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Modernism: Cultural and Intellectual History of Europe

The culture of nineteenth-century Europe was shaped by two opposing concepts of art:

between art as consumerism and art as redemption. The rise in population, the growth in the size

and number of towns, expanding literacy, and improved physical communications had combined to

create a new market for culture which could already be popular and was well on the way tobecoming mass. The culture of a century represented the power and the glory of the royal,

aristocratic, or ecclesiastical patron. For the creative artist, this development of a market for culture

offers the chance of emancipation.

The transformation of the people from passive recipients into active participants was

affected by the rapid development of a democratic political culture in France after 1789. In the

excited atmosphere of Revolutionary France, the poetry, painting, or music produced for such

occasions could be overlooked.

Romantic Revolution.

The romantics built a world-view which oppose emotion to reason, faith to scepticism,

intuition to logic, subjectivity to objectivity, historicism to natural law, and poetry to prose. In their

view, the Enlightenment and its scientic method had analysed and analysed until the world lay

around them in a dismantled, atomized, and meaningless heap. So it was a common accusation

that the Enlightenment could explain everything, but understand nothing.

Commercialization

A striking example of commercialization is how music can interact with technology. The

application of modern techniques of manufacturing based on the division of labor, together withcommercial marketing, transformed the piano from a rare luxury item into a cheap article of mass

consumption. Since piano became a big business, the piano found its way into every middle-class

household with pretensions to culture: it has become so essential, so indispensable that even

those who are not musicians buy a piano as furniture for their sitting-rooms.

Sacralization

In theory, the follower of absolute inwardness could devise an expressive language so

personal as to be comprehensible only to himself. This tendency was counterbalanced, however,

partly by the need to make a living and partly by arts new sacral status. The culture of the old

regime had had three purposes: to represent the power of the sovereign, to assist the Church in

saving souls, and to provide recreation for the lites.

The Church as a patron declined sharply in relative importance, its authority eroded by

creeping secularization and its material resources destroyed in many parts of Europe by

expropriation during the RevolutionaryNapoleonic period. Although still formidable, the lites

control of culture was being weakened progressively by the ever-expanding public sphere.

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From the crisis of modernization, culture emerged as an autonomous force. It was not only

liberated by the decline or collapse of its old political, religious, or social masters, it was

strengthened by the need of the growing intelligentsia to find a secular substitute for revealed

religion. Secularization, in which revealed religion and the churches lost their dominant position,

was accompanied by sacralization, in which art rose above its old handmaiden status to full

autonomy and in the process acquired a new sense of self-importance and seriousness.

Wealth and status

Commercialization and the communications revolution together brought the

democratization of culture. To achieve celebrity unstained with contempt, the artist had to be

successful on his or her own terms, not by following popular fashion. The artists also enhanced

their status by playing a leading role in the great public issues of the day.

Nationalism

Two kinds of nationalism developed: rst a cultural form, which identied the nation as themost important point of reference in human affairs, the supreme source of value and focus for

loyalty; and later a political form, which sought to make the political and cultural boundaries of a

state coincide. Nationalism also inuenced European culture in a more subtle way, by making its

creators aware of their national identity and encouraging them to nd a national voice. Nationalism

also built a bridge between state and artist. Slowly, tfully but surely, governments came to realize

that culture is power, and not only in the obvious sense that educated citizens are more useful than

illiterate subjects.

Summary

So, historical culture of Europe that begin with arts had transformed from aesthetic into

commercialization. After France Revolution, the development of technology had made the values of

art become mass consumption non value.

Elites had less their dominant position in controlling culture by eighteen century

developments. Technology, communication, and commercialization change the sacralization of arts

in Europe become democratization of culture.