Art Styles & Movements

There have been many different modern art styles through the development of modern art, signified by the succession of movements and schools of art that have emerged since the middle of the 19th century. There are several possible answers to the question of when modern art began and which was the first modern art style. There is a general consensus that all the main modern art styles have been in the 20th century, but the beginnings of modern art certainly go back to the middle of the 19th century.

Whether Picasso painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon or Kandinsky’s breakthrough into abstraction could be seen as the real concrete beginnings of modernism is arguable, but these significant achievements could not have happened without ground breaking artists in the years before them. The Impressionists in the latter part of the 19th century paved the way for the flatter, more abstract work of the post impressionists, but the impressionists were building on the advances and breaks with tradition made by Eduard Manet, so that takes the beginnings of modern art back to about 1850.

The vast majority of modern art styles are 20th century movements and they are extremely diverse in range. Modern art styles do not follow a single linear progression, and different things were happening in different countries. If there is such as thing as a world centre for modern art, this moved from Paris in the early part of the century to New York by the middle of the century.

Modern art styles and movements are all characterised by reacting against and moving away from the past. The world was changing rapidly at the time the first modern art styles developed and artists wanted this to be reflected in their art and their lives as artists. The world was full of new ideas, new materials and new possibilities and artists felt that this change and development should be reflected in artistic traditions too. The whole modernist period lasted up until around the 1960s. The period after this is known as post-modernism.

Gothic Art

To define Gothic art is a complex undertaking, so diverse is the geographical and chronological reality that it covers, from the mid 12th c. to the Renaissance. It was precisely at the Renaissance that the term appeared, to express the disdain felt in those times for forms considered as barbarous as the Goths to whom …

Video Art – Experiments in Art and Technology

Term referring to art employing videotape as its medium. As a flexible technique, it encompasses a considerable range of styles, approaches, and intentions, as well as varied presentation formats. Like performance art, video art gives its practitioners the opportunity to exploit duration in combination with the spatial concerns that have always been at the heart …

Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s

A 1960s innovation prioritizing idea over execution. At its extreme, a conceptual art work may consist only of a brief written description or set of instructions for fabrication. However, in practice, conceptual art intermingled freely with other 1960s and 1970s tendencies, such as minimalism, earth art, and performance art, as well as politically oriented art. …

Introduction to Pop Art

Art which is based on images of mass consumer culture. It is principally associated with the USA and Britain in the 1960s. The term originated in the discussions of the Independent Group c.1955. The originator of the phrase is disputed, but the British critic Lawrence Alloway later recalled ‘sometime between the winter of 1954–5 and …

The Pre-Raphaelite Movement

It is difficult to understand today, but the paintings of the PRB were seen as shocking in their day, and critics were harsh in their condemnation, in particular, the writer Charles Dickens. John Ruskin became the champion of the Pre-Raphaelites, writing a series of famous letters to The Times in support of their paintings, and …

Aesthetic Movement

Movement of the 1870s and 1880s that manifested itself in the fine and decorative arts and architecture in Britain and subsequently in the USA; it had no discernible influence on continental Europe. Reacting to what was seen as evidence of philistinism in art and design, it was characterized by the cult of the beautiful and an emphasis on the sheer pleasure to be derived from it.

What Is Constructivism

The Constructivist Art Movement (1917 – 1921) is very much a Russian movement which started in the Soviet Union with the Russian avant-garde. It was not strictly an art movement, rather a trend in the arts that was closely linked to industry and manufacturing, architecture and the applied arts.

Dadaism Art – The Dada Movement

The Dadaism art movement is very much tied into the outbreak of the First World War. Like every other modern art movement, the Dadaists were reacting against some element of the establishment. In this case, it was in part at least a reaction against the nationalist and colonial attitudes that they believed were the causes of the Great War.

The Futurism Art Movement

The Futurism art movement was a totally Italian modern art movement. Unlike other modern art movements that sprang from developing or reacting against other artistic styles developments in art, Futurism seemed to spring from an idea, and the style of how to translate the ideas into the visual arts came afterwards.

History of Der Blaue Reiter Artist Group

The development of German Expressionism is covered on the Expressionism page, which mentions that in addition to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Die Brucke (The Bridge) group, the other important group of Expressionist artists in the early part of the twentieth century was Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider).

The Post Impressionism Art Movement

Post Impressionism (1880s onwards) As the name implies, the Post Impressionism art movement followed on from Impressionism. As well as being a logical extension of that earlier movement, it was in many ways a rejection of Impressionism’s impersonality and strict concern with the effects of light and colour. The Post Impressionism art movement was more …

Expressionism History

The Expressionism art style was a wide-ranging international and far reaching modern art movement that encompassed not just painting but cinema, theatre, literature and dance.

Art Nouveau Movement (from late 1880s)

Art Nouveau History The Art Nouveau movement was a decorative style of art that evolved from the end of the 1880s and lasted up to the beginning of the First World War. Art Nouveau was so called because it was named after a prominent shop in Paris called La Maison de l’Art Nouveau, which featured …

The Pointilism Modern Art Movement

Pointilism follows on very directly from impressionism and builds on the impressionist idea of painting in such a way as to recreate the same effect on the viewer as if they had just caught a glimpse of the subject. Pointilism develops the use of Impressionism’s broken brush-marks and takes this technique a step further by …

The Fauvist Movement

The term ‘Fauve’ means ‘wild beasts’, and refers to how wild and violent these paintings must have seemed when first seen at the end of the nineteenth century. Fauvism in art meant paintings that used intense pure colors in a totally non-naturalistic way.