When you think of modern art, do you think of The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali or On White II by Wassily Kandinsky? Or perhaps you move away from modern art paintings and jump to other mediums where the principles and ideals of modern art has spread such as modern pottery art or modern art sculptures. Or perhaps you have no distinct example to call to mind, instead conjuring up an image of splashes of paint on canvas or a painted handprint on a white wall, something that you swear a toddler is capable of.
Modern art is declared by its proponents as “evocative” and “expressive.” Its doubters call it “lazy” and “lacking in talent.” Which of these is true is up to you to decide. But what’s not up for debate is the huge impact it has had on the art scene, and the number of world-renowned artists that have practiced and re-defined modernism: Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, to name a few.
What Gave Rise to Modern Art?
Unintuitively, modern art isn’t the latest period of art. It’s the predecessor to contemporary art and was an art movement that started over a century ago. The art styles characteristic of the 1860s to the 1970s are called modern art. Visually, modern art can be identified through its bold strokes and use of color, and through discombobulated perspectives and silhouettes. Some of the most famous art styles characteristic of the modern art period are cubism, fauvism, and expressionism.
The essence of modern art is in rejecting the principles and practices of art that was traditional at that point in time, to create art that could represent the artist and the world that they saw. It was a response to the changing industrial world and the artist’s way to represent this change.
Until that point, art was seen as a pastime, only to be enjoyed by the wealthy. Most art created was commissioned by wealthy patrons who wished to see their own portraits hung up in their mansions, or who commissioned paintings of historical, religious, or mythological figures and icons. With the Industrial Revolution, artists no longer related to such paintings and wished to experiment with their talents to create something new to fit the new world.
In addition to wanting to create something wholly unseen until that time, artists also wanted to break away from realism, leading to the creation of abstract paintings. This was because of photography, which had become popular and widely accessible. As a picture could capture a person with far more accuracy than a painter could, artists needed to develop a style of painting that would set itself apart from what photography could achieve. And thus, distortions of subjects and perspectives, and experimentations in painting were born.
The Allure of Modern Art
Modern art is markedly different from its predecessors in that it placed the onus of deciphering the art piece solely onto the viewer. Viewing a piece of modern art is a highly personal and subjective experience, as two different viewers can take away two completely different (if related) messages and ideas from the piece.
Modern art is created with the purpose of stimulating the thoughts and emotions of the viewer, and serves to make them question the truths of the world and the society they live in. This is why seemingly simple pieces of modern art can sell for an astounding sum. People are willing to pay so much for a piece that speaks to them and through which they can access emotions or ideas they could not before.
Modern art also has the unique ability to bridge time periods, age, and cultural differences. Traditional art styles prior to modernism depended on historical, religious, or mythological knowledge, or context for the viewer to decipher the painting and truly appreciate it. This knowledge served to make traditional paintings inaccessible to the vast majority, and restricted the complete enjoyment of the painting to the educated and those from a specific cultural or socio-economic background. Modern art, however, speaks to all people as a direct result of its abstractness, and does not gatekeep people from certain backgrounds from enjoying the work.
Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of “love modern art” and “hate modern art,” it’s undeniable that modern art has greatly influenced the direction of the art scene. It charted a course away from photo-realistic paintings that served to set the painting medium apart from photography. It also broke conventions and started an era where paintings were not merely ornamentations or representations of one’s wealth and glamour, but symbolic of changing times and an effort to evoke feeling through the work.
And finally, we have modern art to thank for a lot of the inventive, imaginative methods of painting and visual depiction that have since been created and enjoyed.