1900'S - Present
What is Modern Art?
The definition of "modern" is " of the present or recent times."
To apply the term modern to art work now is confusing. Did not artists
of the Renaissance apply modern to their work as well? To label the
current period of art as Modern Art we can look to the attitudes and characteristics
of our modern world and what art means to artist and its viewers today.
Modern Art can be viewed as a rapid and radical art style with many variations.
Technology brought change to society along with a differing attitude towards
art. In older times artists were commissioned by churches or wealthy
families, but our times brought about a change that had artists doing "art
for art's sake." With the ongoing wars and political upheaval artists
found an escape with art. Artists wanted to provide a longer lasting
escape from all the world's problems. American artists of this time period
were finally recognized as competitive artists and brought the art world
looking at art from America.
Art now became
a movement into a world of color and expression, a world where an
apple is only a blotch of red pigment or a toilet is a work of art, leaving
more than a few people wondering what can be considered art.
art that stresses the artist's emotional and psychological expression,
often with bold colors and distortions of form. Specifically and art style
of the early 20th century followed principally by certain German artists.
art movement which took its name from one particular painting by Claude
Monet, Impression: Sunrise of 1872. Arising out of the naturalism
of the Realists, as well as an interest in the transitory experience of
light and color on objects, Impressionism did two distinct things to painting:
it elevated color to the status of subject matter, liberating the artist's
marks from previous craft constraints, and it inadvertently asserted painting's
relationship to the flat surface.
aesthetic arrangement of shapes, colors, and forms . (The formal elements
first art movement of the 20th century systematically to reconsider the
conventions of painting since the Renaissance. Such work is epitomized
by the severe flattening of the space across the picture plane, a consistently
inconsistentlight source, and an imploding of the traditional fore-, middle
and background areas in painting composition.
literary and visual art movement interested in unleashing and exploring
the potential of the human psyche. Loosely based on both Freud's
and Jung's investigations into the mind, it is also direct heir of earlier
Dada strategies of unlocking of the unconscious by the use of chance.
Pop Art: (Popular
Culture)- The elements of society that are recognized by the general public.
Popular Culture has the associations of something cheap, fleeting and accessible
Abstract Expressionism: A
common appelation for the first generation American abstract painting after
the Second World War, due to the primary of gesture and color while keeping
consistent with the aims of formalism (the all-over application of paint
and the dispersal of depth across the surface of the picture plane).
Websites to Visit
Gilbert, Rita. Living with Art, 3rd Edition.
McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1992.
Kissick, John. Art Context and Crticism.
Brown & Benchmark, 1993.
This Web site was created by Carrie Ann Elkins, April
Hall, Genator Hawkins, Danny Hendrix, and Jennifer Payne, students at the
University of North Carolina at Pembroke.