I.

Introduction

Modern Art and Architecture, a term that can be applied to all Western or Western-inspired art and architecture from about 1900 onwards, but which is generally used more specifically to designate forms of visual expression from this period that are consciously in tune with progressive aesthetic attitudes. In the second sense, Modern Art and Architecture represents a breakaway from the historical revivalism that had characterized much 19th-century art and a repudiation of many ideals and assumptions that had prevailed since the Renaissance.

Even in this more restricted sense (with which this article is concerned), Modern Art and Architecture is a broad and imprecise term, which is used in different ways by different scholars. Some extend it back to the mid-19th century—in painting, for example, to the work of Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, and the Impressionists (with their contemporary subjects and unconventional techniques), and in architecture to the buildings of Sir Joseph Paxton (with his novel use of industrial materials). However, in everyday usage (and particularly as applied to painting and sculpture) the phrase is generally restricted to art since the beginning of the 20th century, when a series of revolutionary movements fundamentally changed the way artists saw and represented the world.

This aesthetic revolution was characterized by a profusion of styles, movements, and “isms”, many of them short-lived, expressing a restlessness in the search for new directions and novel principles. Some major artists were involved in more than one of these groupings and trends, while others stood apart from them and pursued their own ideals and experiments. Many of these leading figures were based in Paris, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was unrivalled as the world capital of art, but several other countries were prominent in the birth and development of Modern Art; Germany, for example, was particularly important as a centre of Expressionism, and Russia of various types of Abstract Art. Paris maintained its position as the chief focus of artistic innovation until World War II, after which the United States—particularly New York—took the lead.

In the following sections, some of the main trends and outstanding individuals of Modern Art are discussed in roughly chronological order under three main headings: painting, sculpture (which includes also newer forms of expression now usually grouped with the traditional visual arts), and architecture. It must be remembered that while these developments were taking place, the majority of painters and sculptors (and to a lesser degree architects) continued to work in much more traditional styles—unmoved or only superficially influenced by avant-garde styles and attitudes.

II.

Modern Art

A.

Painting

Avant-garde painters of the late 19th century, for example the Post-Impressionists and the Symbolists, pursued many different ideals, but a common denominator among most of them was a diminished concern for realism and a greater concern for personal freedom of expression. In the early 20th century a younger generation of painters adopted even greater distortions of line, colour, and pictorial space, and the decade from about 1905 up to the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was a time of unprecedented artistic experimentation. During this period a series of revolutionary movements transformed painting (and to a lesser extent sculpture), creating what we now generally understand by the term “Modern Art”. The most important of these movements were Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism (which had various offshoots), and Abstract Art.

A.1.

Fauvism and Expressionism

The Fauves were a group of French painters who first exhibited together in 1905. Henri Matisse was the most famous member and others included André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and the Dutch-born Kees van Dongen. They were united by their love of very strong, bright colour, which they used for emotional effect rather than to depict the world accurately. This emotionalism means that their work can be seen as an aspect of Expressionism, which flourished in various countries but mainly in Germany. In the same year that Fauvism was founded, 1905, a group of young German Expressionist artists came together in Dresden under the name Die Brücke (The Bridge). Among the members were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Their work has much in common with the vigour and boldness of Fauvism, but it can be very different in spirit, for they often portrayed the fears and sufferings of humanity. A second major group of German Expressionist painters, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), was organized in Munich in 1911; its two leading members were Wassily Kandinsky (a Russian émigré) and Franz Marc. The Blaue Reiter painters were in general more spiritual in outlook than those of Die Brücke, with leanings towards abstraction. Like the Fauvists and many other avant-garde artists of the time, the German Expressionists at first met with incomprehension or hostility from the general public, but they had supporters among some of the more adventurous dealers and collectors.

A.2.

Cubism and its Offshoots

Cubism marked an even more fundamental break with the art of the past than Fauvism or Expressionism, for it abandoned the use of a single, fixed viewpoint—a standard convention in European painting since the Renaissance. Instead, Cubist painters used a variety of viewpoints, so that several aspects of an object or scene could be depicted simultaneously in one image. By breaking down and analysing forms in this way, the artist presented the essence or accumulated vision of an object or scene, rather than trying to show it as it appeared at any particular moment from any particular position. The joint creators of Cubism were Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who worked in close collaboration in Paris from 1907 until 1914, when their paths separated because of the war. By 1911 numerous other painters in Paris had been converted to Cubism, including Juan Gris (who called it “a new way of representing the world”) and Fernand Léger, and it proved immensely influential, becoming the starting point or major ingredient of several other “isms”. These included Futurism in Italy (launched in 1909), Orphism in France (originating in 1911), and Vorticism in England (flourishing briefly in 1914-1915 before being dissipated by the war).

A.3.

Abstract Art

Cubism was also an influence on Abstract Art, which emerged in several countries around 1910 and soon developed several “isms” of its own. The early abstract artists varied greatly in style and approach. In Russia, for example, Kasimir Malevich was inspired by Christian mysticism to create his extremely austere abstract paintings (his ideas reached their ultimate distillation with pictures of a white square on an almost undifferentiated white background), whereas Kandinsky and his followers in Germany were typically much more intuitive, emotional, and colourful in approach, often finding their inspiration in nature or music.

A.4.

Dada

During World War I a new artistic movement arose that was in some ways even more of a break with tradition than Cubism or Abstract Art. This was Dada, which went beyond radical stylistic innovation and questioned the whole basis and meaning of art. Dada was born in 1915, more or less simultaneously in Switzerland and the United States (specifically in Zurich and New York)—two countries that were at this time neutral during the war. The movement reflected disgust at the horrors of the war and disillusionment with the values of the society from which it had emerged. Dada artists tried to shock people from complacency, and many of them abandoned conventional materials and techniques in favour of such methods as collage, photomontage, and the nonsense poem. They had no regard for traditional ideals of craftsmanship and often allowed chance procedures or effects to play a part in the creation of their work. In Europe the leading Dadaists included Jean Arp, Max Ernst, and Kurt Schwitters; in America the three most important figures were Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia (both French by birth), and Man Ray. The movement was short-lived (it had virtually died out by 1922) and flourished in only a few cities (including Berlin, Cologne, Hanover, and Paris), but nevertheless it was highly influential, establishing the deliberately iconoclastic, debunking strain that has run through so much of subsequent avant-garde art.

A.5.

Surrealism

The immediate sequel to Dada was Surrealism, which was the most widespread and influential art movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Like Dada, it was envisaged as a whole way of life, rather than as a matter of artistic style, but whereas Dada was nihilistic in spirit, Surrealism was positive in outlook. The essential idea of the movement was to release the power of the unconscious mind. André Breton, the French writer who was Surrealism’s chief spokesman, believed that this would help combat what he regarded as the excessive materialism and rationalism of the modern world. Surrealist artists were stimulated by such ideas in various ways, but the most famous paintings of the movement are probably the strange, dream-like visions of Salvador Dalí and the witty compositions of René Magritte, which abound in visual puns and paradoxes. The Surrealists were good at promoting their work (through exhibitions and magazines, for example), and many artists of the period were influenced by their imagery, even if they did not subscribe wholeheartedly to their ideas. In Britain, for example, the hauntingly mysterious landscapes of Paul Nash reflect this influence.

A.6.

Early Modern Painting in the United States

Until about 1950, modern styles and movements almost all originated in Europe and only later spread to the United States and other parts of the Western world. In the early years of the 20th century numerous American artists worked in Europe (particularly Paris) and some of them were in the vanguard of ideas, but it was not until 1913 that the American public saw its first major exhibition of Modern Art—the Armory Show, held initially in New York and subsequently in Chicago and Boston. It made a powerful impact on many American artists, encouraging them to experiment with modern idioms. Stuart Davis, for example, applied Cubist ideas to American subject matter, creating a vigorous and distinctive style. However, other American artists felt a patriotic urge to repudiate European influence, and in the period between the two world wars several of them worked in a vein of descriptive realism that has been called American Scene Painting. The major figure of this trend is Edward Hopper, who was the first artist to show how such distinctively American subjects as motels and filling stations could provide rich pictorial material. The prevailing theme of Hopper’s work is the loneliness of modern urban life. Some of his contemporaries worked in a similar realistic manner but were more concerned with rural and small-town America. Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, and Grant Wood are the three main representatives of this trend, which is known as Regionalism and can be considered a Midwestern branch of American Scene Painting.

A.7.

Abstract Expressionism

Around 1940 a loosely affiliated group of young American painters—active mainly in New York—began moving away from the prevailing realism to create a new and distinctive type of abstraction, now known as Abstract Expressionism. The most famous representative of this movement is Jackson Pollock, and other leading figures include Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. They—and the other representatives of the movement—did not share a common style, but rather a similarity of outlook, believing that abstract painting could make powerful statements about the human condition; many of them liked to work on very large canvases, which emphasized the scale of their ambitions. Their intellectual leanings—notably their interest in the unconscious, symbolism, and myth—were stimulated by the presence of many European expatriate artists, particularly Surrealists, who had left Europe for America during World War II. In his most characteristic pictures Pollock worked in an explosively energetic style, splashing and dribbling paint on the canvas (his technique is known as Action Painting), but other members of the group (notably Newman and Rothko) used relatively flat and broad areas of colour, conveying feelings of vastness and solitude.

A.8.

Post-Painterly Abstraction and the Revival of Figuration

Abstract Expressionism represents a great watershed in the history of painting. In the 1950s its leading practitioners received such great acclaim that America for the first time became the world leader of avant-garde art. As with Cubism 40 years or so earlier, it became a reference point for a whole generation of artists, who either took it as the basis for their own work or reacted against its dominance. Many American artists continued to favour the format of large abstract pictures, for example, but some of them rejected the emotionalism and vigorous brushwork of Abstract Expressionism in favour of cooler and clearer composition and handling, leading to such developments as Minimal Art and Op Art. The term Post-Painterly Abstraction is sometimes used as a general label for these various types of abstract painting.

Other American artists returned to figuration and in the late 1950s created a style known as Pop Art, the jokiness and slickness of which contrasted with the high seriousness of Abstract Expressionism. Pop Artists drew their imagery from advertisements, comic strips, films, everyday objects, and popular culture, reflecting the prosperity and consumerism of post-war America. The style was also a great success in Britain from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, although it had comparatively little impact in other countries. The leading exponents included Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol in the United States, and Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton in Britain. Another movement that flourished mainly in America and Britain is Superrealism (sometimes called Photorealism), which emerged in the late 1960s. Superrealist painters work with a precise, impersonal verisimilitude, imitating the effect of photographs; typically their subjects are taken from banal everyday life (with an emphasis on consumer society reflecting the influence of Pop Art), although one of the best-known Superrealists, the American Chuck Close, has specialized in portraits.

At the same time as these developments were taking place, other figurative artists have pursued a more independent path, not least in Britain, where the tormented visions of Francis Bacon, the deft, urbane portraits and domestic scenes of David Hockney, and the unflinchingly realistic nudes of Lucian Freud all testified to the strength of the representational tradition. In France, Bernard Buffet similarly created a highly distinctive style—bleak and spiky, catching the spirit of existential alienation that to many characterized the post-war world.

A.9.

Neo-Expressionism

Although many recent avant-garde artists have more or less abandoned traditional methods and materials, painting has continued to flourish, and a style called Neo-Expressionism has made a particularly strong impact since about 1980. Neo-Expressionist paintings are typically large and intensely subjective in feeling, sometimes with deliberately crude handling or materials such as straw or broken crockery embedded in the picture surface; subjects are often concerned with violence or disaster. The most famous exponents of Neo-Expressionism include the American Julian Schnabel, the German Anselm Kiefer, and the Italian Sandro Chia.

B.

Sculpture

Many of the movements in painting described above had some kind of sculptural component (Minimal Art, indeed, was more concerned with sculpture than with painting) or exerted a significant influence on sculpture. During the heyday of Cubism, for example, several sculptors experimented with opening up and rearranging forms in a manner similar to that of Braque and Picasso in painting. Alexander Archipenko (Russian by birth but active in Paris at this time) was the most influential of these Cubist sculptors. However, the radical departures from 19th-century tradition that have characterized modern sculpture have perhaps been more clearly revealed in the use of novel materials and techniques than in purely stylistic innovations.

B.1.

Direct Carving

During the 19th century the normal procedure for sculptors was to make a preliminary model in plaster and then create from this a finished work in a more permanent material (usually bronze or marble), with assistants carrying out much of the physical labour involved (especially in stonecarving). In the early 20th century, however, a number of sculptors rejected this approach, which they regarded as mechanical, in favour particularly of “direct carving”, in which the artist manipulates the cutting tools with his own hands, believing that the form of the work should be inseparably related to the material from which it is made. Constantin Brancusi (Romanian by birth but active in Paris for most of his career) was the most influential of the early exponents of direct carving, and a host of other eminent sculptors followed his example, including Jacob Epstein, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore in Britain (although all three also worked in bronze). Direct carving tended to make sculptors move away from surface naturalism and concentrate more on form and texture. Henry Moore summed this up when he wrote of Brancusi: “Since the Gothic, European sculpture had become overgrown with moss, weeds—all sorts of surface excrescences which completely concealed shape. It has been Brancusi’s special mission to get rid of this undergrowth and to make us once more shape-conscious.”

B.2.

Constructivism

In the second decade of the 20th century a new method of creating sculpture arose. Previously almost all Western sculpture had been either carved (usually in stone or wood) or modelled (typically in plaster or clay and then often subsequently cast in metal). The new approach involved simply joining together any materials that caught the sculptor’s attention. It was pioneered by Picasso, who in about 1912 began making sculpture from pieces of everyday material such as cardboard, string, and metal. His sculptures in this vein were mainly small and humorous, but his ideas were soon taken up in more ambitious form by the Russian sculptor Vladimir Tatlin, who visited Picasso in Paris in 1914. Tatlin is regarded as the father of Constructivism, an abstract movement involving industrial materials such as glass, plastic, iron, and steel (the use of these metals in sculpture was facilitated by the development of welding to join pieces together; the blowtorch became commercially available in 1901). Constructivism became the dominant movement in Russian art for a few years after the 1917 Revolution (when it was part of the enthusiasm for machinery, which was seen as a way of building a new and better society) and during the 1920s it spread to Western Europe. There it was widely influential, partly through the example of the sculptor brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, who left Russia in the early 1920s and subsequently worked in several countries. Constructivism, indeed, can be considered an enduring trend or ideology in modern art rather than a particular style.

B.3.

Kinetic Sculpture

Gabo and Pevsner were the first artists to use the word “kinetic” (moving) in connection with sculpture, in a manifesto they published in 1920. Around this time Gabo was experimenting with electrically powered oscillating sculpture, and during the 1920s several other artists, including Marcel Duchamp, explored ways of introducing motion to their work. However, the great pioneer of kinetic sculpture was the American Alexander Calder (active in France for much of his career), who in 1931 began creating abstract moving constructions that his friend Duchamp dubbed “mobiles”. Sometimes he used electrical power to create the motion, but his most characteristic mobiles are made of lightweight metal parts suspended in such a way that they move in response to natural air currents. For several years Calder remained the only notable specialist in kinetic sculpture, but in the 1950s several younger artists entered the field. In 1955 an exhibition entitled “Le Mouvement” was held in Paris at the gallery of the dealer Denise René, and this helped to establish Kinetic Art as a recognized genre. In addition to Calder and Duchamp, the artists represented in the exhibition included Yaacov Agam (Israeli-born but active mainly in France) and Victor Vasarély, best known as one of the pioneers and leading exponents of Op Art.

B.4.

Plastics

Experiments with synthetic plastic as a sculptural material were made as early as the 1860s, and Naum Gabo, for example, made fairly extensive use of sheets of transparent celluloid, particularly in small models. However, it was not until after World War II that plastic became a major addition to the materials used by sculptors. The sleek, glossy surfaces it could provide were utilized, for example, by Pop Artists such as Claes Oldenburg, who sometimes made soft sculptures by stuffing forms made of PVC, and fibreglass (plastic reinforced with glass) has proved a highly suitable material for casting. It is strong but much lighter in weight than bronze (traditionally used for casting), it can take fine detail, and it can be coloured. Superrealist sculptors such as the Americans Duane Hanson and John De Andrea have made memorable use of it in their highly lifelike figures.

B.5.

Recent Developments

Since about 1960 sculpture has often merged with other, more novel, forms of artistic expression, such as Body Art (in which the artist uses his or her own body as the material), Conceptual Art (in which the idea or ideas lying behind a work are considered more important than its physical appearance), and Land Art (in which the artist uses such raw materials as earth, rocks, and soil). The British artist Richard Long, for example, unites sculpture, Conceptual Art, and Land Art in his work, which is based on solitary walks through landscapes. Sometimes he collects objects such as stones that he arranges in gallery settings, and he has also documented his walks through photographs, texts, and maps. Another British artist, Andy Goldsworthy, likewise works predominantly with found natural materials and his sculptures are often inherently short-lived (notably those that he makes from snow and ice); he records them in colour photographs.

During the 1990s a loosely affiliated group known as the Young British Artists (YBAs) became regarded as leaders of avant-garde art. Several of these artists are considered primarily sculptors or have a strong sculptural element in their work, notably Damien Hirst, famous for his “pickled animal” sculptures, Rachel Whiteread, who made her name with casts of domestic features or their surrounding spaces, and Marc Quinn, whose work includes a self-portrait head made from his own frozen blood (it is shown in a refrigerated case).

Among recent trends and movements, however, the one that has made the biggest impact on the contemporary art scene is perhaps video art. It originated in the 1960s and by the 1990s had become highly fashionable among avant-garde artists, as is illustrated by the fact that the Turner Prize, Britain’s leading award for contemporary art, was won by video artists in 1996 (Douglas Gordon), 1997 (Gillian Wearing), and 1999 (Steve McQueen). This growing popularity was influenced by rapid advances in the technology available; many artists now use sophisticated computer equipment as part of their video work.

The term “video art” is an imprecise one, embracing various types of work that use video or television equipment and techniques. An example is To Pray Without Ceasing (1992) by the American Bill Viola, one of the most highly regarded practitioners in the field; it is a 12-hour cycle of images projected on to a screen, accompanied by a recording of a voice reciting poetry by Walt Whitman. Viola himself describes the work as “an unfolding sequence of prayers for the city… a cycle of individual and universal life”.

III.

Modern Architecture

Just as modern art represents a repudiation of traditional values, so modern architecture can be seen partly as a rejection of the “fancy dress” styles that had characterized many 19th-century buildings. However, modern architecture also reflects the use of industrial materials, such as steel, plate glass, and reinforced concrete, which made new aesthetic forms possible, and a response to changing social needs: whereas in the 19th century the most prestigious kinds of building still included churches and royal palaces, in the 20th century types such as factories, offices, and mass housing units (and later airports and entertainment complexes) came to the fore.

A.

The Situation Around 1900

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries there was no concerted movement aimed at creating a new style of building appropriate for the modern world, but rather various strands of thought and practice in different places. In England, for example, several architects of the time designed country houses that drew on vernacular tradition and made their impact through solid dignity of form and material, virtually eschewing all ornament. Edwin Lutyens (in his early work) and Charles Voysey are among the chief representatives of this trend, which reflects the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement. At around the same time in Scotland, Charles Rennie Mackintosh made an even bolder break with tradition in the vigorous, bracingly lucid forms of his Glasgow School of Art. In the United States, modern ideals in architecture were expressed most forcefully in a new type of building, the skyscraper, which was born in Chicago in the 1880s—made possible by the use of steel-frame construction and the development of the electric elevator. Several distinguished architects worked in or around Chicago at this time and they are sometimes referred to as the “Chicago School”. The most important of them was Louis Sullivan, who is regarded as one of the fathers of modern architecture.

Sullivan specialized in large commercial buildings that openly expressed their metal-frame construction in their grid-like pattern of windows, but he nevertheless sometimes adorned his work with beautiful Art Nouveau ornament. This style was characterized by flowing, sinuous lines based on plant forms. It marked a conscious desire to create a novel decorative style that was uninfluenced by the historicism of the 19th century, and it was widely used in buildings and the applied arts in the period from about 1890 to World War I. In architecture it is seen at its purest in the cast-iron entrances to several Paris Métro stations designed by Hector Guimard, and in its most personal form in the work of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona.

B.

The International Modern Style

Whereas modern architecture before World War I was characterized by many currents of thought and practice, in the period between the two world wars one style in particular stood out. This is generally known as “International Modern” or the “International Style” and it did indeed become current among progressive architects in many parts of the Western world. It is characterized by clarity of design, with oblong shapes predominating, clean lines, and a virtual absence of ornament; buildings were often painted white and windows were typically arranged in horizontal bands. Several of the most illustrious architects of the 20th century worked in (or were strongly influenced by) this style, among them Alvar Aalto (who did much to create Scandinavia’s high reputation in modern architecture and design), Walter Gropius (the first director of the Bauhaus, the German art school that played a central role in spreading modernist ideas), Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Even such a supreme individualist as Frank Lloyd Wright was affected by the style in certain aspects of his work.

C.

Brutalism

The International Modern style continued to flourish after World War II, but in the 1950s its dominance was challenged by a new style that was dubbed Brutalism. In contrast to the sleekness of International Modern, Brutalist buildings typically made much use of raw concrete (béton brut in French, hence the name), producing a rough and expressive effect. Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation housing complex in Marseilles (1948-1954) is regarded as the first major work of Brutalism. He created other works in the style and his enormous prestige ensured its wide influence. Notable exponents include Louis Kahn in the United States, Denys Lasdun in Britain, and Kenzō Tange in Japan.

D.

Postmodernism

Since the 1960s several other major strands have appeared in avant-garde architecture, the most pervasive probably being Postmodernism. The term indicates a reaction against the austerity of the International Modern style in favour of a brasher and more eclectic approach: one of the leading advocates of Postmodernism, the American architect Robert Venturi, has said that he prefers “messy vitality” to “obvious unity”. Postmodernist buildings typically use elements of colour and decoration in a way that is foreign to the purist ideals of the International Modern style, and they often introduce references to historic or vernacular architecture, sometimes in a jokey spirit. A famous example is the headquarters of the AT&T telephone company in New York (1978-1984), a skyscraper topped by a giant classical pediment. The designer of the building, Philip Johnson, had earlier been one of the leading exponents of the International Modern style.

E.

High-Tech and Deconstructivism

An entirely different approach to Postmodernism is represented by the style or idiom known as High-Tech, in which expressive use is made of the constructional and operational aspects of a building, with features such as supporting members or heating pipes fully exposed to view. The first great landmark of High-Tech architecture was the Pompidou Centre in Paris (1971-1977), designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano and the Italian-born British architect Richard Rogers. The High-Tech idiom has continued to be associated particularly with British architects and is the only modern architectural style in which Britain has led the world. Its most famous exponent is probably Norman Foster, whose major buildings include the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Hong Kong (1979-1986) and Stansted Airport Terminal, Essex (1989-1991).

Another recent trend in architecture has been given the name Deconstructivism, a term used to characterize buildings in which elements such as fractured forms or warped planes undermine conventional notions of stability and harmony. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1991-1997), by the American architect Frank Gehry, is regarded by some critics as exemplifying this trend. With its undulating titanium-clad walls, it is certainly one of the most spectacular and original buildings of its time.