Modern art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Modern art is a general term used for most of the artistic production from the 1860s until approximately the 1970s. (Recent art production is more often called Contemporary art or Postmodern art). Modern art refers to the then new approach to art which placed emphasis on representing emotions, themes, and various abstractions. Artists experimented with new ways of seeing, with fresh ideas about the nature, materials and functions of art, often moving further toward abstraction.
Walter Benjamin called Paris "the capital of the 19th century". Indeed, Paris was the birthplace of modern art and from the 1860s to the 1940s it was also the art capital of the world.
While in common parlance modern art is usually used to denote art of the early 20th century (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism, one will have to distinguish between modern art and modernist art.
Modern art (Delacroix's Romanticism, Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Naturalism were all manifestations of the cult of ugliness that opposed the Academic ideal of the beautiful) was firmly rooted in France and in fin de siècle aesthetics, while modernist art is closely related to Modernism and to realism.
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History of Modern art
Roots in the 19th century
By the late 19th century, several movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to emerge: Impressionism and post-Impressionism, as well as Symbolism.
Influences upon these movements were varied: from exposure to Eastern decorative arts, particularly Japanese printmaking, to the colouristic innovations of Turner and Delacroix, to a search for more depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such as Jean-François Millet. At the time, the generally held belief was that art should be accurate in its depiction of objects, but that it should be aimed at expressing the ideal, or the domestic. Thus the most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions, or through large public exhibitions of their own work. There were official government sponsored painters' unions, and governments regularly held public exhibitions of new fine and decorative arts.
Thus, breaking with idealization and depiction were not merely artistic statements, but decisions with social and economic results.
These movements did not necessarily identify themselves as being associated with progress, or art artistic freedom, but instead argued, in the style of the times, that they represented universal values and reality. The Impressionists argued that people do not see objects, but only the light which they reflect, and therefore painters should paint in natural light rather than in studios, and should capture the effects of light in their work.
Impressionist artists formed a group to promote their work, which, despite internal tensions, was able to mount exhibitions. The style was adopted by artists in different nations, in preference to a "national" style. These factors established the view that it was a "movement". These traits: establishment of a working method integral to the art, establishment of a movement or visible active core of support, and international adoption, would be repeated by artistic movements in the Modern period in art.
Early 20th Century
Among the movements which flowered in the first decade of the 20th century were Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Futurism.
World War I brought an end to this phase, but indicated the beginning of a number of anti-art movements, such as Dada and the work of Marcel Duchamp, and of Surrealism. Also, artist groups like de Stijl and Bauhaus were seminal in the development of new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design and art education.
Modern art was introduced to the United States with the Armory Show in 1913, and through European artists who moved to the U.S. during World War I.
After World War II
It was only after World War II, though, that the U.S. became the focal point of new artistic movements. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of Abstract Expressionism, Color field painting, Pop art, Op art, Hard-edge painting, Minimal art, Lyrical Abstraction, Postminimalism and various other movements; in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Land art, Performance art, Conceptual art and Photorealism among other movements emerged.
Around that period, a number of artists and architects started rejecting the idea of "the modern" and created typically Postmodern works.
Starting from the post-World War II period, fewer artists used painting as their primary medium; instead, larger installations and performances became widespread. Since the 1970s, new media art has become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means such as video art.
Art movements and artist groups
(Roughly chronological with representative artists listed.)
Modern art
19th century
- Romanticism the Romantic movement - Francisco de Goya, J. M. W. Turner, Eugène Delacroix
- Realism - Gustave Courbet, Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet
- Impressionism - Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley
- Post-impressionism - Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Rousseau
- Symbolism - Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, James Ensor
- Les Nabis - Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Félix Vallotton
- pre-Modernist Sculptors - Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin
Early 20th century (before WWI)
- Art Nouveau & variants - Jugendstil, Modern Style, Modernisme - Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt,
- Art Nouveau Architecture & Design - Antoni Gaudí, Otto Wagner, Wiener Werkstätte, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Koloman Moser
- Fauvism - André Derain, Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck
- Expressionism - Oskar Kokoschka, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde
- Die Brücke - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
- Der Blaue Reiter - Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc
- Cubism - Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso
- Orphism - Robert Delaunay, Jacques Villon
- Synchromism - Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Morgan Russell
- Pre-Surrealism - Giorgio de Chirico, Marc Chagall
- Futurism - Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà
- Vorticism - Wyndham Lewis
- Russian avant-garde - Kasimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov
- Sculpture - Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi
- Photography - Pictorialism, Straight photography
WWI to WWII
- Dada - Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Kurt Schwitters
- Synthetic Cubism - Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso
- Pittura Metafisica - Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà
- De Stijl - Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian
- Expressionism - Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, and Chaim Soutine
- New Objectivity - Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz
- Figurative painting - Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard
- Constructivism - Naum Gabo, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin
- Surrealism - Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, André Masson, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall
- Bauhaus - Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee
- Sculpture - Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Gaston Lachaise, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Julio Gonzalez
- Scottish Colourists - Francis Cadell, Samuel Peploe, Leslie Hunter, John Duncan Fergusson
- Suprematism - Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandra Ekster, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Anna Kagan, Ivan Kliun, Lyubov Popova, Nikolai Suetin, Ilya Chashnik, Lazar Khidekel, Nina Genke-Meller, Ivan Puni, Ksenia Boguslavskaya
After WWII
- Figuratifs - Bernard Buffet, Jean Carzou, Yves Brayer, Maurice Boitel, Pierre-Henry, Daniel du Janerand, Jean Monneret, Gaston Sébire, Louis Vuillermoz, Claude-Max Lochu
- Abstract art -
- Sculpture - Henry Moore, David Smith, Tony Smith, Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Alberto Giacometti, Sir Anthony Caro, Jean Dubuffet, Isaac Witkin, René Iché, Marino Marini, Louise Nevelson
- Abstract expressionism - Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still
- Art brut - Adolf Wölfli, August Natterer, Ferdinand Cheval, Madge Gill
- Arte Povera - Jannis Kounellis, Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Piero Manzoni,
- Color field painting - Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler
- Tachisme - Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung
- COBRA - Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn
- Dau-al-Set - founded in Barcelona by poet/artist Joan Brossa, - Antoni Tàpies, Enrique Tábara, Antonio Saura
- Geometric abstraction - Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Nadir Afonso
- Hard-edge painting - Ellsworth Kelly, Al Held, Ronald Davis
- Kinetic art - George Rickey
- Land art - Christo, Richard Long, Robert Smithson
- Les Automatistes - Claude Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Marcelle Ferron
- Minimal art - Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra
- Postminimalism - Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Hannah Wilke, Lynda Benglis
- Lyrical Abstraction - Ronnie Landfield, Sam Gilliam, Larry Zox, Dan Christensen
- Neo-figurative art - Fernando Botero, Antonio Berni
- Neo-expressionism - Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, Jean-Michel Basquiat
- New realism - Christo, Yves Klein, Pierre Restany
- Op art - Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Richard Anuszkiewicz
- Outsider art - Howard Finster, Grandma Moses, Bob Justin
- Photorealism - Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, Duane Hanson, Richard Estes, Malcolm Morley
- Pop art - Richard Hamilton, Keith Haring, David Hockney,Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha
- Postwar European figurative painting - Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach
- Shaped canvas - Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Robert Mangold
- Soviet art - Alexander Deineka, Alexander Gerasimov, Ilya Kabakov, Komar & Melamid, Alexandr Zhdanov, Leonid Sokov
Important Modern art exhibitions and museums
- For a comprehensive list see Museums of modern art.
Belgium
Ecuador
France
Germany
- documenta, Kassel (Germany), a five-yearly exhibition of modern and contemporary art
- Museum Ludwig, Cologne
- Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Italy
Mexico
Netherlands
Spain
Sweden
U.K.
U.S.A.
- High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
- Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
- Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Guggenheim Museum, New York & Venice, Italy; more recent filiations in Berlin (Germany), Bilbao (Spain) & Las Vegas, Nevada
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
See also
- Modernism
- List of modern artists
- Contemporary art
- Postmodern art
- Art periods
- Modern architecture
- Art manifesto
- History of painting
- Western painting