modernism art essay

The Block, 1971Romare Bearden (American, 1911–1988)Cut and pasted printed, colored and metallic papers, photostats, pencil, ink marker, gouache, watercolor, and pen and ink on Masonite Overall: 48 x 216 in. (121.9 x 548.6 cm); six panels, each: 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm)Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Shore, 1978 (1978.61.1–6)© Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY View SlideshowView Thumbnails During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art. In France, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and their School of Paris friends blended the highly stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculptures with painting styles derived from the post-Impressionist works of Cézanne and Gauguin. The resulting pictorial flatness, vivid color palette, and fragmented Cubist shapes helped to define early modernism. While these artists knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West and Central African sculptures they encountered, they instantly recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to their own efforts to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance. German Expressionist painters such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner of Die Brücke (The Bridge) group, based in Dresden and Berlin, conflated African aesthetics with the emotional intensity of dissonant color tones and figural distortion, to depict the anxieties of modern life, while Paul Klee of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) in Munich developed transcendent symbolic imagery. The Expressionists' interest in non-Western art intensified after a 1910 Gauguin exhibition in Dresden, while modernist movements in Italy, England, and the United States initially engaged with African art through contacts with School of.
In the mid-twentieth century, India was a new democratic country carved out of the subcontinent and led by the Indian National Congress. During this nascent period of independence, its citizens sought to define its parameters and understand its reason for being. The cultural sphere was highly politicized. Authors wrote stories and poems that critiqued the way nationalist leaders handled the events leading up to independence and partition of India and Pakistan. Within the burgeoning art scene, artists introduced themselves as modern and secular practitioners. Some were political, while many more were concerned with formal issues. Some incorporated indigenous traditions, while others turned to art practices from outside of India. The Bombay Progressives During the 1930s and ’40s, a number of communist groups were active in the cultural arena in India. Along with theater professionals and writers, visual artists joined together under the banner of “progressive” and identified with Marxism. In Bombay in 1947, Francis Newton Souza (1924–2002), Maqbool Fida Husain (born 1915), and others formed the Progressive Artists’ Group. They had leftist leanings, rejected the nationalist art of the Bengal School, and embraced international modern art practices. Over the years, Souza gained international notoriety for his erotic and religious paintings that were informed by a variety of styles, including Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, and Primitivism. Husain has also worked in a number of international painting modes; he was exposed to the art of Europeans including Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka through the Progressive Artists’ Group. His work, however, retains traces of indigenous traditions; in particular, he has had an ongoing interest in Indian cinema. Husain first supported himself as an artist by painting cinema billboards; more recently, he has directed films and depicted.
The Quest for National Identity At the dawn of the twentieth century, Egyptians, burdened with centuries of foreign occupation, were united in their aspiration for a modern nation. Thus modern art was an essential visual expression of their national identity and freedom from foreign oppression. It was a manifestation of the contemporaneous intellectual discourse led by secular liberals, among them writers, poets, and artists, male and female. The acceptance of figuration and the introduction of art education in schools were sanctioned by religious scholars. This tolerant attitude toward figurative art was also the outcome of new developments in publishing and photography, as well as the revolutionary establishment of a local cinema industry. Egypt led the Arab world in these fields, although it took a full century before photography was officially recognized as an art form (Van Leo, Self-Portrait). The first generation of modern Egyptian artists was driven by a renewed appreciation of their national patrimony and the return to ancient pharaonic art detached from any African, Arab, or religious cultural references. In architecture and sculpture, the Neo-Pharaonic style, based on a revival of Egyptian classical art, used modern techniques and influences; in painting, it was apparentin the symbolic references derived from ancient Egypt or rural life. The first graduates from the School of Fine Arts initiated a long tradition of art education that influenced not only Egyptian artists but also other Arab artists (Mahmud Mukhtar, Egypt Awakening; Mahmud Said, Dervishes). The Neo-Pharaonic phase was soon supplanted by new trends that challenged popular figurative traditions and promoted innovations in style and technique. Artists experimented with new forms of art such as Surrealism, Cubism, Dadaism, and abstraction. They published the first art journals and established the.
Until recently, the word ‘modern’ was used to refer generically to the contemporaneous; all art is modern at the time it is made. In his Il Libro dell'Arte (translated as ‘The Craftsman’s Handbook’) written in the early 15th century, the Italian writer and painter Cennino Cennini explains that Giotto made painting ‘modern’ [see BIBLIOGRAPHY]. Giorgio Vasari writing in the 16th century, refers to the art of his own period as ‘modern.’ [see BIBLIOGRAPHY] In the history of art, however, the term ‘modern’ is used to refer to a period dating from roughly the 1860s through the 1970s and describes the style and ideology of art produced during that era. It is this more specific use of modern that is intended when people speak of modern art. The term ‘modernism’ is also used to refer to the art of the modern period. More specifically, ‘modernism’ can be thought of as referring to the philosophy of modern art. In the title of her 1984 book [see BIBLIOGRAPHY], Suzi Gablik asks ‘Has Modernism Failed?’ What does she mean? Has modernism ‘failed’ simply in the sense of coming to an end? Or does she mean that modernism failed to accomplish something? The presupposition of the latter is that modernism had goals, which it failed to achieve. If so, what were these goals? For reasons that will become clear later in this essay, discussions of modernism in art have been couched largely in formal and stylistic terms. Art historians tend to speak of modern painting, for example, as concerned primarily with qualities of colour, shape, and line applied systematically or expressively, and marked over time by an increasing concern with flatness and a declining interest in subject matter. It is generally agreed that modernism in art originated in the 1860s and that the French painter Édouard Manet is the first modernist painter. Paintings such as his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (‘Luncheon on the.
Modernism refers to a series of successive art movements and the particular artistic tendencies that unite them. It also refers to the era that included the omission of previous art styles and a rebellion against the past. Van Gogh was a significant figure in the modernism era, as was Edouard Manet, who was considered to be the “Father of Modern Art” in his own right. Modernism began as a European phenomenon and its roots can be traced back to the romanticism and realism of the 19th Century. Modernist art is not, as is sometimes wrongly perceived, the art of today, (art done by living artists is called contemporary art), it is said to have ended sometime between the mid 1950’s and early 1980’s. The end of this era signified the beginning of an even more perplexing movement, Post-Modernism. During the Modernist era many modern times emerged and what followed was a succession of interesting and completely different periods for art. For example the Impressionist era (1875-1890), Expressionism (1905-1930) and Cubism (1905-1915). Modern art was the artistic liberation from traditional rules and conventions, and the freedom of colour accurately representing an object. It rejected the past and was a relentless quest for radical freedom of expression. Instead of one art style dominating for centuries, many different styles “sprang up” in the form of isms. Modern art styles included Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, DaDa, Surrealism and Abstract expressionism. The following art styles are ones that happened in the time frame that Modernism is said to have ended. Pop art, Op art, Conceptual art and Photo-Realism. Edouard Manet was one of the first artists to break with the academic tradition and depict subjects taken from contemporary everyday life. He startled critics with the modernity of his artworks, his work was indicative of the.
1 – In a Dark Room (i) In a dark room, on a large screen, three Indonesian kids in matching purple Adidas tracksuits, wrap-around sunglasses and sun-visors are singing a karaoke version of a song by the 1980s pop group The Smiths. It is equally serious and joyous. The piece is part of Phil Collins's work The World Won't Listen. It is a great work of contemporary art and Phil Collins is an important artist because his work is richly suggestive of a number of significant questions about national identity, popular culture in a global context, and the role of the mass media in representing these. (ii) Another dark room, another projected scene: an evening view of an obscure rural location. In the near-distance we see an odd elongated piece of architecture: a fragile but imposing shelter, an elaborate cylindrical tent that seems simultaneously out of place and yet somehow at home in this natural landscape. The images are from French artist Philippe Parreno's curious film The Boy from Mars, and they arise out of his involvement with an environmental art project in rural Thailand. Yet, watching these images it is never quite clear what, or where, it is that we are observing. Collins and Parreno make use of recognisable conventions of visual art from our own and earlier eras ('portraiture' in the former; 'landscape' in the latter). Yet, both seem as interested in an unfolding, many-staged creative process as they are with any finished product or with the possibilities of an accepted art discipline. As such, they practice types of art, that, as the influential curator Nicolas Bourriaud has argued, remain around the edge of any definition – drawing on much from what would customarily be considered beyond the 'frame' of art, urging us to consider the place of art in the contemporary world, while offering up images and experiences characterised by uncertainty or disconcerting.