Art modren history reading respon

- Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe - This essay appeared originally in What is Art?...What is an Artist? (1997)

1. The Roots of Modernism

Until recently, the word "modern" was used to refer generically to the contemporaneous; all art is modern at the time it is made. In his Il Libro dell'Arte (translated as "The Craftsman's Handbook") in 1437, Cennino Cennini explains that Giotto made painting "modern" [see BIBLIOGRAPHY ]. Giorgio Vasari writing in 16th-century Italy refers to the art of his own period as "modern." [see BIBLIOGRAPHY ]

As an art historical term, "modern" refers to a period dating from roughly the 1860s through the 1970s and is used to describe the style and the ideology of art produced during that era. It is this more specific use of modern that is intended when people speak of modern art. The term "modernism" is also used to refer to the art of the modern period. More specifically, "modernism" can be thought of as referring to the philosophy of modern art.

In her book of the same title [see BIBLIOGRAPHY ], Suzi Gablik asks "Has Modernism Failed?" Does she mean "failed" simply in the sense of coming to an end? Or does she mean that Modernism failed to accomplish something? The presupposition of the latter is that modernism had goals, which it failed to achieve. What were these goals?

For reasons that will become clear later, the question of modernism has been couched largely in formal terms. Art historians speak of modern art as concerned primarily with essential qualities of colour and flatness and as exhibiting over time a reduction of interest in subject matter. It is generally agreed that Édouard Manet is the first modernist painter, and that modernism in art originated in the 1860s. Paintings such as his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe are seen to have ushered in the era of modernism.

Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863 Oil on canvas (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

But the question can be posed: Why did Manet paint Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe? The standard answer is: Because he was interested in exploring new subject matter, new painterly values, and new spatial relationships.

But, there is another more interesting question beyond this: Why was Manet exploring new subject matter, new painterly values and spatial relationships? He produced a modernist painting, but why did he produce such a work?

When Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 a lot of people were scandalized. When his painting of Olympia was exhibited the public were even more upset. Why was Manet painting pictures that he knew many people would find shocking?

Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863 Oil on canvas (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)

It is in trying to answer questions like these that forces us to adopt a much broader perspective on the question of modernism. It is within this larger context that we can discover the underpinnings of the philosophy of modernism and identify its aims and goals. It will also reveal another dimension to the perception of art and the identity of the artist in the modern world.

The roots of modernism lie much deeper in history than the middle of the 19th century. For historians (but not art historians) the modern period actually begins with the Renaissance. A discussion of modernism might easily begin in the Renaissance period when we first encounter secular humanism, the notion that man (not God) is the measure of all things, a worldly civic consciousness, and "utopian" visions of a more perfect society, beginning with Sir Thomas More's Utopia in 1516.

In retrospect we can recognize in Renaissance humanism that modernist expression of confidence that humankind can learn to understand, and then master, nature and natural forces, that we can grasp the nature of the universe, and even shape our individual destinies and the future of the world.

The modernist thinking which emerged in the Renaissance began to take shape as a larger pattern of thought in the 18th century. Mention may be made first of the so-called "Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns," a dispute that dominated European intellectual life throughout the century. The crux was the issue of whether Moderns (i.e. those living in 18th century) were now morally and artistically superior to the Ancients (i.e. the Greeks and Romans). The argument introduces an important dichotomy that is to remain fundamental to the modernist question. In it may be recognized the division between conservative forces, who tended to support the argument for the Ancients, and the more progressive forces who sided with the Moderns.

In the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment saw the intellectual maturation of the humanist belief in reason as the supreme guiding principle in the affairs of humankind. Through reason the mind achieved enlightenment, and for the enlightened mind, freed from the restraints of superstition and ignorance, a whole new exciting world opened up.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement for which the most immediate stimulus was the so-called Scientific Revolution of the 17th and early 18th centuries when men like Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, through the application of reason to the study of Nature (i.e. our world and the heavens) had made spectacular scientific discoveries in which were revealed various scientific truths.

These truths more often than not flew in the face of conventional beliefs, especially those held by the Church. For example, contrary to what the Church had maintained for centuries, the "truth" was that the Earth revolved around the sun. The idea that "truth" could be discovered through the application of reason was tremendously exciting.

The open-minded 18th-century thinker believed that virtually everything could be submitted to reason: tradition, customs, history, even art. But, more than this, it was felt that the "truth" revealed thereby could be applied in the political and social spheres to "correct" problems and "improve" the political and social condition of humankind

This kind of thinking quickly gave rise to the exciting possibility of creating a new and better society.

The "truth" discovered through reason would free people from the shackles of corrupt institutions such as the Church and the monarchy whose misguided traditional thinking and old ideas had kept people subjugated in ignorance and superstition. The belief was that "the truth shall set you free." The concept of freedom became central to the vision of a new society. Through truth and freedom, the world would be made into a better place.

Progressive 18th-century thinkers believed that the lot of humankind would be greatly improved through the process of enlightenment, from being shown the truth. With reason and truth in hand, the individual would no longer be at the mercy of religious and secular authorities which had constructed their own truths and manipulated them to their own self-serving ends. At the root of this thinking is the belief in the perfectibility of humankind.

The vision that began to take shape in the 18th century was of a new world, a better world. In 1763, Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed a new society for the individual in his Inquiry into the Nature of the Social Contract. Rousseau declared the right of liberty and equality for all men.

Such declarations were found not only in books. In the 18th century, two major attempts were made to put these ideas into practice. Such ideas, of course, were not popular with conservative and traditional elements, and their resistance had to be overcome in both cases through bloody revolution.

The first great experiment in creating a new and better society was undertaken in what was literally the new world and the new ideals were first expressed in the Declaration of Independence of the newly founded United States. It is Enlightenment thinking that informs such phrases as "we hold these truths to be self-evident" and which underpins the notion "that all men are created equal." Its wordly character is clearly reflected in its stated concern for man's happiness and welfare in this lifetime, a new notion that runs counter to the Christian focus on the afterlife.

Fundamental, too, is the notion of freedom; liberty was declared one of man's inalienable rights. In 1789, the French also attempted through bloody revolution to create a new society, with the revolutionaries rallying to the cry of equality, fraternity, and liberty.

The French Revolution, however, failed to bring about a radically new society in France. Mention may be made here of a third major attempt to create a new society along fundamentally Enlightenment lines that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian Revolution, perhaps the most idealistic and utopian of all, also failed.

It is in the ideals of the Enlightenment that the roots of Modernism, and the new role of art and the artist, are to be found. Simply put, the overarching goal of Modernism, of modern art, has been the creation of a better society.

What were the means by which this goal was to be reached? If the desire of the 18th century was to produce a better society, how was this to be brought about? How does one go about perfecting humankind and creating a new world?

As we have seen, it was the 18th-century belief that only the enlightened mind can find truth; both enlightenment and truth were discovered through the application of reason to knowledge, a process that also created new knowledge. The individual acquired knowledge and at the same time the means to discover truth in it through proper education and instruction.

Cleansed of the corruptions of religious and political ideology by open-minded reason, education brings us the truth, or shows us how to reach the truth. Education enlightens us and makes us better people. Educated enlightened people will form the foundations of the new society, a society which they will create through their own efforts.

Until recently, this concept of the role of education has remained fundamental to western modernist thinking. Enlightened thinkers, and here might be mentioned for example Thomas Jefferson, constantly pursued knowledge, sifting out the truth by subjecting all they learned to reasoned analysis. Jefferson, of course, not only consciously cultivated his own enlightenment, but also actively promoted education for others, founding in Charlottesville an "academical village" that later became the University of Virginia. He believed that the search for truth should be conducted without prejudice, and, mindful of the Enlightenment suspicion of the Church, deliberately did not include a chapel on the campus in his plans. The Church and its narrow-minded influences, he felt, should be kept separate not only from the State, but also from education.

Jefferson, like many other Enlightenment thinkers, saw a clear role for art and architecture. Art and architecture could serve in this process of enlightenment education by providing examples of those qualities and virtues that it was felt should guide the enlightened mind.

In the latter half of the 18th century, the model for the ideals of the new society was the world of ancient Rome and Greece. The Athens of Pericles and Rome of the Republican period offered fine examples of emerging democratic principles in government, and of heroism and virtuous action, self-sacrifice and civic dedication in the behaviour of their citizens.

It was believed, in fact, certainly according to the "ancients" in that quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns mentioned earlier, that the ancient world had achieved a kind of perfection, an ideal that came close to the Enlightenment understanding of truth. Johann Winckelmann was convinced that Greek art was the most perfect and directed contemporary artists to examples such as the Apollo Belvedere.

Apollo Belvedere Roman marble copy after a bronze original of c. 330 BCE (Vatican Museums, Rome)

It is under these circumstances that Jacques-Louis David came to paint the classicizing and didactic historical painting Oath of the Horatii exhibited at the Salon in 1785. This was a noble and edifying work treating a grand and moralizing subject.

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1785 oil on canvas (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

David himself saw the role of art in building a new society in no uncertain terms. Speaking as a member of the Revolutionary Committee on Public Instruction a few years later he explains that the Committee:

considered the arts in all respects by which they should help spread the progress of the human spirit, to propagate and transmit to posterity the striking example of the sublime efforts of an immense people, guided by reason and philosophy, restoring to earth the reign of liberty, equality, and law.

He states categorically that "the arts should contribute forcefully to public instruction."

With respect to the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, David can be associated with the supporters of the Ancients. He envisioned a new society based on conservative ideals. In contrast, there were others, we can call them Moderns, whose vision of a new world order was more progressive.

The Moderns envisioned a world conceived anew, not one that merely imitated ancient models. The problem for the Moderns, however, was that their new world was something of an unknown quantity. The nature of truth was problematical from the outset, and their dilemma over the nature of humans who possessed not only a rational mind open to reason but also an emotional life (love, for example, which is demonstrably beyond all reason) which had to be taken into account.

It was also felt that reason stifled imagination, and without imagination no progress would be made. Reason alone was inhuman, but imagination without reason also "produces monsters" (see Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters). It was agreed, though, that freedom was central and was to be pursued through the very exercise of freedom in the contemporary world.

Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters Etching and aquatint (Caprichos no. 43: El sueño de la razón produce monstruos), 1796-1797

After the Revolution of 1789, the Ancients came to be identified with the old order, the ancien régime, while the Moderns became identified with a new movement we call Romanticism. In the wake of the 1789 revolution, these two movements, each with their own vision of the future, were soon politicized.

The Ancients, on the one hand, were caste as politically conservative and associated with classicizing, academic art. On the other hand, the Moderns were seen as progressive in a left-wing, revolutionary sense and associated with anti-academic Romanticism. The nature of this division is best seen in the rivalry of Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

In the Salon of 1824, in which Ingres exhibited his Vow of Louis XIII, and Delacroix his Massacre of Scios, Ingres' work, painted in a style the critics called "le beau" (the beautiful), was identified with classical academic theory and the right-wing conservative forces of the ancien régime. In contrast, Delacroix, whose style was labeled "le laid" (the ugly), clearly exhibited more liberal attitudes in his choice of subject matter and was associated with anarchy, materialism, and contemporary or modern life.

J-A-D Ingres, Vow of Louis XIII 1824, Oil on canvas (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Eugène Delacroix, Massacre at Chios 1824, Oil on canvas (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

For conservatives, Ingres represented order, traditional values, and the good old days of the ancien régime. Political progressives saw Delacroix as the representative of intellectuals, of revolution, of anarchy; his supporters said he had overthrown tyranny and established the principle of liberty in art.

It is from Delacroix that the line of progressive modernism extends directly to Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet. In the conservative view, Delacroix's Romanticism, Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Naturalism were all manifestations of the cult of ugliness that opposed the Academic ideal of the beautiful. Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet, were each in turn accused by conservatives of carrying on subversive work that was intended to undermine the State.

This may sound strange to us today. Orthodox art historians and critics have tended to treat modern art as contentless and politically neutral. The process of neutralizing and depoliticizing art was taken in hand by the State, with the support of conservative forces and compliance of formalist critics and art historians, beginning as early as 1855.

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 28 July 1830 1830, Oil on canvas (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Delacroix, whose support of the revolution of 1830 is made clear in his painting Liberty Leading the People, 28 July 1830, for example, came to be spoken of as a colorist. The socialist statements forcefully made by Gustave Courbet in his The Stonebreakers, for example, and the sharp political commentary of Manet in his The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian, 1868, for example, are glossed over in discussions of the formal qualities of each work; their painterly technique and the flattened treatment of pictorial space.

Édouard Manet Execution of the Emperor Maximilian 1868, Oil on canvas (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Gustave Courbet The Stonebreakers 1849-50, Oil on canvas (destroyed)

In this way, the prevailing conservative ethos of society maintained control over the impulses of progressive modernism.

opyright © (text only) 2000 - Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe - This essay appeared originally in What is Art?...What is an Artist? (1997)

2. Art for Art's Sake

The 20th century has focused its artistic attention on progressive modernism to the extent that conservative modernism has been neglected and, indeed, derided as an art form.

The so-called academic painters of the 19th century believed themselves to be doing their part to improve the world by presenting images that contain or reflect good conservative moral values, examples of virtuous behaviour, of inspiring Christian sentiment, and of the sort of righteous conduct and noble sacrifice that would serve as an appropriate model toward which we should all aspire to emulate.

The new world order reflected in academic modernism was seen by the progressives as merely supportive of the status quo and offered a future that was little more than a perpetuation of the present.

The conservatives wished to maintain existing institutions and preferred gradual development over radical change. The progressives, on the other hand, were critical of institutions, both political and religious, as restrictive of individual liberty. Progressives placed their faith in the goodness of mankind, a goodness which they believed, starting with Rousseau in the 18th century, had become corrupted by such things as the growth of cities.

Others would argue that man had been turned into a vicious, competitive animal by capitalism, the corrosive inhumanity of which was plain to see in the blighted landscape of the industrial revolution.

Rousseau had glorified Nature, and a number of modernists idealised the country life. Thomas Jefferson lived in the country close to nature and desired that the United States be entirely a farming economy; he characterized cities as "ulcers on the body politic."

In contrast to conservative modernism, which remained fettered to old ideas and which tended to support the status quo, progressive modernism adopted an antagonistic position towards society and its established institutions. In one way or another it challenged all authority in the name of freedom and, intentionally or not, affronted conservative bourgeois values.

Generally speaking, progressive modernism tended to concern itself with political and social issues, addressing aspects of contemporary society, especially in its poorer ranks, that an increasingly complacent middle class, once they had achieved a satisfactory level of comfort for themselves, preferred to ignore.

Through their art, in pictures that showed directly or indirectly the plight of the peasants, the exploitation of the poor, prostitution, and so on, the progessives repeatedly drew attention to the political and social ills of contemporary society, conditions they felt needed to be addressed and corrected.

Fundamentally, the intention was to educate the public, to keep alive in the face of conservative forces the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality through which the world would be made a better place.

The position taken by progressive modernism came to be referred to as the avant-garde (a military term meaning "advance-guard"). In contrast to the conservative modernists who looked to the past and tradition, the avant-garde artist consciously rejected tradition.

Rather than existing as the most recent manifestation of a tradition stretching back into the past, the avant-garde artist saw him- or herself as standing at the head of a new tradition stretching, hopefully, into the future. The progressive modernist looked to the future while the conservative modernist looked to the past.

The rejection of the past became imperative for the progressives with the advent of the First World War which signalled for them the catastrophic failure of tradition. The senseless, mechanized carnage of the "Great War" starkly showed that modernism's faith in scientific and technological progress as the path to a better world was patently wrong. For the Dadaists, World War One also signalled the failure of all modernist art. It could be claimed that Dada in fact marks the emergence of a post-modernist cast of mind.

Today, we would characterize progressive modernism, the avant-garde, as left-leaning and liberal in its support of freedom of expression and demands of equality. Since the 18th century, the modernist belief in the freedom of expression has manifested itself in art through claims to freedom of choice in subject matter and to freedom of choice in style (i.e. in the choice of brushstroke and colour). It was in the exercise of these rights that the artist constantly drew attention to the goals of progressive modernism.

As the 19th century progressed, the exercise of artistic freedom became fundamental to progressive modernism. Artists began to seek freedom not just from the rules of academic art, but from the demands of the public. Soon it was claimed that art should be produced not for the public's sake, but for art's sake.

Art for Art's Sake is basically a call for release from the tyranny of meaning and purpose. From a progressive modernist's point of view, it was a further exercise of freedom. It was also a ploy, another deliberate affront to bourgeois sensibility which demanded art with meaning or that had some purpose such as to instruct, or delight, or to moralize, and generally to reflect in some way their own purposeful and purpose-filled world. A progressive modernist painter like James Abbott McNeill Whistler, for example, blithely stated that his art satisfied none of those things.

In his 1891 essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", Oscar Wilde wrote:

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.

Art for Art's Sake, however, was a ploy that backfired. The same bourgeois whose tastes and ideas and prescriptions Whistler was confronting through his art, quickly turned the call of "Art for Art's Sake" into a tool to further neutralize the content and noxious effects of progressive modernist art.

In the late 19th century, we find art beginning to be discussed by critics and art historians largely in formal terms which effectively removed the question of meaning and purpose from consideration. From now on, art was to be discussed in terms of style -- colour, line, shape, space, composition -- conveniently ignoring or playing down whatever social, political, or progressive statements the artist had hoped to make in his or her work.

This approach became pervasive to the extent that artists, too, certainly the weaker ones, and even some of the strong ones as they got older or more comfortable, lost sight of their modernist purpose and became willy-nilly absorbed into this formalist way of thinking about art.

In defense of this attitude, it was argued that as the function of art is to preserve and enhance the values and sensibilities of civilized human beings, it should attempt to remain aloof from the malignant influences of an increasingly crass and dehumanizing technological culture.

Eventually there emerged the notion that modernist art is practised entirely within a closed formalist sphere, necessarily separated from, so as not to be contaminated by, the real world.

The formalist critic Clement Greenberg, in an article first published in 1965 entitled "Modernist Painting," saw Modernism as having achieved a self-referential autonomy. The work of art came to be seen as an isolated phenomenon, floating in some rarefied, ideal "Platonic" zone, governed not by human impulse so much as by the mysterious internal laws of stylistic development. Painting and sculpture stood separate from the materialistic world and the mundane affairs of ordinary people.

The underlying assumptions at work here first of all posit that the visual artist, by virtue of special gifts, is able to express the finer things of humanity through a "purely visual" understanding and mode of expression. This "purely visual" characteristic of art makes it an autonomous sphere of activity, completely separate from the everyday world of social and political life.

The autonomous nature of visual art means that questions asked of it may only be properly put, and answered, in its own terms. The history of modernism is contructed only in reference to itself, it is (or was until recently) entirely self-referential.

Impressionism gains much of its art historical significance through its place within a scheme of stylistic development that has its roots in the preceding Realism of Courbet and Manet, and by its also providing the main impetus for the successive styles of Post-Impressionism.

Traditional art historians and critics are fond of extending this sort of approach beyond the modernist period to other artists and periods to enhance the illusion of a history of art composed along one great thread of stylistic interconnection. The system allowed one to connect the preferred art of the present to an authentic art of the past by means of a retrospectively perceived logic of development. By this means a supposedly disinterested judgment could be justified in terms of a supposedly inexorable historical tendency.

In the hands of the conservative establishment, formalism became a very effective instrument of control over unruly and disruptive art. Many of the art movements spawned in the first half of the 20th century could be seen as various attempts to break the formalist grip on progressive modernism.

The system, though, articulated by the more academic art historians and critics, operating hand-in-hand with the art market which was only interested in money and not meaning, effectively absorbed all attempts at subversion and revolt into a neutral, palatable, only occasionally mildly offensive history of art of the kind you encounter today in art history textbooks.

Unfortunately for the history of art, in the process of neutralizing progressive modernism, art history also had to neutralize all other art from earlier periods and from elsewhere in the world. The same reductionist, schematic approach was employed across the board creating a history of art largely devoid of any real meaning original to the artwork. It was generally agreed that aesthetic quality would have priority in deciding the function of art instead of its social or political relevance. It was also agreed that painting and sculpture should remain central to the concept of high art and the "Fine Arts."

Formalism, though, could also be turned to the advantage of the progressives who were able to use it in defense of modernism, abstraction in particular, which has been especially open to criticism. Formalism also neatly dovetailed in the early 20th century with another goal of progressive modernism, universalism.

For art to be an effective instrument of social betterment, it needed to be understood by as many people as possible. But it was not a matter of simply articulating images, it was the "true" art behind the image that was deemed important. Art can be many things and one example may look quite different from the next. But something called "art" is common to all. Whatever this art thing was, it was universal; like the scientific "truth" of the Enlightenment. All art obviously possessed it.

Some artists went in search of "art". From an Enlightenment point of view, this was a search for the "truth" or essence of art, and was carried out using a sort of pictorial reasoning. The first step was to strip away distracting elements such as recognizable objects which tended to conceal or hide the art thing; an example of this approach would be Wassily Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VIII, 1923 Oil on canvas (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York)

A more radical approach was then to reduce the non-recognizable to the most basic elements: line and colour. This was the approach of Piet Mondrian.

Piet Mondrian, Composition A, 1923 Oil on canvas (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome)

However, it is frequently overlooked that for the artists who undertook this search, there was more at stake than the discovery of the "truth" of art.

For some, abstraction was a path to another goal. Both Mondrian and Kandinsky were keenly interested in the spiritual and believed that art should serve as a guide to, or an inspiration for, or perhaps help to rekindle in, the spectator the spiritual dimension which they and others felt was being lost in the increasingly materialist contemporary world.

Abstraction involved a sort of stripping away of the material world and had the potential of revealing, or describing, or merely alluding to the world of the spirit.

3. Modernism and Politics

In the period between World War One and World War Two progressive modernism continued to pursue its goals, but now often in association with other forces.

Progressive artists actively supported political revolution. Pablo Picasso, for example, joined the communist party in 1944, as did many other artists. The Russian Revolution seemed at the time, and for a long time after, to be the answer to the progressive modernist's dream. Marxist communism was the boldest attempt to create a better society, adopting not a political democracy like the United States, but an economic democracy wherein all were economically equal.

The ideas of Karl Marx infused the Surrealist movement that saw itself as promoting, in the words of Salvador Dali, "a revolution in consciousness." Communism offered the vision of universal freedom predicated on freedom of ideas. Progressive modernist artists, in the imaginative freedom of their works, exemplified or encouraged this freedom.

Under Josef Stalin, however, this freedom was sharply curtailed. Modernism persisted, but in a state-manipulated and controlled form. This same form, generally called Social Realism, also flourished at the other end of the political spectrum in Hitler's Nazi Germany.

World War One left progressive modernism dazed and confused. World War Two was a blow that only in later decades do we understand to have been mortal. World War Two effectively destroyed the spirit of modernism. After Auschwitz, Theodor Adorno asked if any art has a right to exist. The Nazi holocaust reduced the modernist dream to ashes. The Germans, after all, were a civilized people who had actively participated in the modernist enterprise from the beginning.

The basic Enlightenment assumption that art improves people warranted serious re-examination. It was claimed (and is still claimed in some circles) that from the study of art comes a moral education all by itself. Further exposure to and learning about art only served to improve the student. But, does art improve people?

Artists, art historians, curators, critics, to mention a few who are in contact with art everyday; are they noticeably different, better, than anyone else who hasn't studied art?

As we have seen, the Enlightenment pictured the human race as engaged in an effort towards universal moral and intellectual self-realization. It was believed that reason allowed access to truth, and knowledge of the truth would better humankind. These tenets were fundamental to the notion of Modernism, the goal of which was the creation of a new world order.

4. Modernism & Postmodernism

In the latter half of the 20th century there has been mounting evidence of the failure of the Modernist enterprise. Progressive modernism is riddled with doubt about the continued viability of the notion of progress. Conservative modernism, in the United States at least, has fallen prey in the political realm to the influences of the Church in the form of the so-called religious right which in recent years especially has seriously undermined the very constitutional foundations of the whole American experiment.

Since Suzi Gablik wrote her book, the communist experiment undertaken in the former Soviet Union has collapsed. Fundamentalism in nearly all of the world's major organized religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism) has risen sharply in recent years in direct opposition to modernism. American Christian fundamentalists still agree with Martin Luther who recognized that "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it struggles against the divine word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."

A growing number of people believe the modernist enterprise has failed. In the search for reasons to explain this failure, questions have necessarily been raised about the whole Western humanist tradition.

It has become apparent to many that the worldview fostered through Modernism (and by the Western humanist tradition) is flawed, corrupt, and oppressive. Both recent events (i.e. since the World War Two), and the perception of those events, have given rise to the notion that Modernism has played itself out and is now floundering and directionless.

If Modernism is at an end, we are now facing a new period. The name given to this new period is Postmodernism.

The term postmodernism is used in a confusing variety of ways. For some it means anti-modern; for others it means the revision of modernist premises.

The seemingly anti-modern stance involves a basic rejection of the tenets of Modernism; that is to say, a rejection of the doctrine of the supremacy of reason, the notion of truth, the belief in the perfectability of man, and the idea that we could create a better, if not perfect, society. A term used by some to describe this view is deconstructive postmodernism.

An alternative understanding, which seeks to revise the premises of Modernism, has been termed constructive postmodernism.

Deconstructive postmodernism seeks to overcome the modern worldview, and the assumptions that sustain it, through what appears to be an anti-worldview. It "deconstructs" the ideas and values of Modernism to reveal what composes them and shows that such modernist ideas as "equality" and "liberty" are not "natural" to humankind or "true" to human nature but are ideals, intellectual constructions.

This process of taking apart or "unpacking" the modernist worldview reveals its constituent parts and lays bare fundamental assumptions. Questions are then frequently raised about who was responsible for these constructions, and their motives. Who does modernism serve?

From the history outlined is this essay, it should be clear that modernist culture is Western in its orientation, capitalist in its determining economic tendency, bourgeois in its class character, white in its racial complexion, and masculine in its dominant gender.

Deconstructive postmodernism is seen perhaps as anti-modern in that it seems to destroy or eliminate the ingredients that are believed necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth. (This point of view, though, that we need a worldview comprised of notions of God, self, purpose, etc, is itself a modernist one.)

Deconstructive postmodern thought is seen by some as nihilistic, (i.e. the view that all values are baseless, that nothing is knowable or can be communicated, and that life itself is meaningless).

Constructive postmodernism does not reject Modernism, but seeks to revise its premises and traditional concepts. Like deconstructive postmodernism, it attempts to erase all boundaries, to undermine legitimacy, and to dislodge the logic of the modernist state. Constructive postmodernism claims to offer a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such, but only that scientific approach in which only the data of the modern natural sciences are allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.

Constructive postmodernism desires a return to premodern notions of divinely wrought reality, of cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature. It also wishes to include an acceptance of nonsensory perception.

Constructive postmodernism seeks to recover truths and values from various forms of premodern thought and practice. Constructive postmodernism wants to replace modernism and modernity, which it sees as threatening the very survival of life on the planet.

Aspects of constructive postmodernism will appear similar to what is also called "New Age" thinking. The possibility that mankind is standing on the threshold of a new age informs much postmodernist thought.

The postmodern is deliberately elusive as a concept, avoiding as much as possible the modernist desire to classify and thereby delimit, bound, and confine. Postmodernism partakes of uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, and accepts ambiguity. Whereas Modernism seeks closure in form and is concerned with conclusions, postmodernism is open, unbounded, and concerned with process and "becoming."

The post-modern artist is "reflexive" in that he/she is self-aware and consciously involved in a process of thinking about him/herself and society in a deconstructive manner, "demasking" pretensions, becoming aware of his/her cultural self in history, and accelerating the process of self-consciousness.

This sort of sensitivity to cultural, ethnic, and human conditions and experiences has been ridiculed by conservatives in recent years as "political correctness."

What about art? It could be argued that several forms of art have been "post-modern" since the First World War. If the mass slaughter of the Great War, achieved through the advances made in science and technology, was the result of the modernist commitment to "progress," then one might begin to question the value of the modernist enterprise.

Nonetheless, between the wars, progressive modernism managed to sustain a vision of a better future. It continued to see tradition and the past as stifling the expression of freedom. The Surrealists before the war still clung to the modernist belief that their art could influence human destiny, that they could change the world.

After the Second World War, however, such optimism in the future was difficult to sustain. And to make things worse, with the advent of the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear destruction, any sort of future looked doubtful.

Having rejected the past many years ago, and now with the future no longer the goal of artistic effort, many artists turned with visible distress to the present and focused their attention on contemporary popular culture.

Popular culture, however, was undergoing a tumultuous upheaval during the sixties: the Civil Rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam war, the emergence of a widespread women's movement, and the transformation of hitherto largely passive and conservative students into the cutting-edge of opposition.

Pop artist could still appear progressive under these circumstances, contributing a critique of bourgeois ideals and the American dream (for example, Richard Hamilton).

Richard Hamilton Just What Is It That Makes Today's Home So Different, So Appealing? 1956, Collage (Kunsthalle Museum, Tübingen, Germany)

What was happening in effect, though, was that modernist art itself was under attack as a bourgeois ideal; a sort of nihilistic neo-Dada which I would identify as Postmodern.

5. The End of Art

The comment made by the military officer in Vietnam that his platoon had to destroy a Vietnamese village in order to save it (i.e. from Communism), seems to have been applied to art; it became necessary to destroy art, or at least the modernist understanding of it, in order to save it. With it the whole modernist enterprise began to collapse.

In June 1970, the French writer Jean Clay observed: "It is clear that we are witnessing the death throes of the cultural system maintained by the bourgeoisie in its galleries and its museums."

In recent years, progressive modernism has seemed bent not on defining a future but in destroying the values of the present, especially as they pertained to art. It has remained largely hostile to prevailing authority-systems, though this position is no longer at all clear. In the late 60s and early 70s, conceptual art emerged as another affront to established to established values (Carl Andre, for example).

Carl Andre, 81 CuFe (The New of Hephaestus), 1981 Copper, steel (81 square units) (Ho-Am Art Museum, Seoul)

Hostility to it was intense, beyond any question of mere aesthetics. Victor Burgin states that conceptualism was a revolt against modernism. This may not seem apparent, because, true to form, orthodox art history has managed to assimilate it into the seamless tapestry of "art history" while stifling its radicalism.

However, conceptualism deliberately was an art that no aesthetic formalism could hope to embrace. It was an attempt to place art beyond all limitations and definitions, to break the stranglehold of bourgeois formalist art history and criticism. Attention was turned towards "making" and the manipulation of materials. The process of making was given importance, with the result, the final object, became secondary, often temporary (Christo and Jeanne-Claude, for example).

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands 1980-83, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida

Conceptualism became an umbrella term (in an attempt to define and contain) under which were lumped together a whole range of difficult-to-classify art such as Performance and Earth Art.

Conceptual artists deliberately produced work that was difficult if not impossible to classify according to the old system. Some deliberately produced work that could not be placed in a museum or gallery (Robert Smithson, for example).

Robert Smithson Spiral Jetty (now under water) 1969-70, Great Salt Lake, Utah

Art in the latter half of the 20th century deliberately placed itself beyond the limits of control. Today, art historians and critics -- we might call them the art police -- throw up their hands in dismay in the face of contemporary art. They have reached their limit - they can no longer absorb contemporary art into the system, patterns of order can no longer be applied. The critical apparatus of control has broken down; traditional art theory and traditional art history have failed along with modernism.