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Make It Modern: A History of Art in the 20th Century
A fascinating journey through Western art from the 1910s to the 1960s, charting how artists wrestled with the headlong changes of a turbulent and conflict-ridden world
From the chaos of the First World War to the ravages of the Second, from the Great Depression to the rise of consumer culture, artists we call “modern” faced the challenge of responding imaginatively to utterly new circumstances of life. Original thought, startling artistic techniques, and new attitudes to experimentation were required to produce exceptional and timely work.
Make It Modern guides the reader through the art of the modern world. Works of celebrated artists, from Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky to Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, and Yayoi Kusama, alongside a panoply of undervalued or less-known figures, populate this decade-by-decade narrative. Make It Modern tells an unforgettable story of how art was changed forever.
From the chaos of the First World War to the ravages of the Second, from the Great Depression to the rise of consumer culture, artists we call “modern” faced the challenge of responding imaginatively to utterly new circumstances of life. Original thought, startling artistic techniques, and new attitudes to experimentation were required to produce exceptional and timely work.
Make It Modern guides the reader through the art of the modern world. Works of celebrated artists, from Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky to Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, and Yayoi Kusama, alongside a panoply of undervalued or less-known figures, populate this decade-by-decade narrative. Make It Modern tells an unforgettable story of how art was changed forever.
- GenresArt
368 pages, Hardcover
Published November 29, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 25, 2023
A sentence printed on the endpapers of the book summarizes the author's project- "From Pablo Picasso and Sonya Delaunay to Andy Warhol and Yayoi Kusama, Brandon Taylor introduces us to the friendships and rivalries, exhibitions and manifestos that sparked radical approaches to art."
The author makes a concerted effort to include artists and movements from around the world, but he often only name drops a few artists and possibly includes a single image of a work of art to represent an entire region or group from outside of Europe or America. I find it very interesting that Yayoi Kusama's name is mentioned in the quote above, when only a single image and four sentences is devoted to her work while Picasso in comparison gets 19 images and many paragraphs devoted to his sculpture and paintings.
Overall the book is a good resource for people who have an interest in deepening their knowledge of modern art movements, but is not for people looking for light reading or a coffee table art book.
It has a lot of color images, but is also full of very dense (and small) text that details different art philosophies, collectives and seemingly countless '-isms' (expressionism, futurism, cubism, rayonism, constructivism, modern classicism, purism, productivism, concretism, … etc.)
The author makes a concerted effort to include artists and movements from around the world, but he often only name drops a few artists and possibly includes a single image of a work of art to represent an entire region or group from outside of Europe or America. I find it very interesting that Yayoi Kusama's name is mentioned in the quote above, when only a single image and four sentences is devoted to her work while Picasso in comparison gets 19 images and many paragraphs devoted to his sculpture and paintings.
Overall the book is a good resource for people who have an interest in deepening their knowledge of modern art movements, but is not for people looking for light reading or a coffee table art book.
It has a lot of color images, but is also full of very dense (and small) text that details different art philosophies, collectives and seemingly countless '-isms' (expressionism, futurism, cubism, rayonism, constructivism, modern classicism, purism, productivism, concretism, … etc.)
Displaying 1 of 1 review