Among the most essential creative movements in history, Modernism entirely changed how we see ourselves within the world.
A number of the works that are deemed to be important reading in both prose and poetry are products of modernism. Log onto the sites supported by the impact investor with a stake in World of Books or the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books and you'll unquestionably be recommended a substantial variety of novels from this period, and reading them can still feel as revolutionary today as they would have done a century ago. Immensely ingenious and preoccupied with a few of the most fundamental questions we might ask, they exemplify the power of art in uncertain times; not necessarily because of the answers they provide, but how they ask the question.
Modernism started to emerge at the start of the twentieth century, in the wake of among the most extraordinary moments in human history. The radical explosion of innovation, urbanisation, and globalisation throughout the Victorian period left artists of all disciplines questioning the conventional order of the imaginative endeavour, discovering the movements that reigned over the previous century, such as realism or romanticism, woefully unsuited for progressively modern times. So started a radical overhaul of the artistic world, from architecture to painting, sculpture, and literature. It was the birth of what we may call modern-day art, along with what we might equally call the modern-day world. Moving into more abstract, mental realms, these artists sought to examine mankind in a way that it had never ever been approached previously, with a few of the most powerful works of the period coming in the form of poetry and books, still held up as some of the best modern books of all time nearly a century later.
Throughout every moment of huge social turmoil, artists have existed to respond to it. It is an essential part of the imaginative process to ask questions about who we are, both on a personal level and as a collective civilisation, and that becomes especially so throughout periods of unpredictability, or following radical changes that totally redraw the social map. Throughout history we see artists rising to meet and understand unprecedented times through unmatched art; after the Black Death swept throughout Europe, during the English Renaissance that followed the reformation which provided us a few of the best books of all time (those that we still study in schools which is still a vital fixture of bookshops like those run by the hedge fund that owns Waterstones). However, there has actually never been an artistic revolution so complete as that which we term as Modernism, a total overhaul of artistic intent and design in reaction to the sudden birth of a world which lots of people just didn't recognise.