Modernism In Art In The 1950's

Modernism in art, in conventional sense, is defined as art from the late 1860s through the 1960s, which examines current (then) artistic, cultural, and social standards. The most common of these being the task that artists face in creating works of that abandons any form of illusionism. By the 1950s through the 1960s, modernism in art was challenged through the ever expanding growth of art reproduction, the art market, galleries and art dealers, and the development of fine art education in universities, etc. Also, during this time, art critics, Clement Greenburg and Michael Fried, expanded upon what modernism in art is, by addressing medium-specificity in their writings. Today’s art historians do not completely agree with Greenberg and Fried’s ideas of modernism during the 1960s. In this essay, I will discuss what modernism meant during this time for art writers, Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, and the main disagreements of today’s art historians with Greenberg and Fried’s ideas. High modernism refers to modernism in the late 1950s and 1960s in the theorizations of Clement Greenberg. Both Greenberg and Michael …show more content…
The effects result in translucent shapes on the unprepared canvas are reminiscent of watercolor on paper. Although the painting is titled, Mountains and Sea, the image is not representational. There is a slight indication of a landscape, but the objects are, for the most part, unrecognizable. The thinned paint creates optical space when the paint seeps into the canvas, and stains the fibers. As Greenberg states, the ‘paint seeps into the canvas … they become a single entity’ (Varieties in Modernism, p. 194). The image abandons tangible space through the unity of paint and canvas. This technique abandons third-dimensionality and emphasizes the two-dimensional