In 1911, the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky produced what was considered the first abstract painting, titled Bild Mit Kries (Picture With a Circle). The painting was, no doubt, a seminal milestone in the evolution of modern art. But what Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, were doing at the time — seemingly inventing modern art — had a direct correlation with a much broader transformation of human society. The early twentieth century avant-garde of modern artists were reflecting on, and responding to, seismic cultural shifts.
A tsunami-like wave of evolution of the nature of human existence began sweeping the civilized world in the 1800’s. By the early 1900’s, modern artists were likewise swept up in this evolution. Inventions such as railroad transportation, and telegraphic communication, had been altering people’s conceptions of time and distance. The industrial age had brought with it a wholesale obsoletion of the very idea of traditions. The ideas of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein were upending ancient precepts of the nature of man and the universe.
It is in understanding these historic shifts, which the early modern artists were witnessing in real time, that allows us to begin to understand the nature of modern art. Particularly, it can help us understand why so much of modern art can look so damn weird to average folks.
Plainly put, modern art is defined by its abandonment of tradition, any tradition, particularly as it applies to realism in visual representation.
So it was, in 1906, when Matisse unleashed his oil-on-canvas Le Bonheur de Vivre (which now hangs in the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia), Parisians freaked out at the sight of it. Paintings of nudes lounging in idyllic arcadian settings were nothing new. But everything else about this large canvas was wild stuff: The shocking colors! The surreal bodies! The alien-planet foliage! People and stuff just don’t look like that! What’s up with that??!!!
What was up with that, was, Matisse and his fellow modern artists were no longer constrained by traditional notions of what people and stuff “look” like. Painting what people and stuff “look” like, was now considered classical art. Matisse painted the scene to convey what it would have felt like, as opposed to what it might have looked like. This concept became a keystone in the foundation of modern art.
Picasso took one look at Matisse’s work of cultural revolution, and was struck by the impulse to one-up his friend, and he did. In doing so, he pushed the cultural revolution of modern art into a whole new phase: Cubism. Picasso’s riposte, was a painting titled Le Demoiselles d’Avignon, and it sparked a genuine uproar. Five nude prostitutes preen in confrontational poses at the viewer. Any pretense of visual perspective has been vanquished by the artist, in favor of a two-dimensional picture plane which is nonetheless compositionally wild, savage, even. The word around Paris was, even Picasso’s comrade Matisse was upset by Le Demoiselles.
So Kandinsky’s 1911 abstract painting Bild Mit Kries was just Kandinsky taking the next logical step in the evolution of modern art: If realism in visual representation was a traditional trope of pre-modern art to be disregarded, why not do away with representation itself? This subsequent vanguard move by Kandinsky would open the floodgates for modern artists to essentially invent their own spiritual languages for expressing the inner-life of humankind. This would become another of the foundational ideas of modern art.
Article by artmobia
