Modernism

 Modernism, a historical movement that began on the turn of the century, lasting from early 1900s to late 1940s, was a movement to deviate from the traditional ways of how to interact with the world. It influenced new ideologies, created new boundaries, advocated change, and fought for both sexual, as well as racial equalities. It was a movement which protested the norm of societies, art, culture, and even religion. Modernism, provoked by the extreme transformations in western countries, was a radical sudden change from how certain aspects of life can no longer be effective in a modern civilization. With many modernists supporting the movement, it became a challenge not to be a part of it. It was a movement that represented and fought for freedom; the freedom to become one’s own individual, without submitting to a limiting system, one that would invade one’s mindset, alter one’s beliefs, and restrict one’s talents. Anticipation, participation, and experimentation, were all intermingled and became the new way of life for many artists. Each artist’s creativity, innovation, and ambition were the solidified backbone of modernism which helped transform the obsolete and traditional forms of art into new more modern pieces.

Every artist contributed towards modernism one way or another, and in Whitney Chadwick’s book, Women, Art, and Society, she explains how each female artist did so. Techniques like abstraction, surrealism, cubism, Dadaism were all established and brought forth to help create modernism. Abstraction art was an experimentation, and every artist expressed it differently, but all abstract art work were as equally aesthetic.

Gabriele Munter
Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, 1909

Vanessa Bell
Cracow, 1913

For example, Gabriele Munter, a German expressionist painter, a very important figure to abstract art, used simple techniques that other abstract artists adopted for their own work. Munter, “Reducing form to simplified color shapes bounded by dark contour lines,” laid the ground work for abstract art. In her painting Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin, 1909, she uses big colorful shapes to depict the main character, keeping the painting very simple and candid. Artists who used similar techniques to those of Munter, created aesthetic abstract masterpieces. For example, “abstract printed linens Cracow, designed in 1913 by Vanessa Bell,” among other abstract designed fabrics like “curtains, [and] bedspreads,” (Chadwick 257) were sold in The Omega Workshops in London to rich patrons.

Sonia Delaunay
Couverture, 1911

Another European woman artist was Sonia Delaunay, a Russian painter who was married to Cubist painter Robert Delaunay. Residing in Paris, Sonia drifted from painting and started to experiment with textile decorations and embroidery, creating her “first piece of decorative art, and first completely abstract work […which] was a pieced quilt influenced by Russian peasant designs,” (Chadwick 261). Delaunay, after being completely “dissatisfied with the inherently static qualities of painting as a medium”, began to create dresses with abstract patterns that would “enhance the natural movement of the body, [and] establish a shimmering movement of color” (Chadwick 262). Her fabric designs and textile decorations were great contributions to abstract art.

Suzanne Valadon
The Blue Room, 1923

Using modernism, female artists began to address the female body more freely, delivering a stronger message to viewers. Suzanne Valadon, a female artists’ model, expressed her rejection of the male gaze through her painting The Blue Room, 1923. Valadon presents the female body as a body controlled by the female’s own “awkward gestures [and] movements” (Chadwick 285), rather than by the male gaze. The subject is painted in her own room with books under her feet, suggesting that she is educated. She is also laying down on her bed in pajama pants and a tank top, with a cigarette in her mouth, not only rejecting the male gaze, but also refuting patriarchal norms in which only men were “allowed” to smoke.  The Blue Room painting sends a very strong statement to all its viewers in which it rejects the male gaze by painting a woman in the comfort of her home as her true self “instead of presenting the female body as lush surface isolated and controlled by the male gaze” (Chadwick 285).

 Modernism was a great opportunity for women artists to share their opinions freely as a part of the movement. It was then that women artists were able to build a foundation that other artists can build on in the future. Modernism helped artists like Susanne Valadon express their opinions and share their beliefs, openly and freely, about issues like the depiction of the female body. Modernism certainly unearthed new methods of expressing art, and most definitely highlighted the line which separates what art is and what art could be. Modernism helped make way for female artists who challenged the norm, and created new pieces of art which helped shape what modern art is.  Modernism today is changing and will continue to change endlessly. This is what makes Modernism vital to human expression and will continue to change the way we see the world and see each other.

Works Cited:

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. 5th edition, Thames & Hudson, October 12, 2012