The Modern Movement: thoughts and comments

This is a useful phrase to describe a multitude of activities which developed over decades in many countries of Europe (including Russia) and went far beyond... Japan, South America as well as North America. In its most important aspect it was deeply involved with the advances of science and technology and the changes in thought they implied, together with ideas on pyschology, statistics, formalist analysis of behaviour and forms of thinking as well as pursuit of the unknown such as fantasy and inexplicable powers “at a distance” which excited the human senses... All these concepts are still being pursued today with great seriousness so it is forgotten that those in the arts were the first to seize and promote their importance against the often violent opposition of the establishments of the day ; the power of the combined ideas was to attract groups and individuals to find some way of bringing these concepts to the attention of certain parts of the enlightened public regardless of ridicule from the status quo. The same social groups that today implicitly admit (by their actions) that they were lacking in intelligent self-interest and imagination, let alone respect for many fine minds left without protection or harassed.

This aspect is played down because today’s conservative handling of modernism cannot face the inescapable fact that the Modernists of greatest influence were almost necessarily forced by that very lack of imagination and support, into the arms of the Left - which often embraced their social ideas and analysis. Vested interests created two poles of opposition then berated modernist thinking as dangerously subversive (Nixon is quoted as telling colleagues in the 70’s to avoid the arts and intellectuals as politically unsound).

While relying on the leaps of modernist thought, exploiting hi-tech and related fields which are controled and subdued for profit. The opposite aim to the ideas of the pioneers and their supporters usually very popular with large parts of the working population as the chance for a better quality of life.

The over-all grouping of the Modern Movement was often many disputatious circles which did not at the time see themselves as a stylistic whole - far from it... that is today’s historical convenience. But is easily shunted into a closed pocket of history via that implication of style ; when in reality it was a door which has been locked so that the contradictions are not examined and above all that such self-generating and wide-spread gifted groups cannot re-form and become a kind of alternative virtual government in the minds of lively elements in society.

The increasingly shaped, state-sponsored “avant-gardes” of today are an extreme form of this double-think, in which assessment of real ability, an integral part of the original groups and individuals has long since been dispensed with - it’s an element policymakers in culture find hard to identify... That would open the door to inviting in the able who are a possible problem group. Lack of talent is maybe an essential part of the workable formula... other attributes are needed and found quite easily.

These texts try to indicate the second wave of the modernist drama - what happened to the thousands who were to survive the violent attacks on their persons and their opinions and their abilities and scattered in dis-order world-wide into places whose own conservative cadres were pre-warned of the potential forces for disruption. The lucky ones found some kind of haven and protection by enlightened indigenous groups but many did not and the stories are legion; as the Fry story shows even those who helped them could be severely punished.

A truly bizarre fate awaited a group of socially-committed architectural students from the Bauhaus, who went to Russia (Moscow) to work on a team proposing new environmental projects (on invitation). After some time they were all arrested and tried and sent to Siberia - in the period when arrests were wholesale. Most got 20 years... In the early 90’s a German documentary team found one who had eventually got back to Moscow after a long period of exile after sentence. In the Gulag he had worked on the construction of small buildings for the camp commandant and even stayed in prison two months beyond his term to see through the last one. Then worked as architect for the local town. A happier fate awaited another Bauhaus student, who managed to get to Australia where he was employed as the art teacher at a private school ; one of his pupils was Rupert Murdoch, who, when he made his first school speech chose to talk on the Bauhaus (in The Paper Prince, a 1981 biography).

The much discussed Chicago School of Philosophy finds another couple of connections ; Leo Straus, the former resident of Weimar witnessed the disorder which the Bauhaus was also struggling against and seems to have concluded that the Leftist social theories created Hitler and were not to be encouraged. But Hitler was sponsored by those who wanted to stop any form of modernist theory which challenged their hold on power. Straus’s presence in Chicago with powerful government backing, including CIA funding, may well have led to the relatively short-lived Chicago Bauhaus (The Art Institute) under Moholy-Nagy and Kepes. The city of Chicago is by far the most alive to the genuine values of modernism which may explain its position on a semi-black-list. Recent events show the pre-war tensions still play a crucial part in today’s debates and that Cold War bland versions are proving themselves to be ineffective to deal with the new situation.

The use of multi-layered deception against an enemy is eulogized by Sun Tzu : “the whole thing appears so subtile, so uncertain, so mystical, so intangible!” The creation of secret intelligence for war-time defence spread into influence on public morale. This element seems to have spawned the habit of using those methods in times of non-combat, and the creation of a Cold War opened the gates to serious abuse with no accountability.