Title: Modernism | Definition, History, & Examples | Britannica
Headings: 
Modernism
art
Top Questions
What is Modernism?
What did Modernism do?
Where is Modernism today?
Know about modernism in art and design and its influence on society during the 20th century
Modernism in literature
Modernism in other arts and architecture
The birth of postmodernism

Content: Courtauld Institute Galleries, London (Courtauld Collection)
By the beginning of the 20th century, architects also had increasingly abandoned past styles and conventions in favour of a form of architecture based on essential functional concerns. They were helped by advances in building technologies such as the steel frame and the curtain wall. In the period after World War I these tendencies became codified as the International style, which utilized simple geometric shapes and unadorned facades and which abandoned any use of historical reference; the steel-and-glass buildings of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier embodied this style. In the mid-to-late 20th century this style manifested itself in clean-lined, unadorned glass skyscrapers and mass housing projects. Seagram Building in New York City
The Seagram Building (1958), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson; in New York City. ©Laurent Ruamps/Dreamstime
The birth of postmodernism
In the late 20th century a reaction against Modernism set in. Architecture saw a return to traditional materials and forms and sometimes to the use of decoration for the sake of decoration itself, as in the work of Michael Graves and, after the 1970s, that of Philip Johnson. In literature, irony and self-awareness became the postmodern fashion and the blurring of fiction and nonfiction a favoured method.