Academic literature on the topic 'Modernism (Art)'

The contemporary vision of modernism, which is constructed from a point outside of that period, differs from the vision created by the participants and originators of modernism. One of the major problems encountered today is the one of the meaning of modernist works art. The extreme concept of "silent" and "pure" art followed by Clement Greenberg and other modernists has now found itself under criticism. The interpretations of many modern currents in art reveal attempts at identifying new content in works of art, which sometimes seems to be an act of assigning new meaning to art. Such interpretations can be observed in studies of impressionism, cubism, abstract expressionism and minimalism. The problem of meaning is the subject of study of such theorists as Timothy J. Clark, Patricia Leighten, Serge Guilbaut, Rosalind Krauss and W. J. T. Mitchell. Their research concentrates not as much on works of art as on modernists' vision of art. Mitchell shows how theory replaced the content of modernism art and proves that "silent" art is impossible since meanings arise independently of the artist's intention in the process reception. The new vision of modernism does not attempt to create a universal and objective model of that period but instead aims at a multiplication of meanings and at a destruction of the previous model (the holistic model). The vision of modernism comes to resemble a mosaic of unconnected elements.

This paper explores the relationship between literary modernism and mainstream culture within a little-studied American magazine, Life (New York, 1884-1936). It does so by looking at three ways in which Life presented modernism to its readers: by quoting modernist writing, and, above all, by satirizing modernist art, and by offering didactic explanations of modernist art and literature. By reconsidering some of the long-established divisions between high and low culture, and between ‘little’ and ‘bigger’ magazines, this paper contributes to a better understanding of what modernism was and meant. It also suggests that the double agenda observed in Life – both satirical and didactic – might be a way of defining middlebrow magazines.

the purpose of this study is to examine the emergence of modernism as a cultural response to the conditions of modernity to change the way people live, work and react to the world around them. In this regard, the following tasks were formulated: 1) study the development of modernism on the world stage, 2) identify its universal features, and 3) analyze how the independence of Central and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with a particularly bright period of modernist architecture in the region, when many young countries studied and asserted their identity in art. The article analyzes several objects of modernist architecture in Africa: urban development projects in Casablanca (Morocco), Asmara (Eritrea), Ngambo (Tanzania). The main features and characteristics of modernism which were manifested in the African architecture of the XX century are also formulated. It is concluded that African modernism is developed in line with the international modernist trend. It is also summarized that modernism which differs from previous artistic styles and turned out to be a radical revolution in art is their natural successor.

Abstract A decade after modernist art history's tentative embrace of postcolonial modernisms, a new crop of books are leveraging this disciplinary acceptance to examine hitherto shrouded aspects of the field. Anneka Lenssen's, Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (2020), Zeina Maasri's, Cosmopolitan Radicalism: The Visual Politics of Beirut's Global Sixties (2020) and Sarah-Neel Smith's, Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in Postwar Turkey, (2022) offer candid appraisals of postcolonial modernism's exposure to colonial and nationalist institutions, Cold War cultural networks, and the hierarchical effects of canonical modernism. Reviewed together in this article, these books reveal the distinctive orientations of modernism in contiguous Syria, Lebanon and Turkey along with the methodological value of formalist methods to assert artistic agency. Through refractive readings of artworks and other materials, Lenssen, Maasri and Smith invert disciplinary anxieties about postcolonial art's political subjection, making a case for postcolonial art's perceptiveness to the instability and abstraction of the institutional forces to which they are subject.

This paperwork discusses some theories between modernist and post-modernist thinking that have been evolved in society. The presence of post-modernist thought is said to be anti-modernist. Thus, the question is whether it emerges as anticipation or the occurrence of a transformation shift at its pace in driving the development of art and culture. The objective of this study is to discuss the changing trends of art practitioners in the context of visual art and culture phenomenon today since the era of modernism. However. to what extent is the presence of post-modernist thinking that is said to be anti-modernism put into practice or is modernist thinking dead? The statement also dissects various notions or is it true that there is no precise and clear interpretation or understanding between "modern art" and "postmodern art"? This is also marked by the emergence of various interpretations and the existence of polemics or discussions among scholars, especially in the discourse of art and culture. This study is using secondary research based on various theories of disciplines and conducting an interview with art critics and art historians in resolving this question. Although there are various doubts in the separation between "modernism" and "postmodernism" but it provides an interesting input that is often associated with the emergence of some characteristics of the postmodern era thought and style that differs in terms of ideas, concepts, approaches, materials, appearance, presentation, ideas, interpretation and it is meaning that leads to the transformation of visual arts in the current socio-cultural context.

The history of Twentieth Century Nigerian art is characterized by ambiguities that impede understanding of the underlying modernist philosophies that inspired modern art from the 1900s. In the past five decades, scholars have framed the discourse of Contemporary Nigerian Art to analyze art created during that period in Africa starting with Nigeria in order to differentiate it from that of Europe and America. However, this quest for differentiation has led to a mono-narrative which only partially analyze modernist tendencies in modern Nigerian art, thus, reducing its impact locally and globally. Adopting Content Analysis and Modernism as methodologies, this research subjected literature on Twentieth Century Nigerian art to critical analysis to reveal its grey areas, as well as draw upon recent theories by Chika Okeke-Agulu, Sylvester Ogbechie, Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor to articulate the occurrence of a unique Nigerian avant-gardism blurred by the widely acclaimed discourse of contemporary Nigerian art. Findings reveal that the current discourse unwittingly frames Twentieth Century Nigerian art as a time-lag reactionary mimesis of Euro-American modernism. This research contends that such narrative blocks strong evidences of avant-garde tendencies identified in the works of Aina Onabolu, Ben Enwonwu, Uche Okeke and others, which exhibited intellectual use of the subversive powers of art for institutional/societal interrogation. Drawing upon modernist theories as a compass for analyzing the works of the aforementioned, this paper concludes that rather than being a mundane product of contemporaneity, Twentieth Century Nigerian art was inspired by decolonization politics and constituted a culture-specific avant-gardism in which art was used to enforce change. Thus, a new modern art discourse is proposed that will reconstruct Twentieth Century Nigerian art as an expression of modernism parallel to Euro-American modernism.

This paper considers issues of convergence of classical and modernist art theories on the example of the so-called Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The works of the main participants in this debate, Charles Perrault and Nicolas Boileau, are examined in the context of the theory of modernism and questions of the origin of modernist art. The aggravation of the contradictions between the two versions of the theory of classicism and, more broadly, the two concepts of modernity, led to the formation of new views on the nature of art in the era of late Louis XIV. The leader of the “Moderns,” Charles Perrault, became the founder of the rationalistic and scientistic theories of modernism, gravitating towards aestheticism, formalism, and semiotics of art. In this article, his theories are explored in connection with the modernist formalist discourse and theoretical work of Clement Greenberg. In addition, Charles Perrault’s theory of art is placed in the space of the theory of “aesthetic modernism” (aesthetic movement) and the theory of “art for art’s sake.” Particular attention is paid to the comparative characteristics of the texts of Charles Perrault, Oscar Wilde, and Julius Meier-Graefe. In turn, the works of the chief theoretician of the “ancients,” Nicolas Boileau, are studied in the context of ideas of the “conservative revolution.” From this perspective, the interpretation of the category of the sublime by Pseudo-Longinus, Boileau, and representatives of romantic culture is assessed. The author concludes that Nicola Boileau and Charles Perrault represent different equal branches of modernist discourse. At the same time, Charles Perrault managed not only to anticipate certain phenomena of the culture of modernism in his texts, but also to take important steps towards the contemporary scientific theory of art.

Abstract Diaspora is a defining condition of the history of the past century, a prehistory to our disastrous moment in time and also the foundation of our political landscape. Yet it is notably absent in much art-historical discussion of modernism, despite the fact that the experiences of diaspora and migration are often embedded in the lives of modernist artists and other actors; in the formations, networks, and dispersals of modernist institutions and group affiliations; and in the deployment of characteristically modernist artistic strategies (temporal fragmentation, collage, montage, and the readymade) that manifest a dialectical entanglement of self and other. This essay ponders the disconnect between the historical structures of modernism in art and its theorization, and considers the questions: Can diaspora and diasporic thinking help further our understanding of the twentieth century in art? Can it help us in reconsidering modernism from a diasporic perspective today? As prompts for further thought, the text considers four historical episodes in which ideas of diaspora, modernity, and modernism are entwined: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First Universal Races Congress in London 1911; Georg Simmel, Du Bois, and Alain Locke in Berlin and the emergence of a matrix of modern sociological thinking; Mikhail Bakhtin in exile in Kazakhstan and the formation of his dialogical philosophy of language; and Aaron Douglas and Meyer Shapiro at the First American Artists’ Congress in 1936 and in the pages of Art Front.