Modernism: The Abstract Movements

The end of Modernism?

Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernists believed that each new generation must build on past styles in new way or break with the past in order to make the next major contribution. Modernism is associated with innovation and progress. Many modernists believed that by rejecting tradition and embracing new technology they could invent new ways of making art.

Despite the fact that early practitioners rejected consumerism, modernism has flourished in consumer/capitalist societies. Modernism even began to fuse with consumer culture during the 1960s. This merging of consumer and the original idea of modernism led to a radical transformation of the meaning of “modernism.” It seems that a movement based on the rejection of tradition has become a tradition of its own.

Information Source: https://visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com/modernism/

The Easy Guide to design movements: Modernism

The Modernist school has had a huge influence on the history of design - and continues to do so today. Aaron Kitney explains why.

With the advances of technology Modernism began to break through at the end of the 19th century into the beginning to the 20th century. Western society began to develop new ways to shape human culture and improve the constructed environment.

Modernism covered many creative disciplines from design and art to influencing architecture, music and literature. The power of machines forced artists to strategically re-think their practice, the results were revolutionary and still influences designers to this very day. This new technology provided the opportunity for mass production, and the machine itself became a theme in modernism.

Influential designers of this period range from Walter Gropius from the Bauhaus to the modern architect Le Corbusier, both men were fascinated with all disciplines of design and it reflected greatly in their work.

'Function should always dictate form'

Modernism particularly inspired fine art, it saw a break in the world of the 'ism' - these art styles include Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Brutalism and Surrealism. With the influence making such an impact across multiple creative disciplines Modernism is arguably being the most influential movement of the 20th century.

Graphic Design and Typefaces

Modernism especially changed the thinking process for communications, graphic design and typography, the style of design shifted drastically from the prior 19th century approach. Before the concept of Modernism, graphic design and typography was 'overly decorated' and elaborate, every possible inch of a typical poster would be filled with imagery and type.

Designers of the era of Modernism abided to strict, structured grid system with emphasis on negative space, just as important was the use of clean sans-serif type. The idea was to create strong graphics that were against commercialism, greed and cheapness. Typical typefaces used in the Modernism era include Franklin Gothic, Monotype Grotesque, Futura, and Helvetica Neue.

Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg practiced painting, architecture and poetry - he also influenced graphic design and is considered the 'ambassador' of the movement De Stijl. He described Modernism times as: "Art should not deal with the 'useful' or the 'nice', but with the 'spiritual' and the 'sublime'. The purest art forms do not cause the decorative change of some detail from life, but the inner metamorphosis of life, the revaluation of all values."

Information Source: http://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design/easy-guide-design-movements-modernism-10134971

Modernism

Modernism in design and architecture emerged in the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution – a period when the artistic avant-garde dreamed of a new world free of conflict, greed and social inequality. It was not a style but a loose collection of ideas. Many different styles can be characterised as Modernist, but they shared certain underlying principles: a rejection of history and applied ornament; a preference for abstraction; and a belief that design and technology could transform society.

Information Source: http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/m/modernism/

What is Modern Art?

The birth of modernism and modern art can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution, a period that lasted from the 18th to the 19th century, in which rapid changes in manufacturing, transportation, and technology profoundly affected the social, economic, and cultural conditions of life in Western Europe, North America, and eventually the world. New forms of transportation, including the railroad, the steam engine, and the subway changed the way people lived, worked, and traveled, both at home and abroad, expanding their worldview and access to new ideas. As urban centers prospered, workers flocked to cities for industrial jobs, and urban populations boomed.

A Modern Art:

Prior to the 19th century, artists were most often commissioned to make artwork by wealthy patrons, or institutions like the church. Much of this art depicted religious or mythological scenes that told stories and were intended to instruct the viewer. During the 19th century, many artists started to make art about people, places, or ideas that interested them, and of which they had direct experience. With the publication of psychologist Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and the popularization of the idea of a subconscious mind, many artists began exploring dreams, symbolism, and personal iconography as avenues for the depiction of their subjective experiences.

Challenging the notion that art must realistically depict the world, some artists experimented with the expressive use of color, non-traditional materials, and new techniques and mediums. One of these was photography, whose invention in the 1830s introduced a new method for depicting and reinterpreting the world. The Museum of Modern Art collects work made after 1880, when the atmosphere was ripe for avant-garde artists to take their work in new, unexpected, and “modern” directions.

Information Source: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/what-is-modern-art

Modernism

Key Dates: 1890-1940

Modernism was characterised by the deliberate departure from tradition and the use of innovative forms of expression that distinguish many styles in the arts and literature of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century. Modernism refers to this period’s interest in new types of paints and other materials, in expressing feelings and ideas, in creating abstractions and fantasies, rather than representing what is real. This kind of art requires its audience to observe carefully in order to get some facts about the artist, his intentions, and his environment, before forming judgments about the work. Paul Cézanne is often called the ‘Father of Modernism’.

Information Source: http://www.artmovements.co.uk/modernism.htm

Surrealism

Surrealism was a movement which began in the 1920s of writers and artists (including Salvador Dalí and René Magritte), who experimented with ways of unleashing the subconscious imagination.

Information Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/surrealism

Video Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPD6okhfGzs

Psychedelia

Roots:
The word "psychedelic" was coined by British psychologist Humphry Osmond in the 50's. A forming of the Latin words psyche and delos, it means "mind manifesting" or "soul manifesting" and by this definition, all artistic efforts that depict the inner world of the psyche may be considered "psychedelic". But is it more than this? Psychedelia hit its peak in the 60's during the counterculture revolution and defined a culture breaking the boundaries socially, politically as well as artistically and musically. It's this rule breaking and freedom of expression that most feel define Psychedelia and it's main contributors.

Music and Visuals:
Graphic designers and illustrators were working closely with musicians and venues to create visually stunning gig posters that mirrored the Psychedelic rock and roll of the time. One of the most widely recognised contributors was Wes Wilson who created some of the most era defining posters of the day. His work with the legendary music venue The Filmore (made famous by promoter Bill Graham) set a standard for Psychedelic gig posters and redefined typography and graphic design for generations to come. In particular, Wilson is known for inventing and popularising a "psychedelic" font around 1966 that made the letters look like they were moving or melting. Breaking long-established conventions of graphic design with his twisting, melting, and distorted forms, his psychedelic art mimicked that of an acid trip.

Zap Comix:

"Zap Comix" was among the original underground comics, and featured the illustration work of Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, and Robert Williams among others. Zap #1 was published in San Francisco in late 1968. Zap became an outlet for illustration and had strong connections with psychedelic styles and content. It featured such characters as Angelfood McSpade, Captain Piss-Gums and his Perverted Pirates, Dirty Dog and others. A cult favourite it still influences illustrators and inspires small Zine publications today.

Psychedelia's Influence:

Originally inspired by the likes of the surrealists and the Dada movement Psychedelia helped inspire a new generation of artists and designers. The rules were broken and the boundaries between art, music, performance and graphic design had been merged. Although the free love, boundary pushing days of the 60's and 70's is long gone the visual style and ideas still remain. The bold use of contrasting colours and free flowing, living text is still a graphic design favourite and used extensively within commercial projects. Artists are still inspired by images of altered consciousness or highly distorted and surreal visuals. This is Testament to the importance of Psychedelia and the culturally and socially important visual movement it helped define.

Information Source: http://www.thelondonillustrationfair.co.uk/psychedelia/

Marcel Duchamp - 'Fountain'

The 'Fountain' is one of Marcel Duchamp's most famous piece of work and is widely seen as an icon of twentieth century art. The original 'Fountain' , which was lost, consisted of a standard urinal which was presented on its back for exhibition, with a signature and date 'R. Mutt 1917'. In William Camfield's Marcel Duchamp's Fountain: Its History and Aesthetics in the Context of 1917, the author quotes from an interview with Duchamp on the origins of "R.Mutt": "Duchamp stated many years later that the pseudonym "Mutt" came from the Mott Works [J.L. Mott Iron Works, manufacturer of the urinal] but was modified because "Mott was too close so I altered it to Mutt, after the daily strip cartoon "Mutt and Jeff" which appeared at the time, and with which everyone was familiar. Thus, from the start there was an interplay of Mutt: a fat little funny man, and Jeff: a tall thin man...And I added Richard [French slang for money-bags]. That's not a bad name for a "piasotiere." Get it? The opposite of poverty. But not even that much, just R. MUTT."  however, some people believe that the R.M stoods for 'readymade' which is a term to describe the 'ordinary manufactured object designed by the artist as a work of art (and, in Duchamp's case, interpretated in some way)

'Duchamp later recalled that the idea for Fountain arose from a discussion with the collector Walter Arensberg (1878–1954) and the artist Joseph Stella (1877–1946) in New York.He purchased a urinal from a sanitary ware supplier and submitted it – or arranged for it to be submitted – as an artwork by ‘R. Mutt’ to the newly established Society of Independent Artists that Duchamp himself had helped found and promote on the lines of the Parisian Salon des Indépendants (Duchamp had moved from Paris to New York in 1915). The society’s board of directors, who were bound by the Society’s constitution to accept all members’ submissions, took exception to Fountain, believing that a piece of sanitary ware – and one associated with bodily waste – could not be considered a work of art and furthermore was indecent (presumably, although this was not said, if displayed to women). Following a discussion and a vote, the directors present during the installation of the show at the Grand Central Palace (about ten of them according to a report in the New York Herald) narrowly decided on behalf of the board to exclude the submission from the Society’s inaugural exhibition that opened to the public on 10 April 1917. Arensberg and Duchamp resigned in protest against the board taking it upon itself to veto and effectively censor an artist’s work. Duchamp never explicitly commented on why he wanted to test the principles of his fellow board members but it may well have sprung from his own experience at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.'

Information Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573/text-summary

Video Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIApXD-TdDs

Dada

Dada was an art movement formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.

Introduction to Dada:

Dada artists felt the war called into question every aspect of a society capable of starting and then prolonging it - including its art. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in art and to create a new art to replace the old. As the artist Hans Arp later wrote:

Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While the guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might.

In addition to being anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and had political affinities with the radical left.

The founder of dada was a writer, Hugo Ball. In 1916 he started a satirical night club in Zurich, the Cabaret Voltaire, and a magazine which, wrote Ball, 'will bear the name "Dada". Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada.' This was the first of many dada publications. Dada became an international movement and eventually formed the basis of surrealism in Paris after the war.

Video Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAz6a5FwZJQ

Information Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/dada#context

William Blake

William Blake was a 19th century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages, and he has been deemed both a major poet and an original thinker.

Born in 1757 in London, England, William Blake began writing at an early age and claimed to have had his first vision, of a tree full of angels, at age 10. He studied engraving and grew to love Gothic art, which he incorporated into his own unique works. A misunderstood poet, artist and visionary throughout much of his life, Blake found admirers late in life and has been vastly influential since his death in 1827.

Source of Information:http://www.biography.com/people/william-blake-9214491#the-move-to-felpham-and-charges-of-sedition

Alain de Botton on Romanticism

Description: "The ideology of Romanticism has been fatal to our chances of long-term happiness in modern relationships. Here, School of Life founder Alain de Botton delivers a lecture at the Sydney Opera House charting a wiser course for love. With deepest thanks to the team at the Opera House."

History of Ideas - Romanticism

Description: "Romanticism is a historical movement that still hugely colours how we tend to feel and look at the world: it’s responsible for the way we approach love, nature, business and children. This is its history."

Samuel Palmer

Samuel Palmer is an English painter, draughtsman and etcher. Palmer was a key figure of English Romantic painting who represented, at least in his early work, ITs pastoral, intuitive and nostalgic aspects at their most intense. He is widely described as a visionary and linked with his friend and mentor William Blake, though he stood at an almost opposite extreme in his commitment to landscape and his innocent approach to its imagery. He had none of Blake's irony or complexity and was inspired by a passionate love of nature that found its philosophical dimension in unquestioning Neo-Platonism.

Information Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/samuel-palmer-411

Modernism

Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850, and is characterised by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasising instead innovation and experimentation in forms, materials and techniques in order to create artworks that better reflected modern society.

Introduction:

The terms modernism and modern art are generally used to describe the succession of art movements that critics and historians have identified since the realism of Gustav Courbet and culminating in abstract art and its developments in the 1960s.

Although many different styles are encompassed by the term, there are certain underlying principles that define modernist art: A rejection of history and conservative values (such as realistic depiction of subjects); innovation and experimentation with form the shapes, colours and lines that make up the work) with a tendency to abstraction; and an emphasis on materials, techniques and processes. Modernism has also been driven by various social and political agendas. These were often utopian, and modernism was in general associated with ideal visions of human life and society and a belief in progress.

By the 1960s modernism had become a dominant idea of art, and a particularly narrow theory of modernist painting had been formulated by the highly influential American critic Clement Greenberg. A reaction then took place which was quickly identified as Postmodernism.

Information Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/modernism

Romanticism

Term in use by the early nineteenth century to describe the movement in art and literature distinguished by a new interest in human psychology, expression of personal feeling and interest in the natural world.

Introduction To Romanticism:

This complex shift in attitudes away from the dominant classical tradition was at its height from about 1780 to 1830, but continued to be an influence long after that. The overall characteristic was a new emotionalism in contrast to the prevailing idea of classical restraint.

In British art, Romanticism was embraced in new responses to nature in the art of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. Visionary artist William Blake examined man's place in the cosmos and his relationship to God as well as exploring new ways of looking at human history. Other significant painters of history subjects were Henry Fuseli, James Barry and John Hamilton Mortimer.

Later Phases of the Romantic movement in Britain embraced Pre-Raphaelities and Symbolism.

Information Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/romanticism

Lecture Reading 2: The Romantic Imagination

http://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/567858/mod_page/content/13/TheRomanticImagination_intropart.pdf

Lecture Reading 1: Romanticism

http://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/567858/mod_page/content/13/ROMpres.pdf

Samuel Palmer and Romanticism - Presentation

http://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/567858/mod_page/content/13/Samuel%20Palmer%20-%20Darryl.pdf