In this spirit, its innovations, like the stream-of-consciousness novel, atonal or pantonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art, all had precursors in the 19th century. In painting, during the s and the s and the Great Depression, modernism is defined by Surrealism, late Cubism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Dada, German Expressionism, and Modernist and masterful color painters like Henri Matisse as well as the abstractions of artists like Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky, which characterized the European art scene.
In Germany, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, and others politicized their paintings, foreshadowing the coming of World War II, while in America, modernism is seen in the form of American Scene painting and the social realism and regionalism movements that contained both political and social commentary dominated the art world.
The end of modernism and beginning of postmodernism is a hotly contested issue, though many consider it to have ended roughly around Post-Impression refers to a genre that rejected the naturalism of Impressionism in favor of using color and form in more expressive manners. Post-Impression refers to a genre of painting that rejected the naturalism of Impressionism, in favor of using color and form in more expressive manners.
Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations. For example, they continued using vivid colors, thick application of paint, distinctive brush strokes, and real-life subject matter, but they were also more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort forms for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary colors in their compositions. Post-Impressionism developed from Impressionism. From the s onward, several artists, including Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, envisioned different precepts for the use of color, pattern, form, and line, deriving these new directions from the Impressionist example.
These artists were slightly younger than the Impressionists, and their work contemporaneously became known as Post-Impressionism. Some of the original Impressionist artists also ventured into this new territory.
Camille Pissarro briefly painted in a pointillist manner, and even Monet abandoned strict en plein air painting. Although these cases illustrate the difficulty of assigning labels, the work of the original Impressionist painters may, by definition, be categorized as Impressionism. The Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with the triviality of subject matter and the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings, although they did not agree on the way forward.
Georges Seurat and his followers, for instance, concerned themselves with Pointillism, the systematic use of tiny dots of color. Vincent van Gogh used vibrant colors and swirling brush strokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind.
Hence, although they were often exhibited together, Post-Impressionist artists were not in agreement concerning a cohesive movement, and younger painters in the early 20th century worked in geographically disparate regions and in various stylistic categories, such as Fauvism and Cubism.
He used planes of color and small brushstrokes to form complex fields and convey intense study of his subjects. Later, he became more interested in working from direct observation, gradually developing a light, airy painting style. To this end, he structurally ordered whatever he perceived into simple forms and color planes.
Additionally, his desire to capture the truth of perception led him to explore binocular graphic vision. This exploration rendered slightly different, yet simultaneous, visual perceptions of the same phenomena, providing the viewer with a different aesthetic experience of depth. He later called these works, mostly portraits, une couillarde a coarse word for ostentatious virility.
All in all, works of the Dark Period include several erotic or violent subjects. In , he attracted the attention of collector Victor Chocquet, whose commissions provided some financial relief.
Jas de Bouffan , The lightness of his Impressionist works contrast sharply with his dramatic resignation in his final period of productivity from — This resignation informs several still life paintings that depict skulls as their subject. Pyramid of Skulls , c. A prize for special achievement in the arts was created in his memory. Many would assail this portrayal as morally degenerate; the modernists, on the other hand, would defend themselves by calling it liberating.
Modernism: Characteristics Arising out of the rebellious mood at the beginning of the twentieth century, modernism was a radical approach that yearned to revitalize the way modern civilization viewed life, art, politics, and science. This rebellious attitude that flourished between and had, as its basis, the rejection of European culture for having become too corrupt, complacent and lethargic, ailing because it was bound by the artificialities of a society that was too preoccupied with image and too scared of change.
This dissatisfaction with the moral bankruptcy of everything European led modern thinkers and artists to explore other alternatives, especially primitive cultures. For the Establishment, the result would be cataclysmic; the new emerging culture would undermine tradition and authority in the hopes of transforming contemporary society.
The modernists believed that for an individual to feel whole and a contributor to the re-vitalization of the social process, he or she needed to be free of all the encumbering baggage of hundreds of years of hypocrisy.
The rejection of moral and religious principles was compounded by the repudiation of all systems of beliefs, whether in the arts, politics, sciences or philosophy. No more conventional cookie-cutter forms to be superimposed on human expression.
What were some of the artistic beliefs that the modernists adopted? Ironically, the modernist portrayal of human nature takes place within the context of the city rather than in nature, where it had occurred during the entire 19th-century. At the beginning of the 19th-century, the romantics had idealized nature as evidence of the transcendent existence of God; towards the end of the century, it became a symbol of chaotic, random existence.
Why would the modernists shift their interest from nature and unto the city? The first reason is an obvious one. This is the time when so many left the countryside to make their fortunes in the city, the new capital of culture and technology, the new artificial paradise.
But more importantly, the city is the place where man is dehumanized by so many degenerate forces. Thus, the city becomes the locus where modern man is microscopically focused on and dissected.
In the final analysis, the city becomes a "cruel devourer", a cemetery for lost souls. The Forces That Shaped Modernism. The year ushered a new era that changed the way that reality was perceived and portrayed. Years later this revolutionary new period would come to be known as modernism and would forever be defined as a time when artists and thinkers rebelled against every conceivable doctrine that was widely accepted by the Establishment, whether in the arts, science, medicine, philosophy, etc.
Although modernism would be short-lived, from to , we are still reeling from its influences sixty-five years later. How was modernism such a radical departure from what had preceded it in the past? The modernists were militant about distancing themselves from every traditional idea that had been held sacred by Western civilization, and perhaps we can even go so far as to refer to them as intellectual anarchists in their willingness to vandalize anything connected to the established order.
In order to better understand this modernist iconoclasm, let's go back in time to explore how and why the human landscape was changing so rapidly. By the world was a bustling place transformed by all of the new discoveries, inventions and technological achievements that were being thrust on civilization: electricity, the combustion engine, the incandescent light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, radio, X-rays, fertilizers and so forth. These innovations revolutionized the world in two distinct ways.
For one, they created an optimistic aura of a worldly paradise, of a new technology that was to reshape man into moral perfection. In other words, technology became a new religious cult that held the key to a new utopian dream that would transform the very nature of man. The later reaction against Modernism gave rise to the Post-Modernist movement both in the arts and in philosophy.
Modernism was essentially conceived of as a rebellion against 19th Century academic and historicist traditions and against Victorian nationalism and cultural absolutism , on the grounds that the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life in a modern industrialized world were becoming outdated.
The movement was initially called "avant-garde" , descriptive of its attempt to overthrow some aspect of tradition or the status quo. The term "modernism" itself is derived from the Latin "modo", meaning "just now". The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer did much to debunk 19th century optimism, and characterized the universe as inherently irrational. Many Modernists took a dim view of religion, and cited the theories of Charles Darwin as the true natural order.
Modernist literature sought to explode the confines of realism, and utilized strategies like stream of consciousness monologues.
The theories of Sigmund Freud, with the emphasis on subconscious motivations, was influential to Modernist writers. The Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky explored his characters' mental travails and spiritual anguish, a focus that inspired Modernist writers such as Knut Hamsun, Marcel Proust and James Joyce.
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