Modernism and its Aesthetics (part 2)

Dr. Judith Findlay

• Think what you know about modern Art.

• Mondrian believed that by reducing his painting to verticals and horizontals and the three primary colours – red, yellow and blue – as well as black and white, he had reduced the components of painting to the essence of the visual.

• Artists such as Malevich, Kandinsky and Mondrian believed that abstract Art was a unique and universal language for the modern world.

• Resting on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the eighteenth century German idealist philosopher, modernism has built its house on the base of “artistic freedom” from the audience market and used as its architect, the faculty of taste.

• The aesthetic has no object or effect other than the satisfaction of taste, and all other concerns are excluded as contaminants.

• Neither has the artist nor the artwork any responsibility to any audience.

• The ‘Romantic Figure’ of the artist:

• Alone• A rebel• An outsider• A misfit• Misunderstood

• In the twentieth century, the early modern notion of progress and development breaks down. Art has visualized this breakdown. Artists repeat themselves, recycle previous styles, they create series, they produce multiples. Linear development and “originality” disappear.

• The ‘modern’ age gives way to the ‘postmodern’…

• Artists attempted to create a universal language for the modern world.

• Instead, abstraction made visible the materials of which Art was made.

• The failure of modernism and the failure of abstract Art.

• This is not however, to diminish the beauty, space, silence, ‘otherworldliness’ and accomplishment of the greatest of modern art and design…