Modern Art Movements
Modern art movements trace the succession of avant-gardes from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th, including Impressionism, Cubism, abstraction, Dada, and Surrealism.
Definition
The branch of art history concerned with the avant-garde movements of roughly 1860 to 1960, characterized by formal experimentation, the rejection of academic tradition, and an emphasis on the autonomy of art.
Scope
This area studies the rapid sequence of stylistic movements that defined modern art, the theories of progress and autonomy that accompanied them, the break with academic realism, and the responses of artists to industrialization, photography, and social upheaval across Europe and the Americas.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What drove the rapid succession of avant-garde movements in modern art?
- How did artists respond to photography, industry, and changing perception?
- What did 'modernism' mean as an aesthetic program of medium and autonomy?
- How did abstraction redefine the purpose and content of painting?
Key theories
- Modernist medium-specificity
- Clement Greenberg's account of modernism as the self-critical tendency of each art to emphasize what is unique to its own medium, leading painting toward flatness and abstraction.
- Absorption versus theatricality
- Michael Fried's argument, developed from his criticism of Minimalism, that authentic modernist art resists 'theatrical' dependence on the beholder, defending the autonomy of the work.
History
Accounts of modern art were long shaped by formalist critics, above all Clement Greenberg, who narrated a teleological progression toward abstraction. From the 1970s, social art history and the 'new art history' challenged this story, situating movements within their political and institutional contexts, while anthologies such as Art in Theory documented the movements' own manifestos and debates.
Debates
- Formalism versus the social history of art
- A central methodological dispute pits formalist accounts of modernism, focused on style and medium, against social-historical approaches that read art through class, politics, and institutions.
Key figures
- Clement Greenberg
- Michael Fried
- Charles Harrison
- Paul Wood
Related topics
Seminal works
- greenberg1961
- harrisonwood2002
- fried1998
Frequently asked questions
- When did modern art begin?
- Most accounts place the beginnings of modern art in mid-19th-century France, with Realism and especially Impressionism's break from academic conventions.
- Why did modern art move toward abstraction?
- Many artists and critics held that art should explore its own formal means rather than imitate the world, a logic that, in formalist accounts, led toward abstraction.