Modernism

Modernism and modern art are terms normally applied to the string of movements that critics and historians have traced from Gustave Courbet's realism through to abstract art and its developments in the 1960s. Drawing on late 19th-century precedents, artists around the world turned to new imagery, materials, and techniques, which they felt expressed the realities and hopes of modern societies better. Although many styles fall under the label, a few ideas keep returning: turning away from history and from conservative values, such as the lifelike depiction of a subject; experimenting with form, often leaning toward abstraction; and putting weight on materials, techniques, and processes. Many modernists also pursued social and political programmes, often utopian, tied to a general belief in progress. By the 1960s it had become a dominant idea of art, and the backlash that followed was soon labelled Postmodernism.

Pick one work and ask what it shows in lifelike detail and what it leaves to shapes, colours, and lines alone. Which of the two holds your eye?