Learning to Look at Modern Art

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by Mary Acton

Routledge

Due/Published July 2004, 360 pages, paper

ISBN 0415238129

This volume addresses some of the questions most commonly asked about modern art: why does it appear so different from the art of the past? Why is it so difficult to understand? How should we approach it? Mary Acton suggests that the best way to understand modern art is to look closely at it, and to consider the different elements that make up each art work - composition, space and form, light and color and subject matter. Her guide to art of the modern and postmodern period covers key art movements including Expressionism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, Surrealism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Young British Art, and artistic forms such as architecture and design, sculpture and installation as well as works on canvas. The book is illustrated with color and black and white images by the artists; designers and architects, ranging from Picasso and Matisse to Le Corbusier, Andy Warhol and Rachel Whiteread are discussed.

Contents

1 Modernism and Tradition: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso 1907
2 Modernism and the Dynamic View
3 Marcel Duchamp and his inluence on Conceptual Art
4 Modern Art and the Idea of Expressionism and Self Expression
5 New Concepts of Composition
6 The Dynamic Interpretation of Space and Form
7 The Dynamic Interpretation of Light and Colour
8 Twentieth Century Treatment of Traditional Subjects