Modernist Trend Research Articles

Образы городов в творчестве индийского поэта Кунвара Нараяна (1927-2017)

The aim of the study is to outline the place of the poet Kunwar Narain in the Hindi poetry of the 20th century, as well as to identify the main features of the images of cities in his creative work and the author’s worldview behind his approach to depicting urban images. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that “new poetry” in Hindi and the Kunwar Narain’s creative work remain little studied. The paper is the first in Russian Indology to consider in a comprehensive manner the urban images in Kunwar Narain’s creative work and to raise the question about the further development of his creative method following the poet’s exposure to Western modernist trends, which was common among most major Hindi poets in the 1950s and 1970s. As a result, it has been found that the problem of alienation, the spiritual loneliness of a person among a hostile environment, especially urban, which is central in modernism, is not the main one for the poet. The main focus for the author is the image of the city in connection with the themes of travel, homeland and culture. The result of the study amounts to a clarification of ideas regarding how Hindi poetry developed during and following the “new poetry” era: the protest sentiments of modernists have been replaced by a perspective associated with the transition from youthful rebellion against reality to acceptance and attempts to comprehend it.

The Architectural Legacy of Lithuanians in the United States during the Post-World War II Era: A Monument to the Cold War

The architectural heritage directly related to the refugees from Europe who came to the USA as a result of World War II is still an under-researched topic. New post-war arrivals from the displaced persons camps resulted in a sizeable growth of the already well-established Lithuanian community, infusing it with highly educated professionals. This also included many architects who needed to adapt and continue their practice in a different environment while also finding a way to be useful for the objectives of their national group. The aim of this paper is to examine the architectural legacy of the Lithuanian community in the post-war decades in the USA, emphasizing buildings that were designed with a specific aspiration to implement national character. Research finds that buildings built for the Lithuanian community carried a strong symbolical language that was a peculiar, yet enriching case, in regard to the then-dominant mid-century modernist trends. These structures show the determination of the national group to use their built environment as a medium to reinforce their identity and use architecture as a political statement. The paper proposes to interpret this politically motivated and stylistically distinctive architecture as monuments testifying to the political atmosphere of the Cold War. In this way, the heritage value of these buildings is linked not to avant-garde architectural styles, but to the political needs of a specific community in exile.

V. Khlebnikov’s “Bobaobi sang lips...” in Chinese reception

At the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries in China, the understanding of the modernist trends of the Russian Silver Age deepened and expanded. The perception of futurism is subject to scientific and creative rethinking. The number of representatives of the Russian futurist movement who deserve the attention of Chinese specialists in translation, research, and critical activities is increasing. The reception of V. Khlebnikov’s work, taking into account the comprehension of futurist aesthetics and his poetic theory, determines the problems of modern Chinese studies of Russian futurism. The authors examine the theoretical and practical reception of V. Khlebnikov’s works in China, analyze the perception of V. Khlebnikov’s work by two Chinese specialists - Wang Zonghu (the main expert in the theory of abstruse language) and Zheng Tiwu (the main translator of the poet’s work in China). Identification of the degree of adequacy of the perception of the poet’s language experiments is carried out using the example of a comparative analysis of translations of the poem “Bobeobi lips sang…” into Chinese. The Chinese reader owes the discovery of V. Khlebnikov as the theorist and founder of Russian futurism to the skill of researchers and translators.

Influence of Western Modernist Trends on Kyiv Music end Theoretical School In 1915–1925 Years

The purpose of the article is to reveal the scientific ideas of the first in Ukraine center of musicologists, formed in Kyiv in 1915–1925 years. The methodology was formed on the application of historical, gnoseological, formal-logical, systematic approaches using special-historical (comparatives and historical typology) methods of research. The scientific novelty of the article is that for the first time in Ukrainian musical historiography, an attempt was made to analyze the scientific, organizational and musicaltheoretical achievements of Ukrainian musicologists on the platform of a certain philosophical and cultural movement with its transformations in education and science on the example of the Kiev Scientific and Music School of the early twentieth century. The Conclusions. The group of the first professional musicologists in Ukraine should enter the history of Ukrainian music science as the Kyiv Music and Theoretical School. The unifying factor for them were common tasks (building the structure of national music education, searching for the essence of music science and the directions of its research research) and fundamental musical and theoretical principles. Filled with special knowledge and enriched with certain experience, leading figures of musical culture in Kiev in a short time (apprehension from 1916 to 1924) for the first time in Ukraine developed a three-stage structure of musical education of youth (B. Yavorsky), painted ways of development of musical science (B. Yavorsky, A. Butskoy). In its organizational activity, new post-revolutionary opportunities were used, and in scientific research they were based on the world's most common moderator philosophical theories. In the teachings about musical thinking and the structure of musical language B. Yavorsky and A. Butskoy consciously or intuitively embodied the ideas of many leading modernist philosophers in the West (especially E. Husserl, A. Bergson, V. Warringer). Despite the rejection of their innovative views at that time, some of them remain effective and relevant today.

The influence of Shanghai Art societies on the development of fine arts in the early twentieth century

The object of the article is the artistic life of Shanghai at the beginning of the 20th century, in which the most attention is paid to the study of the activities of art societies in order to scientifically reconstruct the creative process of Shanghai of the last century. The topic of the research is the contribution of the artistic associations to the cultural life of the city. Their activities are aimed at introducing European painting techniques and modernist trends into the visual culture of the country. The article attaches particular importance to the unique character of the city, tolerant and open to experiments in the field of visual culture. The paper describes three vectors of art development through the activities of art societies: upholding the foundations of traditional Chinese painting, the active inclusion of the European visual language and the synthesis of these two seemingly mutually exclusive streams. Using the historical method, the author analyzes the activities of art societies that significantly influenced the formation of a new scenario for the development of the visual culture of Shanghai in the first third of the 20th century. Firstly, at the beginning of the last century, this metropolis became the largest economic and cultural center of China. Secondly, most of the local artists who joined public organizations received Western education. Thirdly, the activities of art societies have significantly enriched and expanded the creative possibilities of the masters, attracted the attention of the population to the fine arts, and modernized the painting traditions of China. The author of the article comprehends the influence of Russian artists on the cultural life of Shanghai, and also focuses on the emergence and development of "female" art in Chinese culture during the period under study. This research has not only theoretical value, but also practical significance, and allow to determine the scenario of the development of Chinese fine art at the present stage.

موقف الاتجاه الحداثي من التفسير الباطني: عرض ونقد

The modernist trend in the interpretation of the Holy Qur’an is a different shift in the rooting of the rules of interpretation, as the modernist trend formed new directions outside the framework framed for interpretation in terms of its origins and rules. and his position on it.

Edward Hopper and Ernest Hemingway: Problem of Creative Connections

This paper focuses on revealing connections between the creative work of two representatives of the US realism of the early 20th c.: the painter Edward Hopper (1882–1967) and the literary artist Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961). This problem has received studied, only if superficially. Yet Hopper and Hemingway were “key” personalities of the epoch which built them: both of the artists were expatriates, absorbed experience of “European” aesthetic trends, witnessed two world wars; that led to the existentialism concepts becoming central ideas in their creative work. Being self-made men, Hopper and Hemingway went through a similar path of personal growth, were recognized in the 1920s when their artistic style developed; the artists were devoted to it despite domination of different movements in art. Regardless of difference between the artists’ “temperament”, the form of their works is mostly similar in the application of realistic method, influence of impressionist and modernist trends, the desire for simplicity, as well as the focus on light and darkness. The pictorial and thematic affinity of Hopper's and Hemingway's several works is so great that a direct mutual influence between the artists seems very likely.

Creativity of Vladyslav Mamsykov (1940–2020) in the context of national art during the late Soviet time

The article explores the work of the Kyiv painter Vladyslav Mamsykov, which traced several decades of the history of Ukrainian painting — from the mid-1960s to 2020, and reflected the indicative trends of the times: the crisis of the socialist realist doctrine, the originality the «austere style» of the 1960s, and interest in Western modernist trends in the 1970s–1990s and the 2010s.

Gender, Race, Color, Glass: A Reading of Clothing and Decoration in Paul Scheerbart’s Glass Utopias

ABSTRACT This article revisits the utopian fiction of German science-fiction writer and poet Paul Scheerbart, considering the place of race and gender in his fantastical glass architectural spaces. This is primarily done through a reading of clothing and decoration in these texts, elements that are often explicitly mentioned in relation to women and people of color. Historical context concerning modernist paradigms, metaphorical interpretations of architectural glass, the connection between clothing and architecture, and the place of women in the Werkbund provides a framework that serves to extrapolate the significance of some of Scheerbart’s narrative elements, demonstrating the ways Scheerbart’s philosophies both aligned with and departed from the modernist trends that were gaining force during his career. His constant self-contradiction, humor, and absurdist plots, however, undermine any notion that Scheerbart’s fiction should be understood as straightforward polemics, and serve to complicate his position within the philosophical traditions he has been aligned with.

The Modernist Identity of Compositional Practice in 1960s Belgrade: Petar Osghian’s Meditations (1962), Silhouettes (1963), and Sigogis (1967)

In order to focus our attention on compositional practices in 1960s Belgrade, it is necessary to point out that these practices developed in tandem with the latest modernist trends in European music. Serbian musical modernism after the Second World War bore the imprint of a special, original, and autonomous artistic achievement. In that sense, Petar Osghian was one of the composers who created their works using avant-garde techniques, while insisting that their musical language should retain direct expressive and communicative functions. These composers made choices that would emerge logically from the latent possibilities of the materials they worked with, but in doing so they constantly tried to rise to the level of the most advanced compositional practices of the time. In other words, they used a given musical material as a point of departure for structural manipulations and for a wide variety of possible modifications in the construction of a musical work. The result was a harmonious relationship between rationally defined structural elements and ‘irrational’ gestures in shaping their processes; both were of equal importance. This paper discusses this relationship through the analysis of Petar Osghian’s orchestral trilogy—Meditations, Silhouettes, and Sigogis.

FOUCAULT, THE MODERNIST?

In this essay, I argue that it’s theoretically and historically misleading to talk about a break between modernism and postmodernism, and more specifically, that thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida, two figures frequently associated with the postmodern turn, are situated within certain rational, enlightenment and modernist traditions. As part of this claim, I explore how features such as essentialism, binarism, determinism, positivism, and productivism are not characteristics that can be applied to all of enlightenment thought and modernism, and that such a description of the enlightenment and modernism would themselves be essentialist and caught up in binaries. To illustrate these arguments, I re-read figures such as Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and a range of Modern artists (especially their conceptualizations about essences, representations, and processes), tracing patterns such as plurality, particularity, and absurdity/incoherence throughout their thought. After historical and theoretical overview, I connect the experiential and philosophical patterns existing before our so-called “postmodern turn” to an examination of Foucault’s rational methodology and critical ontology, as well as his theorization of enlightenment thought, power/knowledge, ethics, and resistance (especially in, but not limited to, his later works). Through all of this, I ultimately show that 1) Rather than a break, postmodernism signifies an extrapolation of certain pre-existing enlightenment and modernist trends, and 2) Michel Foucault can be claimed as both an enlightenment thinker and a modernist. Such a set of arguments, if deduced as correct by readers, might restructure traditional understandings of postmodernism and the legacy of enlightenment thought.

The Art and Architecture of Victor Bohm (1900–1981)

The art and architecture of modernist architect and architectural theorist Victor Bohm (Bőhm Viktor, Böhm Viktor) are rare examples of modernism. At the same time, they were unusual for a provincial city—Miskolc (Hungary)—far from the modernist hub Budapest. Bohm worked in Miskolc during the 1930s, created numerous extraordinary buildings and shaped the skyline of this industrial town. He emigrated to the United States in 1939. The architectural language of his Hungarian designs followed modernist trends, a tendency less evident in his American projects. His buildings received architectural awards, and he has become known as a designer of medical and commercial buildings. He was a pioneer in the study of the relationship between architecture and psychology and sought to understand how an architectural design affects people and how the architect’s identity is manifested in their works. None of Bohm’s Hungarian buildings are protected; most of his buildings in Miskolc were demolished. The present study attempts to preserve his modernist, Hungarian legacy.

중국 근대 도안교육의 도입과 본토화 — ‘실업’에서 ‘인본’으로 —

China, which entered the modern era with the Opium War and the unequal treaties, promoted industrialization for survival, but various constraints led to imbalances between the machinery industry and the handicraft industry, design and production, and urban and rural areas. While imbalances also appeared in craft education at art schools, in the early period of the Republic of China, Beijing National College of Art first established a design-centered craft education system based on early industrial education in Japan. However, its educational method, which was promoted with the aim of promoting morality and industrial development without thorough ideological enlightenment, was eventually resisted by the New Culture Movement. On the other hand, Hangzhou National College of Art, which was established during the latter half of the Republic of China, continued its design-oriented system, but introduced a French education system and various modernist trends for a more radical aesthetic education, thereby fervently innovating traditional designs while strengthening the creative, scientific and humanistic values of the designs, and emphasizing practicality and popularity. However, due to a government crackdown and the notion of a hierarchical order centered on fine art, it showed the limitations in its development of active knowledge and technology as practical art. In contrast, in the final days of the Republic of China, cooperative projects and handicraft movements arose against the malady of monopoly capitalism and industrial centralization, which had intensified since the end of the Republic of China. During this, Sichuan Art School also overcame design-centered education by attaching itself to this wave and built the foundation for craft design education in the period of the People

Relationship of Proportions, Floorplan Patterns, Typology, and Symmetry in Religious Architecture with Particular Focus on the Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Interwar Hungary

Symmetry, asymmetry, and proportions are often discussed terms in architecture since Vitruvius. The most prominent Renaissance masters of architecture and architecture theory drew on his reflections when contemplating architectural proportions and symmetry. The surge of Modern- ism in arts in the 20th century brought the question of proportion once again into the limelight. The one building type with some of the longest historical traditions is the church, whose architecture, due to the functional constraints and the often-rigid liturgical rules of the denominations, has been very slow to adapt to the changing times. Church architecture of the interwar period is remarkable in multiple ways, carrying the marks of bygone centuries but also an openness to innovation. In its architecture, the Roman Catholic Church of Hungary sought to maintain the delicate balance be- tween the preservation of tradition and the expansion of modernist trends. In the pursuit to better understanding the co-existence of traditions and modernism in the interwar church architecture, the attitude towards symmetry arises as a potential new vantage point. In comparison to the usual practice of style-based examination, the analysis of patterns in both the layout of facades and floor plan arrangements with the help of a specific typology is pointing to new research directions.

The biographical canon and its overcoming in Osip Mandelstam’s autobiographical prose “The Noise of Time”

The Silver age culture involves the search for new forms in literature, poetry, and painting. Egodocuments reflect modernist trends particularly vividly in genres, such as diaries, epistolaries, and autobiographies, among others. Osip Mandelstam’s autobiographical prose “Noise of Time” is an attempt of the poet‘s creative self-expression, his desire to explain the world directly — through his own perception. Author’s direct word shows new forms of communication with the reader: associativity of the narrative, a special relationship with the text, when the reader as if restores the lost subtext moments, while the “sounding mold form” itself becomes the content. The foundations for Mandelstam’s autobiographical prose are his reflections that convey the state of the person staying in the socio-cultural space and seeking to objectify, to get away from his own biography and “to monitor the noise and germination of time”.

Georges Henein

Georges Henein was an important pioneer of modernism in Egypt, who played a critical role in the cultural and artistic movement of the country, despite critics who tried to distance him from contemporary Egyptian thought under the guise that he was a Francophone writer. This research presents Henein’s contribution to the historical, cultural, and national Egyptian trajectory, using some translated excerpts from his writings. The surrealist adventure Henein launched in Egypt was an important modernizing event in contemporary Egyptian culture. Although the influence of surrealist visions on Arabic literature was limited, the impact of these visions on the Francophone literature in Egypt was significant and evident in the work of poets such as Munīr Hāfez, Walid Munir, Horus Shenouda, Edmond Jabès, Mary Kavadia, and Joyce Mansour. In the field of fine arts, the impact of surrealism produced clear and essential modernist trends that have become characteristic of these arts.

ISLAMIC REVIVAL IN KAZAKHSTAN: STATE POLICY

It is widely known that Islamic revival is behind numerous national security threats, religious tension and political challenges. This is confirmed by the fact that practically all terrorist acts are committed by extremist and terrorist groups, which reproduce and execute specific projects of Islamic revival, the Islamic Caliphate being one of the pertinent examples. Fully aware of the threats rooted in the radical and extremist ideas of Islamic revival, the state has no choice but an active and determined opposition. In the 2005-2020, Kazakhstan adopted several normative legal program documents and took certain organizational measures to improve the regulation of the religious situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Many of these laws and organizational measures, however, stirred up heated discussions: the opposition insisted that the state should secularize the society, securitize Islam, etc. Much has been said about the efficiency of opposition to radical and extremist models of Islamic revival. Together, this creates a varied and even contradictory background for the state policy related to Islamic revival and calls for closer attention to the situation unfolding among the Muslims of Kazakhstan. We are already in the third decade of the 21st century, an important stage at which the religious and political environment created by Islamic revival and the relations between the state and confessions should be assessed. In this article, we analyze the state policy in the context of Islamic revival and offer its conceptual analysis as a multifaceted phenomenon. A modernist trend, which often prevails, is developing along with the fundamentalist trend within the framework of the Islamic revival. Accordingly, the authors argue that state policy is not directed against the Islamic revival as such and does not aim for the securitization of Islam or the secularization of society; on the contrary, it seeks to preserve the historically formed recontextualized Islam, which is rooted in the fundamentals of Islam and is simultaneously consistent with modernization and national heritage. In the concluding part of the article the authors touch upon a scholarly discussion of whether state policy of opposing the extremist Islamic revival models is efficient and to which extent. Our discussion and conclusions are supported by sociological data on the religious situation in the Muslim community, obtained through comparison of the religiosity level and the extent of people’s respect for the country’s authorities.

CONTRADICTION BETWEEN MODERN AND CONSERVATIVE DIRECTION OF ARCHITECTURE

The history of the development of architecture has shown that until the middle of the XIXth century, the expression of the plastic language of buildings was restrained by both the preferences of society and the material construction base. Industrial progress has reorganized the structural framework of buildings and the outer wall has ceased to accept the load of floors. In the XXth century it provided opportunities for an expanded stylistic diversity of architecture in the spirit of modernism. However, parallel to this, the processes of returning to the plastic language of architecture of the past took place wave-like. There are several reasons for this phenomenon.
 Firstly, there are ideological beliefs and interference of political forces in architecture. States with a totalitarian regime in the XXth century (Germany, Italy, the USSR) dictated their own conditions for proper life, rejecting the avant-garde and modernist trends. Secondly, there is a certain philosophical, intellectual attitude to reflection with the architecture of the past. The origin of this phenomenon comes from the United States, where modernism from the beginning of the XXth century to the 60s had been developing without non-stop. All of this led to some emotional fatigue and boredom, and as a result, the style of postmodernism appeared, where elements of historicism were rethought and introduced into modern architecture. The third reason for returning the vector of architecture development back to the past is lack of understanding of the trends and opportunities of modern architecture. In Ukraine, buildings are being built from reinforced concrete, with a free curtain facade, but the plastic language of architecture is expressed in an eclectic mix of different historical styles. This distortion of the essence of modern architecture can be explained by the inability of modern architects to keep up with the time. The fourth reason for the desire to return to the style of historicism is dictated by the historical environment of old cities, which, according to both society and architects, should be maintained in its context even if new buildings appear there or renovations are carried out.

Muḥammad Bahjat al-Bīṭār and the Decline of Modernist Salafism in Twentieth-Century Syria

Abstract The Salafī version of the Islamic Modernist trend emerged in the late nineteenth century among middle-ranked ulema-cum-intellectuals in the major Arab urban centres of the Ottoman Empire. Modernist Salafīs strove to strike a balance between modernization along Western lines and an authenticity based on the model of the pious ancestors (al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ). They differed from other early modernists such as the Young Ottomans and the celebrated Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muḥammad ʿAbduh by drawing their inspiration from the teachings of the medieval theologian Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya and his early modern successors, the Wahhābīs and the Indian Ahl-i Ḥadīth. The major components of the quasi-liberal and open religious reform they professed were adherence to the Qurʾān and Sunna, denunciation of saint worship, reasoned ijtihād, selective adoption of Western innovations, revival of the Arab-Islamic civilization, and opposition to autocratic rule.

SOUND IMAGE OF DUDUK IN CHAMBER‑SYMPHONIC WORKS OF A. TERTERYAN AND R. ALTUNYAN

SOUND IMAGE OF DUDUK IN CHAMBER‑SYMPHONIC WORKS OF A. TERTERYAN AND R. ALTUNYAN