Modernism is defined as a modern artistic or literary philosophy and practice; especially a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression. It is a movement which modified traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time in Europe, more female artists left the idea of naturalism in their art and separated from the usual tradition in paintings created by men. Modernism initially started in two directions. Chadwick states, “While some artists worked primarily in two dimensions, others emphasized construction, texture and design.” (264) These changes in their paintings led to a movement of progression and a new form of art expression.
Above is a good example of a modernist painting by Natalia Goncharova titled Rayonist Garden: Park from 1912, which fuse refracted rays of light and scatter color across the canvas surface. An abstraction is the freedom from representational qualities in art. Female artists made many movements within the movements of abstraction. According to Chadwick, “Its course, inextricably bound up with the formal developments of Post-Impressionism and Cubism, and with a desire to break with nature and infuse the resulting art with a profound spiritual content, has been extensively traced. (252) This idea popularized German expressionism, which embraced change and the need to look beyond the present in order to experiment with artistic and bold styles.
European female artists shared a passion through the use of abstraction and surrealism through applying their paintings with Dada collaborators. In order to break the mold and stereotypes of the Male Gaze, it became vital for these women to apply the techniques of design and craft with a new approach that captured the attention from others. Another example above is Hannah Höch’s DADA-Dance from 1919, which rejects a man’s idea of femininity and expectation of the female body. Postmodernism is a concept described as a departure from modernism which has a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of art. According to The Art Story, “The first signs of postmodernism were evident in the early twentieth century with Dada artists who ridiculed the art establishment with their anarchic actions and irreverent performances.” (1)
It can’t be looked at as a coherent movement because it lacks definitive characteristics. It’s mostly considered a set of styles and attitudes that were related to the reaction against modernism from women artists. Their concept of postmodernism did not rely on one exact concept as there are many different approaches to creating such art. It mostly began in the 1960’s with the phenomenon of pop art and followed with conceptual art, neo-expressionism and 1990’s feminist art. According to Tate, “While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born of scepticism and a suspicion of reason. Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century, and advocated that individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles. While the modernists championed clarity and simplicity; postmodernism embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning.” (1)
One example of postmodernist art is Judy Chicago’s Driving the World to Destruction in 1985 above. Rather than glorifying her subjects, Chicago critiques them, portraying them as amateur on the outside. Although the painting seemingly represents a strong man who believes he has the ability to control the world on the inside. Artwork such as Chicago’s provide a shift in subject matter just as the differences and similarities between modernism and postmodernism's peak. It is, in fact, expected, but now uncommon to portray the female body as a symbol of emotion.
Work Cited
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. Thames and Hudson, 2015.
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. Thames and Hudson, 2015.
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