Meanings
- uncountableA form of modernity prevalent during the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world.
It is not just that the borders between high and low have begun to blur significantly after high modernism in the West, bringing some critics to misread the Latin American boom novel as a kind of postmodernism avant la lettre […]
2005, Peter Brooker, Andrew Thacker, editors, Geographies of Modernism: Literatures, Cultures, Spaces, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 111 more example
The idea that silence suits serious art goes back to the age of high modernism in the 1950s. It is hard to imagine Mark Rothko calling an exhibition "Daddy, I Want to Be a Jewish Artist" or indeed calling it anything at all. His paintings have plain titles such as Red on Maroon.
2013 September 25, Jonathan Jones, “Dissecting the Exploding Whale: why do modern art shows have odd names?”, in The GuardianSynonyms: high modernity
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA form of modernity prevalent during the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by an unfaltering confidence in science and technology as means to reorder the social and natural world.
Cite this entry
high modernism. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/high%20modernism
“high modernism.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/high%20modernism. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “high modernism,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/high%20modernism.
Source: high modernism on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.