Enriching Every Communication & Delivery with Modernism – Applying Lessons from Germinal and Improvisation 8
The Scholar In Residence: SAM YEBOAH (LLB, MA - Professional Writer & Researcher)
Two centuries ago, art was classical. It was based on depicting fixed and identifiable symbols laid out within an acceptable conventional framework. Therefore, art, communication, and human interaction came with standards often laid out in a strict format.
However, today's world is deconstructed, where art is expressive and often independent of known conventions. This originates from modernism, which emerged in the early 20th Century based on surreptitious renditions through experimentations, subjective depiction of events, and abstractions.[1].
Modernism did not just make art accessible. It made the delivery of any content more efficient and effective in reaching its audiences. Modernism sought to blend new ideas, fun activities, and simplicity in ways that challenged the audience and got them to think and interpret the content delivered to them on their own terms. This created a two-way engagement through artistic mediums.
This scholarly article examines modernism's practical mechanisms and covers the vital elements for successfully integrating modernism into communication and interactions with others.
Aims & Objectives
The aim of this scholar-in-residency submission is to identify the practical elements of modernism and identify a generic pathway to adopt and adapt them into your presentation. Whether you are a stone-cold boring mathematician or a marketer trying to find better ways to engage your audiences, this is for you.
At the end of this scholarly submission, you will understand the following:
1. The nature of applying modernism to enrich communication and persuasion,
2. Best practices in breaking down the communication process to optimize the delivery of content,
3. The vital elements in communication and delivery of content for a desired end.
Methodology
Modernism is a movement, consciousness, and/or intellectual worldview that emerged in the late 1800s and early 20th Century as a natural result of the convergence of many worldviews and the industrialization, urbanization, and synthesis of different homogenous cultures in Eurocentric countries. Prior to that, society was fairly static. People lived in rural areas and adhered to simple but stable traditions and customs.
However, the advent of civil rights and individualism after the Napoleonic era ushered in a period where art took a different form. Art was appreciated for its aesthetic impact as well as its epistemic essence[2]. Thus, art was not supposed to be a static repetition of some authoritarian story linked to a king or biblical figure. Rather, art became a point for self-expression.
Modernism is, therefore, signified by experimentation, subjective experience, and abstraction[3]. These three components of modernism reflect freedom, expression, and variation, respectively. As such, artists of this period used many methods to create artworks based on their own abstract depictions with many different possible interpretations for different audiences.
"Modernism" is often used interchangeably with "Expressionism." The latter is characterized by the use of exaggerations and distortions to convey the artist's subjective emotions. In effect, modernism and expressionism focus on the "artist's power of attraction" and the "beholder's interpretive sovereignty." This allowed for tremendous enrichment of art by the early 20th Century.
This scholar-in-residence submission draws on a critical analysis of two authoritative works that define Modernism and lay out their relevance and applicability in our times. The world reviewed are:
1. Germinal – a book by Emile Zola published in France in 1885 and
2. Improvisation 8 – a leading abstract painting that showcases modernism's nature, painted by Wassily Kandinsky in Munich in 1908.
These are groundbreaking works of art that defined the very essence of modernism. Although old, these works set the frames for developing media, communication, and delivery across many cultures.
This study will first examine the core elements used by Emile Zola in Germinal and Kandinsky in Improvisation 8. It will examine and critique them to identify their key elements and features.
From there, the core elements will be operationalized and used to develop a path for you or anyone else to improve their communication methods.
Modernism – Germinal & Improvisation 8
In Germinal, Emile Zola tells a story about a young man who finds a job in a mining village in rural France in the mid-1800s. The book reveals the shocking poverty, suffering, and hardships that people in this coal mining village endured at the height of the Industrial Revolution in France.
On the other hand, the oppression of the mine and village owners and managers is depicted in gruesome ways, leading to the residents' desire for a revolt. However, due to their poor understanding of the world, the coal miners in the village failed in their efforts to unseat the elites. In the process, he reveals layers of complexities that create oppression and how this leads to evil that self-destructs everyone in the village.
Germinal is exceptional because although it is set in a long-forgotten place over 150 years, the narration is so engaging that the audience in the 2020s can understand and appreciate it.
First, Emile Zola invokes the emotions and imagination of the reader through agitated composition. He presents serious and unusual elements of his characters by presenting baits and signals that force the reader to stretch their imagination, activating the reader's senses.
The main protagonist of Germinal, Etienne, wanders from place to place until he finds a job in a village’s coal mine, which is worked by miners living in abject poverty. The epic scene of Etienne’s first day at work in the mines involves the sight of miners who woke up at 3 a.m. to converge at the mine for work to start at 4 a.m. The shift is long, cold, and painful.
Emile Zola narrates it so graphically that you see and feel the darkness of the coal mine, the polluted air, and the prison-like circumstances the wretched miners bear as they wait to be transported down the mine.
The main character, Etienne, asks questions about the rope used to hurl the many miners down the mine. The rope is almost cracked, but it is used to send the miners to a depth of about 500 meters to start the day’s work.
As the reader wonders whether the rope will break or not, Emile Zola talks about the horses who live deep down in the mine. When you feel the suspense and sense nothing could be worse, the story of the poor horses comes up. These horses live 1 kilometer underground in the darkness, breathe the coal-filled black air, and are doomed to carry this heavy load nonstop each day for the rest of their natural lives.
The story escalates and de-escalates.
It uses jagged distortions to amplify Emile Zola's expressions.
We humans thrive on stability.
We live with assumptions that allow us to maintain a “normal” life.
Expressionism and modernism rely on instability.
As the writer gives you a dose of the story in an agitated, emotionally charged composition, s/he leads you to the edge, then destabilizes you with a new, shocking twist. This instability shakes you from your comfort zone into a different arena. This is the essence of art. And this is the core foundation of modernism.
The extract covered here is just one scene described in a book of over 400 pages.
Germinal is not different from any other book regarding content and circumstances.
What sets it apart is the engagement and flow.
It presents the dysfunctional in novel doses that always keep the reader on the edge. The composition is agitated. The reader is moved from point to point through jagged distortions, which destabilize them and invoke suspense that emotionally drives the reader to continue flipping the pages to enjoy more artistic content that reflects logical, factual, and rational submissions. However, modernism ensures that the conventional barriers to rigid facts and statements are all dissolved in the artistic and engaging delivery.
This methodology is used in most modern series and books. The power is in presenting bits and pieces—each based on shocking content—that get the reader interested and excited to continue watching or reading.
Improvisation 8 gives a lot of meaning to the elements of modernism and expressionism. A depiction of it is presented below:
Improvisation 8, by Kandinsky – Munich, 1908
When you look at it closely, it is nothing more than a simple artwork. This is a basic artistic piece that anyone can potentially draw. However, it has many layers of meaning. It is abstract but has many elements that could be interpreted in many ways. This is the first element of Improvisation 8—challenging the audience.
Upon seeing it, you feel you are in a medieval setting – a person with the hairstyle of a lord holding a sword. He seems to be conversing with another person of his rank or someone lower than him and submissive. But this individual stands head to head.
One person sits under the shadow of the sword who looks like a priest or perhaps an old beggar. Next to him is a person dressed up in symbolic clothes. What this means is unclear.
This is the second element of modernism and expression – it keeps the audience guessing.
Behind them, we can imagine a rural territory – the mountains of the countryside. And all the resources in the realm this lord controls?
The guesses continue on and on.
Improvisation 8 keeps the audience out of their comfort zone. This is the instability invoked by the artwork.
Anyone who sees this artwork will be challenged to interpret Improvisation 8 on their own terms.
Unlike an elitist work of art from the Romantic era, Improvisation 8 allows anyone and everyone to attempt to interpret the content. That is because it is simple and inviting to anyone and everyone. This is the universal element of modernism, which challenges everyone to try to give meaning to the content.
The inviting nature of Improvisation 8 is based on its simplicity. Anyone—from a child to an adult, all the way up to an art aficionado—can impress meaning on the artwork. That is because it challenges the beholder to interpret the artwork.
Attempting to interpret Improvisation 8 causes an individual to move from their comfort zone. That is because it is abstract, and you can have many different explanations for what it stands for and the coded message within it. Again, the jagged distortions cause the viewer to move out of their area of stability.
The instability of Improvisation 8's abstractions means the viewer will try to unlock the thesis with an antithesis. Over time, they will be pushed to instability until they figure out the essence of the work. This creates conflict that leads to a resolution when the essence of the whole becomes apparent.
In conclusion, Improvisation 8 and Germinal show that modernism and expressionism simplify things and ideas artistically pleasantly. This creates a universal appeal. Once the audience gets interested, they are led on by being challenged. The challenge leads to the presentation of a conflict, which causes an emotional thirst driven by instability. Over time, the artist can tell a story and present an idea that resolves the conflict. Once viewers understand the story behind the delivery, they appreciate and internalize it intimately. Therein lies the value of art – intrinsic satisfaction, aesthetic indulgence, as well as cognitive and philosophical benefits.
Application – How to Break Down Communication & Optimize Communication with Modernism & Expressionism
Modernism and expressionism have been widely applied in our arts and public communication systems.
In our era where mass communication is evolving from broadcasting to narrowcasting[4]Expressionism and modernism can be great tools for helping anyone and everyone improve their delivery style.
Communication is competitive since anyone can sign on to most digital platforms, build an audience, and serve content to them. Hence, improving and enhancing the delivery methods is necessary to make your projects more engaging and impactful.
The following pointers below can be deduced from modernism and invoked to improve and enhance your interaction with your audiences:
1. Know your objectives and understand your persuasion goals and impact pointers: Every good submission comes with a clear understanding of the conclusion. A good writer, professor, or doctor invokes their professional imagination to identify the end game of their presentation. Thus, you must know what you aim to achieve in the entire communication process and the ideal end. Once you have a notion of a desirable conclusion, you can move on to define your objectives and artistic elements to communicate.
2. Use Simplicity and Universality to Challenge Your Audience: The best approach is to present simple content for anyone to work with. At the same time, it should have some tantalizing elements that will challenge the audience to probe your work. Thus, conflict is necessary for effective communication.
3. Keep the Audience Guessing & Anticipating: When you present the conflict, drip the content to the audience in ways that ensure some things will encourage them to want more. The conflict you used to challenge them earlier must be stoked so they keep guessing the next move. Then, they will start anticipating what will happen next. This is the best way to keep your communication fluid.
4. Make the Delivery Engaging: This is where your artistic side must be invoked. Deliver your presentation's symbols, ideas, and elements stylishly and engagingly. This includes getting dramatic or extreme in certain aspects. Here, the jagged distortions must be presented in ways that render the submission surprising and unusual. That will sustain interest in what you are delivering.
5. Escalation and Destabilization of the Audience: Whatever engaging content you present, you are best served if the surprises and extremities keep rising. Thus, the presentation must move the audience from their comfort zone, progressively leading to more serious elements.
6. Allow the Audience to Recover: The greatest compositions in modernism tend to destabilize the audience gradually. So, as they get to see or feel an unusual or unconventional manner, you try to match it with the normal elements they know, presenting the normal side of the situation. Over time, as you proceed with the communication, the audience will start getting relaxed and stable in their thoughts.
7. Re-Escalate Further: When the audience relaxes back to their position of stability, you re-escalate further to destabilize them. Each time, you present the new complications as unsolvable, extremely dangerous, and devastating. This causes the audiences to be destabilized and displaced in ways that allow them to internalize the content,
8. Resolve the Conflicts: As it goes further, find the best path to resolve the most extreme conflict. Here, your bias and interests as a communicator must come to the fore. Thus, the natural thing to do is present the best solution you represent.
9. Bring it All Together: The end of any communication and interaction is to create a unified view of the entire presentation. When we look at Improvisation 8, we can see the entire frame as one image – that is the end game. In Germinal, the goal is to present the collective anthropological realities and lived experiences of a small village in France in the mid-1800s. At the end of the book, the engaging and skillful blend of expressionism and many different sub-plots gives the reader a fair understanding of what life was like in the largely forgotten rural coalmine. The skillfulness of Emile Zola’s narrative style can give most readers a better idea of the coalmining community than the community they actually live in. Effective communication ends with presenting all the separate parts into the big picture to provide a panoramic view of everything. This is the crux of impartation through efficient communication and
10. Call to Action: Finally, when the pieces come together, the individual is in a different place. They will view you differently. This is the perfect time to present your final appeal to meet your objectives in the communication process.
Conclusion
Modernism came to personalize and disseminate elements of the Enlightenment in more efficient and effective ways. Artworks of this era present simple content that anyone and everyone could interpret. This approach was accompanied by intrigues that challenged the audience to interpret and internalize the components of a piece of modernist artwork. This approach is widely used in mass communication to attract and sustain interest in content.
Modernism and expressionism can be applied to everyone's communication and delivery – especially in our times of narrowcasting. To do that, you first need to identify your conclusion by figuring out your endgame or what you hope to achieve. After that, assemble your tools for communication and ensure you lay them out in a simple but challenging format. Once you serve out the first content, give the audience new content with some suspense to keep them guessing and anticipating the next move. Make the process engaging by using emotionally appealing content to increase the intrinsic value through artistic methods. Then, unusual things will be presented that will escalate the conflicts. This escalation moves the audience from their zone of stability and gets them thinking in many directions. This is the core of expressionism and modernism. As you escalate, allow the audience to recover. Let them feel normalcy in the narration so they return to their comfort zone. The moment they feel everything is back to normal, they re-escalate in a more serious way that will cause them to become destabilized most extremely. This is an opportunity to present the solution by showing the best solution you believe in. Then, you bring it all together in complete unity. This is where the audience gets total and deep satisfaction. Finally, you can move on to a call to action, moving the audience to the desired endgame you set for yourself.
Modernism and expressionism are art ideologies and frameworks that project the artist's deepest sentiments skillfully to invite the audience to engage. Thus, in communicating within these frameworks, two things are essential. One is your uniqueness, which often helps you perform at your best. The other is practice. The more we practice communication strategies steeped in modernism and expressionism, the better we become.
Sam Yeboah is an experienced writer and researcher who has over 12 years of experience in scholarly writing.
His professional profile can be found at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yeboah
[1] Joseph Entin. Sensational Modernism: Experimental Fiction and Photography in Thirties America. (Raleigh, NC: University of North Carolina, 2007) p114
[2] David Carr. “Dangerous Knowledge: On the Epistemic and Moral Significance of Arts in Education” Journal of Aesthetic Education 44 (3), 2010 pp1-15
[3] Joseph Entin. Sensational Modernism
[4] Narrowcasting is the process of sharing information with a specialized or selected audience, typically through digital communication systems.