the.com/modernism

means A sweeping cultural and artistic movement from the late 19th into the 20th century that rejected inherited forms and conventions in favor of new techniques, abstraction, and self-conscious innovation, in art, literature, architecture, and thought alike.

from Built from the Latin 'modernus' (meaning 'just now, of today'), itself from 'modo' meaning 'just now' — the same root that gives us 'modern.' The '-ism' tacked on turns a mere adjective into a cause, a program, a battle flag. 'Modernus' had already been used since late antiquity to mark a break from the old, but modernism as a named movement crystallized when artists and writers started treating 'the new' not just as a description but as a mission — make it new, Ezra Pound's rallying cry, could stand as its motto.