Modernism
Modernism is a mid-19th to 20th
century art movement that was influence or born from the 19th
century art movements Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The 20th
century women were still not seen has an artist but known as a craft makers. However,
during this artistic movement multiple sub movements were taking place in Europe
artistic movements like; Cubism, Dada, Futurism, Favism, Constructivism, De
Stijl, Superematism, Optimism, etc. In the Western Modernism, most of the European
art movement were practically the some like Surrealism but, the Western art
world was different from Europe because of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art,
Contemporary art, Feminist art and many others. Also, one have the keep in
consideration that some if not all the sub art movements were political in
nature because of the wars in that time. Even though, women are still not seen
has artist’s they had major impact in the early haft of the modernism art
movement and throughout the era, A.K.A. Shadow
Artists.
Fauvism, Optimism and Surrealism
The Fauvist movement was the first form of
abstract, Wassily Kandisky is known has the father of the fauvist (Wild beasts)
but his wife Nina Andreevskaya was the founder of the painting style with its
stained glassed looked and free impressions brushwork. But her husband to the
movement to the next like and got known for the style
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| Emile Charmy, La Loge 1902 |
In Optimism, the painting style is like quilt Craft work one of the only art styles
women were free to practice. In the movement women challenged the male viewer to
see art through the eyes of a woman, also gender role and fashion. Sonia and
Robert Delaunay were the founder of the Optimism movement even though Sonia
worked alongside her husband; his work was more known then hers. “Sonia didn’t
mind the Robert was touted as the genius of the twosome. While his painting
never changed very much over the years, Sonia was always innovating, thinking
of new ways their ideas could be applied to the world at large. Her work pushed
the envelope between art and life…she went on to paint again and have museum
exhibitions of her own” (The Guerrilla Girls,61). Sonia Delaunay was the brain behind
her husband fame as well as the first iconic fashion artist to change the style
of clothing women wear. Also, her design became more industrial because of the Russian
revolution and was mass produce on clothing, vehicles and the list goes on.
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| Sonia Delaunay, Flamenco dancer, 1916 |
While Claude Cahun the Surrealists art was challenging
the spectator to rethink what is the rolled of a woman, The Guerrilla Girls; “Claude
Cahun was one of the first 20th-century females to dree up and
photograph herself in the of art…Claude took pictures of herself in a range of
gender-bending stereotypes that would make Dennis Rodman Jealous: male dandies,
ultrafeminine maidens, and ambiguous androgynies” (61). Regardless of the fact
she was a lesbian Cahun ripped a hole through the male gaze and causing chaos
in the art world. Frida Kahlo is the most famous western female Surrealists artist, in
her work she doesn’t hold back the pain and raw emotion she felt. Ms. Kahlo
work is unique because its painting of a nude female (herself), painted by a
woman the challenged the male gaze and the viewer to not only see her pain but
to feel the pain. She paints nude and at the something the nude commands the
audience while she is trying to figure out her identity. Even though Frida is a
powerhouse female artist her work was shadow over by her husband Diego Rivera mirror
art. Her painting Without Hope is not
as known as The Two Fridas or The Broken Column and Henry Ford Hospital but message is the
same underline psychological trauma she faced from her marriage, loss of her
child and her accident. Frida is special mixed heritage and the fact that she
was educated in art history.
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| Frida Kahlo, Without Hope, 1945 |
Abstract Expressionism, Pop art and Feminist
art
Dada is one of the
political art movement, the dada art used newspaper, books etc. to challenge
the government and play on the male gaze. Female artist like Hannah Hoch was
image of women body part the men mostly look at to show the woman has a sex
object and not a person. Late in her work became more political because of the
Nazi takeover, and she started to add text and writing the word dada in to her art
work.
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| Hannah Hoch, untitled collage, 1930 |
when some people hear, the words abstract expressionism they think
of Jackson Pollock or Willem De Kooning, but Lenore ‘Lee’ Krassner was the main
reason people even know about Jackson Pollock. Lee Krassner was friends with
most of the dada artists in New York city and she love abstract art and made
some of the abstract expressionism art met the dada artist, also her fund some
of their art shows. She was married to Pollock and was an abstract
expressionist artist herself. The painting style of Ms. Krassner is mosaic,
automatic drawing and painterly brushwork.
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| Lee Krassner, Night Creatures, 1965 |
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| Evelyne Axell, Le fruit defendu 1. 1969 |
The feminist art movement was art made by
woman to show the real life of a woman and the injustice face every day. This movement took place at the sometime as
WWII and the freedom riot. Judy Chicago, Barbara Kruger, Carolee Schneemann,
and Miriam Schapiro are some of the feminist artists and even in this movement
women of color have to fight to be apart the history and changing art world.
Chadwick; “O’Keeffe’s paintings of natural forms and the female body elicited
readings which the artist herself recognized as ideological constructions” (305-6). Even though Ms. O’Keeffe
doesn’t consider herself as a feminist the brush style of her work with the roundness
of the image give it that feminist touch of woman and nature. The modern woman is
still begining over shadow that her male even though his may not be on the same
level of superiority as hers.
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| Georgia O'Keeffe, Jack-in-pulpit No. IV, 1930 |
CITATIONS
Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art and Society. London:
Thames & Hudson, 2007. Print.
The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western
Art. London: Penguin, 1998. Print.
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