Modern Times, Modern Places

by Peter Conrad

The world changed faster during the twentieth century than ever before. Science and technology set the pace, promoting men to the air like gods. There were revolutions on the streets, but also in the uprisings of the Marxist proletariat and of the Freudian id. The new physics of Einstein and his colleagues changed our understanding of nature by showing that matter is made up of empty space, and modern architects constructed buildings to match those new structural principles. Painters such as Picasso and Dali denied they were distorting the human they were simply acknowledging the ways in which modern men and women were different, both physiologically and psychologically.

Little wonder that, even before our unprecedented century has concluded, its culture has been studied, dissected, analyzed, questioned, rejected, and embraced. We are exhilarated by our own story. Yet the twentieth century's proud rejection of the Western humanist past and its newly specialized intellectual style has left our understanding of it in fragments. But rescue is at hand, for in Modern Times, Modern Places , the noted critic Peter Conrad--ranging brilliantly between literature, the visual arts, music and the performing arts, science, and psychoanalysis--connects these disparate areas and sees the modern era as a whole.

Taking his cue from the declaration of the Italian futurists that time and space had been abruptly killed off by Einstein's time-space continuum, he investigates the notion and the nature of modern the justified conviction that we have lived through a unique testing period in the experience of mankind. He also describes the places that were frontiers of modernity--cities like Vienna, Moscow, Paris, and Berlin; new worlds in the Americas; a preview of a possible future in Tokyo.

Did it all happen too fast and go too far? Modernity was like a roller coaster ride, during which the human race jested with disaster and delighted in the havoc created by the play of g-forces. Yet we can take pride in our century's mental achievements, as well as regretting its crimes. Despite the dangers we confront, with the uniquely clear perspective Peter Conrad provides on a phase of history that has nearly passed we are much better prepared to confront the new millennium.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Art, Cultural, 20th Century, Architecture, Science

752 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most memorable evenings from my college days occurred when one of my friends found me in the library studying and told me he had just stolen two boxes of wine from a reception that had just occurred in the Quad. Dan urged me to find another friend, and we would meet back at the dorms and spend the night drinking the pilfered wine. On the way over, Dan and I bought a loaf of fresh Johnnie bread, and we spent the night talking about art, literature, philosophy and religion, drinking wine and eating fresh warm bread. In the discussion, Levinas was like Wiesel was like Shakespeare was like Dostovevsky was like O'Connor in a maelstrom of shared referentiality. The memory holds not only because of the wine, the bread and the great conversation, it holds because a year later in living in Annapolis, going to grad school and disoriented from the seminar discussions in which there was no shared common knowledge among my peers. I brought this disorientation to one of our professors, who explained to me that my disorientation was due to the fact that there was no common cultural reference point among my new peers, and the art of conversation was to listen and develop a way of explaining the reasoning of the text, rather than rely on the jargon and references of an assumed, but cursory understanding. Reading this book at times felt like these two moments from my intellectual development. On the one hand, the first two or three hundred pages were like that night eating bread and drinking wine. Conrad jams four, five or six authors, musicians, or artists into two or three sentences to illustrate a thematic point regarding the relationship between art, literature, science and politics. I think this is a stylistic decision to imitate the whirl of change and simulate the disruptions of science, technology and politics had upon modern art. Intellectually, I get this. I just don't think it works. On the other hand, Conrad tends to do better when he focuses on an exemplary character or movement to illustrate how they incorporate science, technology and politics into their works: Schoenberg, Freud, Picasso, Chaplin, Warhol. When the pace of movement references slows, the book is highly illustrative of modernist thinking and movements. The arch of modernism through the twentieth century is a worthwhile story to tell. Conrad does a good job as he traces the dissolution of space, time and matter, connects these scientific developments to the artistic deconstructions of cubism, futurism, surrealism, etc. He integrates these into the interrogation and dissolution of the modernist subject, its subjugation and eventual dissolution in the world wars, the rise of totalitarianism and eventually the loss of identity in consumerism. So long as you get past those first dizzying 200 pages or so, the book is a really good read.

[Emma Bannenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was it just me?

I tried. I really tried.

Yackety yackety yack. Man explains his understanding of and thoughts on modernity at huge length and as if he’s entitled to all our time and very sure he’s super clever. I’m clever too and I don’t need to read this book to prove it. I don’t have time. I’m off to read something by a woman, who won’t assume I care about her ideas so much that I’ll be delighted to trawl through her exhaustive perceptions. Is there a book by a woman, as long as this, roughly on this topic? Until there are as many books by female intellectuals as lengthy and as lauded and as generously edited (unabridged) as this one, I just can’t.

Some very fine concepts, pleasant writing, intelligent discourse, but runs on far, far, far too long. I tried dipping in, I tried making determined pushes, I read strategically but I always felt the world was being mansplained to me, as though the drawing together of historical events and the making of associations between them was a way for this one man to prove his extensive knowledge, at the expense of large amounts of my time.

I felt it demanded I pay attention to his intellectual authority.

We all perceive our moment and all the subtleties of time, history and association too, you know? I didn’t need this one man’s lengthy display of how these associations can be made and what they mean. A good Virginia Woolf novel will tell you everything you need to know about history, time and perception.

Perhaps I should conclude it’s just me, and this moment in history, in which women are finally admitting we’re just not that interested in what men have to say, if it’s said in this way - at length, exhaustively, demanding attention. I have no time for this type of intellectual performance. Maybe when women are being read and listened to equally, I’ll have another go at it. Sorry Peter.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

735 pages exploring modernism in art and culture, or, as the subtitle says, "How life and art were transformed in a century of revolution, innovation, and radical change." There is much to absorb in Conrad's mind-bending dance through painting, music, architecture, fiction, movies, politics, warfare, physics, philosophy, and probably a half dozen more subjects I can't quite remember at the moment. He's seeming read everything, seen everything, heard everything, and has the memory capacity to make the most minute connections across subjects - either that or (as this was written in 1998 before computers were quite as malleable as they are now) a collection of note cards as big as a library in Borges. I have not read or seen or heard even a tenth of what he discusses in this book, but I still gained insight into the general development of the ways people thought in the 20th Century. Of course, I'm from the pop culture side, and Conrad only occasionally dips into that - he likes HG Wells a lot more than any intellectual I've encountered. But that doesn't mean I'm not fascinated by what he does talk about - heck my newfound opera discoveries I owe entirely to Conrad.

[Steven Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

The language is beautiful, often tempting one to read it out loud so that it can be heard and it can be felt on the lips.

Overall comprehension/retention is difficult,though. Despite the beautiful language, this is really just a book-length exploration of (riff on?) the condition(s) of modernism. Each chapter takes a sort of theme to dissect. There is no narrative thread or trajectory for the reader to follow.

[Randy]

did not finish.

[Eamonn Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent survey of 20th Century art and culture.

[Todd Capen]

This is a remarkable book. The author assumes you can keep pace, know the references, and doesn't wait around for you so brace yourself. A fantastic analysis of the cultural influencers at the turn of the century (1900) or so. Recommend to all history buffs.