Tracey Morgan

Can Modern Art be created today? On the one hand, any art created today is by its very definition modern; but on the other, the term “modern art” has a very specific meaning to art scholars and historians, namely the art of the century leading up to the early 1970s. So unfortunately its time is gone! However there is a certain feel to creative work that is recognisable and could attract the Modern Art label, just as a new building could be described as having Gothic influences, or a design could look Art Deco. In fact, the movement that became known as Modern Art encompasses many different genres and subgenres, and it’s fair to say that almost all of today’s painting, design, architecture, sculpture and visual art is influenced more by Modern Art than by what came before it.

All modern artists will no doubt have chosen their media before embarking on their creative way, be it as a hobby or craft or even as a living. Such a wide-ranging and long-lasting movement took in effectively every medium and branch of the arts, from sculptors chiselling away at solid rock to painters daubing, splashing and printing their masterpieces. Trying to copy modern art would of course betray its own essence, which was to experiment and even to expect the unexpected, as far as allowing randomness or nature to play its part in the finished product. But art rarely has revolutions; most of the time it’s an evolutionary process, with the attitudes and tastes of society both influencing and being influenced by it, which both take time.

Nowadays we have the advantage of being able to look backwards through the artistic telescope, so we can pick and choose genres to be our influences. A painting like Munch’s The Scream was revolutionary in its day, but is now so entrenched in the popular culture that is can be referenced in all levels of society and it’s reasonable to expect most people will know what it is. It can also be parodied, and often is, without actually harming the integrity of the original. And we can say the same of Moore’s sculptures, Duchamp’s Fountain (the upturned urinal), Warhol’s Monroes or anything by Modern Art’s most famous exponent, Picasso. None of their work looks particularly outrageous to contemporary eyes, but in its day was often hugely controversial.

So if you are thinking of creating some modern art today, you have to ask yourself whether you want to capture the actuality of what has gone before or capture the spirit of the works in their day. It’s obviously going to be a lot easier to do the first! Can you imagine, now we’ve had pickled sheep, unmade beds, lines of bricks and rooms full of flashing lights, creating something that will be truly unexpected, but not just shocking for its own sake? Of course, every artist wants to be the one who comes up with a breakthrough piece of work that inspires other artists and maybe even new movements, but it’s now clear why the term Modern Art has more historical than contemporary undertones. Check out the Museum of Modern Art if you’re in doubt. However successful you end up, you’re going to have a lot of fun trying.

Article Source: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=689919&ca=Arts+and+Crafts

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