2. And Now For Something Completely Different Modernism began as a rejection of the ideas or cultural baggage of the past in the 19th Century. New ideas such as evolution, psychology and socialism (Marxism) changed the way people looked at the world. God was suddenly dead, everyone was driven by their subconscious and all people were equal. Modernism was (is) about new ideas, new ideas all of the time.
3. MODERNism START HERE Modernism in art covers the period from Manets Olympia (1863) to the end of pop art in the late 1960s. The following quote by Modernist Art critic Clement Greenburg neatly sums up Art before modernism, “One tends to see what is in an old master before what it is as a picture” END HERE In Manet you see his way of painting. In Titian you see the nude etc.
4. MODERNism The term Modernism refers to an approach to art making defined by certain common characteristics. (Some of )These commonalities are: Masculinity- most modernist masters were male. European- most modernist masters were European. Utopian- most modernist masters sincerely believed in a better world through better art (their own) Media before subject matter- most modernist masters thought the best, most honest art was to use the technique of art as the subject matter. They believed this would get them closer to what art was really about.
9. Post Modernism Post Modernism began from scrutiny of Modernism. The artists and intellectuals of the 1970s began to look at Modernism as being a bit dodgy. This attitude reflected upheavals in society: feminism, equal rights and protest movements. Where were the women? What about their art? Where were the Africans? The Asians? What about their art? Utopianism? Look at what Stalin did (millions dead)! Who controls the media? You can’t trust anyone! Media before subject matter? That’s a dead end. And what about other stuff like comics? Can that be art?
10. POST MODERNISM Post Modernism (in Art) covers the period from the end of the 1960s with Pop Art until the present. The following quote by Italian philosopher, art critic, literary scholar and novelist Umberto Eco sums up the post modern attitude : “The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her ‘I love you madly’, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say ‘As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly’. At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence. If the woman goes along with this, she will have received a declaration of love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent, both will have accepted the challenge of the past, of the already said, which cannot be eliminated; both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony… But both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love.”
11. POST MODERNISM Post Modernist art shares some commonalities, these include: Irony: the use of low brow imagery in a high brow context. Questioning what Art is. Appropriation: the use of another's imagery in a new context to create a new meaning (also referencing) Juxtaposition: using incongruent styles together, abstract and figurative. Pluralism: multiple viewpoints (political), openness to difference in sex, race etc. Deconstruction: looking at the multiple meanings in imagery/text to find bias.
