Ballarin Claudia  5 A

English Written Test I  Second Term  

The quotation tells about art and its transformation during the 19^th and 20^th century.  In the Victorian age paintings and literature tried to represents the external reality and nature on the other hand in the modern age artist paid more attention to his sensation and inner reality. This development was due to a cultural transformation indeed Darwin’s studies about natural selection and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity produced a world crisis. The point of reference and the traditional values crashed, in follows that at the end of 19^th century change the way to see the world. Indeed Freud’s studies about the unconscious and the perception created a new idea of identity, after that crisis the only sure point of reference that any individual had was himself.

This is the reason why in Impressionist the artist focused the attention on his impressions, sensations, mutability, simultaneity of feelings. Then colours and form become, in Post-Impressionist, more important than the subject. In the same way in literature writers studies form and language for this reason the study of linguistic became in the modern age. Freud affirm that language exist in the mind, and analysing language writers try to study the mind and thoughts. In modernism characters tell and represents story and themselves. The narrator turn inside people’s consciences and people’s mental experience. In modern art aesthetic consciousness have taken place of moral values and also art affect the mind, an example can be found in Joyce’s story: The Dead. In that story the point of view is the consciousness of Gabriel, his thoughts are in contradiction between the apparently happy party. Indeed Joyce speaks about alienation of people in Dublin. Joyce focus the attention of the form and the signified. At the end of the story the reader could understand the paralysis of the Dubliner, indeed Gabriel didn’t fails to act.

In conclusion art in modernism turn its attention from external reality to human inner and mind.