Modern Era Notes

The twentieth century is part of the modern era, and this era has included artists working in many styles and approaches. Yet the term Modernism is used by most scholars only to refer to the artistic styles that call attention to the processes of making art. Often these styles include the use of modern materials and technology to express the activity of the artist as creator and to depict the essence of the modern model of reality revealed by science. According to this view, Modernism in painting is the exploration of the way in which that medium is basically a design made on a flat surface, while Modernist sculpture stresses, above all, the arrangement of shapes in three-dimensional space. The critic Clement Greenburg summarized Modernism as "art [used] to call attention to art." (G9-953)