What is the true definition of modernism?

I was in my English class and we read the poem ';Of Modern Poetry'; by Wallence Stevens and we began to ask why the true definition of modernism is. We looked in the dictionary but could not find a definition that could truly define what modernism really was (and still is.) In your own words, can you answer what modernism is? thank you!What is the true definition of modernism?
Modernism refers to anything that is contemporary. All arts - poetry, painting etc - are modern to those who make it whether they produced them in the Italian Renaissance or New York 21 st. c.


But historical 'modern'ism'; refers to a period dating roughly from the 1860s thro the 1970s to desribe the dramatic develepoments that took place in art , literature and other fields. This allegiance to the new was termed ';';Avant Garde';. In the arts, contemporary life was portrayed or described in place of historical events.


Modernism is characterized by a radically new attitudes resulting from the breakdown in the early 19th c. of traditional sources of support from the church, the state and aristocratic elite. Western society had to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that began to emerge. Coming under the term Modernism too, were advances in technology and science; and, in the late modern era - 25 years after World War 11, began the frenetic output of material products and their quick obsolescence which characterized a speedily developing industrial world. These advances influenced the character of all forms of art from painting to poetry, as well as one's style of living. .What is the true definition of modernism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism





Modernism is a trend of thought beginning in the 1870s and continuing past WWII that emphacized technology, progress, pragmatism, human reason, industrialism, man's individuality and creative power, and a positive outlook towards the world and the future, in contrast to the ';traditional'; religious and dogmatic ways of thinking. It greatly influenced philosophy, art, literature, music, architecture, drama, and the applied arts, and gave the way to Postmodernism of the late 20th century.
I look at ';modernism'; in a material way.





Essentially as the ongoing ';upgrade process'; brought to our materialistic means of living and accommodations on this planet. It also seems to be part of our survival.





From caves to palaces! From fire-camps to nuclear energy!





What's next?
The reason you're having trouble is that there is no ';true'; definition of modernism, or even one definition of modernism.





One key characteristic is that modernism is about fractured realities (imagine a Picasso painting), so along those lines, it wouldn't make sense for modernism to have one universal definition.
Ideas that people have to improve the envirmonment and ways of life. In an artistic way.