Modern art
Modern art is the umbrella name for artistic work produced roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, covering the styles and philosophies that emerged when artists threw aside the traditions of the past in a spirit of experimentation. It begins with the post-impressionists - Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat - and runs through Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism and Pop. No single style defines it: what unites the era is a tendency away from narrative toward abstraction, fresh ways of seeing, and new ideas about what materials and art itself are for. The date most often given for its birth is 1863, when Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe appeared at the Salon des Refusés in Paris. Later production is usually called contemporary or postmodern art.
Defining characteristics
- Self-conscious experimentation: traditions of the past deliberately set aside
- Visible, unhidden materials and making: brushwork, collage, and surface kept legible
- Flattened pictorial space and forms reduced to geometry
- A drift from narrative naturalism toward abstraction
- Modern subject matter: the city, machines, the unconscious, and non-Western art
Key figures
- Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) — Post-impressionist whose reduced geometry and faceted planes laid the groundwork for Cubism
- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) — Post-impressionist whose expressive color and brushwork made subjective feeling the true subject
- Henri Matisse (1869-1954) — Leader of the Fauves, who freed color from descriptive duty
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) — Co-inventor of Cubism and the century's most protean modernist
- Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) — Redrew the boundary of art itself with his readymades
Example works
- Le déjeuner sur l'herbe — Édouard Manet (1863)
- Les Demoiselles d'Avignon — Pablo Picasso (1907)
- The Starry Night — Vincent van Gogh (1889)
Sources
- Modern art - Wikipedia encyclopedia