Modernism Chronology - University of Oxford



A Selection of Significant Moments in Modernism

|Date |Literary / Artistic Event |Other Historical Event |

|1872 |“Impressionism” foreshadows avant-gardism | |

|1879 |Henrik Ibsen’s early feminist play A Doll’s House |Edison invents the light bulb |

|1883 |Nietzsche introduces notion of the “superman” in Thus Spake Zarathustra | |

|1884 | |London Underground opens |

|1885 | |Invention of internal combustion engine |

|1890 | |First skyscraper in USA |

|1893 |Edvard Munch’s early expressionist painting, The Cry | |

|1894 | |Discovery of X-rays |

|1895 |Joseph Conrad, Almayer’s Folly |Trial of Oscar Wilde |

| | |Marconi invents telegraphy |

|1896 |Anton Chekhov departs from traditional dramatic action in The Seagull | |

|1897 | |Discovery of the electron |

|1898 |Thomas Hardy, Wessex Poems |The Curies discover radium and plutonium |

| |HG Wells, War of the Worlds | |

| |Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol | |

|1899 |Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, famous for its hazy impressionistic |Beginning of the Boer War (1899–1902) |

| |technique and critique of colonialism |Peace Conference at The Hague |

|1900 |Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim |Birth of Quantum physics |

| |Freud introduces psychoanalysis with The Interpretation of Dreams | |

|1901 |Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks, seen as a novel on the threshold of modernist |Death of Queen Victoria |

| |literature |First transmission of radio wave signals across the |

| |August Strindberg’s play about marital dysfunction, Dance of Death |Atlantic |

| |Picasso’s pre-Cubist “Blue Period” | |

|1902 |André Gide, The Immoralist | |

| |John Atkinson Hobson, Imperialism | |

| |Lenin, What is to be Done? | |

| |William James, Varieties of Religious Experience | |

|1903 |Henry James, The Ambassadors |Wright brothers’ first successful flight |

| |George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman |Emmeline Pankhurst founds Women’s Social and Political |

| | |Union |

| | |Opening of Ford Motor Company |

|1904 |Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard |Beginning of Russo-Japanese War |

| |Conrad, Nostromo | |

|1905 |Richard Strauss, Salome |1905 Russian Revolution |

| |Oscar Wilde, De Profundis |Einstein proposes his Special Theory of Relativity |

| |Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth |Founding of Irish nationalist party, Sinn Féin |

| |Beginning of Fauvism in Paris with its “expressionist” element |First electric bus in London |

|1907 |Picasso produces Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, an archetypal modernist work and | |

| |prototype of Cubism which violently overturns established conventions | |

|1908 |Gertrude Stein, Three Lives | |

| |Jacob Epstein, Figures | |

| |Béla Bartók, First String Quartet | |

| |George Sorel, Reflections on Violence | |

|1909 |Gustav Mahler, Symphony No 9 |Freud lectures on psychoanalysis in the US |

| |Henry Matisse, The Dance | |

| |Filippo Marinetti’s first manifesto of Italian Futurism in Paris, creating an| |

| |artistic philosophy rejecting the past and celebrating speed, machinery, | |

| |violence, youth and industry | |

| |Serge Diaghilev founds Ballets Russes | |

|1910 |First Post-impressionist exhibition in London rocks the art establishment |Japanese annexation of Korea |

| |Igor Stravinsky, The Firebird |Death of Edward VII, accession of George V |

| |Italian Futurist Marinetti gives popular lecture series in London | |

| |TS Eliot publishes poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, describing | |

| |modernist cultural disenchantment | |

|1911 |Kandinsky and others found Expressionist art group in Munich | |

|1912 |Marcel Duchamp produces his “last painting”, Nude Descending a Staircase |Sinking of the Titanic |

| |Arnold Schonberg, Pierre Lunaire |Beginning of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) |

| |Russian Futurists issue manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste |Ford Model T production begins |

|1913 |DH Lawrence, Sons and Lovers |Suffragette demonstrations in London |

| |Thomas Mann, Death in Venice | |

| |Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way | |

| |Vorticist movement named by Ezra Pound | |

| |Kandinsky outlines the principles of abstraction in art in On the Spiritual | |

| |in Art | |

| |Igor Stravinsky’s composition The Rite of Spring for the Ballets Russes | |

| |causes Paris riot | |

|1914 |James Joyce’s experimental short stories, Dubliners |Opening of the Panama Canal |

| |Wyndham Lewis publishes first edition of modernist literary magazine Blast |Outbreak of WWI |

|1915 |Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out | |

| |DH Lawrence, The Rainbow | |

| |Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier | |

| |Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage | |

| |Ezra Pound, Cathay | |

|1916 |James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | |

| |Anti-war, anarchic Dadaism founded in Zurich | |

|1917 |TS Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations |Revolution in Russia |

| |Paul Valéry, La Jeune Parquet | |

| |Prokofiev, “Classical” Symphony | |

| |Carl Jung, The Unconscious | |

|1918 |Lytton Strachey’s book of biographies, Eminent Victorians “take[s] down …the |Votes for women over thirty in Britain |

| |pretensions of the Victorian age to moral superiority” | |

|1919 |Pablo Picasso, Pierrot and Harlequin |Treaty of Versailles; end of WWI |

| |United Artists film studio founded in Hollywood | |

|1920 |DH Lawrence, Women in Love |Founding of the League of Nations |

| | |American women achieve the vote |

|1921 |Pablo Picasso, Three Musicians, two paintings exemplifying the synthetic |New Economic Policy in the USSR |

| |Cubist style |Irish Free State proclaimed |

| |Man Ray produces Dadaist “Rayographs” | |

| |Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author | |

|1922 |James Joyce, Ulysses |Founding of BBC |

| |TS Eliot, The Waste Land |Fascists march on Rome |

| |Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room | |

| |Wittgenstein publishes key work of modernist logic, Tractatus | |

| |Logico-Philosophicus | |

|1924 |André Breton’s first Surrealist Manifesto | |

| |Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain | |

| |Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock | |

|1925 |Sergei Eisenstein deploys modernist film techniques in Battleship Potemkin |Hitler publishes Mein Kampf |

| |Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway | |

| |Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby | |

| |Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans | |

| |Franz Kafka, The Trial | |

|1926 |Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises |General Strike throughout Britain |

| |Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis | |

| |Henry Moore’s sculpture, Draped Reclining Figure | |

|1927 |Launch of Close Up, the first English film review “to approach films from the|Lindbergh flies across Atlantic |

| |angles of art, experiment and possibility” | |

| |Al Jolson, first talkie | |

|1928 |Formation of CIAM (Congrés Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), a forum |Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin |

| |for Modernist architectural theory | |

| |Virginia Woolf, Orlando | |

| |DH Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover | |

| |Wyndham Lewis, The Childermas, Lewis’s most radical novel | |

|1929 |William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury |New York stock market collapses |

| |Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own | |

| |Second Surrealist Manifesto | |

| |Opening of the Museum of Modern Art, New York | |

|1930 |F.R. Leavis, Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture | |

| |Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents | |

|1931 |Fritz Lang’s modernist film classic, M | |

|1933 | |Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany |

| | |First German Concentration Camps |

|1934 | |Commissar Zhdanov in the USSR decrees “the end of |

| | |modernism” |

|1935 |Salvador Dalí, Giraffe on Fire | |

| |Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No 1 | |

|1936 |Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper |Beginning of Spanish Civil War |

|1937 |Nazi’s “degenerate art” exhibition ridicules modernism |Nazi prohibition of modernist art and sanctions against |

| | |its practitioners |

|1939 |James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake |Beginning of WWII |

[pic] This work by Carol Peaker is licensed by the University of Oxford under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence.

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