Major Works of Modern Art

This is a chronological survey that traces major trends in Western modern art from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, with a focus on artists and artworks that have contributed to the definition of various styles and movements. You will learn to identify major Western art trends in the 20th century such as Impressionism, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Conceptual Art and develop an understanding of how social and cultural factors reflects on the production of works of art. Cultural concepts such as modernity, modernism, the avantgarde, formalism, anti-formalism, postmodernism and the contemporary are discussed and creates the grounds for a critical insight into how a painting, sculpture, installation or performance become “major” examples of their “cultural” time. This is no doubt an exclusionary history, based on set of criteria bound to a specific value system that is shaped by various forces of modernity, experienced initially in European art centers. We will thus also question what kind of criteria we use to determine a modern masterpiece, and how ideological positions determine what we view as major or minor.