FACTFILE: GCE HISTORY OF ART MAJOR MODERN ART MOVEMENTS Major Modern Art Movements Key words Overview New types of art; collage, assemblage, kinetic, The range of Major Modern Art Movements is photography, land art, earthworks, performance art. extensive. There are over 100 known art movements and information on a selected range of the better Use of new materials; found objects, ephemeral known art movements in modern times is provided materials, junk, readymades and everyday items. below. The influence of one art movement upon Expressive use of colour particularly in; another can be seen in the definitions as twentieth Impressionism, Post Impressionism, Fauvism, century art which became known as a time of ‘isms’. Cubism, Expressionism, and colour field painting. New Techniques; Pointilism, automatic drawing, frottage, action painting, Pop Art, Neo-Impressionism, Synthesism, Kinetic Art, Neo-Dada and Op Art. 1 FACTFILE: GCE HISTORY OF ART / MAJOR MODERN ART MOVEMENTS The Making of Modern Art The Nine most influential Art Movements to impact Cubism (fl. 1908–14) on Modern Art; Primarily practised in painting and originating (1) Impressionism; in Paris c.1907, Cubism saw artists employing (2) Fauvism; an analytic vision based on fragmentation and multiple viewpoints. It was like a deconstructing of (3) Cubism; the subject and came as a rejection of Renaissance- (4) Futurism; inspired linear perspective and rounded volumes. The two main artists practising Cubism were Pablo (5) Expressionism; Picasso and Georges Braque, in two variants (6) Dada; ‘Analytical Cubism’ and ‘Synthetic Cubism’. This movement was to influence abstract art for the (7) Surrealism; next 50 years with the emergence of the flat (8) Abstract Expressionism; picture plane and an alternative to conventional perspective. (9) Pop Art. Futurism (fl. 1909–14) Impressionism (1870s–1880s) Founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876- The first great modern art movement and the 1944), Futurist art glorified speed, technology, most famous movement in the world today. The the automobile, the airplane and scientific Impressionists included; Claude Monet, Alfred achievement. The Futurists strove to portray the Sisley, Edgar Degas, Edourd Manet, Camille dynamic character of twentieth century life. Pissaro and Pierre-Augustus Renoir. The Although very influential, it borrowed heavily from movement was characterised by discontinuous Neo-Impressionism and Italian Divisionism, as brushstrokes. Preconceived notions of colour well as Cubism, especially its fragmented forms in nature were not applied. Instead nature was and multiple viewpoints. Carlo Carra, Gino Severini observed as it really was in its fleeting light and and Giacomo Balla were the leading painters colour and transmitted to canvas. The use of non- and Umberto Boccioni was the chief sculptor in naturalist colours paved the way for abstract art of the group. David Burlick is known as the ‘Father the 20th century. of Russian Futurism.’ The main contribution of Futurism to “modern art” was to introduce movement into the canvas, and to link beauty with Fauvism (c.1904–8) scientific advancement. From the French word ‘fauve’ meaning ‘wild beast’. This was a short-lived dramatic movement and one that proved highly influential. A key precursor of Expressionism (from 1905) Expressionism, it was a style adopted by artists Principal forerunners who anticipated this associated with Henri Matisse and included André movement with the degree of emotional expression Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. They painted inherent in their work are; JMW Turner, Vincent spontaneously using bold colours. They rejected Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin. Expressionism began the impressionist technique of breaking colour up in pre-war Germany through the work of two and instead painted an object in the colours – often groups ‘Die Brucke’ (Dresden/Berlin) and ‘Der Blaue brilliant and explosive – that they thought best Reiter’ (Munich) led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and expressed its inner qualities. Wassily Kandinsky respectively. This movement refers to art that rejects traditional adherence to realism and proportion and overrides this with the intensity of the artist’s emotions. It uses emphasis and distortion of line, shape and colour to communicate this emotion. 2 FACTFILE: GCE HISTORY OF ART / MAJOR MODERN ART MOVEMENTS Dada (1916–24) Pop Art (1950s, 1960s) International nihilistic movement among European A movement that began in Britain and the USA in artists and writers, Dada was the first anti-art the 1950s derived in the main from commercial movement that revolted against a system that art forms and characterised by outsized replicas could allow the carnage of the First World War. Dada of mass culture. It became the dominant avant- attacked conventional aesthetics and stressed garde style until the late 1960s. It used the images absurdity and unpredictability in artistic creation. and techniques of mass media, advertising, film It originated in Zurich with the poetry of the and popular culture, combined with vibrant block Romanian Tristan Tzara. In Berlin it had political colours, often in an ironic way. Andy Warhol overtones as exemplified byGeorge Grosz’s is the best known artist from this movement caricatures. The French movement centred around but Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Jean Arp, Marcel Claes Oldenburg and Richard Hamilton were Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Man Ray. The also important artists. Perhaps owing to the latter three carried Dada to New York City. Dada incorporation of commercial images, Pop art has principles were eventually modified to become the become one of the most recognizable styles of basis of Surrealism in 1924. modern art. Additional Contemporary Movements; The major Surrealism (from 1924) styles and schools of modernist art in Europe and America during the past 40 years. Surrealism was founded in Paris by Andre Breton with his ‘Manifeste du Surrealisme’. It was ‘the’ fashionable art movement of the inter-war years, although the style is still evident today. Conceptualism (1960s onwards) Composed of abstract and figurative camps, it Derived from Dada and early 20th century evolved out of the nihilism of Dada, most of whose modernism, exemplified byMarcel Duchamp, members metamorphosed into surrealists. It this movement is based on the principle that was influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to art is a ‘concept’ rather than a material object. the expression of the imagination as revealed in That is to say, the ‘idea’ that a work represents dreams, hallucinations, automatic or random image is considered its essential component, not the generation, free of the conscious control of reason work itself. This implied that concerns such as and convention. Surrealists attempt to liberate aesthetics, expression, skill and marketability were pictorial ideas from their traditional associations and all irrelevant standards by which art was usually they juxtapose unexpected objects or themes in an judged. Important exponents of Conceptualism atmosphere of fantasy. Artists working in this vein include Sol LeWitt (who said ‘the idea is the include; Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, René Magritte, machine that makes the art), Joseph Beuys, Felix Man Ray, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy, Andre Masson Gonzales-Torres, Eva Hesse, Jenny Holzer, Joseph and Giorgio de Chirico. In Irish art Colin Middleton Kosuth, Barbara Kruger and Lawrence Weiner. and Dan O’Neill also worked in a Surrealist manner. Performance (Early 1960s onwards) Abstract Expressionism (1948–60) Inspired by Conceptualism, Dada, Futurism and A movement of abstract painting that emerged in Bauhaus, Performance art combines theatre with New York City during the mid-1940s and attained visual arts. Performance includes “happenings” singular prominence in American art in the following by individual artists, as well as “events” typically decade; also called action painting and the New involving groups, and can also incorporate a York School. It was the first important school in number of other media or activities, including American painting to declare its independence from video, installation, dance, music and others. European styles and to influence the development Famous Performance artists include Marina of art abroad. There were two main styles within the Abramovic, the French postmodernist Yves Klein, movement – one was a highly animated form of the Swiss kinetic artist and sculptor Jean Tinguely, gestural ‘action painting’ as practiced by Jackson the British duo Gilbert & George and the German Pollock and there was the more passive, mood- contemporary installation artist Joseph Beuys. reflective style known as ‘colour field painting’ as popularised by Mark Rothko. Both types helped popularise abstraction. 3 FACTFILE: GCE HISTORY OF ART / MAJOR MODERN ART MOVEMENTS Installation (1960s onwards) Photo-Realism (1960s, 70s) This can be a three-dimensional work or work that Photorealism is a style of highly detailed “life-like” is generally site-specific and designed to transform painting and sculpture, inspired by Pop-art, which the perception of a space. Dating from Surrealist emerged during the late 1960s. Also called super- events and shows created by Marcel Duchamp realism or hyper-realism, artists’ work depended and others, installation art involves the creation heavily on photographs, which they often projected of a compelling ‘environment’, often in the form onto canvas allowing images to be replicated with of a room-size ‘work of art’. Famous exponents