methods, practices, or styles characteristic of modern times
a new direction in art, literature, theology, etc, emphasizing contemporary ideas and involving a deliberate break with the past
a practice, usage, or expression characteristic of modern times
(often Modernism) a tendency in theology to adapt traditional doctrine to contemporary thought, esp by minimizing supernatural elements
the theory and practices of modern art, literature, music, etc, esp a search for new forms of expression involving a deliberate break with the past
The dominant 20th-cent. experimental movement in literature and the arts, modernism displaced tradition and the classical. Its weapons were a radical new aesthetic (free verse, stream-of-consciousness prose, etc), an avant-garde posture, a revolt against existing cultural institutions, and a celebration of artistic independence (bohemia). Modernism peaked internationally around World War I, declined with World War II, leaving a major new tradition for successors to face — Professor Malcolm Bradbury
modernist noun and adj
modernistic /-ʹnistik/ adj