Modern Art

“Modern Art,” used as a general heading to describe artistic production during the period covering the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Western art, contains a detailed variety of styles, techniques, and interpretations. Impressionism, which stands out when modernism in art is discussed, symbolizes not only a rebellion against the academic understanding of art, but also a radical change in how artists perceive reality, the world, life, and art. This change marks the beginning of a process that fundamentally altered the course of Western art and brought a new interpretation to the traditional aesthetic understanding. The ideological, intellectual, and economic transformations that came to the fore worldwide, especially at the beginning of the twentieth century, changed the balance of power, while the reflections of developments that eliminated the single-centered perspective in the world of culture and art continue to expand the horizon of “contemporary Western art” with each passing day. Written by art historian and academic Nilüfer Öndin, Modern Art addresses the development process of modernism in art in every aspect and by establishing cause-and-effect relationships. Offering the reader a route to follow on an art-historical plane, Öndin ensures that they can progress without losing their way within the “explosion of style and technique” experienced at the beginning of the twentieth century, and thus evaluate the elapsed process within a simple, holistic, understandable, and informative framework. Modern Art also touches on the change in aesthetic judgment criteria, how the two world wars transformed “reality,” how the new political regimes that replaced the imperial order affected social life, the intellectual world, and the memory of individuals, and the reflections of capitalism, which came to the agenda as one of the effects of the industrial revolution, on production. It helps the reader develop a solid idea of “Modern Art” with its sociological, historical, economic, and intellectual infrastructure in their mind.