Modern & Contemporary Western Art Movements Study Notes
Technological & Historical breakthroughs have significantly influenced the development of various art movements, leading to new forms of expression and techniques that reflect contemporary society.
Rapid progress from the Industrial Revolution \text{(late\ 1800s)} - machines, factories→ Electronic Age \text{(mid-1900s)} - electronic devices→ Cyberspace Age \text{(present)} - modern, digital technologies in just over 100 years
Humans went from: hand-cranked telephones → hands-free mobile phones
Transport: first automobiles → inter-planetary space vehicles
Media: local radio broadcasting → international news coverage via satellite
Medicine: vaccinations against polio and smallpox → laser surgery
ART FORMS IN THE 20TH CENTURY
Modern art began after the camera was invented.
Photographs pictured things exactly as they were.
Some artists saw no reason to do the same thing.
They no longer had to paint portraits so they would remember how they looked long ago.
Artists of the new era try to break away from the traditional techniques and styles.
Every age in history has had its modern artists. -
They are most often young people with new ideas different from the ones their teachers were teaching.
A camera can do the job better.
Modern art” as we define today, is a particular kind of art. It is sometimes not representational. It doesn’t have to look like anything. It may be just a blend of colors representing nothing more than the way the artist feels.
HISTORY of Modern Art
"Modern" = art that often rejects representation; may be pure color/shape to convey feeling
Paul Cézanne
French painter who made the first breakthrough in modern art
influencing many artists with his innovative use of form and color, laying the groundwork for movements such as Cubism and Abstract Expressionism.
French painter; worked slowly and carefully, destroyed many of his works until reaching a new kind of art
he felt: shapes in painting counted most, changed the shape of objects thought it would make a better pic.
Bright colors, let his brushstrokes show in his finished pictures; bridge from Impressionism to 20^{\text{th}}-century abstraction
led other artist to break the tradition : in artsand explore new forms of expression, paving the way for movements such as Cubism and Fauvism.
Key work: Still Life with Apples
MOVEMENTS OF THE MODERN ERA FROM THE 20TH TO THE 21ST CENTURY
Impressionism (Paris, 1860\text{s} continued into the Early 20th C.)
focused: effects of light on things at different times of day
Impressionists use: unblended slashes of pure colo placed together:create a mode or impression of a scene
Artist painted landscapes "en plein air" (outdoors) under natural changing light at diff. times of the day
Impression: coined from the title of a work by french painter (claude monet) ; Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise)
Name from Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise\text{(1872)}
MODERN ART
1870 - major art movement in europe emerged the IMPRESSIONISM : Start with a group of french painters
Major artists & sample works
Claude Monet – leader, most prominent, considered the most influential, founder along with his friends August Renoir.
known for his landscape; depicting his flower garden & water-lily ponds at his home in Giverny (Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899), La Promenade (1875)
Auguste Renoir – one of the central figures, he is along with claude monet.
Works: (Dancer (1874), Girls at the Piano, A girl with a watering can (1876)
Early works;snapshots of real life, full of sparkling color and light
mid 1880s; Renoir broke away from the impressionist movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits of actual people and figure paintings.
Édouard Manet – One of the first 19th century artists to depict modern-life subjects;
He was a key figure in the transition Realism→Impressionism; his work is considered as making the birth of modern art
Works: (Argenteuil \text{(1874)}, Bar at the Folies-Bergère \text{(1882)})
Post-Impressionism (1880\text{s}–1905)
After the brief yet highly influential period of impressionism, an outgrowth movement known as post-impressionism emerged.
European artist continued using the basic qualities of the impressionist. Expanded and experimented in bold new ways: geometric approach, fragmented objects, distorting peoples faces and body parts, applying coloes that were not realistic and natural
Post-impressionism artist were influenced by the impressionists.
modified the latter into modes of personal expressions
artist use bright new colors;showed his strong feelings : artist used bright screaming colors, disregarding natural colors of the object to express emotions powerfully
images were often disorted
Two of the foremost post- impressionist
Paul Cézanne – french artist and post-impressionist painter. 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.
Work: Harlequin (1888-1890), Boy in a Red Vest (1890 oil on canvas), (Curtain, Jug, and Fruit)
Vincent van Gogh – Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, most famous.
Painted to express strong feeling, wmotions, intense/strong violent
Works: remarkable for the strong, heavy brush strokes, intense emotions, colors:almost pulsate with energy;(Bedroom at Arles \text{(1888)}, Starry Night)
Paul Gauguin – same style with van gogh
went from south pacific to paint
simplified scenes to make patterns
NeoImpressionism / Pointillism
Devised by french painter Georges Seurat
Applied colors in small dots/pointilism
Work (White Night Melbourne, The Beach at Heist \text{(1891)}
Expressionism:BOLD new movement (Germany & Austria, early 20^{\text{th}})
More emotional forces rather than realistic or natural images; distorted outlines, strong color and exaggerated forms
Artists painted from imagination & inner feelings, not direct from what their eyes saw in the physical world
Sub-styles
Neoprimitivism – incorporated elements from the native artsof the South SeaIslanders and wood carvings of african tribe(popular at that time)
Western artist; Amedeo Modigliani’s: used elongated shapes of african art, oval faces in his sculpture and paintings: (Yellow Sweater \text{(1919)})
Fauvism – Henri Matisse, Vassily Kandinsky loved colors: Earned the name Les Fuaves or Wild Animals
Used bright colors, strong lines, patterns ( unusual color: joyous feelings of the viewers)
Work: (Woman with a Hat \text{(1905)}, Dance..), (Blue Window (1911)
Dadaism – The Dada movement attacked established values: it declared the absurdity of all conventions and destroyed the notion of art itself.
Marcel Duchamp: prove that any ready made object could attain the level of work of art.
Work: Urinal to fountain & Transition of Virgin into a Bride, Marc Chagall and Giorgio de Chirico
Produces shock and the confusion of the audience
a style characterized by dream fantasies, memory images, and visual tricks and surprise
They chose the child’s term for hobbyhorse, dada, to refer to their new “non-style.”
Surrealism – art characterized by the expression of the activities of the unconscious mind, dream elements.
depicted an illogical, subconscious dream; world that seemed to exist beyond the logical, conscious, physical one.
came from the word “super realism”;artworks expressing a departure from reality
artist: dreaming, seeing illusions, or experiencing a mental state
Many surrealist works depicted morbid or gloomy subjects: Salvador Dalí’s Persistence of Memory \text{(1931)}, Sleep Batman Sleep; morbid or illogical scenes
Social Realism – expressed the artist’s role in social reform
artists used their works to protest against the injustices, inequalities, immorality, and ugliness of the human condition. social realist addressed diff. issues;in the hope of raising people’s awareness and pushing society to seek reforms.
Ben Shahn; “Miners’ Wives” :conditons faced by coal miners after atragic accident killed 111 workers (1947 Illinois coal disaster) leaving their families mourning.
Abstractionism (logical/rational counterpart to Expressionism)
emerged at the same time as the expressionist movement.
had the same spirit of freedom of expression and openness that characterize d life in the 20th century, but it differed from expressionism in certain ways.
s intellectualism was reflected even in art. While expressionism was emotional, abstracti onism was logical and rational.
Involves:analyzing, detaching, selecting, simplifying
In 20th century abstractionism, natural appearances became unimportant : artists reduced a scene into geometrical shap es, patterns, lines, angles, textures and swirls of color
Two Types
Representational abstraction – depicting still recognizable subject
Pure abstraction – no recognizable subject
Major art styles within Abstractionism
Cubism (Paris) – most influential, artist tried to show all the sides of an object, reduces recognizable images to geometric forms or so often showed objects from several positions at one time, and often made opaque forms transparent
modern artist of cubism; Pablo Picasso (Girl Before a Mirror \text{(1932)}, Factory, Horta de Ebbo, Portraint of pablo picasso)
Futurism (Italy) – italian art movement :hoped to glorify the machine age, speed travel and technology
name implies, the futurists created art for a fast-paced, machinepropelled age
admired the motion, force, speed, and strength of mechanical forms
;Gino Severini’s Armored Train in Action \text{(1915)} Futurism Art Movement - Boha Glass )
Mechanical Style – As a result of the futurist movement, what became know n as the mechanical style emerged. Basic forms such as planes, cones, spheres, and cylinders all fit together : brightened only by the use of primary colors. Otherwise, they are lifeless. • Even human figures are mere outlines, rendered purposely without expression.
Fernand Léger works:The City \text{(1919)}, Mechanical Composition
Non-objectivism / Neoplasticism – did not make use of figures or even representations of figures.
not refer to recognizable objects or forms in the outside world.
pure lines, shapes and primary colors seeking balance, unity, stablity : Colors were mainly black, white, primary colors
; Piet Mondrian: Dutch painter, a practonitier of this art
Work: New York City \text{(1942)}
Abstract Expressionism
1920s and 1930s; aspiring young American painters, sculptors, and writers sailed to Europe to expand their horizons; But during the dark days of World War II(1941-1945), a reverse migration brought European scientists, artist etc to American shores.
New York - became a haven for the newly-arrived artist and their american counterparts
The result was the establishment of what came to be known as “The New York School”—as opposed to “The School of Paris” that had been very influential in Europe.
Yound artist succeeses in creating their own synthesis of Europes cubist and surrealist styles: style known as abstract expressionism.
Formed via European émigrés & American artists → "New York School"
artist express es his feelings spontaneously and without reference to any representation of physical reality.
Jackson Pollock is an exponent of this movement.
Action Painting – known as “ action painting
huge canvases spread on the floor, splattering, squirting, and dribbling paint with (seemingly) no pre-planned pattern or design in mind.
Jackson Pollock dripped & flung paint on floor-laid canvases (Autumn Rhythm \text{(1950)}) → “energy made visible”; first one-man show New York 1943 focused worlwide attention
Color Field Painting – A style of abstract painting that focuses on large areas of color rather than vigorous brushwork (unlike action painting)
Emphasis on color saturation(purity, vividness, intensity).
Aimed to create emotional or meditative effects through color.
Vibrant color: mark rothko, Barnett Newman
intimate “pictograph” approach, filling the canvas with repeating picture fragments or symbols: Adolph Gottlieb, Lee Krasner
KEY ARTIST
Mark Rothko (Couleur Blind),
Barnett Newman (Vir Heroicus Sublimis \text{(1950–1951)}),
Adolph Gottlieb,
Helen Frankenthaler,
Kenneth Noland
early 1960s, the momentum of The New York School slowed down: e, a new crop of artists came on the scene usinglighter treatment and flashes of humor, even irreverence, in their artworks.
The movements they brought about have come to be called:
Neo dadaism and pop art
conceptual art
op art (optical art)
the new realism
Neo-Dadaism & Pop Art (1960\text{s})
Like the dadaist movement that arose after World War I, the neodadaism of the 1960s wanted to make reforms in traditional values
unlike the angry, serious tone of the original dadaists: neodadaists is nonsense and wanted to laugh at the world
easily recognizable objects and images from the emerging consumer society—as in the prints of Andy Warhol
Inspirations: ads, celebrities, comics, billboards
Andy Warhol – Marilyn Diptych \text{(1962)}
pop (from “popular”) art emerged 1950s flourished in the 1960s (america and britain)
Different cultures and countries contributed to the movement during the 1960s and 70s
Roy Lichtenstein; american pop artist; 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in this new art movement
Works – Whaam! \text{(1963)}, comic-strip style; 64 Blocks installation, The Marilyn Diptych (1962) is a silkscreen painting by Am erican pop artist Andy Warh ol depicting Marilyn Monroe.
Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist among others
Op Art (Optical Art)
Victor Vasarely
Hungarian-french artist
(“grandfather” and leader of Op Art); early piece Zebra \text{(1937)} ;erliest example of op art
Characteristics
The elements (shapes, color, line) are carefully chosen to fit the design
As the eye moved over a diff. segments of the image, perfectly stable components appeared to shift back and forth.
A form of action painting with the action taking place in the viewer’s eye
Contemporary & Site-Specific Works
Contemporary art came onto the scene after the modernist and postmodernist art movements.
Cordillera Labyrinth – Roberto Villanueva (Philippines)
Go To Room 117 – Sid Gomez Hildawa
Spoonbridge and Cherry – Claes Oldenburg (massive pop-iconic sculpture, Minneapolis)
Geographic Origins Summary
Impressionism – Paris, France
Expressionism – Germany & Austria
Abstractionism – Paris, France
Pop/Popular Art – United States & Britain
Conceptual Connections & Significance
Each movement either embraced or rejected preceding advances (camera, industry, psychology)
Shift from objective depiction (Impressionists capturing light) → subjective emotion (Expressionism) → pure form & concept (Abstraction, Abstract Expressionism) → social critique & mass-culture dialogue (Pop Art)
Ethical/Philosophical threads
Dada & Neo-Dada question definition of art
Social Realism addresses injustice, advocating reform
Surrealism probes subconscious, aligning with Freud’s theories
Abstract trends echo scientific rationalism & modern physics (space, time, relativity)
Practical impact
Influenced design, architecture, advertising, digital media
Set foundations for contemporary installations and multimedia practices
Key Terms & Concepts (Quick Reference)
En plein air – outdoor painting under natural light
Impasto – thick, textured paint application
Readymade – ordinary object presented as art
Pointillism – dot-based color application
Pictograph – canvas filled with repeated symbols/images (Color Field variant)
Diptych – artwork composed of two panels
Representative Timeline (major milestones)
1860\text{s} – Birth of Impressionism in Paris
1870\text{–}1880\text{s} – Monet, Renoir, Manet peak
1880\text{s} – Post-Impressionism; Van Gogh, Cézanne
1905 – Fauvism exhibits in Paris ("Les Fauves")
1910\text{s} – Cubism & Futurism flourish; Duchamp’s Dada provocations
1920\text{s} – Surrealism formalized; American artists study in Europe
1940\text{s} – Abstract Expressionism emerges in New York
1960\text{s} – Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Op Art dominate cultural scene
1980\text{s}–present – Large-scale site installations & pluralistic contemporary forms