Post #3: Modernism vs Postmodernism

Katlynn DeMatos
November 19, 2019
Art and Women
Post #3

Influences and Women Artists of the Modernism and Postmodernism Eras

According to the TATE museum, modernism refers, “to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life.”  Artists aimed to use different techniques, materials and imagery where their goal was to reflect what they saw in everyday life in terms of reality and modern societies (Tate). There was a change in art and the “firsts” of art came one after the other:  impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism, cubism, futurism, constructivism, dada-ism, surrealism, expressionism, abstract expressionism and more (Guerilla Girls, 59). However, these all fall under the categorization of “Modernism” and with it, all the women artists who played a role in influencing its development and techniques. 

Gabriele Munter, Boating, 1910

This image display the adoption of 

bright colors and dark lines in Modernism paintings.

Sonia Delaunay, Prismes Isotiques, 1914

This image is focused on bright color and the easy flow

and usage of shapes and various formations.

This “modernity” is described as being “linked to the desire for the new that fashion expresses so well, and culturally tied to the development of a new visual language for the twentieth century--abstraction” (Chadwick, 253).  This “ism”began with the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which carried with it a “decoration devoid of content” (Chadwick, 253). These designs made by craftswoman challenged the way that art was thought of and the relationship between art and life; this is where the fine arts and crafts emergred.  Another factor that played into this movement was the reformation in the way women would dress, so instead of wearing restricting corsets and formal clothes, women wore pieces that shaped their identity. This fashion change helped artists “to free themselves from representation” so they “explored new kinds of meaning” (Chadwick, 254).  The artist, Gabriele Munter, began to adopt this concept where she created simple shapes in her paintings and emphasized on the dark lines like in her Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin.  There is a “simplification of the figure into blocks of color, the pyramidal form, and the replacement of modeling by a heavy blakc outline” (Chadwick, 256).  Munter also painted, Boating, which holds true to this new form of art.  Another artist, Sonia Delauna, applied this concept of bold shapes and colors and was convinced that “modernity could best be expressed through a dynamic interplay of color harmonies and dissonances which replicated the rhythms of modern urban life” (Chadwick, 260).  Her works, like Prismes Isotiques encompass the break down of forms and the emphasis on shapes and structure.  Her art also connected with the idea of the female body and how the production of art has a connection to the way its perceived.

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Mother and Child Lying Nude, 1907
This image portrays the woman's body in its

natural and motherly state.

Suzanne Valadon, The Blue Room, 1923
The painting takes away any attempt at a male gaze and
displays the woman as strong and lost in her own agenda.

The assault on the female human body was a huge reason as to why women artists began bringing about a focus of the female body as the main subject in their paintings.  They realized, specifically Carol Duncan, that “individual artistic freedom is built on sexual and social inequalities. Reduced to flesh, the female subject is rendered powerless before the artist/viewer...instead of the femme-fatale, one sees an obedient animal” (Chadwick, 280).  This is the concept of the male gaze, which we have discussed earlier in the semester.  Women decided to take this concept and portray the bodies of women in a different light.  Artist Paula Modersohn-Becker painted Mother and Child Lying Nude in 1907, where she depicts the female identity in connection to nature and motherhood while completely taking away all pleasure from the male gaze.  Instead, the images were based on women’s experiences. Suzanne Valadon created art that represents women who are in control of their body and movements and who are focused on their own activities, completely care free of who may be “gazing” at them.  One of these pieces is The Blue Room, in which the woman has short hair, is smoking a cigarette, fully clothed, has books (which represent knowledge) and is completely consumed in her own thoughts and agenda.  All these aforementioned traits are key to the “new” focus of women’s paintings of other women: take away any opportunity for a male to gaze at and turn women into objects in paintings.  

Hannah Hoch, Dompteuse (Tamer), 1930
This image displays the Dada work of collaging different
figures in order to display "the new woman".  

There were other movements categorized under Modernism that stemmed from various events.  One of these was Dadaism, which was "an art movement that challenged every convention (except male supremacy) and scandalized bourgeois society (Guerilla Girls, 66).  The artist of this movement was Hannah Hoch, or better known as the "Mama of Dada". She took images that were from the media to make photomontages and they were "caricatures of 'the new women'", which was the German media's idea of an independent woman who wore revealing clothes, smoked, voted and worked (Guerilla Girls, 67). In other words she displayed works that represented female equality to that of the male patriarchy and other parties that the Dada movement rejected.  One of her works, Tamer, shows a woman with strong male arms; in this, she is challenging the gender roles and again representing the female sex as being equal to that of a man's. 

Now on the other hand, Postmodernism is defined by the TATE museum as “a reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, as well as a description of the period that followed modernism's dominance in cultural theory and practice in the early and middle decades of the twentieth century. The term is associated with scepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality.”  This period came in after World War II and sought to overthrow modernism and question who is making art, what is it for and who is it meant for? Instead of art being for the elite and innovated to be a "first", postmodernism represented art as a way to be expressive, playful, experimental but yet still intellectual. Still the whole idea was that art was for everyone and was meant to mean something.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills, 1977
The photo Sherman too of herself is a play
on the way women in Hollywood were
portrayed most of their time in their
underwear. 

Artists took this period to create new art forms. Cindy Sherman created works where she took photographs of mostly herself and her body.  Her goal was to communicate to people viewing her photos how women were looked at by the male gaze, and she did so in through pretending to be the "other".  For instance, in one of her film photography stills, Sherman poses in her underwear. However, it is not to be an object of desire, but instead to mock the male gaze and the way women appeared in the art forms.  She also portrays a vacant gaze as not giving a care to the person looking at her. Another artist of the post modernism period is Sherrie Levine who focused on photography and questioning what the "authorship" of someone's photo means.  Specifically she questioned the role of the artist, who owns images and what the value of art is. By taking and recreating other art forms, she embodied the concepts of postmodernism and challenged the thought process of many artist and observers. 

Works Cited

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, And Society. Fifth ed., Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Guerilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. Penguin Books, 1998.

Tate. “Modernism – Art Term.” Tate, www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/modernism.