology using empirical methods to study children. Like Walter Benjamin, Piaget…
Lévy-Brühl, Lucien (1857–1939)
Lucien Lévy-Brühl was a French philosopher who taught philosophy at the Sorbonne from 1899 to 1927. Investigating the psychology of ‘primitive’ societies, his book Les…
James, William (1842–1910)
William James was an American psychologist and philosopher who worked across those fields to investigate the nature of consciousness, experience and free will. A founding…
Jung, Carl (1875–1961)
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and an early leader in the psychoanalytic movement, which he left to found analytical psychology. Heir-apparent to Sigmund Freud,…
Tarde, Gabriel (1843–1904)
Gabriel Tarde was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and criminologist. In The Laws of Imitation (1880), he suggests that imitation drives the development of language…
Wundt, Wilhelm Maximilian (1832–1920)
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt, born in Neckarau (now Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg), was a German scientist who pioneered the field of experimental psychology. His best-known work, Grundzüge der…
Marais, Eugène (1871–1936)
Eugène Marais played an astounding number of roles: he was poet, fictionalist, essayist, naturalist, radical experimenter, hypnotist, medical doctor, psychologist, equestrian, prospector, businessman, journalist, advocate,…
Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833–1911)
Born in Biebrich, Rhineland (now Hesse, Germany), the German philosopher and psychologist Wilhelm Christian Ludwig Dilthey founded the German school of philosophy called Lebensphilosophie (philosophy…
Rivers, W. H. R. (1864–1922)
A pre-eminent British neurologist, psychologist, ethnologist and anthropologist, William Halse Rivers Rivers worked as a psychiatrist in British military hospitals, most famously Craiglockhart War Hospital…
Tudor, Antony (1908–1987)
Born into a modest household in London’s East End, Antony Tudor changed the way we look at ballet and what it was thought to express.…