modern art: Origins of Modern Art

Origins of Modern Art

In the second half of the 19th cent. painters began to revolt against the classic codes of composition, careful execution, harmonious coloring, and heroic subject matter. Patronage by the church and state sharply declined at the same time that artists' views became more independent and subjective. Such artists as Courbet, Corot and others of the Barbizon School, Manet, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec chose to paint scenes of ordinary daily and nocturnal life that often offended the sense of decorum of their contemporaries.

Sections in this article:

Introduction
Modern Sculpture
Postwar Modern Art and the Rejection of Modernism
Other Modes of Modern Art
Geometric Abstraction
Cubism
The Isms of Early Twentieth-Century Art
Nineteenth-Century Painting after Impressionism
Impressionism
Origins of Modern Art
Bibliography

See more Encyclopedia articles on: European Art, 1600 to the Present