Modernism and Postmodernism


Entering the 20th century, western art took a rapid shift in subject. Many forms of art or –isms began to emerge such as impressionism, surrealism, Dadaism and cubism. All of these can be placed under an umbrella term called “modernism” (The Guerilla Girls 59). This period of art was a time of exploration for many artists. Their main focus was to ditch the formal themes and styles of art already present and start to experiment on their own. Art became to be more expressive not only with the subjects of the painting but the mediums, techniques, and themes behind them. Many believe that the “objective” of this movement was to take it upon themselves to change the restrictions of the past. Around the same time women were finally granted the right to vote which empowered women and began to shift the view of them in society. Women were now viewed as idols, hard-working, and what I find to be most important, independent. With the idea that women are not considered a man’s property anymore, they still found themselves facing issues with conforming to society’s norms. In “Women, Art, and Society,” Chadwick explains, “despite rhetoric about rights and liberation of women, despite coherent imagery celebrating sexually liberated women… there was no fundamental changes in women’s traditional roles,” (Chadwick 278). The “woman” was still expected to maintain the home and care for children. Modernist art is in a way a rebuttal and rejection towards those ideas.


Just to give some examples of a modernist artist, we can look a Hannah Hoch who is considered a big name in the Dadaism movement considering she was one of the few females in it. A lot of her work focuses on the culture from where she was living which happened to be Germany. A lot of her art took a clear feminist perspective. Hoch attended the School of Applied Arts in Berlin but had to take a break during the war so she could help out with the Red Cross. Years later after the war she was introduced to the art form Dadaism by a man who eventually became her partner. Although Hoch was very a skilled artist, those at the world’s first “International Dada Fair” ended up rejecting her work.  “Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany,” is a piece Hoch made early on in her Dada movement. At first glance the piece appears to be absolute chaos with no one point of focus. There appears to be a scattering of pictures with no relation. When looking in closer, the viewer begins to pick up on the relationship between the people and the rising of mechanization post war. It is a piece depicting the rapid indus
trialization post war and in the bottom right a map can be seen showing all of the countries that women can vote in. Another famous art piece from Hoch is “Made for a Party” where she portrays a distorted or pieced together image of a woman. It is said that the face of the woman is cut off because it does not matter who the woman is. Her lack of identity makes it seem like the woman is simply and object or something to look at since it is no longer a personal thing. This is also why she includes the cut out of a male eye in the bottom left as well to depict the male gaze upon women no matter their identity.  This concept was common among many feminist artists. Art like this was unheard of before this. It defied the “rules” and restrictions that the art world held by using unconventional styles and mediums.

After modernism took its path, postmodernism came around and was much more of a feminist movement at heart. Postmodernism was a movement around the 1970s that set out to contradict ideas of modernism and its offspring. It was in a way a reaction to the former movement. A lot of this art included installations and different forms of media art such as video and intermedia mediums. A writer from Tate Galleries expresses the core of this movement pretty accurately in an online article, “While modernism was based on
idealism and reason, postm
odernism was born of skepticism and a suspicion of reason. It challenged the notion that there are universal certainties or truths. Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century, and advocated that individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles. While the modernists championed clarity and simplicity; postmodernism embraced complex and often contradictory layers of meaning,” (Tate). A very famous postmodern piece comes from female artist Yoko Ono called “Cut Piece” in 1964. Unlike Hoch, this was a performance art piece where she sat and invited audience members to approach her and cut a piece of her shirt off with a pair of scissors. At first there seemed to be some unwillingness to participate but people did approach her after some time. Starting with a small bits being cut off, the performance got more intense and participants began to cut off larger portions and even bra straps nearly exposing Yoko. This performance addresses sexualizing women as an object. In this case, the artist herself is the woman being sexualized. The fact that her movements are limited and she does not speak makes her out to be an object rather than a subject in the performance. By placing herself in this position she portrays how a woman feels in the ranks of society by not being in control of her own actions.

Works Cited

The Guerrilla Girls, The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art (New York, Penguin Books, 1998)

Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society, 4th or 5th edition, (New York: Thames and Hudson), 2007.
“Postmodernism – Art Term.” Tate, Tate Galleries, www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism.