How did modern Western art develop?

Art and music are important parts of Westerners’ cultural life. After entering the 20th century, the fields of art and music have further developed, and many new trends and schools that embody the modern spirit have appeared, which is dazzling. Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Action Painting, Color Abstract Painting, Op Art, Pop Art and other schools appeared in the art world. Impressionism music, Expressionism music, neoclassical music, electronic music, etc. appeared in the music world. music and new genres such as jazz. During this period, the genres of modern Western art showed the characteristics of being anti-traditional, promoting individuality, and reflecting reality. Styles and genres became more diversified and changed frequently. The center of art gradually shifted from Europe to the United States.

New trends in the development of modern Western art in the 20th century. Western art in the 20th century was a period when modernist thought was dominant. Its outstanding feature was anti-tradition, showing a kind of rebel from form to content. posture. In terms of technique, most of them oppose traditional realism and pursue novelty, with disordered spatial structure, random color arrangement, disordered dots and lines, and lack of perspective; in terms of creative themes, they all advocate emphasizing the self and expressing personal emotions and inner world. The main reasons for this trend are: First, the influence of technology. The development of modern science and technology is changing the face of human social life and also changing people's aesthetic taste. The invention of photography and film had the greatest impact on painting. These two new technologies made it possible to use mechanical means to accurately record objective images. In this sense, traditional painting techniques only accomplished what the camera did to record the surface of things. It's just a light reflection reaction. Painters can no longer arouse the excitement of the audience by depicting the surface shapes of things. They can only turn to expressing things in the spiritual realm to impress people. The second is the influence of modern philosophical thought. The modernist philosophical thought that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century provided a prerequisite for mankind to further understand activities in the spiritual field. In particular, theories such as Freud's psychoanalysis and French Bergson's concept of "psychological time" provided a basis for artists to engage in creation. A powerful ideological weapon, they gradually shifted from "extroverted art" that depicts the objective world to "introverted art" that depicts the subjective world. Correspondingly, the social function of art also changed from social and educational functions to "pan-utilitarianism" that meets the universal spiritual needs of mankind. ". The third is the influence of ancient art heritage and oriental culture. Since entering modern times, archaeologists have successively discovered some artworks from primitive indigenous cultures on various continents. These simple yet vivid artworks have brought creative inspiration to artists. The spread of Eastern cultural artworks to the West, especially Chinese ink landscape paintings and Indian grotto art, have spread to the West through various channels. These new styles that are different from Western realism have brought a fresh breeze to the Western art world. . Without inheritance, there is no innovation; without innovation, there is no development. A group of creative artists in the 20th century reached a new artistic height by standing on the shoulders of historical giants.

In the 20th century, various Western art styles and schools coexisted and varied, and they were more closely related to commercialization. Before World War II, many modern schools emerged in the art world. After World War II, new styles and genres changed like a revolving lantern, mutating faster and more frequently, and capital and the logic of capital have also penetrated it.

The modern art school before World War II. Before World War II, Brutalism. Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism are the most influential schools.

Fauvism is the earliest modernist painting school that emerged in the early 20th century. In 1905, the Autumn Salon held in Paris, France, exhibited the works of a group of young artists such as Matisse, Flemish, Marchais, and Dufy. Because of its unconventional techniques, it was called "beast-like art" by critics, hence the name Fauvism, of which Matisse was the representative. Fauvist painters have different styles, but they all emphasize the use of large color blocks and bold and unrestrained lines in their creations to express personal subjective feelings and free will. The pictures generally lack a sense of perspective and have highly decorative patterns. Effect.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a famous French modernist painter. He formally studied painting in his twenties. He inherited the fine traditions of many famous painters and absorbed the characteristics of Eastern art. He gradually formed his own painting style and created a large number of deliberately innovative works, which created a wide range of influence in the art world. Influenced by Fauvism, he became the most accomplished and influential painter among Fauves. Matisse's famous saying is "accurate depiction does not equal truth." This sentence became the program of modern art. His main works include: "The Joy of Life". "Blue Nude", "Red Harmony", "Open Window" and "Woman in a Hat" etc.

Cubism is a new art school that emerged in the French art world in 1907. The main representatives are Picasso from Spain and Braque from France. Among them, Picasso made the greatest contribution. This school of painting advocates disintegrating all images into the simplest geometric blocks and combining them according to the artist's wishes. In their paintings, all objects, landscapes, people and houses are transformed into geometric shapes and squares, and the front side of the object can be seen. From the side, you can also see its back. Cubism gives people a new way of observing the world, that is, observing the world from multiple perspectives. It has been popular in the Western world for half a century, and its most prosperous period was in the 1920s and 1930s.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is one of the most influential painters in the 20th century. He began to learn painting at the age of 7 and created tens of thousands of works throughout his life. The most important contribution is the creation of Cubism. In 1907, he created "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" that shocked the European painting world. The five figures in the painting, especially the face, front, side and oblique side, were all combined together, which completely violated the image seen by human vision. . This work is considered the beginning of Cubism. He loves peace and opposes war. He painted "Peace Dove" and the famous anti-fascist painting "Guernica" painted in 1937, which shocked the world.

Expressionism originated in Germany before World War I. Its representatives are Munch of Norway, Kirchner and Marc of Germany, Kandinsky of Russia, etc. Its purpose is to express Everything felt in the inner world is usually a distortion of reality, making the picture appear intense, rough, dazzling, sad, and terrifying.

Futurism was born in Italy in 1909, and its representatives were Marinetti and Pojuba. Bala et al. They advocated expressing the burst of emotion in painting, expressing the power of rapid movement, and expressing abstract dynamic beauty in one picture.

Dadaism was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916. This sect randomly picked up a children's term "Dada" from the dictionary as the name of the sect. They deny everything with a nihilistic attitude, deny rationality and traditional culture, and believe that art can be without any restrictions and that art can be whatever the artist wants. product. The works of Marcel Toussaint, the representative figure of Dadaism, can be said to be typical works of Dadaism. "Nude Descending Stairs", which made him famous in one fell swoop, is a series of overlapping pictures like a robot; "Bicycle Wheel" is a ready-made bicycle wheel standing upside down on a wooden bench; "Fountain" is a frame nailed to a wooden board The urinal is even more shocking.

Surrealism was a new genre that branched off from Dadaism around 1922. Under the influence of Freud's theory, this school tried to systematically study how to express people's "subconscious mind". Representative figures include Dali and Miro from Spain. Dali's "The Stillness of Memory" outlines a painful world of illusions and a premonition of civil war. It depicts the fear that war brings to people. Miró's representative works include "Women on the Beach" and so on.

Modernist art schools after World War II. The Second World War did not interrupt the trend of art development itself. The various modernist art schools that emerged since the beginning of the 20th century still showed their influence after the war. creativity. But war and social changes will still have an important impact on the development of art, and some new schools will emerge. Among the more famous ones are action painting and color abstract painting, Op Art, Pop Art, Photo Realism, etc. During this period, the center of the modernist art movement gradually moved from Paris, France to New York, the United States.

Action painting and color abstract painting are the most popular art schools that emerged in New York in the 1950s. They belong to abstract expressionism and are of great significance in the history of post-war Western art. Action painting is also known as "drip painting". The most famous painter is Jackson Pollock. He used the method of dripping and splashing paint on the canvas, creating a new way to combine painting activities with subconscious activities. The painter walks along the canvas while dripping, and his own movement is coordinated with the dripping action, thus reflecting the painter's painting action, so it is called "action painting". This method is extremely random and is not governed by any theory of painting techniques. Even the painter himself cannot predict the final effect. It is contrary to all traditional forms in painting. It only focuses on the painting materials themselves and the painting. Language, to pursue the accidental effects of color. Color abstract painting, also known as "large color field painting". In the 1950s, the American Mark Rothko was the representative of this group. His paintings are often composed of simple shapes, colorful squares, and thick lines, forming an abstract space that seems to express some kind of belief or spiritual element, which is often incomprehensible to ordinary people.

Op Art, also known as "Light Effect Art" or "Visual Illusion Art", emerged in Europe and the United States in the 1960s. Artists of this genre use various black and white or colorful geometric shapes to arrange, combine, contrast, overlap, or intersect to form complex images, causing confusion in people's perspectives and creating illusions such as deformation and trembling. This genre is quite popular in countries such as Britain, France, Italy and the United States, and there are also some famous artists in Latin America such as Argentina. His representative works include: "Feather Pattern", "Three Rainstorms" and "Enlightenment" by the British female painter Reilly, "Sorata-T" by the French painter Vasarely, and "Prism Visual Illusion" by Argentina's Lepac. "wait. Because this art has a good commercial advertising effect, it is widely used in the design of decorative arts.

Pop art is the most typical figurative art in the 1960s. Pop means the public, so Pop Art is also called "Popular Art". In 1952, a group of young British painters, sculptors, architects and art critics gathered together and established a group to advocate attention to popular culture, thus setting off a pop art craze. Later, this art became popular in the United States. The American Robert Rauschenberg became the most famous representative of this school. He assembled photos, newspaper clippings and various printed materials, and then painted a few strokes with oil paint to form a work. Later, he simply used a thin quilt to create a work. At the bottom, add a pillow, then pour paint and let it flow to form the work.

This kind of work is not exactly the same as a painting in the original sense. It has elements of painting, sculpture, and assemblage of physical objects.

Photorealism, also known as super realism, is a painting school that emerged in the late 1960s and is also a new school that emerged in the high-tech era. The basic method of this school is the enlargement and copying of photography. In terms of subject selection, they often use a good-looking photo or slide to enlarge the painting, and copy extremely trivial details in order to achieve a more realistic visual effect than the photo. They believe that "lifelike" and "resembling" are art. elements. The most influential representative of this painting school is Chuck Close, whose representative works are "Nude", "John", "Self-Portrait", etc.

New trends in the development of modern Western music in the 20th century. Western music art has entered an unprecedentedly complex period in the 20th century. Diversity, complexity and changeability are its obvious characteristics, with a variety of styles and genres. There are many. They coexist and influence each other. On the one hand, they have the same typical characteristics of the 20th century as other art forms, that is, breaking away from the shackles of tradition, advocating self-assertion and being anti-rational. On the other hand, there is a rational and anti-romantic side. Think of music as abstract, except for itself. It cannot express anything. Compared with traditional music, modern music has seen many new changes in techniques, such as changes in the concepts of key and harmony, changes in the rhythm and melody of music, and the emergence of electronic music. At present, with the development of science and technology, communication technology and transportation, cultural exchanges between countries are increasing day by day, the national boundaries of music are gradually disappearing, and the speed and frequency of popularity are also accelerating. The main music genres in the 20th century are impressionism music, expressionism music, neoclassical music, electronic music and jazz music.

Impressionist music, expressionist music and neoclassical music Impressionist music appeared in the late 19th century, and its influence was mainly produced in the 20th century. Its representative figure is the French composer Debussy. Debussy, the master of Impressionist music, is considered a genius who connected the past and the future in the 20th century music industry. He ended an era, pushed the achievements of that era to the peak, and at the same time opened the way for a new era.

Debussy was born in a suburb of Paris. His family had no musical background. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and continued to explore musical expression techniques. In 1884, he won the Prix de Rome. In the 1890s, Impressionism was created in the history of music. Most of his works are based on poems, paintings, and natural scenes, deliberately portraying the emotions of characters and revealing people's spiritual world. They gradually form a unique artistic personality in terms of mode, harmony, and timbre, and pioneer modern music with a new musical language. development path. In the music he created, people can appreciate a hazy, erratic, illusory and quiet artistic conception. He successively wrote the wind overture "Afternoon of the Faun", the opera "Pelléas", and the orchestral "Nocturne". "Sea of ??Fire" and the piano piece "Moonlight" are both representative works of Impressionism.

Expressionist music is an important genre of Western modern music in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It is contrary to the view of impressionist music. Impressionist music focuses on reflecting the external world and emphasizing objectivity; expression Chinese music focuses on expressing the inner world and emphasizes subjectivity. The main representatives of Expressionist music are Schoenberg and his disciples Berg and Webern.

Schoenberg was born in Vienna. He did not receive much formal music education in his life and was almost self-taught. After 1908, under the influence of Expressionism, he pursued modern creative techniques such as atonality and created Atonal music. This kind of music is always in a state of tension, stimulating people's hearing, and is suitable for expressing "people" in the 20th century who are in a state of tension. In the 1920s, he created the twelve-tone system and wrote a large number of music according to this system. The so-called twelve-tone system abandons the traditional mode, tonality and harmony system, arbitrarily arranges the twelve-tone system in the chromatic scale into a sequence, and then processes it with techniques such as inversion and progression. In order to avoid any one tone becoming the dominant tone. Before all twelve tones appear, no one of them may be repeated. The twelve-tone system had a huge influence on music in the 1970s. His students Berg and Webern later innovated and developed the twelve-tone system. Schoenberg's main works include: string sextet "Night of Ascension", the song "Moses and Ellen", and the cantata "The Warsaw Survivors".

Neoclassical music emerged during the two world wars. Some composers combined the classical principles of the 18th century with the new culture of the 20th century, simplifying the materials and forms of music, greatly compressing the orchestra's composition, and making the music style concise, calm and rational. The main representative is Stravinsky.

Stravinsky (188-1971) was born in Russia. He became a French citizen in 1934 and obtained American citizenship in 1945. His works are of many types and styles, involving almost all important modern schools. His famous works include: ballet "Fire Crow", "The Rite of Spring", opera "The Prodigal Son", etc.

Electronic music and jazz music Electronic music is music produced using electronic technology and equipment. With the rapid development of science and technology in the 20th century, the combination of music and technology has become a major feature of modern music. Some composers were not satisfied with traditional musical instrument sounds and began to boldly innovate and try electronic music.

In 1951, West Germany's Cologne Radio established the first electronic music production studio and produced its first work in 1953. Released around 1956. "Electronic sound generator device" combines various sound generators and sound changers. It is controlled by a unified system, which greatly simplifies the production process of electronic music. After the emergence of semiconductor technology in the 1960s, synthesizers became more complete and compact. As electronic computers enter the field of music, people can copy specific styles of music through programmed programs. Producers can use electronic technology to arbitrarily combine various strange sounds and perform them as they wish. Creation. Electronic music has opened up a new territory and opened up endless sound sources, and its development prospects are promising for the music industry.

Jazz music originated in New Orleans on the lower reaches of the Mississippi River in the United States at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. A brand new music genre emerged, which became popular in the United States more than ten years later and quickly spread throughout the Western world. It was originally mostly played by black bands in New Orleans. Most of the ancestors of local black people originated from West Africa. Therefore, jazz has a strong West African influence. Music style.

Blacks are at the lowest level of American society and are subject to discrimination and oppression. They want to get rid of the depression of real life, so they explore other music of white people in the songs they sing in labor and social settings. This created a deeply melancholic song, called "blues", which was the precursor of jazz music. Later, some local bands further merged with black songs, and soon the original jazz music was formed. Music. This kind of music is based on improvisation, has a strong sense of rhythm and is full of changes, and is suitable for expressing modern life. "Rhapsody in Blue" by the American composer is the most famous jazz music work in the future. "Rock" and "Disco" music have had a profound impact.