20th Century Art as History

The Birth of Modern Art: a 20th Century Historical Reflecting Glass

In a time of economic uncertainty one of the first areas of society to suffer is that of the arts, there seems to be a notion that art is a luxury that cannot be supported when times are hard. But when one looks at the massive shift in the art movement in the 20th Century and how it reflects the very evolution of the social and political developments of the period one might wonder why the metamorphosis of art isn’t more readily used as a biography of the modern world and valued as a form of primary source material in the study of 20th Century history.

By the beginning of the 1900’s a cultural movement had taken hold that rejected the traditional and embraced the newness of the mechanical as well as industrial revolutions. Artists under the influence of the modernist movement turned away from the styles and forms of the past and presented new ideas and new forms in which to express themselves, considering these innovations more reflective of their advancing society (Modernism www.artandpopularculture.com). With the close of the 19th Century, the effects of such modernist movements as Realism, Impressionism, and the beginnings of Expressionism, were seen in the fierce challenge of the “avant-garde” artists against the established conception and production of art. In describing the contribution of these forward thinking artists art historian Fred Kleiner writes:

The avant-garde rejected the classical, academic, and traditional and zealously explored the premises and formal qualities of painting,sculpture and other media…Although the general public found avant-garde art incomprehensible the principle underlying late 19th century modernism appealed to increasing numbers of artists as the 20th century dawned… [Modernism] became a major force during the first half of the 20th century and beyond (Kleiner 687).

While artists challenged the rules of traditional post-Renaissance artistry, the world was rapidly shifting as a result of innovation in both technological as well as intellectual fields. Like the avant-garde artists who shaped the birth and development of 20th century art, the first decade of the 20th century offered up great accomplishments that would forever alter human existence. In 1900, Sigmund Freud introduced his theories regarding the complexities of the human mind in his seminal work The Interpretation of Dreams. Just 3 years later the Wright brothers accomplished first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and that same year the first silent movie was released. It was in 1905 that Albert Einstein changed the way people would understand the mechanics of certain scientific principles with his Theory of Relativity, challenging the scientific community’s understanding of movement and time as codified since the days of Sir Isaac Newton. (Rosenberg www.about.com).

It is in the dawn of the 20th century that the influences of this new world of technological advances and new human understanding becomes reflected not just in what artists create to represent their world but also how they do it as well. A wholly unique understanding of the purposes of an artist not just as the storyteller but character in the story as well began to permeate into the arts with the Expressionist movement, led by Van Gogh in the late 1800s and continuing in Germany well into the 1900s. The Expressionists turned away from the academic standards of their day and made the artist’s individual emotional experience with the chosen subject their goal as opposed to the standard of creating a non-subjective rendering of what was being painted. They also utilized as style of painting which would heighten the intensity of the viewing experience by choice of colors and seemingly eratic brushstrokes (Tate Collection Glossary www.tate.org.uk). The focus on portraying an image on an internal and emotional level established a break with traditional expectations of an art revolving around clean technique and from, paving the way for the innovations we now call 20th century art.

Greatly influenced by their rapidly changing world and percolating in the advances of the early 1900s, artists like Pablos Picasso looked at the art of the past and focused on reflecting their world in forms representing the way the mind processed them, more multidimensional than a canvass seeminlgy allowed for. With the introduction of Cubism in 1908 Piccaso and fellow artist George Braques sought to produce work that offered simultaneous and yet differing perspectives of a subject. Classical beauty held no value in a movement defined by its geometric analysis and presentation of objects in a seemingly distorted form. The key was to reproduce the subject not as the eye beholds it but as the mind processes it, in shapes and angles.

Cubism was a new way of representing reality in art…Picasso and Braques began to bring different views of the object, together in the picture on the surface….the object became increasingly fragmented and the paintings became increasingly abstract. They countered this by incorporating words and then real elements, like newspapers, to reperesent themselves. This was the start of one of
the most important ideas in modern art, that you can use real things directly in art (Tate Collection Glossary).

Just as the world was beginning to look at itself in new ways because of the contributions of the Wright brothers, Freud, and Einstein, so too artists began to look at how modern thought could and should shape the evolution of form in their work. With Cubism, art took a significant turn in its development not only because of its abtract representation of forms from the realm of the seen in a “composition of shapes” but also because of the global history which so profoundly influenced it (Kleiner 697).

Much of the progress made in art during the early 20th century is a direct reflection of the world political stage which it grew from. Cubism, Picasso in particular, was inspired by the traditional works of non-western cultures, the so-called primitive arts and sculpture of aboriginal Americans, Africans, and the Oceanic peoples. Due to the pattern of imperialism that dominated the 19th century, by the start of the 20th century impressive collections and exhibits of native artifacts were on display throughout Europe and even managed to cross the ocean to the United States. These items, which were to inspire the opening art movements of the 20th century were a significant reminder of the carving up of the African continent between England, France, Belgium, Holland , Germany, Spain and Portugal and the continuing colonial presence of the Unites States, France and Holland in the Pacific. The many exhibitions of collected folk treasures, which so affected artists like Pablo Piccaso, were seen by the general public as objects of curiosity that reflected a superstitious and inferior society. The frequent portrayal of what seemed to be polytheistic gods or supernatural animals in the collected relics sharpened the general sense that the countries from which these items came desperately needed to be civilized by their colonial benefactors. While much of the Western world viewed these glaring displays of imperialistic appropriation as clear proof of the continuing necessity of colonialism the artists inspired by the cultural masterpieces took delight in the break in perspective they offered from the art of the past (Kleiner 696).

In the birth and development of Cubism a completely new conceptualization of not just technique and form came into being but a unprecedented manner of reflecting the world in which the artist lived. Observers of the social, political, and technological changes rushing by, artists like Picasso and Braques channeled their undertsanding and interpretations into the development of a revolution in art to parallel the revolutions in science and industry. The ability of the artist to reproduce reality in a form which defied all post Renaissance standards, breaking the barriers of understanding and meaning in regards to aesthetics opening up the field to the movements to come. Movements as diverse as Dada, Abtract, Kinetic Art, and Abstract Expressionism would benefit from the pioneering work of the Cubists.

In looking back at the history of art, particularly in the birth of modern art , and understanding not only its influence on the cultural character of the modern world but its reflection of the spirit of that same world it seems rather obvious that for an educated society that defines itself by the progress it has made, the best way to insure a well rounded perspective on modernity is in the encourgament of future great artists.