Science into art
Mark Bevir
THE FIRST MODERNS by William R. Everdell University of Chicago, £23.95, pp. 473 Paris, 29 May 1913, the opening night of Stravinslcy's The Rite of Spring, three min- utes into the performance, and the music is almost drowned out by catcalls, although a few voices are heard yelling 'bravo'. The Rite of Spring, with its irregular rhythms, staccato style, and use of brief repetitions, soon came to symbolise the artistic innova- tions of the turn of the century. Mod- ernism had arrived, and it had been received with the hostile lack of under- standing it still often inspires. William Everdell explores the music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the paintings of Picasso and Kandinsky, and the writings of Rimbaud and Joyce. The most innova- tive and impressive feature of his work, however, lies in the strong ties he finds between Modernist art and developments in science and mathematics. Modernist cul- ture derives in part from chemical atom- ism. The lack of intermediates between hydrogen and helium points to a discontin- uous universe at odds with the assumptions of continuity and harmony that had been all-pervasive in 19th-century thought. Dis- continuity suggests uncertainty, contradic- tion and causelessness, concepts that now dominate physics. Although the term Modernism seems to ask us to define it as what is up-to-the- minute, it actually represents a particular episode in cultural history. Modernists reject the 19th century, with its heroic materialism, its positivism and determin- ism, its faith in progress, its belief that the human observer can encompass everything in a mighty, harmonious, developing system — the Brahms symphony. Although Modernism grew out of inventions of the 19th century, it rejects the theoretical framework in which those inventions were made. Although Einstein's general theory of relativity arose from a thought-experi- ment inspired by the powered safety eleva- tor, his theory rewrites the Newtonian laws on which that elevator had been predicat- ed. Modernism elevates self-reference and recursion over systemisation and compre- hensiveness. Frege set out, in 1879, to axiomatise arithmetic, but had to give up as he encountered paradoxes suggesting that mathematical logic was a recursive and self-referential system. Before long, artists began to make art out of art, and writers to write about writing. The idea of an impar- tial observer reviewing a complete system collapsed with Modernists turning to subjectivity and multiple perspectives in place of the single objective vision. Picasso and the Cubists broke up objects and rearranged their elements to present them from different points of view simultaneous- ly. Bohr showed that nature consists of things which are waves from one point of view and particles from another. One way of trying to order a multiplicity of subjec- tive perspectives is to abandon precise law- like propositions for fuzzy statistical regularities. But if statistics has played a growing role in science, Modernists else- where often emphasise chance and ran- domness. Order arises only because humans are able to perceive patterns, to find shafts of meaning in a dark, chaotic universe.
The Modernists' concern with chance and randomness reflects a commitment to discontinuity. The world is made up of dis- crete and discontinuous objects. Hence why Modernists dissect the world, analysing it into discontinuous parts with hard edges. In art, Seurat used dots to depict a series of discrete experiences, while Cezanne argued that each patch of colour should be painted independently as there are no colour tran- sitions in nature. In literature, Rimbaud's poetry juxtaposed discrete details taken out of context, while Joyce unpacked discrete 'moments of vision' in a stream of con- sciousness. In music, Schoenberg devel- oped from discrete phase to discrete phase without repetition, while Stravinsky often dispensed with legato ties between phrases and notes. In 1900, the concepts of gene and quantum solved age-old problems by postulating discontinuous bits as the basis of inheritance and nature. The world has not been the same since.
However, although the First Modernists had transformed our understanding of the world by 1913, many people still live in a 19th-century world of continuity, harmony, and progress. Modernism surrounds us, particularly if we include within it not only the arts, but also digital networks, moving pictures, and nuclear physics. Yet many people dislike modern art and have no grasp of the scientific theories underlying many of the things they take for granted. They live a schizophrenic existence, adher- ing to a 19th-century view of the world even as they use the results of a Mod- ernism that decisively rejects it. Perhaps Everdell will help to heal the mental rift. Inspired by C. P. Snow's famous complaint that scholars of the humanities know noth- ing of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, he has written a marvellous, erudite, and readable study that unites 'The Two Cul- tures' to narrate the story of the world in which we now live.
Previous page
