Modern and Postmodern, the Bickering Twins

Where are the manifestoes of yesteryear? There was a time when declarations of aesthetic commitment were commonplace. There was Futurism (as foreseen by its prophet, Filippo Marinetti, in 1909): ''Except in struggle, there is no more beauty.'' There was Cubism (as proclaimed by Apollinaire in 1913): ''We are moving toward an entirely new art which will stand, with respect to painting as envisaged heretofore, as music stands to literature.'' There was Dadaism (heralded by Tristan Tzara in 1918): ''Every man must shout: There is great destructive, negative work to be done.'' And there was Serialism, Surrealism, Neo-Classicism. Arching over them all was something that came to be called Modernism, a movement that wasn't really a movement, but that somehow combined all the isms under a single label, while also accommodating such odd couples as Pound and Brecht, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Picasso and Duchamp. Today, the only label that claims our attention is postmodernism, and it does so in a peculiar fashion. While Modernism thrived on multiple manifestos, postmodernism's manifesto might be that no manifesto is possible: all doctrines are created equal. Postmodernism is almost impossible to pin down; like a blob of mercury, it slips away under the slightest pressure, only to pop up again in original form. Pomo, as it is affectionately called on college campuses, celebrates its own novelty and superiority, but it still can't help defining itself in opposition to Modernism, which may be as important to 21st-century culture as Greek civilization was to the Renaissance. Modernism is a source of myth; it provides a model to be imitated or rejected. But as we enter an era that could well be po-pomo, questions are increasingly being asked about just what Modernism was or even whether it was really anything at all. It is almost as if Modernism were now being recast in the image of pomo. Modernism, in these reinterpretations, is gnomic, ironic, wavering. A recent anthology of historical documents, ''Modernism,'' edited by Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Jane Goldman, and Olga Taxidou, proposes to reveal Modernism's ''contradictions and diversities,'' rejecting any coherent theory of its development. The art historian T. J. Clark, in ''Farewell to an Idea,'' is also interested in disrupting standard interpretations of Modernism by meticulously disclosing the uneasiness and discomfort latent in important paintings: ''The modernist past is a ruin, the logic of whose architecture we do not remotely grasp.'' In another book, ''Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature and Other Arts,'' Daniel Albright, a professor of Humanities at the University of Rochester, smartly argues that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Modernism was its exploration of the relationships between the arts: the way in which Stravinsky juxtaposed the music of ''Renard'' with the story's staging, or the way in which Pound's little-known opera, ''Le Testament'' uses troubadour esque music to disclose themes of modernist poetry. These books try to redefine the familiar interpretation of Modernism that flourished during the last century. The coming of the 20th century, goes this mainstream view, coincided with a crisis in the arts. Music had exhausted the possibilities of the tonal system that lay behind centuries of masterpieces; painting, if it remained pictorial, was doomed to turn into kitsch; and literature could no longer rely on the narrative of the novel and the rhythm and rhyme of verse for its energy. The world had changed politically and socially so the arts would have to change as well. The most influential aesthetic interpretation of this change was offered by the art critic Clement Greenberg. The highest achievements of Modernism, he suggested, reflect a rigorous idealism, an exploration of the principles of each art form. Modernist painting unveiled the nature of painting itself,

for example, while modernist sculpture revealed the means by which art related to space; both rejected demands that art serve decorative or illustrative or sentimental functions. A more political interpretation was offered by the philosopher Theodor Adorno, who, in ''The Philosophy of Modern Music,'' analyzed music by decoding its attitudes toward the social order. Modernism, he suggested, had two major strands. The inauthentic, retrograde strand was represented by Stravinsky, who, Adorno suggested, was all flash and little substance; he was an acrobat, an entertainer, who tried to distract the listener from more serious concerns. Modernism's revolutionary potential, though, was realized by Arnold Schoenberg, who, Adorno argued, stripped away illusion with his rigorous technique. To a careful listener, the music could reveal the conflicts and contradictions latent in modern Western society. Adorno and Greenberg might seem to have had very little in common, but both actually were mandarin in their tastes and rigorous in their demands. Both also grew out of the Marxist intellectual tradition. Greenberg, in fact, became editor of Partisan Review in 1940, a journal that was trying to reconcile Modernism and its stern, formal concerns with Marxism and its interest in economics and the working class). The reconciliation was not all that difficult, because one underlying assumption in many of the manifestoes of Modernism was that ''progress'' could be clearly defined. For Adorno, the progress was political and technical; for Greenberg, the progress was aesthetic and intellectual. History had direction and meaning. This notion of progress, though, is precisely what was discarded in the recent postmodern rebellion against Modernism. The charge against Modernism is that it did not go far enough. Modernism wanted to overturn the past, but still tried to preserve the privileged status of art works. It portrayed a world without certainty but declared itself certain. It rejected the burden of tradition, but it also took tradition seriously. Postmodernism objected. If Modernism began a revolution, postmodernism was to complete it. Composers like John Adams and John Corigliano playfully plundered earlier styles, creating sentimental pastiche. Philip Johnson, who began as a modernist architect, later converted to pomo, coyly mixing elements of styles past. Andy Warhol's Pop Art, Jasper Johns's various flags -- these were, in part, arguments against Modernism and its beliefs. There is no progress, only plunder. In Modernism there is a perspective, a frame of reference; in postmodernism there is no frame, no stability: tradition is a collection of trivia. So postmodernism refuses to take anything too seriously. Its mode is play, its attitude ironic. Each work declares: greatness is a delusion, great art a pretense, and here's the demonstration. The odd thing is that this very declaration -- the impossibility of greatness, the masquerade involved in art -- was already accepted and anticipated by the Modernist movement. But in Modernism, that sense of bewilderment was taken seriously, and deeply felt. There was a notion that something was at stake. Mr. Clark, in his discussion of Modernism, invokes Max Weber's characterization of the Modern as the ''disenchantment of the world.'' Here, disenchantment means that any authority is open to question, and tradition cannot be relied upon for guidance. So Modernist works are scarred by a sense of uncertainty. In close analyses of particular artworks, like Cezanne's ''Large Bathers,'' or Picasso's ''Man With Guitar,'' Mr. Clark reveals how the tensions between a yearning for certainty and a certainty of its impossibility are inscribed in the images. In fact, the effort to reconstitute a tradition and re-enchant the world could be the central preoccupation of the work itself. Schoenberg's opera ''Moses und Aron'' is about the difficulties in creating a new form of law; Eliot's ''Waste Land'' is concerned with the difficulties of reconstituting poetry. In this sense, Modernism anticipated postmodernist arguments; it already showed how difficult and perhaps impossible the attempt to re-enchant the world may be. But that is precisely what gives the works their power. Their subject is partly the difficulty of their project, the futility of their desire. The urgency of this preoccupation by Modernism may be one reason that so many of its adherents fell prey to the temptations of extreme certainties like Fascism (Pound, Wyndham Lewis) or Communism (Picasso, Dos Passos). Some sought refuge in premodern religious faith (Eliot) or declared allegiance to a premodern folkish past (Bartok). Even Mr. Clark, who calls himself a Marxist, has his refuge: his

narrative includes what he calls a ''Satan,'' ''the accumulation of capital and the spread of capitalist markets.'' But this search for certainties only emphasizes the main point: Modernism was haunted by a struggle with disenchantment and a search for new bearings. Pomo said, it's impossible and doesn't matter anyway. Now that this is a po-pomo world, how is Modernism to be understood? Artistic progress has proved to be an illusion. Manifestoes have become impossible. Modernism, in retrospect, can even seem a bit obsessive (Joyce's ''Finnegans Wake'') or overwrought (Schoenberg's ''Erwartung''). Yet there it remains, unavoidably present, making a mockery of pomo irony. Is it possible, then, that the culture is still immersed in Modernism? That the struggle and search continue despite Pomo's best efforts to say they don't matter? Po-Pomo may turn out to be just a variety of Mo. Photos: Postmodernism rebelled against Modernists' notion of progress and went on to plunder their styles. Above, Cezanne's Modernist ''Large Bathers.'' At far left, ''Brillo Box'' by Andy Warhol and at left, the composer John Adams, both of them postmodernists who refuse to take anything too seriously. (National Gallery, London); (Christine Alicino/Nonesuch); (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art); The Modernist Igor Stravinsky, who explored the relationships between the arts. (Joseph Nettis)