Modernism in art triumphed from the 19th century onward and in the early 20th century virtually changed the way art came to be perceived. From the Abstractionists to the Cubists to the Surrealists to the followers of Dada, the modernists continually reinvented themselves with newer and wilder movements, firmly rejecting tradition and all its preoccupations. It was only fitting, however, that modern artists should break so completely with the past: modern society had split from the old world with the Protestant Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the Romantic Era, all of which followed one on the heels of the other. This paper will trace the history of the final era -- the modernist -- by examining five works of five different painters of the modernist era: Franz Marc's "Fate of the Animals," Pablo Picasso's "Guitar and Violin," Marcel Duchamp's "found" artwork "Fountain," Salvador Dali's Surrealist masterpiece "The Persistence of Memory," and Piet Mondrian's "Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow."
As European society sought to understand itself according to new Romantic/Enlightenment ideals (like the ideals of the French Revolution -- liberty, fraternity, equality), many artists sought to reflect the societal revolution around them by initiating artistic revolution. Just as the old world societal structure went away, so too did the old world art forms. The Classical, the Baroque, the Realistic and the Romantic all fell away. The Impressionists delivered the first blow -- but their works still reflected an objective vision. The modern world emphasized subjectivity. Thus, the modernists would create art that would reflect nothing objective but rather something abstract, subjective or (in the case of Duchamp) downright absurd.
Each of these five artists basically came into their own in the early 20th century. Each of them worked through the latest artistic novelty that had come before them. Each of their famous and original techniques was like a response to the other. Mondrian dabbled with post-Impressionism before identifying...
Marc wrote to his wife that he could "hardly believe that (he) painted it!...(but that) it is artistically logical to paint such pictures before wars."
"Fate of the Animals" reflected not just the immediate destiny of European bestiary but also the fracturing of European society. The painting gives the impression of fragmentation and suggests the abstraction that was coming to dominate modern art. Underlying it may be the same kind of spiritual message that other abstract painters like Kandinsky would explore, but it is hard to tell, for the immediate effect of Marc's "Fate" is shock and a touch of horror. Marc himself would not survive World War 1. It was as though with this painting he received "a premonition," which is indeed exactly as he described it to his wife.
Picasso's 1912 Cubist piece "Guitar and Violin" was even more abstract than Marc's "Fate," but also contained less commentary. Picasso excelled at depicting the fragmented nature of modern Europe. "Guitar and Violin" is one such work, a visceral yet balanced, proportionate yet broken reflection of nothing truly discernible. The only reason one has to suspect that it is a portrait of a guitar and a violin is that Picasso tells us so in the title. Otherwise, one's guess is as good as another. The novelty of Picasso's Cubism was partly due to the underlying modernist creed -- which was to scrap what came before either by going one step further or by creating a style completely different. Picasso was popular with the intelligentsia and, as Paul Johnson observes, Picasso's style "can fairly be classified as the first major instance of fashion art…there were soon many forms of Cubism."
But not every modernist was trying to create something so abstract and indefinable. Salvador Dali's famous 1931 "Persistence of Memory" came nearly two decades after Picasso's "Guitar and…
