What is modern art?

Modern art describes a major period of artistic change from the 1860s to the 1970s. It is not one style, but rather an era made up of several iconic movements that challenged the rules of academic fine art.

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The world before modern art

Before modern art, the art world was shaped heavily by tradition. Painting was expected to follow accepted standards of realism, beauty, composition, historical subject matter and technical finish.

Modern artists broke away from those expectations because the world around them had changed.

Industrial cities, photography, political revolution, war, psychology, machinery, mass media and new ideas about human life all demanded new forms of creative expression. Artists no longer wanted their art to only capture the world literally. They wanted to question it, fracture it, intensify it, simplify it, distort it or reveal what could not be seen on the surface.

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The evolution of styles within modern art

Realism in the mid-nineteenth century brought workers and everyday life into serious art.

Impressionism changed painting by focusing on light, movement and modern leisure, as seen in Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise from 1872.

Fauvism used intense colour, led by Henri Matisse and André Derain.

Cubism, developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1907 to 1914, broke objects and figures into multiple viewpoints.

Expressionism used colour and distortion to express emotional and psychological states.

Surrealism explored dreams, the unconscious and irrational imagery through artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Max Ernst.

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The value of modern art

Modern art matters because it changed what art was allowed to be. It moved art away from imitation reality and towards expressions of deeply subjective perception of reality.

That difference is important for art buyers. A modern artwork, or a work influenced by modern art, carries the legacy of that break from tradition. Contemporary art builds on that inheritance but responds to the present moment.

Modern art changed the rules, contemporary art benefits from the creative freedom and the expansion of mass-perception of what art can be, birthed by this rebellious era.