Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance

Modernism and Harlem

Modernism is a movement that focuses on challenging the status quo and undermining conventional thinking. In art this involved placing a focus on color and shape opposed to the traditional view that art was to depict the natural world. In literature it meant a break from the conventional, linear novel and story telling and the incorporation of such styles as stream of consciousness.

Two artists that epitomize the modernist movement are impressionist painter Van Gogh and Irish literary genius James Joyce. Both individuals helped define the modernist movement with their development and use of several characteristics that are now associated with the movement, such as stream of consciousness and color.

Perhaps no other painting serves as a bridge between the conventional and the modern periods than Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night. In this masterpiece, he depicts a traditional scene of the natural world, but does so with a focus on color and shape, which makes it an impressionist painting opposed to a realist painting. (Boime, p. 34).

The result is an abstract painting of a landscape. Although the painting is most definitely a depiction of the natural world, the viewer remembers it for its unique design and style. Van Gogh's use of color and non-linear lines makes the natural world come to life with movement. Clearly, this unique use of color and shape over the actual subject makes Starry Night a modernist masterpiece. (Boime, et. al.).

Similarly, author James Joyce helped define the modernist novel by taking the traditionalist concept of telling a coming of age story and adding to it the modernist characteristics of open form, free verse, discontinuous narrative and classical allusions. The result is a novel that, like Starry Night, captures the movement and color of the real world.

Perhaps no other work of Joyce's demonstrates his modernist characteristics then his magna opus, Ulysses. At its core, Ulysses is a retelling of the classic tale by Homer, the Odyssey.