Play, New Ideas, Modernism

Two posts for the price of one today...

"We seek new ideas through play," the leader of the playgroup said yesterday, as part of her talk on the subject of play. This started me thinking about art and creativity. Then, reading the Cage book (Silences), I started thinking about Modernism...what was the impetus behind Modernism, except a huge desire to inject more play into a more and more rigid, ordered society? And yes, every art movement in history exists in part because the status quo becomes too rigid, too static...every art movement moves towards play...but this is perhaps especially true for the Modernists. The best of the late 19th and early 20th century writers, painters, musicians, dancers and architects were acutely aware of the stultifying effects of industrial society, and worked mightily (worked, but really, played) to circumvent those effects.

But where does that leave us? Post-Modernism, with its emphasis on pastiche, satire and performance, falls short for me because it is (despite appearances) not all that playful--especially when compared to a William Carlos Williams or Charles Zukofsky poem, Cage's Music of Changes, Magritte's paintings, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Jean Toomer's Cane. The best of the Modernists invented new forms almost every time they created; in other words, they played, ferociously.