Is modern art still modern? It technically applies to the period that lasted from the 1860s to the 1970s, so modern art is not modern art anymore, if that makes any sense. Postmodern art came after it and right now, we are living in the post-modern contemporary art era. We have an image of modern art as being something that we don’t really understand and a lot of us don’t consider it to be art. However, the earliest paintings that are considered to be modern are paintings that we would probably view as “normal” art.
Let’s first look at what modern art actually is. Google’s dictionary defines it as “art of a style marked by a significant departure from traditional styles and values, in particular that created between the late 19th and the late 20th centuries”. That is extremely vague and, to my mind, could refer to any type of art that is different to the style that went before it.
Let’s try to unpack it. Modern art is not a style in and of itself. Modern art is an attempt by artists to break the rules that had existed and to experiment with art. Many of the art styles that I have already looked at, such as cubism and impressionism, were both art forms that fall under the umbrella of modern art. Many of the artists that we know from that period, such as Picasso, Monet, Dali, and Andy Warhol were all “modern artists”. All of these people and types of art were the attempts by people to try to express how they were seeing the world. They weren’t rebelling so much as they just wanted to show things in a different way. They were trying to show how a scene felt, rather than just how it looked.
When modern art started, the world had undergone serious change in a very short period of time. Since the Industrial Revolution, society had revolutionized itself and people were living lives that probably couldn’t have been imagined a century earlier. The way they lived, earned their living, and even socialized had all changed. Society had been ripped apart and rebuilt in a way never before seen. It stands to reason that there would be a new art style for this new society. The people who were living through it saw things in different ways to the artists of the past and just like the engineers and the natural scientists that were constantly experimenting, they set out to experiment as well.
Modern art began in 1860 and Edouard Manet is said to be the very first modern artist and his 1863 painting, Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe (lunch on the grass) is said to be the very first modern art painting. Why? What did he do? He used figures that shocked people. He had two nude women with two clothed men, and one of the women is staring straight at the viewer. It shocked and one of the motives of modern art is to shock and provoke. He had very rough brushstrokes, not the fine, detailed strokes that people were used to. He hadn’t finished the picture with the detail that was usual. He hadn’t shaded the picture, but had used color contrasts to achieve tone. Many of these are the things that the Impressionists took up. It portrays real people, rather than idealized people, which is a symbol of modern art. As more artists began to experiment with their style, they became known as “moderns”, which is where the expression modern art came from.
When did modern art end? There is no exact end date. It was more a case of the style of art gradually changed. In the 1970s, the type of art started to move away from painting into things like video, large installations, performance art, photographic art, and things like that. These types of art had existed, but they were not displayed and it was in America where they were first showcased and the new post-modern art era took off. We are currently living in the contemporary art era, or the post-modernist art era. So, what is the difference? It is said that modern artists were focused inwards and they tried to imagine a utopian society. Post-modernists are more focused on society and their goal is to critique society and to try to bring about change. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Steve Johnson: https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-white-yellow-and-red-abstract-painting-1738434/
Sources
https://www.eden-gallery.com/news/modern-vs-postmodern-art
https://artwizard.eu/%C3%89douard-manet—the-first-modern-artist-ar-105
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_art
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art
https://www.eden-gallery.com/news/what-is-modern-art
https://bigthink.com/high-culture/modern-art-origins-future