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.

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting,

originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the
world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to
evoke moods or ideas.

Expressionism emerged simultaneously in various cities across

Germany as a response to a widespread anxiety about humanity's
increasingly discordant relationship with the world and
accompanying lost feelings of authenticity and spirituality. In part a
reaction againstImpressionism and academic art, Expressionism was
inspired most heavily by the Symbolistcurrents in late nineteenth-
century art. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James
Ensorproved particularly influential to the Expressionists,
encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong
colors to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings. The classic
phase of the Expressionist movement lasted from approximately
1905 to 1920 and spread throughout Europe. Its example would
later inform Abstract Expressionism, and its influence would be felt
throughout the remainder of the century in German art. It was also a
critical precursor to the Neo-Expressionist artists of the 1980s.

Key Ideas

The arrival of Expressionism announced new standards in the

creation and judgment of art. Art was now meant to come forth
from within the artist, rather than from a depiction of the external
visual world, and the standard for assessing the quality of a work of
art became the character of the artist's feelings rather than an
analysis of the composition.
Expressionist artists often employed swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly
executed brushstrokes in the depiction of their subjects. These techniques
were meant to convey the turgid emotional state of the artist reacting to the
anxieties of the modern world.
Through their confrontation with the urban world of the early twentieth
century, Expressionist artists developed a powerful mode of social criticism
in their serpentine figural renderings and bold colors. Their representations
of the modern city included alienated individuals - a psychological by-product
of recent urbanization - as well as prostitutes, who were used to comment on
capitalism's role in the emotional distancing of individuals within cities.

Most Important Art

Beginnings

With the turn of the century in Europe, shifts in artistic styles and vision erupted as a
response to the major changes in the atmosphere of society. New technologies and
massive urbanization efforts altered the individual's worldview, and artists reflected
the psychological impact of these developments by moving away from a realistic
representation of what they saw toward an emotional and psychological rendering of
how the world affected them. The roots of Expressionism can be traced to certain
Post-Impressionist artists like Edvard Munch in Norway, as well as Gustav Klimt in the
Vienna Secession, and finally emerged in Germany in 1905.

Impressionism.

The artists like to capture their images without detail but with bold colors. Some of the

greatest impressionist artists were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude

Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Manet influenced the development of impressionism.

Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in

painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout
Europe and eventually the United States. Its originators were artists who
rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were
consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions. In turning
away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day
aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect
of a scene - the impressionobjects made on the eye in a fleeting instant. To
achieve this effect, many Impressionist artists moved from the studio to the
streets and countryside, painting en plein air.

Key Ideas
The Scream (1893)
Artist:Munch
Throughout his artistic career, Munch focused on scenes of death, agony
emotionally charged portraits, all themes and styles that would be adopted by
the Expressionists. Here, in Munch's most famous painting, he depicts the
battle between the individual and society. The setting of The Scream was
suggested to the artist while walking along a bridge overlooking Oslo; as
Munch recalls, "the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against
the fence...shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of
nature." Although Munch did not observe the scene as rendered in his
painting, The Scream evokes the jolting emotion of the encounter and
exhibits a general anxiety toward the tangible world. The representation of
the artist's emotional response to a scene would form the basis of the
Expressionists' artistic interpretations. The theme of individual alienation, as
represented in this image would persist throughout the twentieth century,
captivating Expressionist artists as a central feature of modern life.
Tempera and crayon on cardboard - National Museum, Oslo
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