seanmcglinchey:what are the defining features of 20th century art as opposed to that which came in the centuries before it? pick any artform and comment or make a giant generalisation from whatever areas you are knowledgable about if you wish
A divorce between art and conventional ideas of spirituality, rationality and representation. Prior movements hoped either to exemplify either religious truth, emotional truth, or the glory of reality. The Impressionists in the late 1800s started kicking the door open for simple, moving pieces done as experiments in the act of seeing itself. These seeing-experiments made one thread of 20th Century art, which would include things like experimental electronica, bebop jazz, minimalism and abstract impressionism. The Symbolists, near-contemporaries of the Impressionists, illustrated interior landscapes, and paved the way for the other main thread of 20th Century art: explorations of the irrational. The Surrealists were the most important influence on this group of movements, which could be said to include anything from Duchamp's found art to Pop art, expressionist film, folk art (in the sense of inverting traditional hierarchies) and psychedelic rock.
So between the act of seeing and the substrata of logical thought, you've got most things covered. |
