The Revolution of Modern Art

The Modernist revolution had a main ideal in which traditional forms of art, literature, and social culture were deemed outdated. Modernists advocated a complete reexamination of every aspect of existence, and in the case of art they decided that the previous method to portray nature without modification was unacceptable. Much of the artisticrevolution came from a multitude of French painters who were trained in Impressionist schools. Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise is the piece for which the Impressionist movement is named after. Monet and numerous other painters were considered to be the founders of Impressionism, even though they never openly admitted it. They all didn’t conform to the same exact style but as Oxford shows, “They were united…in rebelling against academic conventions to try to depict their surroundings with spontaneity and freshness, capturing an ‘impression’ of what the eye sees at a particular moment, rather than a detailed record of appearances (Impressionism).” The techniques of Impressionistpainters like Monet included light brushstrokes, light colors, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities, and using ordinary subject matter. Edgar Degas did not conform to strict Impressionist standards just like Monet, but he still experimented with new ways to utilize colors. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists describes Degas’ innovation in this short excerpt, “He experimented boldly with pastels, as he did with other techniques; he sometimes mixed different kinds of paints in the same picture, for example, and he sometimes steamed his pastels, so he could manipulate the colours more fluidly (Degas, Edgar).” Near the end of his life he grew blind and maintained a constant depression, but nonetheless in 1883 Picasso described him as ‘certainly the greatest artist of our epoch.’ There was a great importance placed on the beauty of nature and its attributed colors. Previously such...