Modernism and Post Modernism
After the great war, or the devastation of world war 1 brought an end to the sense of enthusiasm that identified the years leading up to the war. This very contradictory, or realistic, view of the world, and the technological advances, gave birth to Modernism.
Modernism or Modernist history has its roots in the late 19 and early 20 centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. Modernism is a response by clusters of intellectuals and artist to the converging processes of industrialization. In other words, is the reaction of artist and writers to the new society formed because of industrialization.
Whitney Chadwick, the writer of Women, Art, and Society, represents Modernism with this quote “Modernity is both linked to the desire for the new that fashion expresses so well, and culturally tied to the development of a new visual language for the twentieth century-abstraction” (253). It illustrates how Chanwik represents Modernism as an abstraction in painting and sculptures.
Sonia Delaunay, an artist from Russia input the beginning modernism in her painting. Sonia's painting represents colorful and geometric forms such as triangles, circles, and squares. Her geometric shapes influence the abstract of the new art in many different artists. Her geometric shapes were emerging across the art forms including fine art, commercial and industrial design and architecture. She also influences her husband to study industrial design as reasons for her painting. Lastly, we can see how her painting grasps attention in Russia by many companies such as clothing companies, car companies, factories and many more other industries. In precise, we can see how Sonia Delaunay started the revolution of the new art and view of the world .
Alexandra Exter, Composition, 1914
Alexandra Exter was a Russian painter and designer of international growth. Alexandra decided to paint composition base on cube futurism principles and brilliant colors. Whitney Chadwick, the writer of Women, Art, and Society, represents compositions the painting as “logical system of lines in relation to each other” (268). Indeed, how Whitney describe this paint as an intellectual painting base on the connection of line. It shows how Alexandra gaze to improve modernism in our society such as improvements of clothing, development of houses, and as well as the perspective of human thinking.
Suzanne Valadon, The Blue Room, 1923
Suzanne Valadon started her life as a model and taught herself to paint by observing many different techniques in the modernism in time and giving them meaning through her paintings. Suzanne painted The Blue Room to show deeper meaning behind it and convey that message to society behind the colors of the painting. Her message was to shift the society mentality and to protest in an indirect way against the male gaze. We can also see in this painting how she painted herself laying on messy bed, smoking cigarette in her mouth and some books on her feet. In abstract, we can see how she influenced women to strive for their education and equality. Every detail in the painting has an association with some message she was trying to convey to the society and particularly towards women to stand up for themselves and fight for their rights.
Sylvia Sleigh, The Turkish Bath, 1973
Sylvia Sleigh was born in England and studied arts at London University. She moved to the United States in 1960 to start a new life. Sleigh decided to the paint The Turkish Bath as a symbol of modernism for our society. We can see how The Turkish Bath deals with flesh and nudity: in this portrait Sleigh cast female faces onto the male body. As it shows in the painting, she chooses to portray six men in the art: these men are the men were in her life, which includes her friends, fellow artists and her husband, Alloway. It also shows how Sylvia decided to paint man including her husband with no clothes because she wants to shift society's mentality towards the woman and not see or treat women as an object. She cast a female gaze on men’s bodies in this painting as she wanted to express the dynamics between the male gaze and the objectified female body to challenge and reverse a history in which men are contemplating the naked bodies on women. Her intentions behind were to challenge my audience to see it from a different perspective.
Work Cite:
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. 4th ed. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Print.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York: Penguin, 1998. Print.
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