Art History, Parisian modernist art Assignments | Online Assignments Services

Standard histories generally link the rise of modernist art in Paris to a triumphant arc of intellectual, technological, and political ‘advancement’ that starts with the French Revolution. The argument generally claims that a new sense of personhood emerged with modernity, an understanding of the self and society that required new possibilities within art. However, not all modern artists embraced the promise of modern life. Certain proposed novel visual styles that critiqued and at times outright rejected the changing world around them.

What might progress and doubt about progress ‘look like’ in modernist art? How can we read such opinions about modern life into an artist’s visual style? Were their different degrees of artist’s anticipation of progress? Were there different motivations for doubting the modern world as an instance of advancement? Did such differences inform the varying manners in which modernist artists challenged visual mimesis, foregrounded subjective experience, redefined technique, or proposed a new relationship between art and social life? Can an artist still be considered a visual ‘modernist’ if they doubt modern culture’s claims of progress?

Your 4-5 page essay will compare four works of art by four different Parisian artists of the nineteenth and/or twentieth centuries. Two of those works will be rooted in a faith in modern progress, and two will reflect doubt about those claims.

Your essay will be based in close visual analysis and relevant contextualization of each artwork, and will close with a comparative discussion. Please situate each work in both its historical context and art historical context. Discuss how the changes that defined modern society are present in the work, not only as subject matter but in the artist’s visual means. Through close, focused visual analysis demonstrate how your chosen artworks are either a statement of progress, critical of modern culture, or perhaps even both. Then in closing, explain what we learn about the relationship of visual style to the celebration, acceptance, or rejection of modern life

Your essay should be 4-5 pages long, double-spaced, in New York Times Roman 12-point font, and with 1’’ margins. Please dispense with long introductory paragraphs of general statements. Briefly introduce the gist of your argument and use the majority of the essay to treat the artworks in detail.