Contemporary Art and Society

Luka Zarkov (GL)

Have you ever looked at a piece of modern art and felt "I could do that"?

Modern art is like fragrance - some love it, and some hate it. But there is one thing for sure - everyone has an opinion on it. Many individuals find it wild to see paintings of artists like Mark Rothko and Jeff Koons sold for tens of millions of dollars, with clients having fights to obtain the pieces. Here, we try to understand how modern art revolutionized society and why it still fascinates people all over the world.

Firstly, it is important to recognize that Modern art is not the same as contemporary art - the movement begins in the late 19th century and concludes in mid-20th century. Modern art is a manifestation of the rapid progress and industrialisation of society at the time. As my teacher once rightly said “Art is not made in a vacuum". Image: Red-Blue-Yellow by Wassiliy Kandinsky, post-impressionism

It would be a fallacy to say that

Modern art emerged out of nowhere - the movement is filled with subjectivity, symbolism, deep meanings and discussion that often are a reaction against the past.

Modern art is the artist's subjective perception of what surrounds them. Modern art, out of all the previous art movements, is the most ambiguous and thought provocative; studying modern art engages the viewer in a way that forces them to question things around them, but also allows them to discov-

Image: At the races in the countryside, Edgar Degas, 1872 er themselves. Essentially, the intense transformation and contrast seen in

Modern art, in comparison to all previous movements, reveals that society was changing with rapid progress.

Modern art originated in France in 1860 with the rise of the Impressionists. As Paris became modernized under the direction of William Haussmann, many new facilities and activities pushed artists to pursue new experiences. With modernization came improved transportation (train lines), which allowed painters to broaden personal horizons and paint new subject matter. The development of technology allowed them to develop a more extensive assortment of pigments. Books and theories studying colour - for example notes on the colour wheel by Charles Blanc - evoked a scientific interest in the colour of the Impressionists. the idealized, refined compositions that were promoted by art schools and the Salon. Breaking the academic norms was considered unprofessional rather than creative, and consequently created difficulties for the Impressionists in gaining recognition. Although the impressionists were criticized, with the majority considering them incompetent, they gained supporters. For example, Madame Georges Charpentier, a fashionable, well-known figure in French upper-class society, started to commission Auguste Renoir

The name Impressionists arose because the group’s focus was to convey their subjective, naturalistic view of the world around them. When it comes to the Impressionists, we see a divergence from the academic norms. For example, Edgar Degas’ “At the races in the countryside” has a cropped, unframed composition, and Edouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” has a discontinuous perspective. The artists rejected Image: Madame Georges Charpentier and her children, Auguste Renoir, 1878

..continued from previous page to paint portraits of her family. Approval from such educated and well-cultured figures like Charpentier pushed the majority to notice the impressionists.

After the boundaries began to be broken, other artists also felt confident to experiment and be free.

Experimentation grew rapidly, and many artists began to develop new styles of painting. Examples include Pointillism, Neo-Impressionism, Realism, Symbolism, Constructivism and Cubism.

By inventing new ways to express ideas, artists increased their ability to communicate with the viewer and convey their spirituality, emotions and thoughts. Additionally, the expansion of alternative mediums like photography reduced the need for art to emulate the real world and allowed artists to gain artistic freedom and shift into abstraction.

The shift into abstraction within an artist's career is especially evident in the works of artists like Kazemir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky. Many of Kandinsky’s early works included rural landscapes painted in thick, abstract brushstrokes (see Landscape with Tower, 1908), or genre paintings that were completed in pointillism, and maintained use too vivid for nature (Riding Couple, 1906). As time grew and Kandinsky’s ideas evolved, he took away many elements he considered unnecessary, leaving the most important feature in his opinion: the sensation. One of the examples is Kandinsky’s famous Yellow-Red-Blue from 1925. The painting depicts Kandinsky’s perception of sound through colour and line, something known as synaesthesia. This neurological condition allows the artist to hear colours and shapes through sound, which allowed Kandinsky to convey something non-tangible through a tangible medium.

With its rich history and symbolism, modern art doesn’t compromise periods like the Renaissance or Baroque. Despite many people under-rating modern art, many of the pieces from this period hold a lot of consideration and illustrate complicated thoughts and ideas. Innovation appears normal in today’s society, and it's difficult to absorb how much reaction and revolution the works discussed generated. Modern art affected everyone, Image: Riding couple, Vasiliy Kandinsky, 1906, post-impressionism pushing the viewer to engage and process the work on a deeper level. Some of the ideas discussed are still relevant to this day. Although some works look like they were painted effortlessly, or are so abstract they are impossible to understand without an art historian by your side, they hold years of investigation and evolution that led up to the painter’s creation of the piece.