Study in Lund: Calinescu. // Modernism and Postmodernism in the 20th Century- LUND UNIVERSITY Spring 2016

Calinescu: Three Genetic Rules of the Concepts of Criticism

1.      Value judgement.

Modernism: Calinescu describes how when using the term modernism, there are “two distinct and bitterly conflicting modernities” (Calinescu, 1987: p41). The classic idea of modernism is positive – the “doctrine of progress” (Calinescu, 1987: p.41), changing and moving forward, coming out from darkness of the Middle Ages; however, this positive aspect transformed with industrialization to represent something negative (for example, in modern times, time equals money and modernity implies consumerism and capitalism).

Avant-garde: The term really does convey a value judgement in its name, meaning literally something strikingly upfront, implying something aggressive, nonconformist. The label implies a radical value, shocking, like a type of attack to the senses (the term was used literally to refer to warfare in France in the Middle Ages, before being applied to the avant-garde cultural movement).

Decadence: The term decadence “preserved traditional derogatory connotations” (Calinescu, 1987: p.157). It implies a sense of artificiality; Calinescu says that decadence “always involves self-deception” (Calinescu, 1987: p.182). It had a sense of corruption and exhaustion.

Kitsch: The term is something “we identify simply with bad taste” (Calinescu, 1987: p.240). Kitsch is understood as a negative label as it was reproducing commodities of one of kind work of art (high art) for “mass-culture” (Calinescu, 1987: p.257).

2.                                     Historical category.

Modernism: It is difficult to confine this to a specific time period because it spans such a long time, so many diverging concepts throughout history can be said to fall under the umbrella term of “modernist.” Calinescu says that “It is impossible to say precisely when one can begin to speak of the existence of two distinct and bitterly conflicting modernities” (Calinescu, 1987: p.41); it could be said to originate in the early Medieval times and to have continued until the mid 20^th century.

Avant-garde: “The actual career of the term avant-garde was started I the aftermath of the French Revolution” (Calinescu, 1987: p.101) and it could be argued that the spirit of avant-garde continued into the 1950s culture of the Beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc.) and 1970s and 80s anarchist punk rock (Sex Pistols, The Clash), perhaps even into grunge and metal music.

Decadence: Middle of the 19th century, continuing into the early 20^th century. In reference to the term, Calinescu states that “Even if it enjoyed some kind of sporadic circulation before the 1850s, it was, significantly, after that date that ‘decadent’ underwent a process of semantic enrichment […] during the 1880s” (Calinescu, 1987: p.168).

Kitsch: It is still in today’s society. Calinescu states that today’s popular culture is often pure kitsch (Calinescu, 1987: p.243). The notion of “the culture industry” was introduced during the late 1930s (Calinescu, 1987: p.241).

3.                                     Type.

Modernism: Again this is difficult to define since the term is used to cover different characteristics and traits. Essentially, it moved away from the constraints of the past, traditional art, literature, and culture. Some examples include the fiction of Virginia Woolf (her novel To The Lighthouse is a milestone in modernist literature since it challenges the traditions of realism, moving into a type of fiction that expresses more abstract notions of thoughts and feelings rather than the perceived reality of the scene), and the art of Manet, Picasso and Dali which rejected representing reality. Also, modernity broke away from religious traditions also; for example, Nietzsche’s nihilistic statement that “God is dead,” turning away from Christian conservative views.

Avant-garde: Experimental and innovative, Calinescu describes it as “aesthetic extremism” (Calinescu, 1987: p.116) produced to shock the bourgeois society – one example of this art designed to shock is Marcel Duchamp's “Fountain” from 1917, which is a toilet urinal presented as a sculpture.

Decadence: Calinescu states that “decadence is simply a style favourable to the unrestricted manifestation of aesthetic individualism, a style that has done away with traditional authoritarian requirements such as unity, hierarchy, objectivity, etc.” (Calinescu, 1987: p.171) but also that it is quite negative in the face of reality, and portrays a kind of “culture of negation,” artificiality, “false consciousness” and “austere pessimism” (Calinescu, 1987: p.210)

Kitsch: It is something cheap, tacky, it is available easily to the consumer, it represents the “desire to consume” (Calinescu, 1987: p.245). Calinescu describes kitsch art as an “industry of cheap imitations, humble religious art objects, vulgarism souvenirs and kinky antiques” (Calinescu, 1987: p.230). It is kind of a “modern commercialized pseudo-art” (Calinescu, 1987: p.228) One contemporary example is pretty much everything you can buy in TGR.