Characteristics of Western Modernist Art

The so-called western modernist art refers to some schools of modern art developed by western countries from the beginning of the 20th century-Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstraction and Pop Art. The word "modernism" is associated with some new, unconventional and different artistic concepts. Modernist art is not only different from traditional art in the past, but also does not include various schools of modern realism. It is not a concept with western modern art, it only occupies a place in it.

The emergence of western modernist art has its political, economic, cultural and philosophical historical origins, and it is closely linked with the process of western modern society. New technological revolution, changes in social structure, people's thoughts, values, relationships between people, etc. The increasingly mature photography technology, the introduction of oriental art and African art represented by Japanese printmaking, the philosophical thoughts of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the influence of Freudian psychology, as well as various contradictions and drawbacks in the western real society, have all promoted the formation of modernist art.

From the perspective of the whole European art history, the trend of modernist art thought began from the period before and after Impressionism. To be exact, it originated from French post-impressionist painters Cezanne, Gauguin and Dutch painter Van Gogh.

1905, Fauvism was born in Paris, with Matisse as the head and Flamenco and others as the backbone. Inspired by Cezanne's works and deeply influenced by Gauguin and Van Gogh in artistic form, Cezanne expresses his subjective feelings about the objective world with strong colors, bold lines and distorted and exaggerated shapes. At the same time, German expressionism came into being. They deny the objectivity of the real world and blindly pursue the artist's own subjective feelings. However, they do not pay attention to the exploration of pure form, but regard painting language as a means to resist social Xi ism and vent their dissatisfaction.

Two years later, cubism led by Picasso and Braque appeared in Paris. It first destroys and dismembers all objects, decomposes natural shapes into various geometric sections, and then subjectively combines them, and even develops to combine several different aspects of the same object on the same picture to express four-dimensional space.

Since cubism, various new theories and concepts have flooded into Europe, so futurism appeared in Italy in an avant-garde manner in 1909. They reject the emotional appeal and expectation of the past as a means of painting, admire the original form, deny the old things in the theme, and think it is very important to describe modern urban life, such as steel, speed, strenuous exercise and so on.

After futurism, a metaphysical school appeared in Italy. In metaphysical painting, the hands of the clock and the flags on the tower are in a state of stagnation, and everything is still, shrouded in mysterious silence, with the aim of separating things from daily ethics. Metaphysical painting has elements of surrealism.

The first world war left a very painful wound for European countries. A group of young artists published the Dada Declaration out of strong dissatisfaction with society. Dadaists hate everything that human beings have, so they want to deny everything and destroy everything. In art, it tries to get rid of all the ancient traditional culture and art, denies all the modeling concepts and laws of traditional art, and expresses some incomprehensible things with a grotesque and absurd image.

1924, French doctor, poet, and former Dadaism strongman Bretton came forward to organize and set up the surrealism school. Relying on the so-called automatic narrative method, they express absurd and chaotic feelings and images by means of picture symbols, modeling metaphors and changing environment, and construct many strange worlds with deformity, fantasy and magic.

Around 190 1 year, after years of exploration by Russian painter Kandinsky, Dutch painter mondriaan and others, abstraction was finally formed. Artists get rid of the tradition of plastic arts to reproduce visual feelings, and regard points, lines and surfaces as independent expressions and turn them into symbolic symbols, thus conveying the artist's feelings to the audience. After World War II, Pollock, the founder of American Action School, began to turn to abstract expressionism. Instead of using strokes, he scattered pigments on the canvas; There is no specific image and life content on the picture, only speckled things spread out, which goes beyond the narrow scope of framed painting and gives the picture an infinite sense of space.

In the 1960s, abstract expressionism became more formal, so some artists did the opposite, from "extremely abstract" to "very concrete"-to real objects in life. This book is the pop art that started in Britain and then became popular in America.

How to treat western modernist art in the twentieth century? There are indeed a considerable number of works whose pictures are vague, deformed and even absurd, which is incredible and shows the idealistic artistic interest and decadent ideas of some schools; However, more modernist artists show rebellious character through their works, emphasize their own value, express the artist's subjective intention, and also create many artistic expression methods and new materials worth learning.