What is Modern Art?

What is Contemporary Art?
Contemporary Art just means art that has been and continues to be created during our lifetime, or more presisely from the 1960’s or 70’s up to now.

What is Modern Art?
Modern Art dates from the Impressionists (around 1880) up to the 1960’s or 70’s.

What is Postmodern Art
The term Postmodern Art and “Postmodernism” popped up around 1970 when the art establishment chose to move on from ‘conventional’ art ie figurative paintings on canvas. Postmodern art is a term used to describe art which is thought to be a contradiction to Modernism. Movements such as, Installation art, Performance art, Conceptual Art and Video Art are all described as postmodern.

What is Pop Art?
Pop Art was born in Britain in the mid 1950s. The idea of Pop Art arose during discussions between members of the Independent Group of artists (IG) around 1952-53.

Pop Art is about popular culture ie materialism, consumer goods, advertisements and mass communication (film, television, newspapers and magazines), Pop Art thus held up a mirror to contemporary society. Bold flat colours, imagery influenced by comic books, images of celebrities are all characteristic of Pop Art. The movement was driven by the energy and optimism of young artists growing up during the Post-World War II period. The term Pop Art was first coined by Lawrence Alloway in his article “The Arts and Mass Media,” Architectural Record (February 1958); Richard Hamilton’s Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Home So Different and So Appealing? (1956) is generally considered to be the first major Pop Art picture.

Andy Warhol was perhaps the major Pop Artist. It was his insightful observations about the allure of shopping and celebrity that have proved so enduring and influential, and still resonates with artists and art lovers more than 40 years on.
Pop Art is said to have been the last important movement of the Modernist period – it finally lost it’s appeal in the early 1970s once the Postmodernist generation decided that ‘popular art’ was no longer serious enough.

Important Pop Artists are Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, Edouardo Paolozzi, Peter Blake, R. B. Kitaj, David Hockney and Allen Jones.

David Storey September 2011