Modernism in art emerged in the 1860s through the works of artists like Édouard Manet who broke from academic conventions in paintings like Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia. While modernism's roots can be traced to intellectual developments in the Renaissance and 18th century, it was in the early 20th century that progressive modernism came to dominate the European art scene by focusing on qualities of form like color, shape, and line rather than subject matter. Conservative modernists also existed who believed art should set moral examples, in contrast to progressive modernists who reduced compositions to basic elements. Famous modernist artists and their groundbreaking works are mentioned.

1. Modernism
by sasha
oliynyk
10-v

2. The Roots of Modernism
• In the history of art, however, the term ‘modern’ is used to refer to a period
dating from roughly the 1860s through the 1970s and describes the style and
ideology of art produced during that era. It is this more specific use of modern
that is intended when people speak of modern art. The term ‘modernism’ is also
used to refer to the art of the modern period. More specifically, ‘modernism’ can
be thought of as referring to the philosophy of modern art.
• Art historians tend to speak of modern painting, for example, as concerned
primarily with qualities of colour, shape, and line applied systematically or
expressively, and marked over time by an increasing concern with flatness and
a declining interest in subject matter. It is generally agreed that modernism in
art originated in the 1860s and that the French painter Édouard Manet is the
first modernist painter. Paintings such as his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe(‘Luncheon
on the Grass’) and Olympia are seen to have ushered in the era of modernism.
• When Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863,
many people were scandalized not only by the subject matter, which shows two
men dressed in contemporary clothes seated casually on the grass in the
woods with a nude woman, but also by the unconventional way it was painted.
Two years later the public were even more shocked by his painting of Olympia
which showed a nude woman, obviously a demi-mondaine, gazing out morally
unperturbed at the viewer, and painted in a quick, broad manner contrary to the
accepted academic style.

3. Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner
sur l'herbe

4. Édouard Manet, Olympia

5. The Roots of Modernisms of
Modernism
• The roots of modernism lie much deeper in history than the middle of the 19th
century. For historians the modern period actually begins in the sixteenth
century, initiating what is called the Early Modern Period, which extends up to
the 18th century. The intellectual underpinnings of modernism emerge during
the Renaissance period when, through the study of the art, poetry, philosophy,
and science of ancient Greece and Rome, humanists revived the notion that
man, rather than God, is the measure of all things, and promoted through
education ideas of citizenship. The period also gave rise to ‘utopian’ visions of a
more perfect society, beginning with Sir Thomas More's Utopia, written in 1516,
in which is described a fictional island community with seemingly perfect social,
political, legal customs.
• The modernist thinking which emerged in the Renaissance began to take
shape as a larger pattern of thought in the 18th century. Mention may be made
first of the so-called ‘Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns’, a literary and artistic
dispute that dominated European intellectual life at the end of the 17th century
and the beginning of the 18th century. The crux was the issue of whether
Moderns were now morally and artistically superior to the Ancients (writers and
artists of ancient Greece and Rome). Introduced first in France in 1687 by
Charles Perrault, who supported the Moderns, the discussion was taken up in
England where it was satirized as The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift.

6. • It was also satirized by William Hogarth in a print called The Battle of the
Pictures, which shows paintings mostly by Renaissance and Baroque
masters attacking Hogarth’s own works of equivalent but more
contemporary subject matter.

7. Art for Art's Sake
• By the early 20th century, progressive modernism came to
dominate the art scene in Europe. It is well to remember that
for most of the 20th century, we have fostered a narrow view
of the modernist period, one in which progressive modernism
has received almost exclusive attention while conservative
modernism has been largely ignored.
• Conservative modernists, though, the so-called academic
painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries, believed they
were doing their part to improve the world. In contrast to the
progressive modernists, conservative modernists presented
images that contained or reflected good conservative moral
values, or served as examples of virtuous behaviour, or
offered inspiring Christian sentiment. Generally, conservative
modernists selected subject matter that showed examples of
righteous conduct and noble sacrifice that was intended to
serve as a model which all good citizens should aspire to
emulate.

8. Jean-paul laurens‟s painting, last MoMents of MaxiMilian,
Emperor of Mexico , for example, shows the puppet emperor
before his execution by firing squad.

9. Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky who, in his Composition VII, painted in
1913, reduced his compositions to arrangements of colours, lines, and
shapes. He believed colours, lines, and shapes could exist
autonomously in a painting without any connection to recognizable
objects.

10. A radical approach was to reduce the non-recognizable to the most
basic colours, lines, and shapes. This was the approach of the Dutch
painter Piet Mondrian in his Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red,
painted in 1921, in which three colours plus black and white are
arranged as rectangular shapes in a grid.

11. other well-known painters of modernism
and their paintings
hans hofMann's painting “the gate” picasso‟s „portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler‟

12. Pablo Picasso,
Robert Rauschenberg,
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
Untitled Combine

13. The Jackson Pollock,
Farm (Miró) №5

14. Martiges (Harbour in Provence)
Andre Derain
Andre Derain
Port