ART FORMS in the

th 20

Century

Art Movements of the modern era from 20th 21st Century

Modern Art  painting, sculpture, and other forms of 20th-century art.  refer to art of the 20th century in Europe and the Americas, as well as in other regions under Western influence.  the most important characteristic of modern art is its attempt to make painting and sculpture ends in themselves, thus distinguishing modernism from earlier forms of art that had conveyed the ideas of powerful religious or political institutions.  is difficult to understand. One of the things that make modern painting hard to understand is the sheer variety of styles.

Paul Cezanne
 a French painter who made the first breakthrough in modern art.  He worked slowly and carefully.  He even destroyed many of his works before finally reaching a new kind of art.  He felt that the shapes in painting counted most.  He changed the shapes of the objects he painted if he thought it would make a better picture.  His colors were bright and he let the brush strokes show in his finished pictures.

Art Movements of modern era from 20th 21st Century

Impressionism
 style that evolved in Paris in

Claude Monet was the leader of the Impressionists.

1860 s and continued into the early 20th century.  an art movement which focused on showing the effects of light on things at different times of the day. Impressionists use unblended slashes of pure color placed together to create a mode or impression of a scene.

Fauvism
Painters who loved colors were Henri Matisse Vassily Kandinsky. They used bright colors, strong lines and patterns which seemed to burst from their canvas and the unusual color combination which created a kind of joyous feeling to the viewers

Red Room (Harmony in Red) (19081909) by Henri Matisse is an example of the Fauve style, which was expressive and emotional.

Neoimpressionism
 was the style of painting devised by the French painter George Seurat.  He applied colors in small dots called Pointilism rather than by means of the usual brush strokes.

Cubism
 the most influential style of the early 20th century.  the artist tried to show all the sides of the object, reduces recognizable images to geometric forms or so often shows objects from several positions at one time, and often makes opaque forms transparent.  The best known artist of cubism was Pablo Picasso.

Dadaism
The Dada movement attacked established values.  It declared the absurdity of all conventions and destroyed the notion of art itself.  Marcel Duchamp was out to prove that any readymade object could attain the level of a work of art. The important thing to Dadaists was not the work itself but the shock and confusion they could produce.

He bought a urinal and called it Fountain.

Futurism
 is an Italian art movement which hoped to glorify the machine age, speed travel and technology.  An exponent of the movement was Marcel Duchamp s Nude Descending the Staircase . Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) is a synthesis of two modern-art styles: cubism and futurism.

Neoplasticism
 is a non-objective painting that reduced forms into horizontal and vertical movements and used only black and white and the primary colors.  Piet Mondrian was the practitioner of this art.

Surrealism
 a movement in art characterized by the expression of the activities of the unconscious mind and dream elements. Salvador Dali is one of the artists of the movement.

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

Young Virgin Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity

Abstract Expressionism  is a style of painting in which the artist expresses his feelings spontaneously and without reference to any representation of physical reality.  Jackson Pollock and Filipino artist, Jose T. Joya are the exponents of the movement.  Jose T. Joya is the leader of Abstract Expressionism in the Philippines. Black and White (1948) by American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, painted in a style sometimes called action painting.

Op art
means optical illusion works of art that depend in optical illusions, fugitive sensations and other subjective visual phenomena.  Victor Vasarely is a French painter of Op art.  Victor Vasarly (1908-1997), French painter, sculptor, and graphic artist of Hungarian birth, who is recognized not only as the creator of Op Art but of one of the most successful Op Artists.

GENERALIZATIONS: 1. Why is modern art difficult to understand? 2. Which among the modern art movements have the most influential style? Why? 3. Explain how Paul Cezanne made the first breakthrough in modern art? Describe how he painted.

ASSIGNMENTS: 1. Describe modern art in the Philippines today. 2. Name the famous Filipino modern artists and describe their artworks.