MODERN ART

Introduction
◦ n all of human history, art has mirrored life in the community,
society, and the world in
◦ all its colors, lines, shapes, and forms. The same has been true in
the last two centuries, with world events and global trends being
reflected in the art movements. The decades from 1900 to the
present have seen the human race living in an ever- shrinking
planet.The 20th century saw a boom in the interchange of ideas,
beliefs, values, and lifestyles that continues to bring the citizens of
the world closer together.
Technical breakthroughs
From the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s, the world zoomed
into the Electronic
Age in the mid-1900s, then into the present Cyberspace Age. In
just over 100 years, humans went from hand-cranked telephones
to hands-free mobile phones, from the
first automobiles to inter-planetary space vehicles, from local radio
broadcasting to
international news coverage via satellite, from vaccinations
against polio and smallpox
to laser surgery
Social, political, and environmental
changes
◦ There has been migration across the globe, allowing different cultures,
languages, skills, and even physical characteristics of different races to
intermingle like never before.
◦ The 20th century also suffered through two World Wars, and several regional
wars in
◦ Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. There was the Great Depression of the 1930s,
and
◦ the Asian economic crisis of the 1990s. Considered the modern-day plague,
AIDS has
◦ afflicted millions the world over, while millions more continue to live in hunger,
disease, and poverty. Environmental destruction has also become a major
concern.
Effects on the world of art
◦ The art movements of the late 19th century to the 20th century captured
and
◦ expressed all these and more. Specifically, these were the movements
known as
◦ impressionism and expressionism. While earlier periods of art had a quite
set
◦ conventions as to the style, technique, and treatment of their subjects,
impressionists
◦ and expressionists conveyed their ideas and feelings in bold, innovative
ways. These
◦ were the exciting precursors of the modern art of the 21st century.
Impressionism
◦ was an art movement that emerged in the second half of the 19th
◦ century among a group of Paris-based artists. The duration of the impressionist
◦ movement itself was quite short, less than 20 years from 1872 to the mid-1880s. But
◦ it had a tremendous impact and influence on the painting styles that followed, such as
◦ neo-impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism, and cubism—and even the artistic
◦ styles and movements of today.
◦ The name impressionism was coined from the title of a work by French painter
Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant (in English, Impression, Sunrise).
Color and Light
The painting conventions and techniques of earlier art periods were very much
concerned with line, form, and composition. In contrast, the impressionists painted
with freely brushed colors that conveyed more of a visual effect than a detailed
rendering of the subject. They used short “broken” strokes that were intentionally
made visible to the viewer. They also often placed pure unmixed colors side by side,
rather than blended smoothly or shaded. The result was a feeling of energy and
intensity, as the colors appeared to shift and move—again, just as they do in reality.

“Everyday” Subjects
Impressionists also began to break away from the creation of formally posed portraits
and grandiose depictions of mythical, literary, historical, or religious subjects. They
ventured into capturing scenes of life around them, household objects, landscapes and
seascapes, houses, cafes, and buildings. They presented ordinary people seemingly
caught off-guard doing everyday tasks, at work or at leisure, or doing nothing at all.
And they were not made to look beautiful or lifelike, as body parts could be distorted
and facial features merely suggested by a few strokes of the brush.
Painting Outdoors
The location in which the impressionists painted was also different. Previously, still
lifes, portraits, and landscapes were usually painted inside a studio. However, the
impressionists found that they could best capture the ever-changing effects of light on
color by painting outdoors in natural lighting

Open Composition
Impressionist painting also moved away from the formal, structured approach to
placing and positioning their subjects. They experimented with unusual visual angles,
sizes of objects that appeared out of proportion, off-center placement, and empty
spaces on the canvas.

The Influence of Photography

Photography was in its early stages at this time as well. As it gained popularity,
photography inspired impressionists to capture fleeting moments of action, whether in
landscapes or in the day-to-day lives of people. But whereas camera snapshots
provided objective, true-to-life images, the artists were able to offer a subjective view
of their subjects
Claude Monet
Claude Monet (1840-1926) was one of the founders of the impressionist movement
along with his friends Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille. He was
the most prominent of the group; and is considered the most influential figure in the
movement. Monet is best known for his landscape paintings, particularly those
depicting his beloved flower gardens and water lily ponds at his home in Giverny.
Aguste Renoir
Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), along with Claude Monet, was one of the central
figures of the impressionist movement. His early works were snapshots of real life,
full of sparkling color and light. By the mid-1880s, however, Renoir broke away from
the impressionist movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits
of actual people and figure paintings.
Paul Cezanne
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) was a French artist and post-impressionist painter. His
work exemplified the transition from late 19th-century impressionism to a new and
radically different world of art in the 20th century—paving the way for the next
revolutionary art movement known as expressionism.
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a post-impressionist painter from The
Netherlands. His works were remarkable for their strong, heavy brush strokes, intense
emotions, and colors that appeared to almost pulsate with energy. Van Gogh’s
striking style was to have a far-reaching influence on 20th century art, with his works
becoming among the most recognized in the world.
Expressionism: A Bold New Movement
In the early 1900s, there arose in the Western art world a movement that came to be
known as expressionism. Expressionist artists created works with more emotional
force, rather than with realistic or natural images. To achieve this, they distorted outlines, applied strong
colors, and exaggerated forms. They worked more with their imagination
and feelings, rather than with what their eyes saw in the physical world.
Among the various styles that arose within the expressionist art movements were:
neoprimitivism
fauvism
dadaism
surrealism
social realism
Neoprimitivism was an art style that incorporated
elements from the native arts of the South Sea
Islanders and the wood carvings of African tribes
which suddenly became popular at that time. Among
the Western artists who adapted these elements
wasAmedeo Modigliani, who used the oval faces and
elongated shapes of African art in both his sculptures
and paintings.
Fauvism was a style that used bold, vibrant
colors and visual distortions. Its
name was derived from les fauves (“wild beasts”),
referring to the group of
French expressionist painters who painted in this
style. Perhaps the most known
among them was Henri Matisse
Dadaism was a style characterized by dream fantasies,
memory images, and visual
tricks and surprises—as in the paintings of Marc Chagall and Giorgio
de Chirico below. Although the works appeared playful, the
movement arose from the pain that a group
of European artists felt after the suffering brought by World War I.
Wishing to protest
against the civilization that had brought on such horrors, these artists
rebelled against
established norms and authorities, and against the traditional styles in
art. They chose
the child’s term for hobbyhorse, dada, to refer to their new “non-style
Surrealism was a style that depicted an
illogical, subconscious dream world
beyond
the logical, conscious, physical one. Its
name came from the term “super
realism,”
with its artworks clearly expressing a
departure from reality—as though the
Social Realism.expressed the artist’s role in social
reform. Here, artists used their works to protest against
the injustices, inequalities, immorality, and ugliness of
the human condition. In different periods of history,
social realists have
addressed different issues: war, poverty, corruption,
industrial and environmental hazards, and more—in
the hope of raising people’s
awareness and pushing society to seek reforms.
Abstractionism
nother group of artistic styles emerged at the same time as the expressionist
movement. It had the same spirit of freedom of expression and openness that
characterized life in the 20th century, but it differed from expressionism in certain
ways. This group of styles was known as abstractionism. The abstractionist movement arose from the
intellectual points of view in the 20th
century. In the world of science, physicists were formulating a new view of the
universe, which resulted in the concepts of space-time and relativity. This
intellectualism was reflected even in art. While expressionism was emotional, abstractionism was logical
and rational. It involved analyzing, detaching, selecting, and simplifying.
In previous centuries, works of art were a reflection,
in one way or another, of the outside world. In 20th
century abstractionism, natural appearances became
unimportant. Artists reduced a scene into geometrical
shapes, patterns, lines, angles, textures and swirls of
color. The resulting works ranged from
representational abstractionism, depicting stillrecognizable subjects (as in the artwork on the left), to
pure abstractionism, where no recognizable
subject could be discerned.
Cubism
The cubist style derived its name from the cube, a three- dimensional geometric figure composed of strictly
measured
lines, planes, and angles. Cubist artworks were, therefore, a play
of planes and angles on a flat surface. Foremost among the cubists
was Spanish painter/sculptor Pablo Picasso (right)

Futurism
The movement known as futurism began in Italy in
the early 1900s. As the name implies, the futurists
created art for a fast-paced, machine-propelled age.
They admired the motion, force, speed, and strength
of mechanical forms. Thus, their works depicted the
dynamic sensation of all these—as can be seen in the
works of Italian painter Gino Severini.
Mechanical Style
As a result of the futurist movement, what became known as the mechanical style
emerged. In this style, basic forms such as planes, cones, spheres, and cylinders all fit
together precisely and neatly in their appointed places.

Nonobjectivism
The logical geometrical conclusion of abstractionism came in the style known as
nonobjectivism. From the very term “non-object,” works in this style did not make
use of figures or even representations of figures. They did not refer to recognizable
objects or forms in the outside world.