_Modern Art _
By: Luke D Evangelist
I. Introduction Wherever man lives there is art, because art is anything made
or done by man that affects or moves us so that we feel and see beauty. Man
uses his imagination to invent a unique beauty in which the artist sees his
feelings and inspiration affects on how he will express his artThrough the
major development of technologies and social changes that have taken place in
the 19th century, Modern art flourished during this period and caused a lot
movements of modern art to form, some of these famous movement are cubism,
abstract expressionism, pop art, and surreal art. Modern art also become mans
inspiration in life because these great art can express a unique feeling in
which a person is attracted to that kind. This also means that a modern artist
learns from himself and does not need any major training, a modern artist
learns by himself through his experiences and imagination Modern art runs a
very important role in mans life throughout history, because it that does not
only give us inspiration but also the freedom to express ourselves through the
use of different mediums. II. Statement of the problem This research aims to
answer the following questions: 1. What are the general informations about
Modern Art? 2. What is the beauty of Modern Art? 3. What are the different
styles in making Modern Art? III. Presentation A. Definition of Modern Art
Parallel to the scientific, technological, and social changes that have taken
place in the 20th century are the rich varieties of art styles that have
developed. Notable are the number of isms , such as Fauvism, expressionism,
cubism, futurism, constructivism, neoplasticism, surrealism, precisionism.
Modern Art didnt have a main origin from where it came from. But there is a
general agreement that it was first seen between 18th century to 19th century,
from the French revolutionist movement. Art in its broader meaning, however,
involves both skill and creative imagination in a musical, literary, visual,
or performance context. Art provides the person or people who produce it and
the community that observes it with an experience that might be aesthetic,
emotional, intellectual, or a combination of these qualities. Modern Art does
not follow any traditional rule, in fact Modern Art breaks this barrier. In
the traditional way of painting, you must the true nature of your work; you
must have the balance in creating it. The rules that are working on our
universe must be applied to the old traditional painting. All of these, are
the opposites of the principles of Modern Art. Modern does not follow any
rule, for example a modernist painter like Vincent Van Gogh, he used different
kind of color pigments that represents the real color of an object like a
field for example, he uses the color blue for the ground and red for the sky
or yellow for the trees. Modern artist does not just put their painting s on
and on, they work also with harmony. (Harmony is the art principle that
produces an impression on unity through the selection and arrangement of
consistent objects and ideas.) Their work might vary in size, shape, texture
and color. Most people, especially Traditionalists, do not like Modern Art
only because it is unconventional. They find it harder to relate a Picasso or
a Kandinsky than to a painting or sculpture by Michelangelo. With Modern Art,
you are more likely to ask yourself the question: "What is it? only by
reading the title of the painting do you then find out the answer to your
question. An artist's medium affects the style of the work. Thus, a sculptor
must treat stone differently from wood; a musician achieves different effects
with drums than with violins; a writer must meet certain demands of poetry
that might be irrelevant to the novel. Local tradition also affects art
styles. Pottery design in one area and period may be geometric and in another,
naturalistic. Indian tradition prescribed closely curled hair in depictions of
the Buddha, just as Western tradition decreed blond hair for depictions of
Jesus Christ. Eastern artists paid no heed to scientific perspective, which
has been a major concern of Western painters since the Renaissance. The main
focus of Modern Art is to portray their subjects in a more abstract level, In
which some modern artist uses their feelings and imagination in creating their
masterpiece. The freedom to express yourself into some visual medium is also
another kind of Modern Art. A person appreciates the beauty of modern art
because of the emotional attraction that binds them to the art. Some people
say they remember something deeper in their life because they saw a painting
that struck them. This happens because a Modern artist uses his freedom to
feel and express their work. Sometimes we might look to a painting and might
interpret another meaning, this is also one beauty of a modern art because you
could look through a painting with many broad meaning, and it may depend on
how the person would look at it. Many people accept Modern Art because of the
nature of a man to create things. Knowing that being a Modern Art artist
requires a lot of persistence, experience, imagination, freedom to express
your feelings, understanding, skill, creativeness constant practice,
inspiration and most of all passion lets a modern artist truly a respectable
man. B. History of Modern Art In the second half of the 19th century painters
began to revolt against the classic codes of composition, careful execution,
harmonious coloring, and heroic subject matter. Patronage by the church and
state sharply declined at the same time that artists' views became more
independent and subjective. Courbet, Corot, and others of the Barbizon school,
Manet, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec chose to paint scenes of ordinary daily and
nocturnal life that often offended the sense of decorum of their
contemporaries. The roots of modern art can be seen in French 19th-century
avant-garde painting, which resulted in several movements, including
impressionism and postimpressionism. The common denominator among leading
late-19th-century artists was a diminished concern for realism and a greater
emphasis on personal freedom of expression. About the turn of the century, a
group of French painters formed a movement called fauvism, which focused on
utilizing dramatic lines and colors and had a significant impact on modern
art. French and German artists, including the fauves and a German group known
as Die Brücke, were influenced by the boldness and power of the art of
indigenous peoples from around the world. Around 1911 some work of a second
group of German artists, Der Blaue Reiter, moved toward semiabstract and
abstract painting. Interested in indigenous sculpture also played a role in
the development of cubism, which arose between 1907 and 1914 with the help of
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The most influential style of the modern period,
it emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane and
rejected traditional perspective. Several Italian artists employed the cubist
style but emphasized motion. Their movement was called futurism. Cubism was
crucial to the development of abstract art, which began to be seen in German
and Swiss art around 1910. Simultaneously, Russian artists were aware of
cubism and developed two branches of it: suprematism and constructivism. Dutch
artists sought to create a universal, harmonious style suitable to every
aspect of contemporary life. Their movement, De Stijl, involved the expression
of pure plastics (forms) and often reduced the range of color in a work to
just primary colors. The dada movement, which arose both in Europe and America
during World War I (1914-1918), comprised a group of war resisters who chose a
nonsense word, dada (French for "hobbyhorse"), to describe their antiaesthetic
works. By 1922 some practitioners of Dadaism moved to surrealism, in which
accident, chance, and the subconscious were employed in the creation of art.
Until the late 1940s, nearly all-modern American art styles originated in
Europe. The Ashcan school was a reaction against impressionism and
concentrated on ordinaryeven uglycity scenes. Fauvism and cubism were
relatively unknown in America until after the Armory Show, an international
art exhibition held in New York City in 1913. The precisionist style grew out
of cubism and depicted a sharp-focus, stylized realism. Despite the growing
acceptance of European modernism in the United States, exemplified by the 1929
founding of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the 1930s were also a
period of reaction and rebellion against imported styles. Urban realist
painters depicted the harsh political, social, and economic conditions of the
Great Depression era. Regionalists drew inspiration from rural midwestern life
and folklore. A number of American artists after the 1930s created a new
movement called abstract expressionism, which derived from the surrealists an
interest in the subconscious, symbolism, and myth. In reaction against
abstract expressionism, other American artists drew their imagery from
everyday, popular-culture objects. They became known as pop artists.
Internationally, abstract painting continued to develop, resulting in op art,
in which stark black-and-white patterns or brilliant color contrasts were
intended to create optical illusions; and in minimalism, which ranged from
geometric forms to serialized patterns and almost monochromatic canvases.
Conceptual art, in which the artist's idea or concept took precedence over the
actual work, grew from minimalism. By the 1980s a reaction had developed
against abstract styles, leading to a revival of figurative and narrative
painting known as neoexpressionism. Like modern painters, sculptors were
influenced by primitive and ancient art. Some reduced form to the simplest
level. Others, affected by cubism, depicted the human figure with emphasis on
geometric planes. In Russia, constructivists emphasized sculptural space
rather than mass. French dadaist Marcel Duchamp made the first mobile
sculpture in 1913, using found objects; he was later to give the name mobiles
to the movable sculptures of American artist Alexander Calder. The definition
of recent sculpture has been expanded to include a wide spectrum of new
styles, materials, and techniques. Minimalists, earthwork sculptors, kinetic
artists, light artists, video artists, and pop art sculptors have all
developed their art. In the mid-1980s organic forms began reappearing in
sculpture, a trend known as postminimalist or postmodern sculpture. C. Forms
of Modern Art The need to create has always been a part of man's nature. The
art he creates always reflects his culture and the time period in which the
artist lives. The art he makes reveals feelings, beliefs, ideas and his way of
life. The story of modern painting begins in the 19th century. The industrial
and democratic revolutions of this time brought about dramatic social changes
and a faster way of life. New art styles developed quickly also. Many styles
of art developed as reactions to earlier art styles just as new governments
were born out of revolution against the old. The invention of photography and
the ability of artists to buy ready-made paint in tubes also led the painter
in new directions. Some moved away from copying nature and others moved
out-of-doors to paint. 1. Impressionism - The Impressionists were interested
in the world outside their studio. Scientific discoveries about light and
color led them to use these new principles in their paintings. They focused on
the dazzling effects of sunlight on objects and on the landscape. The emphasis
is on reflected light rather than the form of objects or realistic
representation. The edges of forms melt and blur in the light because the
artists used dabs of pure color that are blended in the eye of the viewer
rather than mixed by the artist on the canvas. If you stand too close to an
Impressionist painting you will only see dots and dabs of color. It is when
you step back that your eye will blend the colors and forms will come into
view. 2. PostImpressionism - Post-Impressionists refers to a group of artists
who worked with or were influenced by the Impressionists but then moved on to
work in other directions. They expanded their own style to create works that
led to later developments in the art of the twentieth century. Some focused on
the underlying structure and geometry of forms, while others highlighted
texture or pattern for expressive effects. Since the Post-Impressionist period
many artist have thought about paintings as objects with colorful, lively
surfaces rather than scenes 3. Pointillism - Pointillism was developed by
Georges Seurat. The name comes from using just the point of the brush to apply
small dots of paint. He placed small dots of pure color next to each other for
your eye to blend. Your eye sees the colors as mixed but makes the painting
"glow" with color. This style was based on the new scientific theory of light
developed during the 19th century. These paintings were very time consuming.
4. Expressionism - Some modern painters were concerned with feelings. One
painter, Matisse, was concerned with expressing the feeling he had for life
and insisted that his work had but one purpose: to give pleasure. Other
Expressionist artists were involved with personal feelings. German artists who
had experienced World War I painted emotional subjects that ranged from fear
and anger to concern with death. Some expressionist artists use color as their
expressive element. They express feelings or create moods with color and will
use it arbitrarily rather than use the actual color of objects 5. Cubism -
Cubism was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. This style
emphasizes structure and design and is a prime example of Abstract Art. It was
influenced by three basic ideas. First, that all shapes in nature are based on
geometric solids such as the cylinder, the sphere and the cone. Second, was
the discovery by scientists that all matter is made up of atoms. Finally,
European artist were influenced by the cubical forms of African sculpture that
had recently been exhibited in Paris. Cubist painters tried to paint three
dimensional objects from many different points of view at the same time. Some
works appear fractured and objects within them appear at different levels and
seen from different angles 6. Surrealism - Surrealism is based on fantasy
and imagination. After World War I, artists rebelled against the culture that
had led to such suffering and devastation. Surrealists presented very
realistic, almost photographic images, but of crazy situations. The paintings
are strange and dreamlike. Some are nightmares while others are funny or
mysterious or frightening. Surreal paintings do not make sense to the viewer,
but will contain recognizable objects and realistic details 7. Pop Art - Pop
Art refers to an art style based on the products and images of popular
culture. These painters used brand-name products, famous people, advertising
and comic book images as subject matter. They tried to bring attention to
everyday objects that people see and use without much thought or notice. They
often poked fun at the American way of life and its dependance on material
things 8. Abstract Impressionism - The art of throwing paint quite liberally
and as fast as possible onto a large canvas. Abstract expressionism arose
after the Second World War as a more interesting alternative to geometric
abstraction, which had become for many postwar American painters boringly
repetitive. Abstraction is impulsive. You do not have to ponder over the finer
details: object, form , colour etc... you just splatter paint on canvas at
will. Abstract expressionism is spontaneity. Wassily Kandinsky and Jackson
Pollock are the best known of the abstract expressionism family. Kandinsky
stumbled across this new form of art while studying one of Monet's pictures,
The Millstone. 9. Super-realism - Super-realism is also known as
Hyper-realism, or Photo-realism. These sculptures and paintings portray
subjects realistically, sometimes so real that viewers have been fooled into
thinking that sculptures were real people. These artists use a variety of
media for their paintings and sculptures but the end result is always a
precise and incredibly life-like image or form. They can be life-size or
sometimes much larger than life to confront the viewer with a huge close-up.
D. Appreciation of Modern Art How can we appreciate art? We can appreciate
art if we are experiencing it. I believe that all of us here experience art,
because as we all know that art is a great beauty that a man creates from his
own will. We can appreciate art if we know the essence of why and how it was
created Modern Art can be appreciated in many factors; the beauty of the
work, the harmony of the work (this includes the shape, size, texture, color
of the painting), the emotional attraction to the painting, a deeper
understanding to the painting The beauty of the work can be seen how the
artist manages to make his work a colorful one out of nothing. We could see
also the beauty of the art if it symbolizes something else that lets us think
a deeper meaning. In a beautiful art requires good harmony to one object to
another the color should be balanced and the weight the paintings proportion
must be balanced. The emotional attraction is a big deal in Modern Art
appreciation, because you could feel the same way that the artist feels when
he is creating that art. Other people are emotionally bonded to that painting,
they always wanted to see that painting whenever they are sad because that
painting give them happiness. Others remember something in their life whenever
theyre going to look at their attractive art. Understanding to what the
painting means is also an important factor in appreciating art. Because can
never appreciate art if youre not going to understand it, but Modern Art is
quite different because a single art could mean a thousand things, because it
is the authors work of expressing his feelings and freedom Artist like
Vincent Van Gogh achieved great impression about his works because he uses
different color pigments to express his paintings. If youre going to look at
his work, you will feel a strange feeling because that painting looks as if
you are on an alien world. That is why Vincent Van Goghs painting is worth
more than anything else. IV. Analysis Now that I have presented to you the
general facts and information about Modern Art and how you should look at it,
we must carefully realize how Art is very important to our lives I believe man
cannot live without the knowledge of creating art Art is a disciplined
activity that maybe limited to skill. This means that each one has its own
specialty, for example the art of sculpting is very different from Martial
Arts. For me I look at art as my inspiration for my everyday life. I like to
appreciate those masters that created major masterpieces. My favorite artist
is Vincent Van Gogh, I like his style in creating his work, though some say
that Vincent is mentally dis-ordered person In general, Modern Art was a
kind of art the breaks off the traditional rule in making art and it was
formed between 18th century and 19th century. There are different styles on
Modern Art is made these are, cubism, abstract expressionism, pop art,
abstract arts, surreal art. The beauty of Modern Art may vary from people to
people and on how theyre going to look at the different works of the artist.
The beauty of the modern art is its ability to express itself to the people
looking at it. Though it has a lot of meaning to us it is not necessary to
debate over which has a better interpretation Modern Artist requires a great
talent, a talent to create things with deeper meanings. Most of us sometimes
experience on how we will make our work a colorful one, imagine how difficult
it is for us to think in new ways on how we are going to show our work. In
judging an art first we must look at the authors background to further
understand why did he come up to that kind of presentation V.
Interpretation The different movements that occur during late 18th century
and 19th century gave way to the birth of Modern Art. In those movements,
different styles are formed in making art and this all have the same concept,
to break free of the old traditional way of making art. Breaking of the
traditional way is the common way that defines modern art during those times.
We have learned that Modern Art holds a broad meaning for defining itself. It
is sometimes an art of expression and an art of freedom. There are several
techniques that are used in making Modern Art, these are mainly the cubism,
abstract expressionism, pop art, abstract arts, surreal art. Most of these are
movements from the French revolutionist, their way to find a more meaningful
one also lead these men in creating the modern art. VI. Reaction Modern Art
is a new kind of approach of expressing art. It also gave a deeper
understanding about art and it showed us how to use our freedom and to express
ourselves to our ever-changing world Modern Art is a unique art because it
does not follow the traditional rule on making art, because in the traditional
art, it must be done as realistic as possible, your subject must be true in a
sense that it should look like a real one and it must follow the natural laws
that govern in this universe. While in the Modern Art, your mind is your work,
your imagination is the outcome of your work. That is why Modern Art is very
unique, that almost everybody is attached to because they can see their
feelings and thought through these great art I like Modern Art in the very
beginning because I saw how the artist uses his imagination and freedom to his
work. I also like the color they put on it, it is like having a different
world when you look at it. Our likes and dislikes, our opinions, our criticism
varies from people to people. Each has a different way of saying how beautiful
modern art is
_Bibliography _
VII. Bibliography Arnold, Nellie D. The Interrelated Arts In Leisure St. Louis
California: The C.U. Mosby company 1976. Encyclopedia Britanica, 1980 ed. M12
Modern Dance . Brockett, Oscar G. The Theatre Hott Rinchart and Winston Inc.
1977 p.3, 6, 8, 14. Cruz, Nonita L. Art Appreciation; Second Year Home. New
York: abiva Publishing Copyright 1949, pg. 1-6, 13-14. Fawcett, Robert In the
Art of Drawing New York. Watson-Guptill Publications pg, 15, 16, 24, 26.
http://metalab.unc.edu/wm/paint/tl/20th/expressionism.htm
http://metalab.unc.edu/wm/paint/tl/20th/Fauvism.html Microsoft Encarta 97,
1997 ed. Modern Art and Architecture Munch, Florenda H. Life and Leisure.
New York: Kodanasha Publishing 1980. Tawes, William I, Creative Sculpture.
London: Tide Water Publishing. 1983 pg. 1-3, 5.
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