Art movement

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An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered a new avant-garde movement. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality (figurative art). By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new style which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy (abstract art). [1]

Contents

Concept

According to theories associated with modernism and also the concept of postmodernism, art movements are especially important during the period of time corresponding to modern art. [2] The period of time called "modern art" is posited to have changed approximately halfway through the 20th century and art made afterward is generally called contemporary art. Postmodernism in visual art begins and functions as a parallel to late modernism [3] and refers to that period after the "modern" period called contemporary art. [4] The postmodern period began during late modernism (which is a contemporary continuation of modernism), and according to some theorists postmodernism ended in the 21st century. [5] [6] During the period of time corresponding to "modern art" each consecutive movement was often considered a new avant-garde. [5]

Also during the period of time referred to as "modern art" each movement was seen corresponding to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it, concerning the visual arts. Generally there was a commonality of visual style linking the works and artists included in an art movement. Verbal expression and explanation of movements has come from the artists themselves, sometimes in the form of an art manifesto, [7] [8] and sometimes from art critics and others who may explain their understanding of the meaning of the new art then being produced.

In the visual arts, many artists, theorists, art critics, art collectors, art dealers and others mindful of the unbroken continuation of modernism and the continuation of modern art even into the contemporary era, ascribe to and welcome new philosophies of art as they appear. [9] [10] Postmodernist theorists posit that the idea of art movements are no longer as applicable, or no longer as discernible, as the notion of art movements had been before the postmodern era. [11] [12] There are many theorists however who doubt as to whether or not such an era was actually a fact; [5] or just a passing fad. [6] [13]

The term refers to tendencies in visual art, novel ideas and architecture, and sometimes literature. In music it is more common to speak about genres and styles instead. See also cultural movement, a term with a broader connotation.

As the names of many art movements use the -ism suffix (for example cubism and futurism), they are sometimes referred to as isms.

19th century

20th century

1900–1921

1920–1945

1940–1965

Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944), oil on canvas, 73
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1/4 x 98" (186 x 249 cm) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. De Kooning said: "I met a lot of artists -- but then I met Gorky... He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head; remarkable. So I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends." Gorky-The-Liver.jpg
Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944), oil on canvas, 7314 × 98" (186 × 249 cm) Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. De Kooning said: "I met a lot of artists — but then I met Gorky... He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head; remarkable. So I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends."

1965–2000

21st century

See also

Related Research Articles

A cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. This embodies all art forms, the sciences, and philosophies. Historically, different nations or regions of the world have gone through their own independent sequence of movements in culture; but as world communications have accelerated, this geographical distinction has become less distinct. When cultural movements go through revolutions from one to the next, genres tend to get attacked and mixed up, and often new genres are generated and old ones fade.: These changes are often reactions against the prior cultural form, which typically has grown stale and repetitive. An obsession emerges among the mainstream with the new movement, and the old one falls into neglect – sometimes it dies out entirely, but often it chugs along favored in a few disciplines and occasionally making reappearances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of painting</span> Historical development of painting

The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts and artwork created by pre-historic artists, and spans all cultures. It represents a continuous, though periodically disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, continents, and millennia, the history of painting consists of an ongoing river of creativity that continues into the 21st century. Until the early 20th century it relied primarily on representational, religious and classical motifs, after which time more purely abstract and conceptual approaches gained favor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modernism</span> Cultural and artistic movement

Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and social issues were all aspects of this movement. Modernism centered around beliefs in a "growing alienation" from prevailing "morality, optimism, and convention" and a desire to change how "human beings in a society interact and live together".

This is an alphabetical index of articles related to painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abstract impressionism</span> Art movement

Abstract impressionism is an art movement that originated in New York City, in the 1940s. It involves the painting of a subject such as real-life scenes, objects, or people (portraits) in an Impressionist style, but with an emphasis on varying measures of abstraction. The paintings are often painted en plein air, an artistic style involving painting outside with the landscape directly in front of the artist. The movement works delicately between the lines of pure abstraction and the allowance of an impression of reality in the painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern art</span> Artistic period from the 1860s–1970s

Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic of the traditional arts, toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production is often called contemporary art or Postmodern art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Post-Impressionism</span> Predominantly French art movement, 1886–1905

Post-Impressionism was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour. Its broad emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content means Post-Impressionism encompasses Les Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont-Aven School, and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists' work. The movement's principal artists were Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abstract art</span> Art with a degree of independence from visual references in the world

Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postmodern art</span> Art movement

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual art of the United States</span>

Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.

This is a chronological list of periods in Western art history. An art period is a phase in the development of the work of an artist, groups of artists or art movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">20th-century French art</span> Art in France during the 20th century

20th-century French art developed out of the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism that dominated French art at the end of the 19th century. The first half of the 20th century in France saw the even more revolutionary experiments of Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, artistic movements that would have a major impact on western, and eventually world, art. After World War II, while French artists explored such tendencies as Tachism, Fluxus and New realism, France's preeminence in the visual arts progressively became eclipsed by developments elsewhere.

Painting – artwork in which paint or other medium has been applied to a surface, and in which area and composition are two primary considerations.

Twentieth-century art—and what it became as modern art—began with modernism in the late nineteenth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western painting</span> Art produced in the Western world

The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from antiquity until the present time. Until the mid-19th century it was primarily concerned with representational and traditional modes of production, after which time more modern, abstract and conceptual forms gained favor.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the history of painting:

In the visual arts, late modernism encompasses the overall production of most recent art made between the aftermath of World War II and the early years of the 21st century. The terminology often points to similarities between late modernism and postmodernism, although there are differences. The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is contemporary art. Not all art labelled as contemporary art is modernist or post-modern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modern and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject modernism for post-modernism or other reasons. Arthur Danto argues explicitly in After the End of Art that contemporaneity was the broader term, and that postmodern objects represent a subsector of the contemporary movement which replaced modernity and modernism, while other notable critics: Hilton Kramer, Robert C. Morgan, Kirk Varnedoe, Jean-François Lyotard and others have argued that postmodern objects are at best relative to modernist works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">20th-century Western painting</span> Art in the Western world during the 20th century

20th-century Western painting begins with the heritage of late-19th-century painters Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others who were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck, revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Matisse's second version of The Dance signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian modernism</span> Artistic style and cultural movement

Australian modernism, similar to European and American modernism, was a social, political and cultural movement that was a reaction to rampant industrialisation, associated moral panic of modernity and the death and trauma of the World Wars.

References

  1. Mel Gooding, Abstract Art, Tate Publishing, London, 2000
  2. Man of his words: Pepe Karmel on Kirk Varnedoe — Passages – Critical Essay Artforum, Nov, 2003 by Pepe Karmel
  3. The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths Rosalind E. Krauss, Publisher: The MIT Press; Reprint edition (July 9, 1986), Part I, Modernist Myths, pp.8–171
  4. The Citadel of Modernism Falls to Deconstructionists, – 1992 critical essay, The Triumph of Modernism, 2006, Hilton Kramer, pp 218–221.
  5. 1 2 3 Post-Modernism: The New Classicism in Art and Architecture Charles Jencks
  6. 1 2 William R. Everdell, The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-century Thought, University of Chicago Press, 1997, p4. ISBN   0-226-22480-5
  7. "Poetry of the Revolution. Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes" introduction, Martin Puchner Archived 2005-12-27 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved April 4, 2006
  8. "Looking at Artists' Manifestos, 1945–1965", Stephen B. Petersen Archived September 27, 2011, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved April 4, 2006
  9. Clement Greenberg: Modernism and Postmodernism Archived 2019-09-01 at the Wayback Machine , seventh paragraph of the essay. URL accessed on June 15, 2006
  10. Clement Greenberg: Modernism and Postmodernism Archived 2019-09-01 at the Wayback Machine , William Dobell Memorial Lecture, Sydney, Australia, Oct 31, 1979, Arts 54, No.6 (February 1980). His final essay on modernism Retrieved October 26, 2011
  11. Ideas About Art by Desmond, Kathleen K. , John Wiley & Sons, 2011, p.148
  12. International postmodernism: theory and literary practice, Bertens, Hans , Routledge, 1997, p.236
  13. "The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond | Issue 58 | Philosophy Now". philosophynow.org. Archived from the original on 2021-09-16. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
  14. "National Gallery of Art". Archived from the original on 2011-05-11. Retrieved 2013-10-19.
  15. Willem de Kooning (1969) by Thomas B. Hess