Modern Art History
The 19th and 20th centuries marked the beginning and end of Modernism. Modern art replaced traditional art as individuality replaced academic art and what emerged were four major art movements: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. From each movement came great artists, who defined each ism in their own style. Impressionism started in 1870 and included artists like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, and Cassatt. Impressionists tried to capture the mood in a glimpse concentrating on the immediate visual impressions. They played with the effects of sunlight and shadow and of direct and reflected light that they observed. To reproduce immediate visual impressions as seen by the naked eye, they abandoned the use of grays and blacks in shadows and used complementary colors instead. A fine example of an impressionist painting found in Art Through The Ages is Le Moulin de la Galette by Auguste; it\'s a scene \"dappled by sunlight and shade\" taking place on a Sunday afternoon in Paris with people crowded all about in the frame work (993, 26-69). Impressionists\' paints stemmed from the principles of freedom of technique, a personal approach to subject matter, and a truthful depict
The fourth movement was abstract expressionism, which began in the 1940\'s. This movement celebrated intuition and self-exploration. Paintings were free spirited forms of expression and at times loosely structured. Jackson Pollock\'s Lucifer, is a great example of the phrase loosely structured (1098, 28-4). Pollock\'s method of dripping paint onto the canvas was an innovation to the act of art making. His painting has no visible or identifiable shapes. The colors encompass back and forth and into each other. Abstract expressionists tended to focus on psychological subjects, so as to avoid any clear representation of reality. Abstract expressionism led to something as simple as a blank canvas where the onlooker was forced to interpret it. Art\'s form of expression was indeed abstract. Surrealism began in the 1920\'s with an emphasis on unrealistic, dreamlike images. Surrealism expressed the subconscious characterized by fantastic imagery and subject matter. Salvadore Dali\'s The Persistence of Memory shows a place where time is at a end and things don\'t seem to begin or really end, things more or less seem to linger, in this haunting image (1076, 27-64). It truly gives the onlooker a sense of a dreamland. Surrealists tried to reunite the conscious and unconscious so as to join fantasy with the world of dream in a surrealistic
Some common words found in the essay are:
Pollock's Lucifer, Persistence Memory, Starry Night, Galette Auguste, Les Demoiselles, Cassatt Impressionists, Redon's Cyclops, Braque Cubism, London Bridge, Seurat Vincent, abstract expressionism, immediate visual impressions, van gogh, immediate visual, visual impressions, fine example, dream world, brush strokes, loosely structured, generations post-impressionism, subject matter,
Approximate Word count = 913
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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