MODULE 11: Modern and Contemporary Art

Abstract Expressionism

• Common characteristics are gestural techniques, mark-making, and spontaneity.

Abstract Expressionism

• Famous artists Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock advocated this art movement.

Abstract Expressionism: Action Painters

• Use expressive brush strokes in their canvases

Abstract Expressionism: Color Field Painters

• Fill their canvases with large areas of a single color.

Pop Art

• It drew inspiration, sources, and even materials from commercial culture

• One of the most critical statements against this art was its use of very banal and low objects and subject matter.

Pop Art

• It began as an uprising against the leading approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art should be

Optical Art

• Depends on creating an illusion to inform the experience of the artwork using color, pattern, and other perspective tricks.

Photorealism

• Painstaking attention to detail is aimed, without asserting an artist’s style.

Photorealism

• The artists projected photographs onto a canvas to be captured with precision and accuracy with the aid of an airbrush

Conceptual Art

• Emphasizes ideas and ignores the actual physical appearance

• Many considered it a prank

Installation Art

• It involves the use of a room or warehouse

• It allows the viewers to enter and move around the arranged space and interact with its elements

Earth Art

• It is concerned with the landscape manipulation and the materials used, taken directly from the ground or vegetation

• A spin-off of installation art

Street Art

• Product of graffiti in the 1980’s

• Artworks are not traditional in format but are informed by illustrative, painterly, and print techniques and even a variety of media

Street Art

• There are no governing rules in its production and interaction

• It needs space

Street Art

• Some examples are murals, stenciled images, installative/sculptural objects usually out of common objects and techniques.