Modernism and Postmodernism

Roy Lichtenstein, Modern Art I, 1996

  

   With the development of economic and political environment and the change in social culture, more and more female devote their life to the female right campaign, and this kind of changes was reflected in the art area. From the late 19th, many art schools bloomed, and the modernism and post-modernism are two repetitive styles. More importantly, female artists in this two kind of movements not only gained great artistic achievements but played an important role in the struggle for the status of women. In this way, this easy will focus on the two important movements, modernism and postmodernism.

Gabriele Münter, Portrait of 
Marianne von Werefkin, 1909.
One of the representative works of abstract painting  

  

    Modernism is a shift in art area from western traditional art. It took the changes in modern society and brought something in traditional culture, and in the end, form a totally new art era. Moreover, this kind of movement have deep relationship with the changes in society at that time, among the factors that shaped modernism was the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Besides, modernism absorbed the essence of some important concepts in modern art, such abstraction, German expressionism, dada and surrealism and other movements in 20th century. More importantly, with these techniques, it kept influence the society for a long time in the 20th century. For example, one of the typical artists is Gabriele Münter. Her abstraction art played an important role in the born of the special art style and had great influence on the following abstraction artists. As the author, Chadwick, writes in the book, “Art, Women And Society”, “ From these sentence, we can know that the style of Gabriele Münter is unique and creative, she used a new approach to display the shape of an object. When the author uses words like “simplified” and “counter”, we can know that the abstraction breaks the traditional limit on western traditional painting, and pay more focus on the self-expression of artists. These kind of change not only are a milestone in the art world, it influenced the social culture as well.

    

Modernism Embodied by the Fashion Design
Fashion help females apply the techniques of design and craft in these new approaches to art

As for how were women integral in applying the techniques of design and craft in these new approaches to art, fashion is a strong helper. At that time, reform female’s dressing fashion is one of the most important missions of feminists. As Chadwick says in the book, “The bustles, whalebone stays, and tight lacings so fashionable in the 1880s came under attack in progressive circles as criminal in their manipulation and obstruction of female movement and breathing.” (p.254).” these sentences show s that clothing became an accomplice of patriarchy because the clothes of women always are controlled by the male gaze, and this situation has influenced females’ life for a long time. In this way, as what Chadwick explains in the book, the liberation of female fashion also means a change and reform in female identity and the way females use to think about their status and their life.

Barbara Kruger’s untitled art
 (Your Gaze Hits the Side of my Face) 1981 

       

  Postmodernism started after World War II in the 1950’s. It’s a kind of scientific developments, technological advancements, which shift from traditional to modernized ways and views of making art. According to Chadwick, “Challenges to Modernism notions of male authority, originality, and the autonomy of the art object have become central features of postmodernism critical theory ”(384). This means that postmodernism is a kind of change from modernism. However, their approach and form of expression to make art is different because of the technology advancement in the 20th century. Moreover, women artists been instrumental in the development of its main themes because feminism movement is thriving in this period and the feminism thinking influenced the postmodernism a lot. Chadwick says, “Shifts in emphasis also became clear within feminism as the collaborative and activist politics of the 1970s gave way to the institutionalizing of the gender studies within American academic structures."(p.379).” In this way, many female artists at that time tried to use many different approaches to break patriarchy and male gaze. For example, the well-known picture of Barbara Kruger,  Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face, which is actually untitled, shows a photo of a classical female statue, the symbol of "beauty" in traditional art history, but undermines this interpretation by pointing out that the male gaze at the female object is an aggressive act that silences women from taking part in the discourse. They contest the traditional view of “art” and “beautiful”, and in this way to show their rejection of the chain that patriarchy and male gaze put on them.

Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1936
Typical Postmodernism Style Work

-Zou Xindi

Literature Cited:

- Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. Langara College, 2016.