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Modern Painting: A Concise History
While acknowledging the legacy of Herbert Reads classic 1959 study A Concise History of Modern Painting in the World of Art series, academic and artist Simon Morley places the foundation of modern art much earlier than Read, at the emergence of Romanticism and the dawn of the industrial age. Structured loosely chronologically by period, the focus is as much on individual artists as well as movements, with works discussed within a broader context - stylistic, historical, geographical, and gender and ethnic frames - themes that recur throughout the chapters. Generously illustrated, the global and diverse range of artists featured include William Blake, Édouard Manet, Hilma af Klint, Kazimir Malevich, Willem de Kooning, Amrita Sher-Gil, Faith Ringgold, and Kehinde Wiley.This guide also includes an Appendix in the form of questions the reader might like to ask in relation to the artists and the ideas discussed - in order to reconsider the works from a contemporary perspective.
433 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 7, 2023
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February 23, 2024
This potted history of modern painting is certainly a lot more inclusive than its predecessor in Herbert Read, and also takes us through the ironies of post-modernism, all the way to the present, and how the Internet and sociaI media are now influencing modern Art. It does mention the ongoing issue of appropriation and plagiarism that emerge as issues since the arrival of post modernism, there not perhaps being time to look at how AI will influence things. The book is so not so inclusive as to include the ouvres of pigs, chimpanzees or elephants, nor for that matter the fact that the humanoid robot Sophia sells her drawings for tens of thousands while most mortals who have not attended the right schools are lucky to make peanuts on their modest folios, but maybe now this reviewer is getting just a little jaundiced.
Coincidentally, this reviewer did attend an exhibition describing the work of the very first human painters though, all the way back in time to tens of thousands of years ago to the Altamira cave paintings.
In other words, despite the shock of the new most noticeable after the Twentieth Century, despite attempts of artists to make painting itself redundant, painting is as ubiquitous as ever, on our desperately over-populated planets. And whether gimmicky or not, sometimes making billions.
Read began his critique with Cézanne, Morely instead takes us back to Turner, Blake and Constable. It is here where artists begin to paint for themselves, rather than as employees being mouthpieces for either princes, commentating for imperial states, or for the church. A kind of individualism then is what stirs the the roots of modern painting, starting from 1789, leading on too from that other, industrial revolution....
Paint also becomes more available on a literally industrial scale, while in France artists from the Salons de refusés start to influence each other, leading to the birth of impressionism. Now that the photograph could also capture a moment in time, there was the choice either to emulate a photograph or to bring more subjective renditions of a given image.
With more abstraction emerged the geometric rigour of cubism, later on surrealism, expressionism, and more. Imports from Japan then challenged Western suppositions that an artwork should necessarily be set on an easel, using strict linear perspectives and judging all works by these criteria, where a totally other culture governed how an artwork should be, elsewhere.
Then, maybe inevitably, the exhibiting of Duchamp's toilet questioned whether or not there was even any need to create at all. Anything could be art!
Artists began to question their role as artists more and more as the creative quest became one of deconditioning, deconstruction, questioning the fitness of a biased psyche to depict any kind of reality in its work. My dirty unmade bed could be exhibited as Art, though Morley does not mention this particular artist.
Morley doesn't necessarily state the obvious emperor's new clothes follies that can ensue from all this, where a virtually empty canvas can fetch millions at an auction, or a lost pair of glasses might be mistaken for a deeply profound exhibit, and where the taped-on banana worth tens of thousands gets eaten accidentally. There is also the way that the aesthetic and careful craftsmanship get lumped together as symptomatic as the fallen and empty meaningless of the conditioned bourgeois mind.
Maybe. Morley however, continues his critique by focusing on work that definitely does challenge the mindet and perception of its audiences, rather than pander to whatever it might find comfortable. The faith remains that there is indeed method to the madness as Pollock and his Japanese counterparts suspend their bodies over their horizontal canvases, and Tapies mangles basic materials ranging from found objects to clay and metal, to express something essential.
You do not even have to be a sane, productive member of society. Morley draws our attention to the Swiss artist Adolf Wölfi, who never left his lunatic asylum, but nevertheless was highly productive despite his psychosis.
Women artists are given generous air time in this book too. For example Klint, who until recently, had been almost completely forgotten, was one of the pioneers of abstract impressionism, certain well before Kandinsky emerged.
What has been noted about the discovery of Japanese art and how it influenced post impressionist such as Van Gogh and Gauguin, applies even more so once traditional artwork from traditional societies was discovered. Again, this harks back to the desire to somehow attain a purer form of consciousness less encumbered by the weight of cultural conditioning, and to produce artwork from this cleaner slate. Possibly, with no sense of irony however, Morley does point out that Aboriginal art for example has benefited a great deal from exposure to Western art, and more work gets produced through this cross-cultural fertilisation. It certainly gives many artists from developing countries the opportunity to find their own voice as artists, and some of their work can slso be found in this book.
So then, it may indeed be the case that it will always take a long spoon, or rather paintbrush, to sup with the devil.and possibly now, painting is becoming more comfortable with that, even with the bubbles and scams currently being created because of new technologies involving the Internet and block chains, or the AI challenged this reviewer has already touched upon.
Either way, this book is a highly entertaining read, and does indeed serve well as an introduction to modern painting, alongside the dynamics that are behind it
.
Coincidentally, this reviewer did attend an exhibition describing the work of the very first human painters though, all the way back in time to tens of thousands of years ago to the Altamira cave paintings.
In other words, despite the shock of the new most noticeable after the Twentieth Century, despite attempts of artists to make painting itself redundant, painting is as ubiquitous as ever, on our desperately over-populated planets. And whether gimmicky or not, sometimes making billions.
Read began his critique with Cézanne, Morely instead takes us back to Turner, Blake and Constable. It is here where artists begin to paint for themselves, rather than as employees being mouthpieces for either princes, commentating for imperial states, or for the church. A kind of individualism then is what stirs the the roots of modern painting, starting from 1789, leading on too from that other, industrial revolution....
Paint also becomes more available on a literally industrial scale, while in France artists from the Salons de refusés start to influence each other, leading to the birth of impressionism. Now that the photograph could also capture a moment in time, there was the choice either to emulate a photograph or to bring more subjective renditions of a given image.
With more abstraction emerged the geometric rigour of cubism, later on surrealism, expressionism, and more. Imports from Japan then challenged Western suppositions that an artwork should necessarily be set on an easel, using strict linear perspectives and judging all works by these criteria, where a totally other culture governed how an artwork should be, elsewhere.
Then, maybe inevitably, the exhibiting of Duchamp's toilet questioned whether or not there was even any need to create at all. Anything could be art!
Artists began to question their role as artists more and more as the creative quest became one of deconditioning, deconstruction, questioning the fitness of a biased psyche to depict any kind of reality in its work. My dirty unmade bed could be exhibited as Art, though Morley does not mention this particular artist.
Morley doesn't necessarily state the obvious emperor's new clothes follies that can ensue from all this, where a virtually empty canvas can fetch millions at an auction, or a lost pair of glasses might be mistaken for a deeply profound exhibit, and where the taped-on banana worth tens of thousands gets eaten accidentally. There is also the way that the aesthetic and careful craftsmanship get lumped together as symptomatic as the fallen and empty meaningless of the conditioned bourgeois mind.
Maybe. Morley however, continues his critique by focusing on work that definitely does challenge the mindet and perception of its audiences, rather than pander to whatever it might find comfortable. The faith remains that there is indeed method to the madness as Pollock and his Japanese counterparts suspend their bodies over their horizontal canvases, and Tapies mangles basic materials ranging from found objects to clay and metal, to express something essential.
You do not even have to be a sane, productive member of society. Morley draws our attention to the Swiss artist Adolf Wölfi, who never left his lunatic asylum, but nevertheless was highly productive despite his psychosis.
Women artists are given generous air time in this book too. For example Klint, who until recently, had been almost completely forgotten, was one of the pioneers of abstract impressionism, certain well before Kandinsky emerged.
What has been noted about the discovery of Japanese art and how it influenced post impressionist such as Van Gogh and Gauguin, applies even more so once traditional artwork from traditional societies was discovered. Again, this harks back to the desire to somehow attain a purer form of consciousness less encumbered by the weight of cultural conditioning, and to produce artwork from this cleaner slate. Possibly, with no sense of irony however, Morley does point out that Aboriginal art for example has benefited a great deal from exposure to Western art, and more work gets produced through this cross-cultural fertilisation. It certainly gives many artists from developing countries the opportunity to find their own voice as artists, and some of their work can slso be found in this book.
So then, it may indeed be the case that it will always take a long spoon, or rather paintbrush, to sup with the devil.and possibly now, painting is becoming more comfortable with that, even with the bubbles and scams currently being created because of new technologies involving the Internet and block chains, or the AI challenged this reviewer has already touched upon.
Either way, this book is a highly entertaining read, and does indeed serve well as an introduction to modern painting, alongside the dynamics that are behind it
.
Displaying 1 of 1 review