266 <strong>The</strong> experience <strong>of</strong> space and timeas class structure, diplomacy, and war tactics in terms <strong>of</strong> modes <strong>of</strong>time and space makes possible the demonstration <strong>of</strong> their essentialsiilarity to e ::c plicit considerations <strong>of</strong> time and space in literature,phtlosọphy , sClen e, and art' (pp.1-5). Lacking any theory <strong>of</strong> technologicalmnovatIon, <strong>of</strong> capitalist dynamics across space, or <strong>of</strong> culturalproduction, Kern <strong>of</strong>fers only 'generalizations about the essentialcult ,: ral d : velopment <strong>of</strong> the period.' But his descriptions highlightt?e mcred ble confuslOns and oppositions across a spectrum <strong>of</strong> possIblereactIons to the growing sense <strong>of</strong> crisis in the experience <strong>of</strong> timeand space, that had been gathering since 1848 and seemed to come toa head ju t before the First World War. I note in parenthesis that1910-14 IS roughly the period that many historians <strong>of</strong> modernism(begnni g with Virgnia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence) point to ascrucIal m the evolution <strong>of</strong> modernist thinking (see above p. 28;Bradbury and McFarlane, 1976, 31). Henri Lefebvre agrees:Around 1910 a certain space was shattered. It was the space <strong>of</strong>common sense, <strong>of</strong> knowledge, <strong>of</strong> social practice, <strong>of</strong> politicalpower, a space hitherto enshrined in everyday discourse, just asm abstract thought, as the environment <strong>of</strong> and channel forcommunication ... Euclidean and perspectivist space have disappearedas systems <strong>of</strong> reference, along with other former'common places' such as town, history, paternity, the tonalsystem in music, traditional morality, and so forth. This was atruly crucial moment. (Lefebvre, 1974)Consider a few aspects <strong>of</strong> this crucial moment set, significantlyenough, between Einstein's special theory <strong>of</strong> relativity <strong>of</strong> 1905 andhe general theory <strong>of</strong> 1916. Ford, we recall, set up his assembly linem 19<strong>13</strong>. He fragmented tasks and distributed them in space so as tomaximize efficiency and minimize the friction <strong>of</strong> flow in production.In effect, he used a certain form <strong>of</strong> spatial organization to acceleratethe turnover time <strong>of</strong> capital in production. Time could then beaccele aṭed (speed-up) b virtue <strong>of</strong> the control established throughorgalllzmg and fragmentmg the spatial order <strong>of</strong> production. In thatvery same year, however, the first radio signal was beamed aroundthe world fro the Eifel tower, thus emphasizing the capacity tocollapse space mto the sImultaneity <strong>of</strong> an instant in universal publictime. Th power <strong>of</strong> ireess ?ad been clearly demonstrated the yearbefor lth the rapId dlffuslOn <strong>of</strong> news about the sinking <strong>of</strong> the!ztamc (Itself a symbol <strong>of</strong> speed and mass motion that came to griefm much the same way that the Herald <strong>of</strong> Free Enterprise was to keelover to speedy disaster some seventy-five years later). Public time<strong>The</strong> rise <strong>of</strong> modernism as a cultural force 267was ecoming ever more homogeneous and universal across space.And It was not only commerce and railways, for the organization <strong>of</strong>largẹ-sc. ale commuting systems and all the other temporal coordm t1 ns that mad metropolitan life bearable also depended uponestabhshmg some ulllversal and commonly accepted sense <strong>of</strong> time.<strong>The</strong> more than 38 billion telephone calls made in the United States in 914 .emphasizd the .power <strong>of</strong> i I. tervention <strong>of</strong> public time and spacem dally an d pnvate hfe. Indeed, It was only in terms <strong>of</strong> such a public.sense <strong>of</strong> time that reference to private time could make sense. DeChi ico appropriately celebrated these qualities by conspicuouslyplacmg clocks (an unusual gesture in art history) in his paintings <strong>of</strong>1910-14 (see plate 3.9).<strong>The</strong> eactions pointed in many directions. James Joyce, for one,begn hIS quest to capture the sense <strong>of</strong> simultaneity in space and timedunng tis period, insisting upon the present as the only real location<strong>of</strong> expenence. He had his action take place in a plurality <strong>of</strong> spaces,Kern (p. 149) notes, 'in a consciousness that leaps about the universeand mixes here and there in defiance <strong>of</strong> the ordered diagramming <strong>of</strong>the cartographers.' Proust, for his part, tried to recover past time andto create .a sense <strong>of</strong> individuality a d place that rested on a conception<strong>of</strong> expenence across a space <strong>of</strong> time. Personal conceptions <strong>of</strong> timebecame a matter <strong>of</strong> public commentary. '<strong>The</strong> two most innovativenovelists ?f the period,' Kern continues, 'transformed the stage <strong>of</strong>modern hterature from a series <strong>of</strong> fixed settings in homogeneousspac ' (<strong>of</strong> the so t hat re list novelists typically deployed) 'into amultltude <strong>of</strong> quahtatvely dIfferent spaces that varied with the shiftingmoods and perspectlves <strong>of</strong> human consciousness.'Picasso and Braque, for their part, taking their cue from Cezannewho had be un to bre k up t?e space <strong>of</strong> painting in new ';'ays in the1880s, expnmented WIth cubIsm, thus abandoning 'the homogeneousspace <strong>of</strong> lmear perspective' that had dominated since the fifteenthcentury. Delaunay's celebrated work <strong>of</strong> 1910-11 depicting the EiffelTower (plate 3.10) was perhaps the most startling public symbol <strong>of</strong> amovement that tried to represent time through a fragmentation <strong>of</strong>space; the protagonists were probably unaware that this paralleledthe practices on Ford's assembly line, though the choice <strong>of</strong> the EiffelTower as symbol reflected the fact that the whole movementhad something to do with industrialism. It was in 1912, also, thatD rk?eim's .E:lementa? forms <strong>of</strong> the religious life was published:l lth ItS exphclt recogllltion that 'the foundation <strong>of</strong> the category timel th rhythm f social life,' and that the social origin <strong>of</strong> spacehkewlse necessanly entailed the existence <strong>of</strong> multiple spatial visions.Ortega y Gasset, following Nietzsche's injunction that 'there is only
268 <strong>The</strong> experience <strong>of</strong> space and timePlate 3.9 De Chirico's <strong>The</strong> Philosopher's Conquest (1914) exploresmodernist themes <strong>of</strong> time and space explicitly. (<strong>The</strong> Art Institute <strong>of</strong> Chicago,Joseph Winterbotham Collection)a perspective seeing, only a proper perspective knowing,' formulateda new version <strong>of</strong> the theory <strong>of</strong> perspectivism in 1910 which insistedthat 'there were as many spaces in reality as there were perspectiveson it,' and that 'there are as many realities as points <strong>of</strong> view.' ThisPlate 3.10 Delaunay's Eiffel Tower (transfer lithograph, 1926), firstexhibited in 1911, uses a familiar image <strong>of</strong> construction to examine thefragmentation and break up <strong>of</strong> space typical <strong>of</strong> cubism. (Collection, <strong>The</strong>Museum 0 f Modern Art, New York, Purchase Fund)
Change language