Modern Art Research Paper

Throughout history, mankind has been inclined towards expression through many artistic media. Early art mainly focused on expressing the form of humanity, rather than the emotions and thought that make us human beings. When art, specifically sculpture, shifted towards what we know as the modern movement, it was somewhat shunned, or touted as being inferior to traditionalist styles. My research paper will focus specifically on the difference between modern and traditional styles of art, the dynamic between them, and how both styles contributed to how we view art today, as well as the vilification of modern art in the eyes of the art world. My interest in this topic mainly stems from my own personal interest in art, because it’s what i want to

Among my peers I would see a major distaste for art they would see as lazy or uninteresting. The main debate within this topic is whether modern/postmodern styles of art, or other contemporary styles, can even be considered art, mostly due to their simplicity or seeming lack of imagination. I have seen many arguments against contemporary art, one of my articles, the one by Michael Bise, is especially harsh in its criticism towards the works of Josephine Meckseper. The author of this article went on to talk about how there was no meaning behind this simple art, and that the “art was bad” (Bise). I have not, so far, been able to find any scholarly or credible resources on why modern art is good and can be considered art, but I will continue to support this idea with factual statements alongside my own opinions and definitions. Many of the arguments used in the art world as bias against modern art forms is that it isn’t simply as good as traditional or classical art. In my opinion, modern art is just a different form of art, not necessarily good or bad wholly, but just different, and it differs enough that it shouldn’t be compared to the stunning idealistic realism of renaissance art movements, because that isn’t what modern art is about. An article by Karsten Harries describes modern art as no different than the classical forms that preceded it. The author outlines the ideas that art is a representation of the ideal form of man, and “as that image changes, so must art” and that the emergence of modern art could be the “disintegration of the Platonic-Christian concept of man,” where “the artist no longer has an obvious, generally excepted route to follow” (Harries). This essentially means that, as humanity grew, the images of itself changed, whether due to the inventions of new things such as the camera, or the internet, and this caused a large upheaval and sway from the generally