Modern & Postmodern

The Modern Art Movement arguably began in the 1870s with the advance of Impressionism and ended a century later with the rise of Post-Modernism.

The main principles associated with Modern Art are purity, universalism, experimentation, authentic experience, historical progress, objectivity, and rationality. The aesthetic character of Modern Art includes abstraction (form reduced to its essence), reduction of the color palette, purity of materials, and experimentation with form.

Notable critics of this movement include Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, Rosalind Krauss, John Canaday, Meyer Schapiro, Michael Fried, and Leo Steinberg. The artists associated with the Modern Art are Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse. Other notable artworks and artists include the following:

Mirror by Isamu Noguchi

Bird in Space by Constantin Brancusi

Right After by Eva Hesse

Untitled by Paul Klee

Golconde by Rene Magritte

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain was the precursor to the Post-Modern Art Movement. Although the Fountain was first exhibited in 1917, the Post-Modern Art Movement didn't gain momentum until the 1960s and 1970s. The Post-Modern Art Movement is ongoing, albeit in its denouement.

The main principles associated with the Post-Modern Art Movement are pluralism, escapism, multiculturalism, consumerism, and globalism. Post-Modernism is defined by modernist principles and the desire to deconstruct them. It is "inherently reliant on, even captive to, the origin" and its "meaning is purely circumstantial, simply a placeholder to mark the period after modernism" (Bourriaud, The Radicant). Post-Modernism exists as "a set of negations" and embraces "representations of reality over the real thing" (Heartney, Art & Today). It deconstructs tradition and authentic experience to create new narratives. The aesthetic character of Post-Modern Art includes the use of renewable materials such as in Duchamp's ready-mades, the use of new technologies or ways of art-making, the influence of popular culture, and a lack of distinction between the high and low.

Artists associated with Post-Modern Art include Jeff Koons, Judy Chicago, Bruce Nauman, Krzystof Wodiczko, Kara Walker, Martin Puryear, Jasper Johns, and Sol LeWitt. The most notable critic of Post-Modernism is French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard. Other notable critics include David Harvey, Hal Foster, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Okwui Enwezor and Nicolas Bourriaud.

The art of today is Post-Aughtsism. Post-Aughtsism began in 2010 with the demise of the "aughts" decade. Some online theorists suggest that Post-Aughtsism made its first appearance with the emergence of the global financial crisis of 2007. This theory is unsubstantiated.

The main principles associated with this movement is the re-creation of an authentic identity, the development of neo-autonomy, a lack of self-awareness, and the hapless search for meaning and value after a decade characterized by ciphers. This movement looks to the past and occasionally masquerades as Pre-Post-Modernism (not to be confused with Modernism). Although Post-Aughtsists aspire to authenticity and universalism, their inherent distrust of society (and of themselves) discredits any presumed authenticity. The aesthetic character of the the art of today is characterized by an authentic fabrication (as opposed to the fabricated authenticity of Post-Modernism), a disconnect from both time and space, and the use of extinct materials.

The main critics associated with Post-Aughtsism are anonymous internet bloggers, who rose to the forefront of art criticism after a sudden (and lasting) period of disillusionment with institutionally-trained critics. The main artists associated with Post-Aughtsism are essentially anonymous as multiple pseudonyms became a popular trend.