In deciding which two artists I wanted to focus on in the Modern Period, I chose to focus on two of the larger names from the period, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock; specifically from the Abstract Expressionist period. This period in modern art came about in the late 40’s, and was defined by  “a development of abstract art that originated in New York in the 1940s and 1950s and aimed at subjective emotional expression with particular emphasis on the creative spontaneous act.” (Tate)  However, even though both men painted during the same time and are categorized in the same artistic genre, their styles although in some ways similar, still differ a good bit.

In Pollocks art, he was defined as one of the premier Abstract Expressionists of his time, brining about a new type of painting called “drip painting”, which he created by “flinging and dripping thinned enamel paint onto an unstretched canvas laid on the floor of his studio. This direct, physical engagement with his materials welcomed gravity, velocity, and improvisation into the artistic process, and allowed line and color to stand alone, functioning entirely independently of form.” (MOMA) Within his paintings themselves, they invoked a ” life-force in nature itself, at others they could evoke man’s entrapment – in the body, in the anxious mind, and in the newly frightening modern world.” His early life could also be connected to the wild ways in which he created art. An addict, he grew up without a stable family life and often bounced around. This chaotic upbringing can be mirrored in his works, which as stated above evoke a sense of anxiousness, instability, and lack of form. In Pollocks work, much of his feelings were quite literally thrown into his art. His ability to be “in” his paintings by standing from different angles and splattering the paint allowed him to connect with the art on a deeper level. Like some other modern art pieces, Pollocks pieces lack a focal point, and rather allow the eye to wander around the painting, rather than centering on one distinct piece within the painting itself. It is more about the colors, the chaos, and the feelings that it evokes.

(Pollocks “Autumn Rhythm No. 30)

(Conversation with Jackson Pollock No.41)

Despite creating works within the same time period and being categorized within the same art era, Mark Rothko’s paintings differ significantly from Pollock’s. Rothko was known largely for creating what is known as the “Color Field” painting “which employed shimmering color to convey a sense of spirituality.” If we take the meaning of Pollock’s paintings and compare them to Rothko’s there is a distinct difference in how one is supposed to feel after looking at each one. With Rothko’s paintings, you feel a sense of calm, much related to the “sense of spirituality” as his works are defined by. His art takes on a sense of form by using rectangles on a canvas and is categorized by “floating” on a background of color that often melts into one another. Unlike Pollock, Rothko’s form shows”formal elements, such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale.”, whereas a Pollock painting shows just the opposite. Rothko also makes sure to explain that his paintings are not a referral of anything else, nor any other period, (as suggested that his pieces are of Western landscapes), but rather are what the viewer makes of it. “Colorfield painters believe that art could encourage the physical sensation of time and being there with the work.”

To say that two artists creating works during the same time period could be so different is something of an anomaly. One would expect the two to be quite similar, yet their form, the methods, and even their feelings towards their art differs completely. While both Rothko and Pollock define very clear elements of Modern Abstract Expressionism, the two men create pieces of works are unlike each other. This shows that although you could belong to the same genre, a lot of what Abstract Expressionism is are artists that have backgrounds in Surrealism or Cubism, many are categorized simply because they fail to fit into one category. Their art has similarities with other pieces created during the same time, yet drastically differ in important aspects. With Pollock, you see a frenzy, an anxious and chaotic piece free of form or any rules. With Rothko, you feel a sense of peace and calm, almost connectedness to God because of the ability to blend colors together to give the illusion of rectangles floating. Rothko has a distinct form, Pollock does not. Pollock entered his work, while Rothko painted from afar. Both artists show that you can belong to a similar artist genre, and create art during the same time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the art will be similar, even on a very basic level.

(Mark Rothko Untitled c.1956)

(Mark Rothko Untitled No. 12)

One of the most significant traits of modernism paintings is the use of flatness. Based on a flat surface, the painting is an art played in two-dimension, which is the only condition painting shared with no other art. Therefore, modernist painting oriented itself to flatness as it did to nothing else (Frascina,6). Illustrating the three-dimension world on the flat canvas was once the painting tried to do. Before modernism art appears, the space was shown under the principle of perspective.

When modernism artist freed themselves from strictly record the realistic world, the principle was abandoned gradually, give way to the innovation of expressing the sense of space in the paintings. When we looked at Cézanne’ s painting during last week’s trip, the way he arranged the space in the painting impressed me. In the work At the Water’s Edge, we could see how he used color field without lines to illustrate the view. By emphasizing the grades of green color in the foreground and weaken the river, representing it only with a field of simple white, Cézanne reduced the comparison of the depth, and flattened the pictorial space. In another work, Banks of the Seine at Médan, we could also see how Cézanne used different shades of color to shape the sense of space. Cézanne refused to copied the perspective relationship in the realistic, and choose the harmony in the painting instead.

Later, the similar technique could also be found in the Cubism. Artist like Picasso and Braque was inspired by Cézanne, give up the three-dimensional perspective in the painting. Instead, they use two dimensional from many perspectives to show the integrity of a painting. They use geometric shapes to represent the objects in an abstract way. Not all the paintings use color to build the sense of depth and perspective. Some of Cubism work just indulge tridimensional view flow into a flat, compressed surface. However, some Cubism paintings, we could see how the shades of color field is used to shape the sense of three-dimensional.

In Picasso’s Figure dans un Fauteuil, the use of different shade of greys combines multiple small facets of the objects, and thus endows it with the sense of perspective. The slight shades of colors are not the actual appearance of the objects the painting represent, but the extraction of the shade and light in different perspectives. Inspired by the post-impressionism, the painters developed the technique about showing spaces in flatness through all those years.

References：

Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison, eds. Modern Art and Modernism. London; Cambridge; Milton Keynes: Harpercollins, 1983

https://www.nga.gov/

“Cubism: Overview” (Phil Hansen, art teacher)

It was said that Rothko gave us equilibrium and Pollock took us to chaos. They are the representative of abstract expressionism. And their new artwork can be regarded as “a reflexive and self-reflexive turn in conceptions of art and the role of the artist which continues to today”.( Irvine, P1)

Both of them used their distinct art style to display their strong personal preferences and their attitude towards art. Action Painting represented by Jackson Pollock used action and gesture as the basis of creation. Color-field painting represented by Mark Rothko relies on large areas of Color to express certain ideas.

Rothko’s painting is really the code word of the art world: “frontality.” No attempt to violate a two dimensional plane — no depth, no Angle; Any concrete interpretation is crudely forbidden (there are no empty beaches, no sky, no clouds). “This style offered him the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea and between the idea and the observer by getting rid of anything that triggered history or memory or narrative or even geometry.” He used colors to express emotions and these emotions and feelings connected observer and painter, which created a dialogue. All the value of this pure abstraction is reduced to the viewer’s response and appreciation of the tone, relationship, and balance or imbalance of the composition of each color block. Through the rigorous conditions it provides to the viewer, the pure abstraction itself is free from error, if properly appreciated. In spired by Nietzsche, Mark Rothko’s art focuses on the expression of spiritual connotation. He tried to reflect the profound symbolism through limited colors and minimal shapes. He believes that western civilization today is rooted in western traditional culture, especially Greek culture. The conflict between human and nature, between individual and group, is the reflection of human’s basic living state. He was trying to create an overwhelming sensory experience for the viewer through monumentality simplicity and stillness many have described standing before a Rothko as a Religious Experience. He said, “If you are only moved by color relationships, you are missing the point. I am interested in expressing the big emotions – tragedy, ecstasy.” Rothko wanted to make you feel something to encounter the undefinable to stare into the void to confront universal human tragedy; this isn’t painting about nothing it’s painting about everything.

Pollock’s painting does have some sort of “ineffable appeal.” Pollock’s brush never touches the canvas, and the paint drips on it like a raindrop, and it is called Drip Painting. There is beauty in the drop of paint, in the natural curves, in the right color scheme, and pollock elevates that natural beauty, recreates it, sublimates it into art. When Pollock was creating, after he hit the paint bucket with his body, the pendulum movement of the rope and the vibration of the paint bucket made the falling paint produce countless lines with self-similarity in different proportions. And these naturally formed seemingly entangled paintings, but potentially indescribable beauty. Critics of the secret art of masterpieces have argued that Pollock’s work is different from the desultorily scribbled work in that although the pictures seem random, the lines and colors always contain a special attraction Just judging from the first impression, Pollock’s works “dirty” picture, line “mess”, “poor” to the seemed to be spilled paint random canvas, of course, through images and screen has greatly reduced the effect of the original “shock” effect, because the common characteristics of these paintings is a larger picture, and on the canvas in the representational style to express their ideas, through the screen can’t direct perception of giant format and sensory of interaction and experience. Manic appearance, hidden under the exquisite poetry. The crazy picture, no doubt, is from a frenzied mind. Staring at these images for a long time, under the surface of madness, a sense of order and precision arises, as if these works are extracted from the solemn nature and are part of it. Pollock’s works are like the force of nature, with abundant energy. When he closes his eyes, he will never forget it for a long time. His stormy pen is like a black hole in the universe as if it can absorb everything in the world.

Both of them can be viewed as the pioneer of artists who abandon the traditional idea of having concrete objects as carriers. The idea itself becomes more important than concrete objects. In his or their works, you can no longer find the concrete things: people, trees and houses are all gone. Only abstract color blocks, lines, strokes, in their works, the concept has become more important than ever. Of course, you could also say that Pollock and Rothko’s success could not be separated from America’s urgent need to compete with Europe culturally after world war ii. However, we have to admit that they are masters of connecting the past with the future and creating a new era.

References

Irvine, Professor Martin. Introduction to Modern Art and Modernism: Framework for Case Studies at the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Mus

Laurie Schneider Adams, A History of Western Art. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. eum.

Here attached an interesting pic I found:

Renoir and van Gogh, though both modern artists, are typically characterized as, respectively, impressionist and post-impressionist painters. The clear differences in technique, color, and overall composition between Renoir’s Pont Neuf (1872), Paris and Oarsmen at Chatou (1879) and van Gogh’s Roses (1890) and Green Wheat Fields, Auvers (1890) are evident on first glance, and represent the stark differences between the two movements. 

Impressionism and post-impressionism are reactions from dialogic situations of the art periods that preceded them (Irvine, 1). Impressionism begins from the rejection of academic works; paintings that featured idealized figures and a balanced composition (Strickland, 96). Impressionists, instead, sought to represent the fleeting moment, and Renoir found his inspiration from cafes and outdoor scenes, as seen in Pont Neuf (1872), Paris and Oarsmen at Chatou (1879) (Strickland, 96-97). Renoir’s dappled brushstrokes and use of depth of field contrast greatly to the post-impressionists, more specifically, van Gogh. Van Gogh and some his fellow post-impressionists found inspiration from the rejection of the previously mentioned fleeting moment. Instead of portraying a moment in time, post-impressionists aimed to introduce more emotive brushstrokes and a flatted composition (Strickland, 112). This gestural handiwork, and reduced depth of field, are clear in van Gogh’s Roses (1890) and Green Wheat Fields, Auvers (1890). 

Its interesting to think about the Artworld’s involvement in the outcomes of impressionism and post-impressionism. In 1874, Renoir, Monet, Degas, and others organized the first “impressionist” exhibition. However, the term hadn’t been coined yet. The term came from the title of one of Monet’s exhibited works, Impression, and a critic of the show had used the term ironically. From then on, the term “impressionism” gained momentum and labeled the movement (“How the Impressionists”).

For the post-impressionists, specifically van Gogh, he never saw success during his lifetime. While his brother supported his career, its clear that the support was one of devotion to family rather than to talent. Van Gogh’s paintings are some of the most recognizable, yet his fame came posthumously when his nephew, and namesake, opened a museum for his paintings. Had the Artworld recognized his talent, and not simply his mental illness, theres no telling where van Gogh’s successes could have ended.

Its fascinating to me how a few people’s opinions can influence art history.

“How the Impressionists Got Their Name.” Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/avant-garde-france/impressionism/a/how-the-impressionists-got-their-name. Accessed 28 Feb. 2019.

Irvine, Professor Martin. Introduction to Modern Art and Modernism: Framework for Case Studies at the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. p. 4.

Strickland, Carol, and John Boswell. The Annotated Mona Lisa: a Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to the Present. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2017.

Modern art always fascinates me. They may not always consist of detailed and delicate lines and shadows to reflect “realism,” in fact, many modern arts does lack the “details” pursued by realism artists. However, modern art treasures to the art world not because of their details or techniques, but the ideas beyond their canvases: modern art is always open for interpretation.

As one of the representatives of post-impressionism art, Georges Seurat is well-known for his pointillism technique of illustrations. To him, the use of colored dots to build up an image means a deviation of thought from both classics and impressionist. However, his choice of using such technique can also be seen as a “mixture” of ideas from both genres above, since he is both pursuing some level of details while still maintaining the vibrancy of his colors.

One of his works, the Seascape at Port-en-Bessin depicts a natural seaside landscape with greenish hills and peaceful blue ocean. However, a closer look at this piece shows that hills may not just be composed of green, and the sea may not be represented only by blueish colors. Seurat once said that Art should be about “harmony; the analogy of the contrary and similar elements of tone, color, and line.” In his seascape painting, Seurat skillfully used an equivalent quantity of warm and cold color “pixels” to express a rather calm picture; a way that not many artists at his time ever attempt to do. In addition, his use of colored dots also leaves an open interpretation of their use. “Are they used just to balance the mood? Or do they represent something present in the picture?”

Another one of his art pieces and perhaps his most famous one is the “Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte.” I this painting, Seurat also made use of harmonious color effect to achieve a calm and leisure beach-side environment. However, as a painter who is still been influenced by impressionist thoughts, he left the emotions and interactions among people on the beach largely “vague.” Therefore opens a “conversation” between viewers and the painting regarding the relationships and mood of people inside this art piece.

If Seurat’s works are not enough for evoking active interpretations, then Rene Magritte is definitely the artist that “plays with meanings” in every one of his art pieces. Magritte’s surrealistic paintings often cause his viewers to execute what psychology called a “cognitive closure,” which is described as the human desire to “fill-in-the-gap” and arrive at certain conclusions. This subconscious intention is the major driving force for people’s open interpretation of his works. 

What is the landscape behind the painting? What does the man look like behind the green apple? A thousand people may have a thousand interpretations regarding their perceptions. However, as Magritte once pointed out about his paintings, that “my images conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.” The beauty of modern art is its ability to evoke interpretations. There are no right or wrong answers, yet the interpretation process they create is always the most precious to its viewers.

The journey through an art museum is often a journey through human history. 

We walked through the period of Medieval to Renaissance, from Neoclassicism to Romanticism; when the rise of photography finally liberated artists from the domain of providing an accurate depiction of the physical world, as they began to explore how paintings can go beyond the ideal of imitating reality, there arrived the era of Modern art. 

But what is left there to paint? Artists like Renoir and Monet focused on portraying moments of impression, accentuating the changing qualities of light with visible brushstrokes. It departs from capturing the still moments of life, and instead attempts to project a particular segment of their memories onto the canvas. By doing so, artists seek to capture a feeling or experience—something completely subject to their own interpretations as well as the expression of their individual ideals. 

Claude Monet (French, 1840 – 1926), Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1983.1.29

As time went on, this presence of subjectivity and individuality became more and more dominant in the art scene. Artists like Picasso and Braque defied the traditional expectations and explore alternative ways of constructing visual experiences of their own; Rothko employed significant open space and expressive use of colors as a profound form of communications; Pollock ascertained the journey toward making a work of art could be as important as the work of art itself. Throughout the 20th century, a variety of materials were applied, and a number of methods were experimented; they expanded and developed the definition and possibilities available to the artists for the creation of new artworks, even when it meant forcing the audience to take the trouble to question their own preconceptions about art.  

Jackson Pollock (American, 1912 – 1956), Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950, oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1976.37.1

Art is evolutionary, and great art movements are revolutionary. Bearing the influence of what came before them, each generation of artists heroically march into the unknown and comment upon the reality in the way that encompasses the fundamental changes of technology, society, and philosophy. As the world is fleeting as it is transforming, their works help us apprehend the zeitgeist of the days in which they had trailblazed. 

References:

Irvine, Martin. Introduction to Modern Art and Modernism: Framework for Case Studies at the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Laurie Schneider Adams, A History of Western Art. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.

Strickland, Carol, and John Boswell. The Annotated Mona Lisa: a Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to the Present. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2017.

From observing the positions of celestial objects to improve calendars to trying to revealing the possible law of time and space in the universe, the human has never stopped exploring the philosophy of time and space from various different fields. In the art realm, no matter the linear perspective in Renaissance or the flatness of abstract expressionism, artists also devoted themselves into the exploration of a proper way to represent space under certain conditions and within certain timeframes.

When we look at time and space in the Modern period, the impressionism firstly stands out because of its feature of using colors to capture natural lights and shadows. Impressionists didn’t blend color smoothly, leaving the obvious tracks of strokes. They were rejected by the Académie’s Salon but eventually had their own Salon (Salon des Refusés). They focused no more on the historical events but preferred to depict temporary life and natural landscapes. Instead of focusing on details, they were better at capturing the momentary effects of lights to creating an overall visual effect. Monet’s series of paintings usually depict different lights on the same object at different times of a day or year. Especially his painting series of the West Façade of the Rouen Cathedral shows how the change of time conditions would exert an impact on the given space. A revolution of painting techniques has been ignited by impressionists, meanwhile, the topic time and space has been renovated.

Rouen Cathedral (Monet series)  There are more (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_Cathedral_(Monet_series) )

Instead of leaving an obvious track of strokes on the canvas like Impressionism, Surrealists depicts scenes with more elaborated photographic precision. However, different from Realists, Surrealists never just depict a normal scenario or still life from daily life: they are obsessed with illogical scenes and desire to emphasize the strong contradiction between the dream and reality. Those features of surrealism are no exception of the social context: the cruel reality due to the first and second World War created the unnerving atmosphere, which was contradictory to people’s longing for peace.

Source: Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory#/media/File:The_Persistence_of_Memory.jpg

The Persistence of Memory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory#/media/File:The_Persistence_of_Memory.jpg)

A very famous piece of surrealism is Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Hanging a soft melting clock on the tree and laying watches on the beach, Dali used “the exactitude of realist painting techniques” to depict a strange dream-like scene that can happen in reality. Although Dali said The Persistence of Memory is not inspired by Einstein’s theory of relativity, four clocks with blurry shapes might still hint at the perception of time in surrealism. Whether time has a specific shape, how would time look like if it were projected on a two-dimensional surface, in what conditions will time and space be warped when looking at the melting clocks, people will have such questions bursting out. Different from Monet’s artwork, Dali’s painting skills in The Persistence of Memory are not used to capture the natural light in order to reflect the fleeting time. Instead, his “exactitude of realist painting techniques” are used to represent the blurriness of boundary in the dream and the hollowness and loneliness in mind, following the quest on the time and space.

Monet and Dali are artists of different genres that are born in different time and space, but they both have explored the time and space in some of their artworks. Although different genres of art have different features and there might be seemingly gap and deviation between different genres, time and space have been the universal concern. The frame or the suit of time and space will still be the topic of many artworks, literature or scientific researches in different time and space in the future.

References

Art History Education Videos “Impressionism: Overview” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuOonogw-TM

Charles Baudelaire, “The Salon of 1859: The Modern Public and Photography” and ” The Painter of Modern Life” (pp.19-27).

Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,”

Wikipedia “Surrealism” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

Wikipedia “Rouen Cathedral (Monet series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_Cathedral_(Monet_series)#Painting_Light

Wikipedia “The Persistence of Memory” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory

Modern Art period is long period and the content of modern art is very complicate because art in the modern period not only heritage from the classical art, but there were so many genres generated from the dynamic period, from impressionism to the Abstraction. However, what define “Modern Art” and why define an artwork as Impressionism, Realism, Post Impressionism, or other genres? Initially, I thought Modern Art must be “modern” and must be far different from classical art, however, after knowing more about the history of Modern Art and by using the method of semiotics, I found that Modern Art is not only defined by the skills, techniques, or materials of paintings, but also defined by the ideas and thoughts of a period that artists who begun embracing freedom, inherence, and feelings. The artworks and artists of the Modern Art period from a dialogic situation and differentiate the period with other periods of art history.

Before the impressionism, Realism in the 19th century is the mainstream of art and painting, and even though it reflected the reality of society and industrial life, what I found about Realism still heritage the skills and technique of classical art, while it adopted real life and depicted the original life of people and the Industrial Revolution. Photography was invented and assisted the classical art in many aspects, including learning on perspective and locomotion (Laurie Schneider Adams, 2011). However, if photography could do the same thing as the artist, what is the meaning of art in the context of history and real life?

Starting from Impressionism, the artist chose to depict moments by adding the understanding and feeling of artists themselves. During the visiting in the National Gallery of Art, I saw a series of picture draw by Manet. His early paintings were not realism, but it is also not the same as other paintings of Impressionism. Manet adopted both Realism and Impressionism style in his early painting life, the figures in his paintings are not romantic or ideal but show the normal shapes and moments, and at the same time, show the artist’s “individual freedom”. His later works showed more features of Impressionism by using blurring and depicting “slice of life”. I also found that his paintings have something common with Renoir’s paintings. Both of the artists created an environment of an endless surrounding within the limited canvas and showed the imagination of artists. Monet’s famous paintings depict more about the environment and create more about the feelings, the shift of lights and passing time. Manet combines realism with Impressionism, while Monet seems to adopt more elements of Impressionism in his artworks and his paintings developed the Impressionism and were used to represent the Impressionism as an individual genre.

Moreover, Monet also utilized the feature of brush and color to create abstraction. Explicit depiction of objects is a way to judge the skills of an artist, however, Monet did not want to show the skills of painting but showed his ideas and feelings within a painting. I read the introduction of the Birth of Abstraction in the National Gallery of Art, and it is said that “paintings that were no longer pictures of the visible world but just…paintings”. Even though Abstraction was thought to generate from the 20th century, Monet and other artists who lived in the earlier period might influence later artists and art genres by the idea of replacing objects, the idea of expressing the artists’ feelings, and the spirit of revolution in arts.

Art cannot be understood without its context and history. At first glance, some artworks might be considered as drafts or unskilled sketches because there was no painting skills or technique shown in the artworks. However, “Art is not a ‘profession'” (H. H. Arnason &Elizabeth C. Mansfield, 2012). If an artwork were put within the context of meaning, it could construct a dialogue between the audience and the artists and express the meaning of it.

Reference:

Introduction of the Birth of Abstraction. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

H. H. Arnason and Elizabeth C. Mansfield. History of Modern Art. 7th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Excerpts.

Laurie Schneider Adams, A History of Western Art. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Excerpts.

Prof. Irvine, “Framing an Interface for Modern Art and Modernism”

Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso are one of the most famous artists in the Modern period. Their artworks are also one of the most representative pieces for some genres: Impressionism and Surrealism. Although Claude Monet is famous for Impressionism, and Pablo Picasso is one of the beginners doing Cubism, however, they do not only draw the paintings they are famous for. For example, Monet has Sunrise and Jerusalem Artichoke Flowers. Sunrise is a typical impressionistic work, while Jerusalem Artichoke Flowers is more like a realistic art piece. At the same time, Picasso draws many versions of Guitar. Some versions are pretty cubistic, but some others are very surrealistic.

These comparisons indicate that every artist might have tried several styles and genres to express their ideas in their life. It is not appropriate to simply say that Monet is an impressionistic artist. According to the study of semiotics, there should be some pattern or prototype among the works for each artist. Adam mentions that the use of colored shadow and reflection is Monet’s expertise. In this case, no matter which genre Monet’s art pieces belong to, the shadow and reflection are the prototypes of Claude Monet’s artwork.

For the series of Guitar, Picasso does not only try it on two-dimensional work. He also makes sculptures of guitar, which is a three-dimensional piece, becoming one of the pioneers of Cubism. In some words, Picasso also changes the medium of expressing art: any material besides paper and canvas can also be used as the medium reflecting the artist’s idea.

Indeed, the Modern period has never had been defined before Monet, Picasso and other artists shaping it. The development of every genre is actually a fusion process of many artists’ attempts and personal styles.