Conceptual Art maybe defined as a concept or art movement that came about the 1960’s as a reaction towards formalism. Where in art theory, formalism is a concept where an artwork or piece’s entire artistic value is based purely on its form and visual aspects. For example, American essayist/art critic, Clement Greenberg suggested the notion that art should examine its own nature and was already a potent aspect of vision of Modern art during the 1950’s. However with the mergence of conceptual artists such as Joseph Kossuth, Lawrence Weiner and many more, a far more radical interrogation of art than was previously done began. One of the first and most important things they questioned was the common assumption that the role of the artist was to create special kinds of material objects (Osborne 2002, 232). This essay will discuss as to why and how did Conceptual artists disagreed with the statement of formalism and set out to destroy or undermine the value of physical pleasure in art’s making and reception.…
In this essay I will be discussing French artist Jules Cheret’s art work: La Loie Fuller (1893, figure 2.3) and American artist Will H. Bradley’s art work: The Chap Book, Thanksgiving no. (1895, figure 2.24) in a compare and contrast exercise, looking at both the similarities but also what makes these two works very different. The art works are both dated by the end of the nineteenth century. Around the same time, the Industrial Revolution brought a huge boost productivity, but also changed the social structure in Europe. Some artists start interest in finding a new artistic vocabulary that could best express the industrial world in which they lived. Therefore, an artistic movement called Art Nouveau has started in around 1890 to1910. It turned Western Classicism into Modernism. Jules Cheret and Will H. Bradley’s art…
Simon Schama begins with rhetorical questions to make the readers thinking about the power of art and give a statement of how most of art’s history being assumed. He moves on to give detailed description of Mark Rothko and his arts. Schama then uses his personal experience of not being interested in Rothko’s arts to illustrate the process of the change of his perspective. Schama purposely writes, “The longer I started, the more powerful was the magnetic pull through the block columnar forms towards the interior of Rothko’s world” to make a transition of his point of views towards Rothko’s arts (401). He continues to develop the point of what makes Rothko’s arts so powerful. Schama organizes his writing in this particular order to better show…
The second half of Leo Steinberg’s Other Criteria focuses on the differences between past artists and modern artists. Steinberg introduces the reader to the idea of having many objects merge into each other, instead of having many distinct objects in the piece with distinct lines and colors. He also brings up the idea of the flatbed picture plane. Instead of composing a piece with the idea of human posture in mind, these “flatbed” pieces are composed more like a worktable or a bulletin board.…
* The effect of modernism in literature and art, psychoanalysis, and the revolution of physics on intellectual life.…
Cited: “America Modernist.” Sullivan Goss An American Gallery. 2008. Sullivan Goss, Ltd. 4 Apr. 2010. .…
In some of his work Rauschenberg tries to get people’s attention with little paintings by making them unusual and extraordinary. Rauschenberg’s main goal with his art was to purposely play with people minds daring them to fill in the blanks of his work and creativity. In ‘Reservoir’, it’s not just a normal painting. It includes, fabric, wood, glass, graphite, paint and rubber. These elements do not ass up to a single meaning. Instead they convey both the randomness and order that Rauschenberg saw in everyday life and what he wanted his audience to see in his artwork making their own mind on what they see. Rauschenberg held an exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou DECEMBER 20, 2005–APRIL 2, 2006. This exhibition was a comprehensive survey of the highly inventive body of work that Robert Rauschenberg (American, b. 1925) terms "combines." Among the sixty-seven works on view are several that have never before been shown publicly. With these mixed-media works of art, Rauschenberg reinvented collage, changing it from a medium that presses commonplace materials to serve illusion into something very different: a process that undermines both illusion and the idea that a work of art has a unitary meaning. Appearing as either wall-hung works or as freestanding objects, the combines are composed as syncopated grids that draw on materials from everyday life and the history of…
With the advent of modern technology during the industrial revolution, here comes another transition in the history of art which defined a major modification in the way people perceive and take their personal stand in the society. Along with the invention of modern resources and rise of urban cities, a new artistic style known as impressionism have emerged resulting to various transformations that greatly influenced the reflections and contemporary views on the subject of modernity.…
The need for dramatic and extravagant forms of expression started to disappear, while more and more artists began completely abandoning techniques associated with the previous Age of Enlightenment. This inescapable yearning for change was the product of a century’s worth of growth through industrialization and urbanization in the western world. As more and more discoveries and innovative research was made, people started embracing new ideologies of philosophers such as Darwin, Nietzsche and Marx, and questioning the boundaries and self-imposed limitations that came with the previous era. As such, the demand of an art industry that also rejected previous boundaries grew. Visual artists and Western music composers alike embarked on a journey of simultaneously distancing and re-establishing themselves. This meant stepping away from the great amounts of detail found in realism- moving into the realm of surrealism and expressionism for some, and plunging into the Avant-Garde territory of obscurity for others. (Auner 2013) Arnold Schoenberg, along with his pupil who formed the Second Viennese School and surrealism, is often falsely regarded as an advocate against harmony. In fact, his mission behind the emancipation of dissonance has everything to do with harmony, and broadening previously set boundaries of what is right and wrong. John Cage, who studied with Schoenberg, however, was far less…
This essay is going to look at the life of William Morris and his working practices by analyzing his writing and historical and social background, and discuss to what extent Morris’s actual practices reflected his views on social and artistic reform.…
The movie “Pollock” staring Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock is a story of how art was affected by an artist. The movie follows the latter years of Pollock’s life as he rises to fame as a painter but also watches him struggle with life. American artist Jackson Pollock was an alcoholic, manic-depressant and often an uncontrollable, angry and insecure man. However, through one woman and when he painted, he found a sense of freedom and peace, a release from his anger and sadness. Out of tragedy he helped create a movement in Abstract Expressionism. This essay will focus on how this movie showed his last years as an artist, the art and movement he created, it’s tragic end and what as a student I have learned from this.…
Modernism as a movement is an artistic reaction to the conventional art and literature of mid- to late 19th century. World War I introduced advanced technology and the introduction of industrialisation provoked Modernist writers to express their concerns about the changing society and the complexities it of through their works. Urban alienation, the meaning of life as well as inner psychological perspectives are some issues explored through the experimentation of new literary techniques as the progression from the Realism and Romanticism of the 19th century called for more realistic conventions in literature to allow writers express their values concerning the changing world. The poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S. Eliot and ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ by Ernest Hemingway are two texts which highlight the concerns of rapid industrialisation and values such as sex before marriage. Modernist writers expressed their opinions through the use of techniques such as stream of consciousness, non-linear structure, defamiliarisation, impressionism and symbolism.…
In the introduction, Pollock starts to analyze how the art and public world during the late 19th century was directed towards masculine standards. That the standards connected to modern art are those set by men for men, leaving the female artists unaccounted for. She also goes on to say that the work produced by the women artist of this time period is different that that of their male equals due to the fact that the women of this era were limited to certain areas of life, there for restricting there subject matter and views. She explains this in telling how there were severe differences socially, economically, and individually among men and women during this time frame (Pollock, 247). Pollock does this through the article by using the Impressionist artists, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. She explicates the fact that these two artists' works are different in several degrees due to the fact that spaces they were bound to affected what they produced (Pollock 248).…
His ‘ready-mades’ lead to new possibilities such as non-art materials and ideas about the conceptual basis of artworks. Society began accept these new materials and ideas about art which helped Robert Rauschenberg create is Combines, which was his term for his technique of attaching cast-off items, such as tires or old furniture, to a traditional support. ‘Bed’ is one of Rauschenberg’s first Combines and is a well-worn pillow, sheet, and quilt, scribbled on them with pencil, and splashed them with paint, in a style reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism. These bedclothes are supposably Rauschenberg’s own, thus making this as personal as a self-portrait, or more so – a quality consistent with Rauschenberg’s statements, “painting relates to both are and life… (I try to act in that gap between the two).…
Brockett, Oscar G., and Robert J. Ball. "Chapter 7: Modernism and It 's Effect." The Essential Theatre. Tenth ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. 177+. Print.…