An artistic movement during the early twentieth century, modernism responded to stifling Victorian conventions and nineteenth century realism. The many branches of modernism illustrate the unstable, self-aware zeitgeist of the early twentieth century. New social movements and The Great War created a need for new forms of expression that broke from standard poetic form, aesthetics, and representations of time, space, and gender. Modernists broke from artistic conventions yet embraced tradition as a body of works rich with possibilities for revision and allusion. They captured harsh truths and framed them in forms as various and conflicted as their times.

Modernism...

"...does not seek to please everyone a little, but is willing to make friends and enemies."'
- Emily Smith

"...transforming destruction, arguing disillusionment into a form of creativity into, ideally, something jarring."" - Catherine Walker

"...a tight-rope walker in two-ton shoes; a mind riot; an attempt to knock art off its previous pedestal; a house with many rooms and no walls."" - Ted Emerson

"...Pound, Stein, Eliot, Moore, Loy, Stevens, Williams, McKay, Toomer, Hughes, Marsden, Anderson, Eastman."' - Dave Tulis

"Sometimes the outcry against the preceding Victorianism was almost violent."" - Simone Muller

"The connecting thread of Modernity is discontent with a static cultural norm and the challenge of new ideas and issues to achieve a more enlightened understanding."" - Alice Neumann

"...read all the its and discard them all that is except for it, the core, the salt of the stew, the distillation. Make a new tradition, a new coding for genius."" - Alex Entrekin

"...forcing a view that is different from the accepted...artistic view into the public sphere and making it new."" - Sabrina Rissing