Modernism

Modernism

There is great debate over when Modernism actually started. Most say it started in the late 19th century with the Industrialization of most of the Western world. Some go as far back as the 14th century and call Michelangelo a Modernist because he worked with imagery from daily life. Others put its beginning as late as the end of WWII. I think it came out of the Machine Age putting its beginning around 1900-1910. The Machine age changed the way we worked like no other time in history. It created mass unemployment for unskilled laborers and oodles more leisure time skilled laborers to perfect the craft of running and improving their machines. This expanded the leisure class to include those who could adapt to new technologies to mass produce commodities. This group of add-ons to the leisure class included many artists and creative thinkers, giving them more time on their hands to exercise their creative abilities.

Modernism ended with the oil crisis of the 1970’s(Bourriaud). With the Western world’s primary source of energy unsure for the first time since the Great Depression and the threat of the un-seating of Western culture’s leading place in the world, artists and writers began feeling disaffected and irrelevant. They now decided to turn their focus to the absurdity of life and our economic existence. Looking to consumerism and rejecting commodification of art and pop culture.

Two main artist critics of Modernism are Clement Greenberg and Irving Sandler. Greenberg was a fan of naming eras and isms, while Irving Sandler wrote for Art in America and maybe even Art News and spent his time hanging out with the Ab/Ex crowd in New York City. This crowd included heavy hitters like De Kooning, Kline, Krasner and Rothko. Greenberg is most well known for popularizing the work of Jackson Pollock whose drip paintings reference leaves falling to the residual energy of a massive explosion(a major Modernist theme). Modernism sought purity and universality, abstraction and form.