MODERNISM 1880 - 1945
Post Impressionism 1880s: more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, to distort form/color for expressive effect, and to use unnatural and arbitrary color.
(Paul Cezanne, Georges Seurat, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)
Symbolism – 1880s: continuation of some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition. These movements invited a reaction in favor of spirituality, the
imagination, and dreams. (Caspar David Friedrich, John Henry Fuseli, Gustave Moreau, Gustav Klimt, Odilon Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes )
Synthetism - late 1880s : emphasized two-dimensional flat surface patterns. (Paul Guaguin, Emile Bernard, Maurice Denis)
Expressionism 1900 - express the meaning of "being alive" and emotional experience rather than physical reality. The tendency of an artist to distort reality for
an emotional effect (Edvard Munch, Chaim Soutine). In Germany, included Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter groups. (Emile Nolde, Erich Heckel, Otto Dix, Ernst
Lu,dwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann, James Ensor, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka)
Fauvism 1900 – 1920 emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.( Henri Matisse,
Andre Derain, Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin)
Cubism 1907 – 1914 objects are broken up into small multifaceted areas, show different viewpoints, no coherent sense of depth, the background and object
interpenetrate one another to create shallow ambiguous space. simplification of natural forms into cylinders, spheres, and cones. (Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque,
Juan Gris)
Precisionism 1910 Influenced by Cubism and Futurism, its main themes included industrialization and the modernization of the American landscape, depicted in
precise, sharply defined, geometrical forms. (Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe, Joseph Stella, Stuart Davis, Francis Picabia, Fernand Leger)
Dada 1916 -1922 believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. According to its proponents, Dada was not art, it
was "anti-art." For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics.
If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics. The Dadaists hoped to destroy
traditional culture and aesthetics. (Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Otto Dix, Francis Picabia, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Hannah Höch)
Bauhaus 1920s - 1940's school of art and architecture in Germany. The Bauhaus revolutionized art training by combining pure arts with the study of crafts.
Design did not merely reflect society, it could actually help to improve it. The Bauhaus was founded at Weimar in 1919 and headed by Walter Gropius with (Paul
Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy)
Harlem Renaissance 1920s -1940's Challenging white paternalism and racism, African-American artists and intellectuals rejected imitating the styles of
Europeans and white Americans and instead celebrated black dignity and creativity. Asserting their freedom to express themselves on their own terms, they
explored their identities as black Americans, celebrating the black culture that had emerged out of slavery, as well as cultural ties to Africa. (Jacob Lawrence,
Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Henry Bannarn, Augusta Savage)
Surrealism 1920s -1940's a movement emerging out of Cubism, Dada, Freud and Communist philosophy, which aimed to fuse the conscious with the
unconscious to create a 'super-reality'. Emphasis was on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. “Automatism” (Andre Breton, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Rene
Magritte, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Andre Masson )
MODERNISM & POST-MODERNISM 1945 - Present
More complete List
Abstract Expressionism (AB EX) 1945 - 1960 American movement (originating in NY: The New York School ) influenced by surrealism, with its emphasis on
spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. (Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell,
William Baziotes, Helen Frankenthaler)
Pop Art 1960s A reaction to Ab Ex, themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects.
Images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony, make it
difficult to readily comprehend. (Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann)
Photorealism - mid-1960s Photorealism (Hyper Realism) evolved from Pop Art and as a counter to Abstract Expressionism as well as Minimalism. Change and
movement must be frozen in time. Transfer from a photograph to the canvas is done using projection or the grid. (Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Charles Bell, Audrey
Flack, Don Eddy)
Earth/Land Art - late 1960s Landscape is the creation, exist in the open, located well away from civilization, left to change and erode under natural conditions.
(Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, Dennis Oppenheim, Michael Heizer, James Turrell, Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Long)
Post-painterly Abstraction As painting continued to move in different directions, powered by the spirit of innovation of the time, the term "post-painterly
abstraction", was gradually supplanted by minimalism, hard-edge painting, lyrical abstraction and color field painting.
Minimalism 1960s – reaction against Abstract Expressionism and a bridge to Postmodern art. The work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. “Less
is More” . Sharp contrast to the energy-filled and highly subjective, emotionally charged paintings of Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline. (Donald Judd, Agnes
Martin, Robert Morris, Frank Stella)
Hard Edge Painting 1960s abrupt transitions are found between color areas. A reaction to the more painterly or gestural forms of Abstract expressionism,
adopted a knowingly impersonal paint application and delineated areas of color with particular sharpness and clarity (Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, Ad
Reinhardt, Frank Stella, Leon Polk Smith, Agnes Martin, Myron Stout, Al Held )
Geometric Abstraction: Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian were pioneers.
Lyrical Abstraction 1940s (Europe) 1960s (America) Characterized by intuitive loose paint handling, spontaneous expression, process, occasional imagery,
and other painterly techniques. It led the way away from minimalism and toward a new freer expressionism. (Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages Alfred Manessier,
Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Sam Francis)
Color Field Painting 1950s: Large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas; creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane.
Less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. (Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Ad
Reinhardt)
Post-Minimalism - late 1960s refers less to a particular movement than an artistic tendency. Post minimalist artworks are usually everyday objects, use simple
materials, and sometimes take on a "pure", formalist aesthetic. ( Eva Hesse, Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Bruce Nauman, Martin Puryear, Richard Tuttle, Rachel
Whiteread)
Process Art - mid-1960s: emphasizes the process by which it was made, rather than on its form/composition/end product
Conceptual Art 1970s: the concept or idea in the work takes precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.
Installation Art 1970s: site-specific, three-dimensional works designed to transform the perception of a space
Performance Art 1970s: the artist(s) creates a live performance, often using a variety of media
Neo-Expressionism 1980s a reaction against the conceptual and minimalist art of the 1970s. A returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the body, in a
rough and violently emotional way using vivid colors and banal color harmonies. (Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Anselm Kiefer,
Georg Baselitz)