A Visual History of Modern Art

A
Visual History
Of
Modern Art
composed by

Victoria Lief Bertotti
Teachers College, Columbia university
December 2013

Thursday, December 12, 13

We are in an age
referred to by many as
POSTMODERNITY.
Postmodernity,
according to some,
has already replaced
MODERNITY.


The Age of Modernity
is the epoch
that began
with
the age of
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
about
1687 to 1789.


MODERNISM emerged from
the age of
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
and
at the founding of
a new nation called The
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.


PRE-MODERNIST
Jacques Louis David
painted scenes
from the
FRENCH REVOLUTION.


MODERNISM
also emerged amidst
the social & political revolution
sweeping all of
Western Europe
&
its many cultures.


PRE-MODERNIST
Francisco de Goya
depicted
Napoleon's
invasion of Spain.


In 1770,
Immanuel Kant
laid the philosophic foundation for
ARTISTIC MODERNISM
&
for the formalism
of the 1930’s.


Artistic modernism
is more recent than
philosophical modernity.
ARTISTIC MODERNISM
began between
the middle and the end of
the nineteenth century.


Modernists
signified their allegiance
to the new
by referring to themselves as
"AVANTE GARDE"
thinking they were
ahead of their time and beyond
historical limitations.


others modernists,
such as
THE CONSTRUCTIVISTS
in the Soviet Union,
embraced influences of
scientific modes of thinking.


Some modernists,
such as
THE FUTURISTS
during the 1920s,
celebrated new technology
in their work,
especially the quality
of speed.


during the early1900’s
THE FUTURISTS
in Italy & France
originated important
Modernist classic works.


In the 1920s,
the theory of modernism
received a big boost from British critics.
Clive Bell & Roger Fry
introduced
FORMALISM.
Formalism & modernism
are inextricably linked.


During the 1930s,
in the area of literary criticism,
T. S. Eliot
and other writers
developed "New Criticism."
This became
a formalist approach to literature
that paralleled
formalism in art.


After
World War II,
MODERNIST FORMALISM
became extremely important in
the United States.


Clement Greenberg
became the most influential
American critic
of the 20th century.
“Greenberg pushed the position that the best avant-garde artists were emerging in
America rather than Europe. ... In the 1955 essay "American-Type Painting"
Greenberg promoted the work of Abstract Expressionists, among them
Jackson Pollock, [and] Willem de Kooning, ... as the next stage in Modernist art,
arguing that these painters were moving towards greater emphasis on the
'flatness' of the picture plane.”
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Greenberg


With the backing of
Clement Greenberg
And fellow critic
Harold Rosenberg
abstract expressionists,
color-field painters & hardedge
abstractionists flattened
their paintings.


the FORMALIST PRINCIPLE
defined painting as
two-dimensional by nature
and it ought not attempt
three - dimensional illusions.
“At a certain moment
the canvas began to appear to one American painter
after another as an arena in which to act.
What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”
— Harold Rosenberg


During the 1960’s,
art critic Michael Fried
wrote extensively on formalism,
concentrating especially on
MINIMALIST SCULPTURES.


However,
as social forces
in the 1960’s
sought to obliterate
social boundaries,
so too did art movements
erase aesthetic boundaries.


Criticism of modernism
and its slogan of
“ART FOR ART’S SAKE"
pushed toward minimal abstraction.
Tom Wolfe
attempted to discredit
Greenberg & Rosenberg
and their
abstract and minimalist movements.


Arthur Danto
credits Warhol with bringing about
"THE END OF ART."
Danto
refers Warhol’s “the end of art” as
the end of
MODERNISM.


Many others agree
that the history of modernism
is a history of "erasures."
MODERNIST ARTISTS
took apart the foundations
of all that was special
in previous art making.


Arthur Danto
specifically credits
‘THE BRILLO BOX’
with the end of modernism.
Andy Warhol
made the "philosophical" statement:
‘one could no longer tell
the difference between an ordinary object
and an art object just by looking at it.’


Other critics, notably
Douglas Crimp
write a different history of modernism,
arguing that its demise
was brought about
by the
INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY.


The significance of
the reproducibility of artworks
by photographic means
was originally noted by
Walter Benjamin
in the 1930’s.


In
POSTMODERNIST
terms,
Danto's and other writers'
renditions of
MODERNISM
are thought of as
"stories."


We might have inherited
a very different
history of art than
MODERNISM
(others are currently being written).
But we didn't.


What we inherited was
MODERNISM
as a very influential and limited,
explanation of
the art of
the past century.


A Visual History of Modern Art

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