Post 3: Modernism/Postmodernism

The term Modern is known to be something new, contemporary and the latest thing. Modernism is a discrete historical period from the 1860’s to the 1970’s. Modernism is a series of cultural movements that originated from the enlightenment the late 19th to the early 20th century. Modernism had its own state of mind and allowed people to escape their moral and philosophical, and artistic traditions. This movement allowed people to embrace the new and was considered a period of innovation and experiments. The early stages of Modernism were fairly optimistic, and it looked to a future free of artificial constraints and an increase of technological progress. However, after World War l, the idea of optimism changed and mainly replaced with a loss of faith in human development and the promises of the enlightenment for a better world. Modernism allowed artist and viewers to remove the realistic depiction of human figures and not merely because the artist could not draw but they just chose the right to break traditions.

This movement allowed for the first feminist wave to occur which allowed women to express themselves freely and create a name for themselves without being undermined by men. During the early 19th century to the early 20th century, the primary focus that occurred during this period was women gaining civil rights (the right to vote), equal access to education and health care, and the right to enter and practice in the professions. There were several female artist during this time period that made their mark.

‘Womanhouse’ in 1972 was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, in an abandoned house in California. 

The Womanhouse contained a total of 28 rooms, themes surrounding domesticity, and using a DIY aesthetic, and explored themes surrounding gender roles and the female experience. The project came together by a lack of studio space, and the use of a house highlighted the symbolic connection between women and the home. Only women were allowed to visit on the first day, followed by all viewers. Womanhouse had over 10,000 visitors and continued to remain extremely impactful and popular.

As stated in Guerilla Girls, “ the invention of the camera threatened to make painting obsolete. Photography was great for women artists: because it was brand new, there was no canon to be excluded from.” (The Guerilla Girls 47). Another feminist is performance artist Carolee Schneemann created abject art, forcing the viewer to experience the “unedited” and raw female body. Schneemann wanted to liberate herself from oppressive artistic and social conventions and constraints, while using her body to express a potent female sexuality. During this performance, Schneeman stood upon a table and read aloud from a scroll extracted from her vagina.Abstract Expressionism is an artist movement in the 1940’s and 1950’s, at the New York School, American Abstract Expressionist began to express many ideas relevant to humanity and the world around human civilization. In Whitney Chadwicks book, “ Women, Art, and Society: Fourth Addition she states, “Many women artists, encouraged by their teachers to divorce art practice from female experience and self awareness in order to succeed professionally, found themselves painfully aware of the contradictions between artistic and personal identity” (Chadwick 324).

Mountains and Sea, 1952,

Artists were not meant to represent the ever-changing world around them. Instead, how the world around them affected the artist themselves. Helen Frankenthaler helped influenced Abstract Expressionist painting yet she developed her own distinct approach to the style. She invented the "soak-stain" technique, in which she poured turpentine-thinned paint onto canvas, producing luminous color washes that appeared to merge with the canvas and deny any hint of 3D illusionism.

The works of males have dominated German Expressionism for several years in the visual arts and literary texts. The movement was primarily defined through poetry and despite the excavation of Expressionist works by women in recent decades, these artworks and books remain lacking. Twentieth-century expressionism in Germany emerged during the mid-1900s in Dresden and Munich. A similar but smaller movement occurred in Austria during the same time. It occurred up until the beginning of World War I, the expressionist movement in Germany remained an aesthetic development of the Saxon Worpswede Group and the Parisian Fauvist movement. Dada and Surrealism were two revolutionary art movements, which emerged in response to the events and ideas of the early twentieth century. Dada characterized by found objects and works made according to the laws of chance, was anarchic and anti-art. In part a reaction to the senseless destruction of the war, it questioned all accepted values.

Dada artist Sophie Taeuber’s work demonstrated an affinity for color and geometric forms. According to the Oxford University Press. “Her austerely geometric art arose from her belief in the innate expressive power of colour, line, and form, and was informed by unusual wit and freedom. She rejected her contemporaries’ progressive schematization of objective form”. Surrealism, in contrast, was more a defined movement, which evolved in the 1920's as artist and writers took Sigmund Freud's concept of the unconscious to undermine traditional conventions. By use of such techniques such as automatism, the artist sought to represent in concrete terms the imagery of dream and fantasy. The difference between the dada and surrealist movements is seen through the artwork of several artists.

Postmodernism is a movement in response to modernism or critique of the Modernist period and is defined as a period of art between the 1960s to the1990s. The idea of what is considered to be art expanded to mixed media, installation, conceptual art, and video art. Creative techniques such as collages, performance art and the distinction between high and low art and pop culture are blurred. Postmodernism occurred after World War ll and the postmodernist period was mainly a shell-shocking period for many of the artist. Select female artists during this time were known for creating autobiographical works, documenting complex and challenging experiences that continue to affect many women. Chadwicks  asserts, “ Marginalized in the aesthetic and political debates swirling around modern art movements in the early decades of the twentieth century, many women turned to the female body as the primary subject of a woman’s experience.” (Chadwick 282).

Throughout the late 1980-1990s, there was an development of female artists creating and embracing another level of emotion art. Many started to believe this was a direct consequence of first wave feminist art. Nan Goldin is a post-modern artist, and her work often explores LGBT bodies, moments of intimacy, and the HIV crisis. Her 1984 most popular work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, she explores the post-Stonewall gay subculture and Goldin's family and friends. Postmodernism has allowed artist to reconsider questions based on the assertions that no women artists have ever created or been appreciated to the level of "greatness" compared to male counterparts. The position that society has institutionalized on women as unable to be anything but subordinate and unexpressive is a significant contributor to this claim.

Work Cited

The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Books, 2006.

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, art, and society. Londres: Thames & Hudson, 2012. Print.

“Famous German Expressionist Painters.” German Expressionism, germanexpressionism.net/.