Investing in Art: Investing in Modern Art

De: Artie Convesso

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Modern Art is different to Contemporary Art. Although the English language allows the words “modern” and “contemporary” to be interchangeable, in the art world the genres of Modern and Contemporary art are very different. Modern Art spans the period from the end of the Impressionist period, which was approximately 1880 until the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary art then spans the period from the 1960s and 1970s up until the present day. In the art world, Modern Art is usually explained as being the point at which artists felt comfortable in expressing their inner visions and putting those visions down onto whatever medium they worked in. It was also the time when artists started to use real life as a subject matter for their work and also when they became free to become innovative and allow experimentation to show through in their work. Abstract painting and forms became much more the vogue when Modern Art came to the fore. No longer did some artists wish to conform to the styles of their predecessors and instead of painting, drawing or otherwise capturing exactly what they saw and putting it down on to the medium of their choice, they felt free to depict the representation of what they saw, felt or the emotion they were feeling at the time. Modern Art became the genre when art no longer needed to actually represent something which was recognizable. Whilst many artists embrace this new, radical idea many felt that their art was being betrayed by this “modern” movement and initially the artists who embraced this form were decried by their compatriots and patrons alike. The art world was turned on its head to a much greater extent than it had ever been previously. Artists using the modern style try to portray the very essence of the life of something; what they are attempting to do is to put across the “idea” of something rather than a likeness. As all artists interpret things very differently, therefore all “forms” of style were abandoned and no works conformed any longer to any particular “school” or “style”. This trend stretched across every genre of the arts; dance, music, sculpture and in its purist form, has always been highly controversial. In the “Painted Word” Tom Wolfe explained that sometimes that what the artist is trying to convey is so abstract and subtle that an explanation as to what the theory is behind the depiction is required. In some galleries, these explanations are actually placed beside the works. Some artists however baulked at the thought of their thought processes actually being explained as what they wanted was for their work to speak to every individual who was viewing it; in other words what they wanted the art to do was to convey visually to the onlooker what their feelings were. This is a very difficult thing to do and what was achieved more often than not in the early days (and indeed through much of the period) was confusion and misunderstanding. This led very much to art becoming something which was either loved or loathed in equal measure.