What is modern art?
Modern art is an extensive movement that needs a lot of time and thoughts to be dedicated in order to be somehow understood, experienced or felt.
It is difficult to say where modern art ends and contemporary begins. People still cannot agree on the decade of when modern becomes contemporary. For sake of simplicity, modern art is between 1860 to about 1950/1960. If you want to know more about contemporary art, just go back to this previous article “Some thoughts on contemporary art”.
What does Modern Art really mean?
Modern art is the overarching term given to a variety of movements. As the name already suggests Modern art brought about the modernity of art. From centuries of painting nude Venuses with pale skin and idealised proportions to painting naked women with all their faults and glories. It was the split from the academic remains stemming from the renaissance.
The most significant change that happened was that artists left their studios. They moved away from the predetermined symbolisms of emotions and colour and shapes. It was so significant yet so simple. They broke the rules by painting what they saw rather than painting what ought to be there.
Impressionism:
Modern art was kicked off by Impressionism. Mostly defined by big names such as Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Seurat and the lonely Cezanne with his endless paintings of Mont Sainte- Victoire as well as other artists hanging about Paris. As the name Impressionism hints they were transfixed by the notion of painting the impression of the moment. The real moment. This is where the perception of the artist starts to play a key role. Especially noticeable by Monet capturing the sunsets the way he sees them, with the colours he sees. As they were painting outside the brushstrokes move away from the premeditated, studious approach to the free flowing brush strokes emphasizing natural light and movement. People against the movement would dismiss impressionists artworks as sketches on canvas.
Post-Impressionism:
Of course after impressionism followed post-impressionism. Instead of focusing on the visual reality of their subject they focused on capturing the subject/object’s essence. Its most famous artists are Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh and some might even say Seurat with his pointillism but that is up for debate.
Fauvism:
Then early 20th century, Les Fauves appeared, their short lived yet very influential movement was called Fauvism. The name was coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles who would later also coin the term ‘cubists’. The artist that was in the middle of this group was Henri Matisse. They, so to speak, liberated colour. Hence people thought they were like wild beasts going rampant with colour.
Expressionism:
At the beginning of the 20th century in Germany emerged the expressionism movement. It followed fauvism’s bright colours. Its most representable names are Edvard Munch, Paul Klee, Amedeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, etc. They believed that feelings and emotions should take precedence to thought. Therefore they were expressive and painting without thought but guided by their emotions.
Cubism:
Cubism, spearheaded by Picasso but a movement of which Cezanne was the grandfather, is the first turn of art towards abstraction. Its deconstructed forms can easily be seen in one of all time most popular artists Pablo Picasso. Others include Georges Braque, Fernand Leger and Juan Gris.
Surrealism:
In the early 20s, Andre Breton introduced surrealism to the world and showed how everyday objects can be modified by the unconscious thoughts of the artist. They were very organized as they even wrote a manifesto describing what it is to be a surrealist artist. Look up the works of the already mentioned Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp.
So, what is Modern Art?
Modern art is at the core an era that was about modernising art and the concept of what art is. They were all about breaking free of boundaries and constraints. As much as it brought about artistic and visual change it also brought about philosophical changes. It shaped the way we see art now.
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