"Modern Art" generally means works produced during the approximate period 1870-1970. This "Modern era" followed a long period of domination by Renaissance-inspired academic art, promoted by the network of European Academies of Fine Art.
The date most commonly cited as marking the birth of "modern art" is 1863 - the year that French Impressionist artist Edouard Manet exhibited Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe (The Luncheon on The Grass) in the Salon des Refuses in Paris. It sparked outrage for depicting a naked woman and another scantily dressed one having a picnic with two clothed men.
The Post-Impressionism movement was developed during the last two decades of the 19th century by the French painters Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Georges Seurat, and by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.
Cézanne was more interested in rendering the structural qualities of his subject than in copying nature. He painted still lives and landscapes in a manner emphasizing their cubic volume. His emphasis on the geometric forms and prismatic light inherent in nature anticipated cubism.
Gauguin was concerned with developing flat, decorative surface patterns in an attempt to capture the pictorial boldness of folk art.
Van Gogh used vivid, often strident, colors to evoke powerful spiritual and emotional meanings from his subjects. Representative of his subjective approach is Starry Night (1889).
At the beginning of the 20th century Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, and André Derain revolutionized the Paris art world with 'wild', multi-colored, expressive, landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism.
In 1905 Henri Matisse visited the small French port of Collioure with fellow artist André Derain. There Matisse discovered Mediterranean light and he gave himself up to vibrant, and sometimes violent color. Throughout 1905, he painted a series of works that changed the course of art. These included the portraits of his wife Amelie, Woman with a Hat and The Green Stripe. No one had painted like this before - in The Green Stripe Amelie's face is bifurcated by a vivid emerald brush stroke. This new approach, where color trumped everyday appearance, caused outrage when Matisse exhibited in the Paris galleries in the autumn of 1905.
Henri Matisse's two versions of The Dance marked a key point in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's 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.
During the late 1900s Georges Braque, began to experiment with collage and invented the technique of gluing paper, wood, and other materials to canvas.
The genre of art known as Cubism derived its name from a belittling remark made by Henri Matisse in reference to a Graque painting. Matisse said that the landscape looked as though it were wholly made up of little cubes.
Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907, Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five nude prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new Cubist inventions.
The famous French painting, Nude Descending a Staircase by the French artist Marcel Duchamp, was displayed at an 'Armory Show' in New York City in 1913. The work was labelled as America's first look at modern art. Critics called the work "scandalous" and "meaningless."
The American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollack was known for his "drip and splash" technique, in which he laid his canvas on the floor and poured paint from a can instead of using an easel. The art critic Harold Rosenberg introduced the term "action painting" in 1952 to describe the form of abstract art popularized by Jackson Pollock.
Conceptual Art is a movement, dating from the 1960s, where the artist, instead of producing a physical object (eg a painted canvas) presents ideas, often in the form of a written text, a map, or a sound cassette.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City once hung Matisse's 'Le Bateau' upside-down for 47 days before an art student noticed the error.
Sources Visual Arts Cork, Radio Times, Funk & Wagnells Encyclopedia
The date most commonly cited as marking the birth of "modern art" is 1863 - the year that French Impressionist artist Edouard Manet exhibited Le Déjeuner Sur L’herbe (The Luncheon on The Grass) in the Salon des Refuses in Paris. It sparked outrage for depicting a naked woman and another scantily dressed one having a picnic with two clothed men.
The Post-Impressionism movement was developed during the last two decades of the 19th century by the French painters Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Georges Seurat, and by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.
Cézanne was more interested in rendering the structural qualities of his subject than in copying nature. He painted still lives and landscapes in a manner emphasizing their cubic volume. His emphasis on the geometric forms and prismatic light inherent in nature anticipated cubism.
Gauguin was concerned with developing flat, decorative surface patterns in an attempt to capture the pictorial boldness of folk art.
Van Gogh used vivid, often strident, colors to evoke powerful spiritual and emotional meanings from his subjects. Representative of his subjective approach is Starry Night (1889).
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| Starry Night |
In 1905 Henri Matisse visited the small French port of Collioure with fellow artist André Derain. There Matisse discovered Mediterranean light and he gave himself up to vibrant, and sometimes violent color. Throughout 1905, he painted a series of works that changed the course of art. These included the portraits of his wife Amelie, Woman with a Hat and The Green Stripe. No one had painted like this before - in The Green Stripe Amelie's face is bifurcated by a vivid emerald brush stroke. This new approach, where color trumped everyday appearance, caused outrage when Matisse exhibited in the Paris galleries in the autumn of 1905.
 |
| Woman with a Hat |
During the late 1900s Georges Braque, began to experiment with collage and invented the technique of gluing paper, wood, and other materials to canvas.
The genre of art known as Cubism derived its name from a belittling remark made by Henri Matisse in reference to a Graque painting. Matisse said that the landscape looked as though it were wholly made up of little cubes.
Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere and cone. With the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907, Picasso dramatically created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five nude prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new Cubist inventions.
The famous French painting, Nude Descending a Staircase by the French artist Marcel Duchamp, was displayed at an 'Armory Show' in New York City in 1913. The work was labelled as America's first look at modern art. Critics called the work "scandalous" and "meaningless."
The American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollack was known for his "drip and splash" technique, in which he laid his canvas on the floor and poured paint from a can instead of using an easel. The art critic Harold Rosenberg introduced the term "action painting" in 1952 to describe the form of abstract art popularized by Jackson Pollock.
Conceptual Art is a movement, dating from the 1960s, where the artist, instead of producing a physical object (eg a painted canvas) presents ideas, often in the form of a written text, a map, or a sound cassette.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City once hung Matisse's 'Le Bateau' upside-down for 47 days before an art student noticed the error.
Sources Visual Arts Cork, Radio Times, Funk & Wagnells Encyclopedia
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