Symptoms of Modernity (I)
This symptom describes who sees and is seen.
E.g., Mary Cassatt's In the Loge (1878)
What is "Spectatorship & The Gaze"?
This annual public exhibition in Paris was the most important site for an artist’s visibility and success in the nineteenth century.
What is the Salon?
This symptom refers to the massive growth of factories, railways, and mechanized labor, changing both landscapes and daily life.
What is "Industrialization"?
A large Romantic painting depicting survivors of a shipwreck, blending eyewitness reportage with dramatic theatricality.
What is Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa (1819)
This movement rejected idealization and sought unvarnished depictions of contemporary labor and social conditions.
What is Realism?
This symptom describes the increasing impact of goods, entertainment, and café culture on modern life.
What is "Commodification & Mass Culture"?
This institution regulated artistic training and enforced aesthetic norms until the late 19th century.
What is the Académie des Beaux-Arts (the French Academy)?
Artists like Monet and Caillebotte depicted streets, boulevards, and crowds to explore this hallmark of 19th-century life.
What is "Urbanization"?
This Impressionist painting captures a bustling Haussmannized Paris street with elevated viewpoint and loose brushwork.
What is Claude Monet's Boulevard des Capucines (1873)
This movement was characterized by smooth surfaces and antique themes.
What is Neoclassicism?
This symptom describes growing sense of unease in modern life.
What is "Anxiety & Alienation"?
This genre ranked lowest among the Academy's hierarchy?
What is Landscape?
This term describes the unequal distribution of wealth and status, often highlighted in art through peasants, workers, or bourgeois spectators.
What is "Class Inequality"?
This Pre-Raphaelite painting shows the Holy Family in a detailed English workshop, emphasizing realism and domestic piety.
What is John Everett Millais's Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50)
These painters emphasized immediate, subjective perception.
What is the Impressionists?
Trains, telegraphs, photography, acceleration.
E.g., Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913)
What is "Technological Change & Speed"?
In 1863, this alternative exhibition was created after thousands of submissions were rejected by the official jury.
What is the Salon des Refusés?
Borrowing from African, Oceanic, or folk art, modern artists used this to challenge European norms while reflecting colonial power dynamics.
What is "Primitivism"?
A Neo-Impressionist work showing a leisure scene on the banks of the Seine, with meticulous pointillist technique and social observation.
What is Georges Seurat A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884–86)
This movement embraced fragmentation, simultaneity, and the speed of modern life.
What is Futurism?
Self portraits, solitude, flâneurs.
What is "Individualism"?
This prestigious award provided years of state-funded study in Rome and was considered essential for ambitious history painters.
What is the Prix de Rome?
Malevich’s Black Square exemplifies this shift away from recognizable objects toward shape, color, and surface.
What is "Abstraction"?
Radical Suprematist painting reducing art to pure geometric form, hung in an “icon corner” to signal a new conception of painting.
What is Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915)
Characterized by their use of geometric shapes, these painters rejected representation and emphasized "pure artistic feeling."
What is the Suprematists?