With leaders like Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir , the Impressionists use of brief, fierce brush strokes and the altering effect of light separated their work from what came before it. Subsequent movements such as Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Constructivism, and De Stijl were just a sampling of those following the experimental path started by Impressionism.
The Dada movement took experimentation further by rejecting traditional skill and launching an all-out art rebellion that embraced nonsense and absurdity. Dadaist ideas first appeared in , and the movement was made official in with its Berlin Manifesto.
French artist Marcel Duchamp exemplified the haughty playfulness of the Dadaists. His piece Fountain , a signed porcelain urinal, and his L. In doing so, Duchamp predicted Post-Modernism. Artist Jackson Pollock working in his studio. Modernism reached its peak with Abstract Expressionism, which began in the late s in the United States. Moving away from commonplace subjects and techniques, Abstract Expressionism was known for oversized canvasses and paint splashes that could seem chaotic and arbitrary.
Painter Jackson Pollack became famous for his method of dripping paint onto canvas from above. The transition period between Modernism and Post-Modernism happened throughout the s. Pop Art served as a bridge between them. Pop Art was obsessed with the fruits of capitalism and popular culture, like pulp fiction, celebrities and consumer goods. Begun in England in the late s but popularized in America, the movement was informed by former Abstract Expressionists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg , who had metamorphosed into the Neo-Dada movement of the late s.
Warhol gained further fame from his haunting silk screen portraits, most famously of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe , while Pop Art compatriot Roy Lichtenstein plundered comic book panels for his paintings. Post-modernism, as it appeared in the s, is often linked with the philosophical movement Poststructuralism, in which philosophers such as Jacques Derrida proposed that structures within a culture were artificial and could be deconstructed in order to be analyzed.
At the heart of Post-Modernism was conceptual art, which proposed that the meaning or purpose behind the making of the art was more important than the art itself. There was also the belief that anything could be used to make art, that art could take any form, and that there should be no differentiation between high art and low art, or fine art and commercial art.
What was revealed was a new honesty in this portrayal: disintegration, madness, suicide, sexual depravity, impotence, morbidity, deception. Many would assail this portrayal as morally degenerate; the modernists, on the other hand, would defend themselves by calling it liberating. Modernism: Characteristics Arising out of the rebellious mood at the beginning of the twentieth century, modernism was a radical approach that yearned to revitalize the way modern civilization viewed life, art, politics, and science.
This rebellious attitude that flourished between and had, as its basis, the rejection of European culture for having become too corrupt, complacent and lethargic, ailing because it was bound by the artificialities of a society that was too preoccupied with image and too scared of change. This dissatisfaction with the moral bankruptcy of everything European led modern thinkers and artists to explore other alternatives, especially primitive cultures.
For the Establishment, the result would be cataclysmic; the new emerging culture would undermine tradition and authority in the hopes of transforming contemporary society.
The modernists believed that for an individual to feel whole and a contributor to the re-vitalization of the social process, he or she needed to be free of all the encumbering baggage of hundreds of years of hypocrisy.
The rejection of moral and religious principles was compounded by the repudiation of all systems of beliefs, whether in the arts, politics, sciences or philosophy. No more conventional cookie-cutter forms to be superimposed on human expression. What were some of the artistic beliefs that the modernists adopted?
Ironically, the modernist portrayal of human nature takes place within the context of the city rather than in nature, where it had occurred during the entire 19th-century. At the beginning of the 19th-century, the romantics had idealized nature as evidence of the transcendent existence of God; towards the end of the century, it became a symbol of chaotic, random existence.
Why would the modernists shift their interest from nature and unto the city? The first reason is an obvious one. This is the time when so many left the countryside to make their fortunes in the city, the new capital of culture and technology, the new artificial paradise. But more importantly, the city is the place where man is dehumanized by so many degenerate forces.
Thus, the city becomes the locus where modern man is microscopically focused on and dissected. In the final analysis, the city becomes a "cruel devourer", a cemetery for lost souls. The Forces That Shaped Modernism. The year ushered a new era that changed the way that reality was perceived and portrayed. Years later this revolutionary new period would come to be known as modernism and would forever be defined as a time when artists and thinkers rebelled against every conceivable doctrine that was widely accepted by the Establishment, whether in the arts, science, medicine, philosophy, etc.
Although modernism would be short-lived, from to , we are still reeling from its influences sixty-five years later. How was modernism such a radical departure from what had preceded it in the past? The modernists were militant about distancing themselves from every traditional idea that had been held sacred by Western civilization, and perhaps we can even go so far as to refer to them as intellectual anarchists in their willingness to vandalize anything connected to the established order.
In order to better understand this modernist iconoclasm, let's go back in time to explore how and why the human landscape was changing so rapidly. By the world was a bustling place transformed by all of the new discoveries, inventions and technological achievements that were being thrust on civilization: electricity, the combustion engine, the incandescent light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, radio, X-rays, fertilizers and so forth.
These innovations revolutionized the world in two distinct ways. For one, they created an optimistic aura of a worldly paradise, of a new technology that was to reshape man into moral perfection. Modernism remains much more a movement in the arts than in philosophy , although Post-Modernism has a specifically philosophical aspect in addition to the artistic one.
Donate with Crypto. A huge subject broken down into manageable chunks. Random Philosophy Quote :. Minimalism is an extreme form of abstract art developed in the USA in the s and typified by artworks composed …. Postmodernism can be seen as a reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, as well as a description of ….
Paul Farley. This article investigates the exile of German modernist artist Kurt Schwitters , who spent his final years in the Lake …. Dexter Dalwood and Nancy Ireson. Artist Dexter Dalwood and curator Nancy Ireson explore the enduring influence and legacy of self-taught artist Henri Rousseau. Martin Hammer. Mark Rawlinson. This paper considers the historical coincidence of modernism and the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. In particular, it contextualises allusions …. Martin Herbert. Michael Bracewell.
Micheal Bracewell discusses the pervading influence of folklore, mythology, mysticism and the occult in the development of modernism and surrealism …. Main menu additional Become a Member Shop. Art Term Modernism Modernism refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. Twitter Facebook Email Pinterest. Related terms and concepts Left Right.
Abstract art Abstract art is art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use ….
Formalism Formalism is the study of art based solely on an analysis of its form — the way it is made ….
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