Definition of Modernity

Modernism is the term for a number of cultural revolutions in the Western society through art, literature, music during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Through knowledge and self awareness, the term defines how humans molded the world they lived in from the practices and nuances in which they lived by. "Modernists are critiques of modernity. they draw upon the archaic, the classic, the exotic and the 'primitive' to develop their critiques. Modernism does not feel at home in Modernity. Its creative drive is constructed from components drawn from an idealised past or a utopianised future, not from Modernity's present, which it finds banal or life threatening. Yet each modernist critique of Modernity invariably fails. During its creative avant-garde moment it seeks to make Modernity endurable, liveable. As its energy wanes its traces may be discerned in Modernity. For Modernism's critique is not sustained; it folds over into a celebration of Modernity. It begins with its Picassos and ends with its Warhols tirelessly repeating themselves. Then hopefully, but not inevitably, a renewed avant-garde may appear again, perhaps as the strange child of cultural imperialism, and in another part of the globe." (Smith 12)