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Origin of modernist
Explanation
An artist who belonged to a 19th- and 20th-century art movement that rejected old ideas and styles was called a modernist. Virginia Woolf is one example of a modernist writer. The philosophy behind modernist art and writing was basically that the old Victorian ways of expressing artistic vision weren't keeping up with the changes in society. Modern industry, the growth of cities, and reactions to World War I were all factors that affected modernists' break with the old style. Modernist painters included the Impressionists (like Manet and Monet). Philosopher Immanuel Kant, psychologist Sigmund Freud, and composer Arnold Schoenberg are all also considered to be modernists.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A violinist who covered music from 1925 to 1947, she was a modernist with her finger on the pulse of the times and stood in refreshing contrast to the fussy East Coast male critics.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
Milton and Lyman Stewart were religious zealots who were horrified by the encroachment of modernist ideas on society.
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2026
George Balanchine, the great modernist choreographer, forbade his male dancers to wear long hair or beards.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
The church is a still-unfinished modernist masterpiece by architect Antoni Gaudi that was visited by nearly five million people last year.
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 2026
He’d argued for something modernist, full of glass and light, but she’d wanted a brownstone like this one.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
He developed a surprising reputation as an interpreter of Rachmaninoff and other romantics disliked by modernists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
Keynes set out to turn economics theory on its head, Smith to explore the classical ideas that the modernists were tossing aside.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 21, 2026
Although his own buildings sometimes faced a backlash from critics who thought post-modernism belonged firmly in the 1980s, he maintained that the modernists had been wrong to throw away the history books.
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2025
Today, many critics and preservationists speak of Mr. Goldfinger’s work in the same sentence as that of Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier, two world-renowned modernists who likewise designed homes around New York City.
From New York Times ● Aug. 3, 2023
The biblical criticism and mystical speculations of the modernists call for no special remark; they are such as any studious or spiritual person, with no inherited religion, might compose in our day.
From Winds Of Doctrine Studies in Contemporary Opinion by George Santayana
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
