Art Gallery of Oil Paintings , Drawing or the Plastic Artist : Maria D'Adam
Oil paintings art gallery logo
Oil painting, Drawing with Pencil and chalk coal, Landscape, Portrait, Personalized Paints

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized worldModernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and also that of the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator[2][3] This is not to say that all modernists or modernist movements rejected either religion or all aspects of Enlightenment thought, rather that Modernism can be viewed as a questioning of the axioms of the previous ageA salient characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness This often led to experiments with form, and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction)[4] The poet Ezra Pound's paradigmatic injunction was to "Make it new" Whether or not the "making new" of the modernists constituted a new historical epoch is up for debate Philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno warns us:Adorno would have us understand modernity as the rejection of the false rationality, harmony, and coherence of Enlightenment thinking, art, and music But the past proves sticky Pound's general imperative to make new, and Adorno's exhortation to challenge false coherence and harmony, faces T S Eliot's emphasis on the relation of the artist to tradition Eliot wrote:Literary scholar Peter Childs sums up the complexity:These oppositions are inherent to Modernism: it is in its broadest cultural sense the assessment of the past as different to the modern age, the recognition that the world was becoming more complex, and that the old "final authorities" (God, government, science, and reason) were subject to intense critical scrutinyCurrent interpretations of Modernism vary Some divide 20th century reaction into Modernism and postModernism, whereas others see them as two aspects of the same movementSome commentators approach Modernism as an overall socially progressive trend of thought, that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge or technology[8]From this perspective, Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same endOthers focus on Modernism as an aesthetic introspection This facilitates consideration of specific reactions to the use of technology in The First World War, and anti-technological and nihilistic aspects of the works of diverse thinkers and artists spanning the period from Nietzsche to Samuel Beckett[9]The first half of the nineteenth century for Europe was marked by a number of wars and revolutions, which contributed to an aesthetic "turning away" from the realities of political and social fragmentation, and so facilitated a trend towards Romanticism: emphasis on individual subjective experience, the sublime, the supremacy of "Nature" as a subject for art, revolutionary or radical extensions of expression, and individual liberty By mid-century, however, a synthesis of these ideas with stable governing forms had emerged, partly in reaction to the failed Romantic and democratic Revolutions of 1848 It was exemplified by Otto von Bismarck's Realpolitik and by "practical" philosophical ideas such as positivism Called by various namesin Great Britain it is designated the "Victorian era"this stabilizing synthesis was rooted in the idea that reality dominates over subjective impressionsCentral to this synthesis were common assumptions and institutional frames of reference, including the religious norms found in Christianity, scientific norms found in classical physics and doctrines that asserted that the depiction of external reality from an objective standpoint was not only possible but desirable Cultural critics and historians label this set of doctrines realism, though this term is not universal In philosophy, the rationalist, materialist and positivist movements established a primacy of reason and systemAgainst the current ran a series of ideas, some of them direct continuations of Romantic schools of thought Notable were the agrarian and revivalist movements in plastic arts and poetry (eg the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the philosopher John Ruskin) Rationalism also drew responses from the anti-rationalists in philosophy In particular, Hegel's dialectic view of civilization and history drew responses from Friedrich Nietzsche and Siren Kierkegaard, who were major influences on existentialism All of these separate reactions together began to be seen as offering a challenge to any comfortable ideas of certainty derived by civilization, history, or pure reasonFrom the 1870s onward, the ideas that history and civilization were inherently progressive and that progress was always good came under increasing attack Writers Wagner and Ibsen had been reviled for their own critiques of contemporary civilization and for their warnings that accelerating "progress" would lead to the creation of individuals detached from social values and isolated from their fellow men Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, and could not move forward in its present form Philosophers called into question the previous optimism The work of Schopenhauer was labelled "pessimistic" for its idea of the "negation of the will", an idea that would be both rejected and incorporated by later thinkers such as NietzscheTwo of the most significant thinkers of the period were, in biology, Charles Darwin, and in political science, Karl Marx Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined the religious certainty of the general public, and the sense of human uniqueness of the intelligentsia The notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as "lower animals" proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality Karl Marx argued there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist systemand that the workers were anything but free Both thinkers would spawn defenders and schools of thought that would become decisive in establishing Modernism[citation needed]Historians have suggested various dates as starting points for Modernism William Everdell has argued that Modernism began with Richard Dedekind's division of the real number line in 1872 and Boltzmann's statistical thermodynamics in 1874 Clement Greenberg called Immanuel Kant "the first real Modernist",[10] but also wrote, "What can be safely called Modernism emerged in the middle of the last centuryand rather locally, in France, with Baudelaire in literature and Manet in painting, and perhaps with Flaubert, too, in prose fiction (It was a while later, and not so locally, that Modernism appeared in music and architecture)"[11] At first, Modernism was called the "avant-garde", and the term remained to describe movements which identify themselves as attempting to overthrow some aspect of tradition or the status quo[12]Separately, in the arts and letters, two ideas originating in France would have particular impact The first was impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors (en plein air) Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, but instead see light itself The school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential Initially rejected from the most important commercial show of the time, the government-sponsored Paris Salon, the Impressionists organized yearly group exhibitions in commercial venues during the 1870s and 1880s, timing them to coincide with the official Salon A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusis, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon While most were in standard styles, but by inferior artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention, and opened commercial doors to the movementThe second school was symbolism, marked by a belief that language is expressly symbolic in its nature and a portrayal of patriotism, and that poetry and writing should follow connections that the sheer sound and texture of the words create The poet Stiphane Mallarmi would be of particular importance to what would occur afterwards

Oil Painting Gallery Homepage

At the same time social, political, and economic forces were at work that would become the basis to argue for a radically different kind of art and thinking Chief among these was steam-powered industrialization, which produced buildings that combined art and engineering in new industrial materials such as cast iron to produce railroad bridges and glass-and-iron train shedsor the Eiffel Tower, which broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could beand at the same time offered a radically different environment in urban lifeThe miseries of industrial urbanism and the possibilities created by scientific examination of subjects brought changes that would shake a European civilization which had, until then, regarded itself as having a continuous and progressive line of development from the Renaissance


0157336

Mariadadam.com Oil Paint Gallery © 2004-2010 - All right reserved
Modernism - Oil Paintings Art Gallery Maria D'Adam