Modern art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
![Olympia (detail) by Édouard Manet, painted in 1863, it stirred an uproar when it was first exhibited at the 1865 Paris Salon. Today, it is considered as the start of modern art.](/images/thumb/200px-Olympia_(1863)_by_Édouard_Manet.jpg)
["Goya] was the last of the great masters and the first of the moderns."--Promenades of an Impressionist (1910) by James Huneker “Romanticism and modern art are one and the same thing” --Charles Baudelaire, 1846 "We stand at the threshold of an altogether new art - an art with forms which mean or represent nothing, recall nothing, yet which can stimulate our souls as deeply as only the tones of music have been able to." --August Endell on abstract art The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art, 1897-98 "The history of modern painting, one of the greater glories of modern France, is briefly as follows: In the early part of the nineteenth century, a definite and determined reaction against the erotic pictures of Boucher, Fragonard, and Greuze was ushered in by Vien and apotheosized by David. Austere, prudish, insipid themes from Greek and Roman history became the fashion."--History and bibliography of anatomic illustration in its relation to anatomic science and the graphic arts (1921) by Johann Ludwig Choulant and others "For Winckelmann's mistake, as Herder had already pointed out with great justice, consisted not only in this, that he set up for imitation a departed ideal for the consciousness of his contemporaries, but notably in that he obtruded principles upon modern painting which might be valid in ancient sculpture. Since the antique ideal was solely a plastic one, and neither the Greek Prussian nor, later, Meister Ephraim was clear as to the difference between sculpture and painting, they practically recommended the painter to work after plastic models."--The History of Modern Painting (1893/94) Richard Muther |
![Cover of the catalogue of the Nazi "Degenerate Art Exhibition" (1937). The exhibition was held to defame modern and Jewish artists. On the cover is Der Neue Mensch sculpture by Otto Freundlich.](/images/thumb/200px-Degenerate_art_exhibition_in_Nazi_Germany.jpg)
![L'Art moderne by Huysmans, Huysmans was also known for his art criticism: L'Art moderne (1883) and Certains (1889). He was an early advocate of Impressionism, as well as an admirer of such artists as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon.](/images/thumb/200px-L'art_Moderne_by_Huysmans.jpg)
Related e |
Featured: |
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, concepts 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.
While there is much disagreement on just what constitutes modern art, everyone agrees that it started in 19th century Paris. Walter Benjamin called Paris "the capital of the 19th century". Paris yielded this position of art capital of the world in the 1940s, when the center of artistic activity gravitated towards New York.
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. By this token modern art is Delacroix's Romanticism, Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Naturalism. Charles Baudelaire considered Delacroix as the originator of modern art, calling him in his review of the Paris Salon of 1846 "leader of the modern school."
Both modern and modernist art were firmly rooted in 19th century France and both are manifestations of the cult of ugliness that opposed the Academic ideal of the beautiful.
Contents |
History of Modern art
Roots in the 19th century
Although modern sculpture and architecture are reckoned to have emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, the beginnings of modern painting can be located earlier. The date perhaps most commonly identified as marking the birth of modern art is 1863, the year that Édouard Manet exhibited his painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe in the Salon des Refusés in Paris. Earlier dates have also been proposed, among them 1855 (the year Gustave Courbet exhibited The Artist's Studio) and 1784 (the year Jacques-Louis David completed his painting The Oath of the Horatii). In the words of art historian H. Harvard Arnason: "Each of these dates has significance for the development of modern art, but none categorically marks a completely new beginning .... A gradual metamorphosis took place in the course of a hundred years."
The strands of thought that eventually led to modern art can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and even to the seventeenth century. The important modern art critic Clement Greenberg, for instance, called Immanuel Kant "the first real Modernist" but also drew a distinction: "The Enlightenment criticized from the outside ... . Modernism criticizes from the inside." The French Revolution of 1789 uprooted assumptions and institutions that had for centuries been accepted with little question and accustomed the public to vigorous political and social debate. This gave rise to what art historian Ernst Gombrich called a "self-consciousness that made people select the style of their building as one selects the pattern of a wallpaper."
The pioneers of modern art were Romantics, Realists and Impressionists. By the late 19th century, additional movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to emerge: 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 realism in the depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such as Jean-François Millet. The advocates of realism stood against the idealism of the tradition-bound academic art -- as testified by the print "Combat des écoles. - L'Idéalisme et le Réalisme" -- that enjoyed public and official favor. 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, while governments regularly held public exhibitions of new fine and decorative arts.
The Impressionists argued that people do not see objects but only the light which they reflect, and therefore painters should paint in natural light (en plein air) rather than in studios and should capture the effects of light in their work. Impressionist artists formed a group, Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs ("Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers") which, despite internal tensions, mounted a series of independent 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.)
Roots of 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 World War I)
- 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
- Cubism - Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso
- Fauvism - André Derain, Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck
- Expressionism - Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde
- Futurism - Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà
- Die Brücke - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
- Der Blaue Reiter - Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc
- Orphism - Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Jacques Villon
- Photography - Pictorialism, Straight photography
- Post-Impressionism - Emily Carr
- Pre-Surrealism - Giorgio de Chirico, Marc Chagall
- Russian avant-garde - Kasimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov
- Sculpture - Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brâncuşi
- Synchromism - Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Morgan Russell
- Vorticism - Wyndham Lewis
World War I to World War II
- 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, Giorgio Morandi
- De Stijl - Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian
- Expressionism - Egon Schiele, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine
- New Objectivity - Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz
- Figurative painting - Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard
- American Modernism - Stuart Davis, Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe
- Constructivism - Naum Gabo, Gustav Klutsis, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Vadim Meller, Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin
- Surrealism - Jean Arp, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, André Masson, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall
- Bauhaus - Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef Albers
- 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, Ivan Kliun, Lyubov Popova, Nikolai Suetin, Nina Genke-Meller, Ivan Puni, Ksenia Boguslavskaya
- Precisionism - Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth
After World War II
- Figuratifs - Bernard Buffet, Jean Carzou, Maurice Boitel, Daniel du Janerand, Claude-Max Lochu
- 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, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell
- American Abstract Artists - Ilya Bolotowsky, Ibram Lassaw, Ad Reinhardt, Josef Albers, Burgoyne Diller
- Art Brut - Adolf Wölfli, August Natterer, Ferdinand Cheval, Madge Gill, Paul Salvator Goldengreen
- Arte Povera - Jannis Kounellis, Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Piero Manzoni, Alighiero Boetti
- Color field painting - Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Sam Francis, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Helen Frankenthaler
- Tachisme - Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Ludwig Merwart
- COBRA - Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Asger Jorn
- De-collage - Wolf Vostell, Mimmo Rotella
- Neo-Dada - Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, John Chamberlain, Joseph Beuys, Lee Bontecou, Edward Kienholz
- Fluxus - George Maciunas, Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik, Daniel Spoerri, Dieter Roth, Carolee Schneeman, Alison Knowles, Charlotte Moorman, Dick Higgins
- Happening - Allan Kaprow, Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Robert Whitman, Yoko Ono
- Dau-al-Set - founded in Barcelona by poet/artist Joan Brossa, - Antoni Tàpies
- Grupo El Paso - founded in Madrid by artists Antonio Saura, Pablo Serrano
- Geometric abstraction - Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Nadir Afonso, Manlio Rho, Mario Radice, Mino Argento
- Hard-edge painting - John McLaughlin, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Al Held, Ronald Davis
- Kinetic art - George Rickey, Getulio Alviani
- Land art - Christo, Richard Long, Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer
- Les Automatistes - Claude Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Pierre Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Marcelle Ferron
- Minimal art - Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Richard Serra, Agnes Martin
- Postminimalism - Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman, Lynda Benglis
- Lyrical abstraction - Ronnie Landfield, Sam Gilliam, Larry Zox, Dan Christensen, Natvar Bhavsar, Larry Poons
- Neo-figurative art - Fernando Botero, Antonio Berni
- Neo-expressionism - Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Jörg Immendorff, Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Transavanguardia - Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi
- Figuration libre - Hervé Di Rosa, François Boisrond, Robert Combas
- New realism - Yves Klein, Pierre Restany, Arman
- 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, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, David Hockney
- Postwar European figurative painting - Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Gerhard Richter
- New European Painting - Luc Tuymans, Marlene Dumas, Neo Rauch, Bracha Ettinger, Michaël Borremans, Chris Ofili
- Shaped canvas - Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Ron Davis, Robert Mangold.
- Soviet art - Alexander Deineka, Alexander Gerasimov, Ilya Kabakov, Komar & Melamid, Alexandr Zhdanov, Leonid Sokov
- Spatialism - Lucio Fontana
- Video Art - Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys, Bill Viola
- Visionary art - Ernst Fuchs, Paul Laffoley, Michael Bowen
References
- L'Art moderne (1883) by J.-K. Huysmans
- Modern Painting (1893) by George Moore
- The History of Modern Painting (1893/94) by Richard Muther
- Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning (1915) by Willard Huntington Wright (S. S. Van Dine)
- Promenades of an Impressionist (1910) by James Huneker
See also
- Possible originary dates for the birth of modern art
- Modernism
- Art movements and artist groups
- List of modern artists
- Museums of modern art
- Contemporary art
- Postmodern art
- Art periods
- Modern architecture
- Art manifesto
- History of painting
- Western painting