When Art Became Code If Expressionism was a temperamental predilection, then Cubism became the basis for a new artistic language that would dominate the rest of the century. But during the Great War, a younger generation of artists rebelled against the artistic...
The Avant-Garde Before the Great War The decades of the fin-de-siècle period in Europe were fruitful ones, years of innovation and experimentation in painting. “Ism” followed “ism:” Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, German Expressionism, ended only by...
The Painters of Modern Life Although the Pre-Raphaelite artists initiated the artistic interest in contemporary urban life and the problems of modern people, the Parisian artists are given credit for learning how to express modernité in formal terms. The French...
Advanced Guard before the Avant-Garde There is some historical disagreement over when and where the avant-garde movement in the visual arts began. But it is clear that that the notion that changes in art come from the margins not the center came into existence and...
WHISTLER AND ART FOR ART’S SAKE Part Three Whistler was unusual among artists of his time in that he answered back to critics and took pains to establish his own discourse on his own art. His unique way of painting, without the meticulous detail of the...
WHISTLER AND THE PEACOCK ROOM Part Two The term “artistic freedom” may seem like a given but for nearly a century after Kant established the principal, “freedom” was rarely practiced. But Whistler took the concept seriously and set out to test...
