Modern Art is the name given to the artistic production that emerged between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century.
Following romanticism and realism, modern art began to branch out into avant-gardes from the visual arts, with the painters of the so-called Impressionism, who were dedicated to portraying exterior scenes of everyday life, such as landscapes and people.
Modern art would be the first artistic period that would encompass new ways of making art, such as photography and cinema, which emerged during the Industrial Revolution.
Modernity was a period of vertiginous and chaotic transformations, which was marked by the ephemerality and sensation of the fragmentation of reality.
The so-called modernist artists, in the first half of the 20th century, believed that the “traditional” forms of the arts plastics, design, literature, music, cinema and organizational and everyday life have become fully outdated. A new culture had to be “created”, with the aim of transforming already established cultural and social characteristics, replacing them with new forms and visions.
From the new conception of cultural modernity, after the decline of Enlightenment thought, the idea of “destruction creative” becomes an essential condition of modernity, and artists are the main protagonists of this era. Artists would feel responsible (a “heroic role”) to represent and define the essence of humanity.
See also the meaning of Enlightenment and read about The Types of Art.
Wars, new technologies, industrialization and other “structural evolutions” made artists feel the need to explore all the novelties that appeared to them.
This condition was conducive to the emergence of several revolutionary vanguards, who saw in artistic aesthetics the opportunity to change the world.
The vanguard movements aimed to try to solve or find answers to the problems that arose in the modern era, whether in the social or political field. Among these movements, the surrealism, O expressionism, O futurism, Dadaism, cubism and other vanguards that directed modern art to the revolutionary causes of the time, which, paradoxically, defended the reality that was established, at the same time, which completely denied it.
know more about Vanguard, Expressionism and Characteristics of Expressionism.
Modern artists, from these new artistic forms that were established, developed their creation and reproduction techniques, subjectively giving rise to a new way of thinking about the system current.
The artist's way of thinking and positioning in relation to the processes of modernity (change, ephemerality and fragmentation) were extremely important for the formation of a modernist aesthetic.
modern art in Brazil
Modern Art was officially established in Brazil with the Week of Modern Art in 1922 and, according to some researchers, it lasted until the 1970s.
Brazilian artists were in constant contact with the artistic movements that were expanding in Europe, a continent known as the "cradle of art" in the world. Based on the concepts of European modernism, they brought the characteristics and philosophies to Brazil of the new vanguards that, at first, were not well accepted by the traditional critics Brazilians.
Among the main Brazilian modernist artists are: Di Cavalcanti, Vicente do Rêgo, Anita Malfatti, Lasar Segall, Victor Brecheret, Tarsilla do Amaral and Ismael Nery.
Modern Art Week
The Week of Modern Art, also known as "Semana de 22", was an event that took place at the Municipal Theater of São Paulo and marked the beginning of Modernism in Brazil.
See also the meaning of Art, Modernism and Abstract art.
