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Modern art

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This article is about art produced from the 1860s to the 1970s. For art produced from the 1940s to the present, seecontemporary art.

Modern art
Vincent van Gogh,Country Road in Provence by Night,1889, May 1890,Kröller-Müller Museum
Paul Cézanne,The Large Bathers,1898–1905
History of art
Periods and movements
Regions
Art of the Middle East

Art of Central Asia

Art of East Asia

Art of South Asia

Art of Southeast Asia

Art of Europe

Art of Africa

Art of the Americas

Art of Oceania

Religions
Techniques
Types

Modern artincludes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles andphilosophiesof theartproduced during that era.[1]The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation.[2]Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency away from thenarrative,which was characteristic of the traditional arts, towardabstractionis characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production is often calledcontemporary artorPostmodern art.

Modern art begins with the heritage of painters likeVincent van Gogh,Paul Cézanne,Paul Gauguin,Georges SeuratandHenri de Toulouse-Lautrecall of whom were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th centuryHenri Matisseand several other young artists including thepre-cubistsGeorges Braque,André Derain,Raoul Dufy,Jean MetzingerandMaurice de Vlaminckrevolutionized the Paris art world with "wild," multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics calledFauvism.Matisse's two versions ofThe Dancesignified a key point in his career and the development of modern painting.[3]It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination withprimitive art:the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation andhedonism.

At the start of20th-century Western painting,and initially influenced byToulouse-Lautrec,Gauguinand other late-19th-century innovators,Pablo Picassomade his firstCubistpaintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids:cube,sphereandcone.With the paintingLes Demoiselles d'Avignon(1907), Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent ofAfrican tribal masksand his new Cubist inventions.Analytic cubismwas jointly developed by Picasso andGeorges Braque,exemplified byViolin and Candlestick, Paris,from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism, the first clear manifestation of cubism, was followed bySynthetic cubism,practiced by Braque, Picasso,Fernand Léger,Juan Gris,Albert Gleizes,Marcel Duchampand several other artists into the 1920s.Synthetic cubismis characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces,collageelements,papier colléand a large variety of merged subject matter.[4][5]

The notion of modern art is closely related toModernism.[a]

History[edit]

Édouard Manet,The Luncheon on the Grass(Le déjeuner sur l'herbe), 1863,Musée d'Orsay,Paris

Roots in the 19th century[edit]

Édouard Manet,Boy Blowing Bubbles,1867,Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

Although modernsculptureandarchitectureare reckoned to have emerged at the end of the 19th century, the beginnings of modernpaintingcan be located earlier.[7]Francisco Goyais considered by many as the Father of Modern Painting without being a Modernist himself, a fact of art history that later painters associated with Modernism as a style, acknowledge him as an influence.[8][9][10]The date perhaps most commonly identified as marking the birth of modern art as a movement is 1863,[7]the year thatÉdouard Manetshowed his paintingLe déjeuner sur l'herbein theSalon des Refusésin Paris. Earlier dates have also been proposed, among them 1855 (the yearGustave CourbetexhibitedThe Artist's Studio) and 1784 (the yearJacques-Louis Davidcompleted his paintingThe Oath of the Horatii).[7]In the words of art historianH. 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."[7]

Multi-colored portrait of a far eastern courtesan with elaborate hair ornamentation, colorful robelike garment, and a border depicting marshland waters and reeds.
Vincent van Gogh,Courtesan (afterEisen)(1887),Van Gogh Museum
Portrait of a tree with blossoms and with far eastern alphabet letters both in the portrait and along the left and right borders.
Vincent van Gogh,The Blooming Plumtree (afterHiroshige)(1887),Van Gogh Museum
Portrait of a man of a bearded man facing forward, holding his own hands in his lap; wearing a hat, blue coat, beige collared shirt, and brown pants; sitting in front of a background with various tiles of far eastern and nature-themed art.
Vincent van Gogh,Portrait of Père Tanguy(1887),Musée Rodin

The strands of thought that eventually led to modern art can be traced back to theEnlightenment.[b]The modern art criticClement Greenberg,for instance, calledImmanuel Kant"the first real Modernist" but also drew a distinction: "The Enlightenment criticized from the outside.... Modernism criticizes from the inside."[12]TheFrench Revolutionof 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 historianErnst Gombrichcalled a "self-consciousness that made people select the style of their building as one selects the pattern of a wallpaper."[13]

The pioneers of modern art wereRomantics,RealistsandImpressionists.[14][failed verification]By the late 19th century, additional movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to emerge:post-ImpressionismandSymbolism.

Influences upon these movements were varied: from exposure to Eastern decorative arts, particularlyJapanese printmaking,to the coloristic innovations ofTurnerandDelacroix,to a search for morerealismin the depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such asJean-François Millet.The advocates of realism stood against theidealismof the tradition-boundacademic artthat enjoyed public and official favor.[15]The most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions or through large public exhibitions of their 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 that 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.[16]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.[17]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, the 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[edit]

Pablo PicassoLes Demoiselles d'Avignon1907,Museum of Modern Art,New York
Henri Matisse,The Dance I,1909,Museum of Modern Art,New York

Among the movements that flowered in the first decade of the 20th century wereFauvism,Cubism,Expressionism,andFuturism.

Futurism took off in Italy a couple years beforeWorld War Iwith the publication ofFilippo Tommaso Marinetti'sFuturist Manifesto.Benedetta Cappa Marinetti,wife of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, created the second wave of the artistic movement started by her husband. "Largely thanks to Benedetta, her husband F.T. Marinetti re orchestrated the shifting ideologies of Futurism to embrace feminine elements of intuition, spirituality, and the mystical forces of the earth."[18]She painted up until his death and spent the rest of her days tending to the spread and growth of this period in Italian art, which celebrated technology, speed and all things new.

During the years between 1910 and the end of World War I and after the heyday ofcubism,several movements emerged in Paris.Giorgio de Chiricomoved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his brother Andrea (the poet and painter known asAlberto Savinio). Through his brother, he met Pierre Laprade, a member of the jury at theSalon d'Automnewhere he exhibited three of his dreamlike works:Enigma of the Oracle,Enigma of an AfternoonandSelf-Portrait.In 1913 he exhibited his work at theSalon des Indépendantsand Salon d'Automne, and his work was noticed byPablo Picasso,Guillaume Apollinaire,and several others. His compelling and mysterious paintings are considered instrumental to the early beginnings ofSurrealism.Song of Love(1914) is one of the most famous works by de Chirico and is an early example of thesurrealiststyle, though it was painted ten years before the movement was "founded" byAndré Bretonin 1924. TheSchool of Paris,centered inMontparnasseflourished between the two world wars.

World War I brought an end to this phase but indicated the beginning of manyanti-artmovements, such asDada,including the work ofMarcel Duchamp,and ofSurrealism.Artist groups likede StijlandBauhausdeveloped new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design, and art education.

Modern art was introduced to the United States with theArmory Showin 1913 and through European artists who moved to the U.S. during World War I.

After World War II[edit]

It was only afterWorld War II,however, that the U.S. became the focal point of new artistic movements.[19]The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence ofAbstract Expressionism,Color field painting,Conceptual artistsofArt & Language,Pop art,Op art,Hard-edge painting,Minimal art,Lyrical Abstraction,Fluxus,Happening,video art,Postminimalism,Photorealismand various other movements. In the late 1960s and the 1970s,Land art,performance art,conceptual art, and other new art forms attracted the attention of curators and critics, at the expense of more traditional media.[20]Largerinstallationsandperformancesbecame widespread.

By the end of the 1970s, when cultural critics began speaking of "the end of painting" (the title of a provocative essay written in 1981 byDouglas Crimp),new media arthad become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means such asvideo art.[21]Painting assumed renewed importance in the 1980s and 1990s, as evidenced by the rise ofneo-expressionismand the revival offigurative painting.[22]

Towards the end of the 20th century, many artists and architects started questioning the idea of "the modern" and created typicallyPostmodern works.[23]

Art movements and artist groups[edit]

(Roughly chronological with representative artists listed.)

19th century[edit]

Early 20th century (before World War I)[edit]

World War I to World War II[edit]

After World War II[edit]

Notable modern art exhibitions and museums[edit]

For a comprehensive list, seeMuseums of modern art.

Austria[edit]

Belgium[edit]

Brazil[edit]

Colombia[edit]

Croatia[edit]

Ecuador[edit]

Finland[edit]

France[edit]

Germany[edit]

India[edit]

Iran[edit]

Ireland[edit]

Israel[edit]

Italy[edit]

Mexico[edit]

Netherlands[edit]

Norway[edit]

Poland[edit]

Qatar[edit]

Romania[edit]

Russia[edit]

Serbia[edit]

Spain[edit]

Sweden[edit]

Taiwan[edit]

United Kingdom[edit]

Ukraine[edit]

United States[edit]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^"One way of understanding the relation of the terms 'modern,' 'modernity,' and 'Modernism' is that aesthetic modernism is a form of art characteristic of high or actualized late modernity, that is, of that period in which social, economic, and cultural life in the widest sense [was] revolutionized by modernity... [this means] that Modernist art is scarcely thinkable outside the context of the modernized society of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Social modernity is the home of Modernist art, even where that art rebels against it." — Lawrence E. Cahoone[6]
  2. ^"In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries momentum began to gather behind a newviewof the world, which would eventually create a newworld,the modern world. "— Lawrence E. Cahoone[11]

References[edit]

  1. ^Atkins 1997,pp.118–119.
  2. ^Gombrich 1995,p.557.
  3. ^Clement 1996,p. 114.
  4. ^Scobie 1988,pp.103–107.
  5. ^John-Steiner 2006,p.69.
  6. ^Cahoone 1996,p.13.
  7. ^abcdArnason & Prather 1998,p.17.
  8. ^Lubow, Arthur (2003-07-27)."The Secret of the Black Paintings".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.Retrieved2024-04-28.
  9. ^Danto, Arthur C. (2004-03-01)."FRANCISCO DE GOYA".Artforum.Retrieved2024-04-28.
  10. ^"The unflinching eye".The Guardian.2003-10-04.ISSN0261-3077.Retrieved2024-04-28.
  11. ^Cahoone 1996,p.27.
  12. ^Greenberg 1982,p.5.
  13. ^Gombrich 1995,p.477.
  14. ^Arnason & Prather 1998,p.22.
  15. ^Corinth et al. 1996,p. 25.
  16. ^Cogniat 1975,p. 61.
  17. ^Cogniat 1975,pp. 43–49.
  18. ^Conaty, Siobhan M. (2009)."Benedetta Cappa Marinetti and the Second Phase of Futurism".Woman's Art Journal.30(1): 19–28 – via JSTOR.
  19. ^Saunders 2013.
  20. ^Mullins 2006,p. 14.
  21. ^Mullins 2006,p. 9.
  22. ^Mullins 2006,pp. 14–15.
  23. ^Jencks 1987,p.[page needed].
  24. ^Lander 2006.

Sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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