«How did the Artists in the 20th Century Critique Traditional Ways of Making Art?» - Free Essay Paper

The artists of the 20^th century criticized the majority of traditional ways of making the art. It was the cultural period of Modernism. It was the time of both a combination of cultural trends and a variety of conglomerated cultural processes, primarily appearing from large-scale and amplitudinous alterations to the Western world in the period between the late 19^th century and the early 20^th century. Modernism was a rebellion against conventional and ossified valuables of realism. A convex feature of Modernism is self-awareness. This typically provoked a number of experiments with shape and form, and products, which catches the attention to the operations and materials utilized, together with the long-run abstraction trend.

In fact, Modernism is considered to be an umbrella term for artistic movements, thus, the cultural period of Modernism can be subdivided into different categories. Modernist art evolved on a number of fronts under several names, including Cubism, Fauvism, Constructivism, de Stujl, Surrealism, and Dadaism. These avant-garde movements consciously rejected tradition. The appearing of Cubism signalized the rupture of a number of styles in the 20^th century. This style emphasized non-traditional, thus flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane. With the help of spatial deconstruction approach adoption, the painters of the Cubism rejected all conventional techniques of perspective, putting an aspect, molding, chiaroscuro and the restraint of nature. In fact, the Cubist artists condemned realistic paintings, advantaging contextures of modes, forms and shapes separating from the traditionally appreciated world. For example, the style of Cubism may be analyzed with the help of Pablo Picasso’s painting named Les Demoielles d’Avignon. It portrays five naked feminine prostitutes from a brothel in Barcelona. Each and every form is painted in a disarranged confrontational style and none of them is traditionally female. The females emerge as hardly formidable and are presented with gnarled and desultory body forms. This is a remaking of Primitivism and refusal of perspective in behalf of a plane, two-dimensional painting notch; thus, Pablo Picasso makes a drastic departure from the traditional way of painting. This work is considered a proto-cubism painting, and thus, it is a primordial for the evolvement of both Cubism and Modernism. The departure from the traditional ways of painting can also be exemplified with the help of George Braque’s painting The Portuguese. This is the example of Analytical Cubism. The painter concentrated his attention on the process of form desecration and the process of placing the form in the dynamic interaction with the space around it. Unlike the traditional painters, who utilized different colors, the Cubists chose subdues hues, meaning the solely brown tones, in order to focus the viewer’s attention on the form. In the case of The Portuguese, the artist carried his analysis so far that the viewer must work meticulously in order to find tips to the subject. The construction of the vast intercrossing notches represents the shapes of a male and a guitar, while lesser forms inter-osculate and fluctuate in the solid notches. Even the way Braque comported the glow and umbra demonstrate his deviation from traditional artistic practice. Lightsome and opaque fragments infuse both chiaroscuro molding and pellucid notches, which provide the viewer with the possibility to identify one level to another. The longer one observes the painting, the more detailed shapes appear only to be blurred practically directly due to a different interpreting of the subject. In addition, Fauvism has also been a form of Modernism, and it highlighted picturesque attributes and solid color over the representative or naturalistic attributes constrained by Impressionism. The paintings of this style were featured by outwardly raging brushwork and rasping colors, while the subject matter had a high level of pruning. For example, the work by Henri Matisse Red Room is a bright example of Fauvism. The Matisse’s canvas is radically different from traditional painting of a domestic interior, as objects are depicted in basic and conceptualized manner with flattened shapes. Moreover, the colors contrast richly and intensely, as over-painting reveals the importance of color for striking the right chord in the viewer. In addition, Dadaism was another form of avant-garde in the early 20^th century. Dadaists had a rule: never to follow any rules. Marcel Duchamp was the most influential Dadaist. He worked with “readymade’ sculptures, meaning the mass-production common objects. The art of this particular artwork lied in the actual choice of the object. Thus, the creation of ready-mades was deprived of any speculations of either good or bad style. Fountain was his excessive and rampageous readymade. That was a urinal made from porcelain, which was presented on its back, signed with “R. Mutt” and dated. Thus, the author took conventional articles of life, put them so that their beneficial magnitude perished under the innovative and fresh denomination and standpoint, and thus composed a new speculation concerning the object. That is probably the most aggressive avant-garde approach to art. Photomontages were another form of the Dadaism movement. Hannah Höch was a Berlin Dadaist who consummated the technique of photomontage. These photomontages accelerated the inept irrationality of Dadaism by providing the viewer with rambling, conflicting and derisive contexture. The photomontage Cut with the Kitchen Knife is one of the most famous photomontages of the Dada movement. The work is the eclectical confusions of cutout photos in outwardly casual manner. Moreover, the fact of placing the heads of German commanders with the bodies of various exotic dancers provided the roguishly humoristic criticism central to Dadaism.

Thus, the facts demonstrate that Modernism as an umbrella movement was a revolt against traditional art and art forms. The very critique of traditional art by the artists of the 20^th century together with their departure from it has led to the appearance of a number of art movements.