An art movement is a tendency or style in
art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years. Art movements were especially important in
modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered a new
avant-garde movement.
Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of
perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality (
figurative art). By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new
style which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy (
abstract art).[1]
Concept
According to theories associated with
modernism and also the concept of
postmodernism, art movements are especially important during the period of time corresponding to
modern art.[2] The period of time called "modern art" is posited to have changed approximately halfway through the 20th century and art made afterward is generally called
contemporary art.
Postmodernism in visual art begins and functions as a parallel to
late modernism[3] and refers to that period after the "modern" period called contemporary art.[4] The postmodern period began during
late modernism (which is a contemporary continuation of modernism), and according to some theorists postmodernism ended in the 21st century.[5][6] During the period of time corresponding to "modern art" each consecutive movement was often considered a new
avant-garde.[5]
Also during the period of time referred to as "modern art" each movement was seen corresponding to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it, concerning the visual arts. Generally there was a commonality of visual style linking the works and artists included in an art movement. Verbal expression and explanation of movements has come from the artists themselves, sometimes in the form of an
art manifesto,[7][8] and sometimes from
art critics and others who may explain their understanding of the meaning of the new art then being produced.
In the
visual arts, many artists, theorists, art critics, art collectors, art dealers and others mindful of the unbroken continuation of modernism and the continuation of modern art even into the contemporary era, ascribe to and welcome new philosophies of art as they appear.[9][10]Postmodernist theorists posit that the idea of art movements are no longer as applicable, or no longer as discernible, as the notion of art movements had been before the postmodern era.[11][12] There are many theorists however who doubt as to whether or not such an era was actually a fact;[5] or just a passing fad.[6][13]
^Man of his words: Pepe Karmel on Kirk Varnedoe — Passages – Critical Essay
Artforum, Nov, 2003 by Pepe Karmel
^The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths
Rosalind E. Krauss, Publisher: The MIT Press; Reprint edition (July 9, 1986), Part I, Modernist Myths, pp.8–171
^The Citadel of Modernism Falls to Deconstructionists, – 1992 critical essay, The Triumph of Modernism, 2006,
Hilton Kramer, pp 218–221.
^
abcPost-Modernism: The New Classicism in Art and ArchitectureCharles Jencks