Where Have All the “Isms” Gone? or, Why We Don’t We Have Art Movements In The 21st Century

Take any introductory art history survey and you’ll know once you get to the nineteenth century you’re suddenly bombarded by a rapid onslaught of “isms” one right after the other. These are the big art movements of modernism: Impressionism, post-impressionism, pointillism, expressionism, fauvism, cubism, constructivism, and so on. Eventually, once you get to the seventies, these endless “isms” peter out. The last one I personally teach is minimalism, ending in the 1970s.