Witness three revolutions in Western painting in the past two thousand years, which reflected the development of the human condition. And after each revolution, view the various art trends that emerged: |
Pompei
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The first revolution occurred in the 15th century, originating in the Medici's Florence. In the Renaissance, a resurgence of science and art, not seen since Greek and Roman times, pulled the Western world from the Middle Ages. This resulted in a scientific definition of man as the center of the universe. Painting reflected this by replacing largely iconographic images with representation of man as a human being. But painting remained an "objective" mirror image of the world, and largely ecclesiastic or allegorical. The "spiritual image" was still tied to "objective" representation. |
Cimabue
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Watch the comparison between classical Roman representation (fresco in Pompei), iconographic medieval representation (Cimabue), and Renaissance representation (Michelangelo, da Vinci, Botticelli). |
Michelangelo
da Vinci
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The second revolution occurred around the turn to the 20th century. Along with science and philosophy, art mutated again. With the invention of photography, painters no longer had a monopoly in depicting reality. So they looked for other ways to express themselves. Painting changed from being a mirror of nature to a mainly aesthetic statement. And it became less (photographically) representative.
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Renoir |
Monet |
Impressionism more or less started the revolution. Degas, Monet, Pisarro, Renoir, Cezanne. Color, its reflection and refraction - as opposed to literal representation - became an increasingly dominant element of painting. Many believe that it was CŽzanne who set in motion the revolution to modernity in painting. Impressionism depicted the impression objects made when artists saw them. |
Cezanne
van Gogh |
Gaugin
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The Expressionism of Les Fauves (Matisse, Gaugin, van Gogh, Seurat, etc.) pioneered the aesthetic and "look" of modern art by representing object or subject more than before with the artist's spirit as the purpose of representation. German and nordic Expressionism (Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluf, Munch) used the approach for their social criticism. |
Matisse |
Expressionism expressed the artist's feelings and thoughts, not a direct representation of objects. |
Kirchner |
With Expressionism expressing the feelings and thoughts of a painter, it was a logical development that Abstraction developed. Two painters pioneered Figurative Abstraction in two different ways, and they influenced painting more than perhaps any artist: |
Picasso discovered line and shape as a specific aesthetic expression. And Picasso's (and Braque and a few others') Cubism literally disected objects into shapes with aesthetics independent from the original. |
Picasso |
Matisse showed color - as aesthetic expressions all by themselves, and - rather than cubistic painting, he pioneered Flat Painting (inspired by Russian and medieval iconic art) which was to become a cornerstone of modern art. |
Matisse |
Semi-figurative Abstraction (Paul Klee), using to some extent symbols, followed figurative abstraction and preceeded totally non-figurative painting.
Klee
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Marc The German Bauhaus movement (led by the architect Walter Gropius) tried to structure modern art with theories, and to apply it to architecture, industrial design, etc. |
Feininger
Beckmann |
This new art, along with movements like Der Blaue Reiter and Die Bruecke also were perceived as provocations and threats by the bourgeois society. And as a consequence they were ridiculed, and many of the modern German artists later escaped persecution by the nazi regime (to Switzerland, the United States, etc.).
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Heckel
Klimt (Art Nouveau) |
Kandinsky |
Parallel to growing abstraction of the figurative, Non-figurative Painting (Kandinsky, Mondrian, Miro) gave art a new language:
Miro |
Mondrian Art became pure spirituality, undisturbed by external physical representation. |
Delauney |
Kupka |
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Duchamp |
Minimalism and Dadaism (painting, poetry) were influenced by Nihilism and revolted against bourgeois values. The message was reduced to its essence. |
Arp |
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Dali
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Surrealism painted - the surreal. (Dali, Tanguy, ernst, deChirico, Magritte, Delvaux, Dubuffet, Bacon) |
Bacon |
And Art Brut, the art of the mad.
Dubuffet |
Art Brut |
Andrew Wyeth
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In the main, American painting remained traditionalist - representative.
The U.S. government public help program for artists actually favored traditional / popular art. "Acceptable" works of art were to decorate government buildings. |
Hopper |
In America, this was to change in the late 1940's and 1950's - in part due to the influence of European artists recently immigrated, but also as a manifestation of American freedom, free from rules and from European art trends.
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In totalitarian countries, art was used for the governments' propaganda: Socialist and Fascist Realism.
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The third revolution occurred about 1950, when the remaining structure of the non-figurative and the cubist approach to painting were challenged. And the Renaissance realistic tradition, even if abstracted by European modern painting, was definitely broken, by abstract, symbolic or totally free association.
Pollock |
Motherwell
For many, it was a political statement reflecting victory of the American ideal of individual freedom, as it was celebrated by the end of WW2. And the movement replaced as avant garde painting the traditionalism of art in America.
deKooning |
And for some, the act of painting itself became as much art as the end product itself: Action Painting.
Some did away with traditional composition and structure, partially eliminated the apparent end to a painting at its edges, and seemed to paint signs and forms as spiritual icons. Painting became pure spirituality.
Rothko |
Newman
Abstract Expressionism ("Ab-Ex") (Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, etc.) introduced a new and free form of painting, largely dissociated from modern European painting. .
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Francis
Although Ab-Ex had its origins in the New York art scene, it later spread to the West Coast (e.g. Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Fancis) and to Europe
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deStael
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European Abstract Expressionism tended to be less extreme in leaving behind the influences of Renaissance tradition. Some of European Ab-Ex painters: Wols (Wolfgang Schulze), Jean Dubuffet (also Art Brut), Hans Hartung, Nicolas de Stael.
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Hartung
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Runic Expressionism (Karel Appel) showed high spirited violence in style and content. Appel |
Nicholson The British St. Ives Group (Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson) showed mainly abstracted landscapes and objects in a style that might be called "tactful Ab-Ex". |
Post-Painterly Abstraction was a movement inspired by art critic Alan Greenberg: |
It was a reaction against the importance accorded to the personal touch of the painterly gesture in Ab-Ex. |
Noland |
Artists painted mainly geometric shapes, devoid of "personal touch". |
Stella Main artists of this movement were Frank Stella ("What you see is what you see"), Louis, Noland, Ellsworth Kelly, Al Held, Jules Olitsky. |
Pop Art |
(Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, etc.) reinstated figurative painting. |
Lichtenstein
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It depicted mundane objects, intentionally banal, in a commercial, advertizing, comic strip way that made their art appeal to the masses, and thereby seemed to augur the end of painting as an "elitist" art form, apparently devoid of the egotism of the elitist. |
Warhol |
Pluralism* characterized art development since 1960. Artists sought response not to theory but to a desire for directness and immediacy of experience. It led to a proliferation of new movements at an ever accelerating pace. This has engendered an atmosphere conducive to experiments, often remote from the taste of the public - please hold your breath: |
Vasarely |
Op Art (Richard Anuskewitz, Victor Vasarely, Jean Tinguely) |
Tingueli |
 Color Field (Noland, Olitsky, Louis, Poons) |
| Minimalism (Andre, Robert Morris, Don Judd, Dan Flavin) | ||||
| Conceptualism (Mel Bochner, Joseph Kosuth) | ||||
Christo
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Environmentalism, Earth Art (Robert Smithson, Walter DeMaria, Christo)
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Smithson |
Fundamental, Minimal Art (Ryman, Marden, Martin) |
Feminist Art (Judy Chicago) |
Pattern Decoration (Valerie Joudon, Robert Zakanich) |
Joudon |
Neo Geo (Peter Haley) |
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| Photo Realism (Chuck Close, Al Leslie, Philip Pearlstein) | Performance Art (Vito Acconci) | |||
| Video (Bruce Nauman) | ||||
| Lyrical Abstraction (John Seery, Dan Christensen) | Neo Expressionism, Italy (Clemente, Chia) | |||
| New Image (Lois Lane, Robert Moskowitz, Susan Rothenberg) | Graffiti Art (Keith Haring, Kenny Sharf) |
Haring |
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| Neo Expressionism, Germany (Georg Baselitz) |
Baselitz |
Neo Expressionism, U.S. Julian Schnabel, Leo Castelli |
 Arte Povera (Joseph Beuys) |
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Hanson |
Smart Art (Jeff Koons) |
Koons |
 Damian HIrst |
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Neo-conceptual art and Young Britiish Artists Damian HIrst, Tracy Emin, John LeKay (US), Martin Creed, Liam Gillick, Bethan Huws, Simon Patterson, Simon Starling, Douglas Gordon |
Diebenkorn
In summary
- Our Western roots are in Greek culture, its Renaissance, and its tradition of representing man, as opposed to ornamental painting;
- Impressionism, whilst attached to Renaissance painting, started taking freedoms in the way the artist depicted his impressions;
- In Expressionism, abstraction of Renaissance art by Cubism (Picasso), neo-iconic Flat Painting (Matisse), and by symbolic abstraction (Klee) remained in the Renaissance culture but opened it up to interpretation;
- Non-figurative painting (Kandinsky, Mir˜, Mondrian) started leading us into spiritualism, some of it close to Oriental ornamentalism;
- Art and design in industrial/commercial/architectural use (Jugendstil, Art Nouveau, Bauhaus) extended visual art beyond painting;
- The replacement of Renaissance rules by Abstract Expressionism liberated (estranged?) art from its cultural roots, and opened it up to a "free for all";
- The banalization of art, by commercialization of art copies (Mona Lisa?), and by the Pop-Art movement (Lichtenstein) attacked the elitist notion of art, and perhaps diminished what we thought was sacred;
- The acceleration of art movements to fashion trends (pluralism) encouraged experimenting and creativity, but it also exposed it to potential loss of "quality" and permanence.
So then, what is Art and what isn't ?
Here is what some of my artist friends dug out:
Henri Matisse
"When I am submissive and modest, I feel surrounded by someone who makes me do things of which I am not capable. All art worthy of the name is (spiritual, or) it is nothing more than a document, an anecdote."
Pablo Picasso
"Something sacred, that's it, - we ought to be able to say that word, or something like it, but people would take it the wrong way, and give it a meaning that wasn't intended. We ought to be able to say such and such a painting is as it is, with its capacity for power because it has been touched by God. But people would put a wrong interpretation on it."
And another painter friend sent me this: "I remember the story of the student who asked the Zen monk about the meaning of life(art) and after going back and forth with the question, and ... receiving only silence as an answer, the student replied: now I understand"
Ted Knerr
Marc Salz