Modernism /anglais

Movements in Modern Art

by Harrison Charles

Modernisation, modernity, and modernism — three concepts around which thought about the modern world and its culture have tended to revolve. But what is modernism? The term is used generally to convey a faith in progress and a healthy skepticism for received ideas and traditional values. More specifically, the modernist tendency has often been associated with the most vital developments and highest achievements in the art of the past 150 years. However, those concerned with maintaining traditional values in one form or another see "modernist" art as merely one alternative among many, and perhaps even an empty or misguided one. This introduction looks at modernist works in order to consider what are the defining characteristics of modernism, and also explores the critical terms in which this art has been represented.

Genres: Art, Art History

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 13, 1997

Reviews

[Bandit]

In my quest to educate myself on the subject of art history, this seemed like the book to read. Alas, its exceptionally dense academese narration maybe it a very difficult read. I enjoyed the art inserts, but they were barely talked off. Instead it was pure and somewhat mind numbing theory, although on the positive note I did learn about modernism. I do wish there were more accessible ways of doing so, something between art for dummies and this type of book.

[Mark]

At first glance, the idea of writing a short introduction to modernism in art can be something of a fool’s errand. This is because “modernism” is simultaneously many things and yet nothing: not a name that refers to a single movement but an umbrella term under which everything from impressionism to abstract expressionism and pop art has been clustered, all of which are themselves subjects of individual volumes of similar length in Tate’s “Movements in Modern Art” series. To try to summarize all of that in less than a hundred generously-illustrated pages would thus promise to result in only the most superficial of overviews.

Charles Harrison’s solution to this problem is to focus on describing the history of the concept of modernism as applied to nineteenth and twentieth-century art. This leads him to engage not just with the artists who developed what came to be regarded as modernist art, but the criticism of it as well. The twentieth-century art critic Clement Greenberg becomes as central a figure in Harrison’s narrative as more famous figures as Edouard Manet, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, as he presents the concept as one developed as a dialogue between artist and audience. Modernism becomes something defined not just by the artist’s rebellion against the Western tradition that had emerged from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the contemporary response to the modernists’ work as well.

This approach allows Harrison to define a commonality in modernist art shared by the various movements grouped underneath the terms. This he frames as a skepticism that unframed the previous relation between subject and spectator in art, and a confidence in the validity of the sensory experience. He demonstrates this with a deft knowledge of the full range of modernist art, which he provides a highly useful sampling of in his selection of illustrations. While his narrative assumes a certain preexisting knowledge of modern art movements on the part of his reader that limits the book’s effectiveness as an introductory text, it is nonetheless a quick read that provides a stimulating introduction to the idea of modernism as applied to art over the past two centuries.

[Jez]

purrr. This whole series is amazing.

[m.]

It's about Greenberg modernism, not radical-manifesto modernism. An important distinction to those of us who are giant nerds.

[Hanna Pastushenko]

Nothing special:(