This paper will examine the development of the Modernist movement in art with special
consideration being given to the increased emphasis which was placed on individualism and the
originality of the artist as European and American culture changed during the period from the early
nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The development of the concept of the Avant Garde
which emphasized the creativity of the individual will also be traced.
Modernism had its beginnings during the Romanticera of the early nineteenth century. During the
decade of the 1830’s the notion of the artist as being primarily a skilled craftsman gave way to the idea
of the artist as a creative, primarily male, “genius” who was an eccentric outsider, isolated from the
prevailing culture often not appreciated during his lifetime. This notion was cultivated by the artists
themselves. Cliches expressing this isolation such as “the artist must suffer” or the expression “starving
artist” have survived into the present era.
Although one might have a first impression that he was just crazy, Henry Darger is a relatively recent
example of the isolated, eccentric artist whose often beautiful, but sometimes disturbingly violent
paintingsof an unreal fantasy world inhabited by naked little girls with penises in combat with evil
soldiers, some wearing graduation hats as part of their uniforms,were discovered in his closet shortly
before his death in 1973. Since then, a bookand a DVD featuring his work have been published.
Although Darger’s art is unique he nonetheless had dialogue with existing work. His drawings of little
girls were begun by taking tracings from comic book or children’s book characters such as Little Miss
Muffet, Little Annie Rooney, Dorothy from Frank Baum’s Oz books and photographs of Shirley Temple.
He also inserted photo-collage of soldiers into some of his large watercolor scenes.
Underlying the Romantic view of the artist is the notion that the source of creative originality is a
spontaneous, divinely inspired spark of creativity to be found within the artist in his isolation rather
than from a dialog with existing work. The artist, is considered to return from the mountain top or the
wilderness within with his message to humanity much as if he were a mythological hero or the prophet
of a secular religion called Art which was still believed to have an influence on politics and culture at that
time.
According to Jessica Millen1 the historical context of the Romantic obsession with originality had three
principal elements. The first of these was a reaction against the advent of mass production and
commodity culture. An unoriginal work was considered to be akin to a mass produced commodity.
Although it might not be a mass-produced copy, the value of a derivative work was nonetheless
lessened because its concept did not originate in isolation from all preceding work. The impossibility of
such a complete isolation was ignored or denied if a good approximation to originality, which gave the
illusionof the uniqueness of a work, was achieved.
The second element of the Romantic obsession with originality was the feeling that the human voice
was being drowned out in an age of technological advancement. Artists felt a need to assert their own
individuality and to express the essence of their humanity in an era of the Industrial Revolution and
increased urbanization. The spiritual quality of this essence was connected to originality in the manner
described above as artistic inspiration apparently came from out of nothing tangible.
The third element of the Romantic obsession with originality was that it was becoming more difficult
to come up with something new. If repetition and imitation were becoming more difficult to avoid, the
“demand” for originality grew as the “supply” diminished. The modernist feeling that there was plenty
of room for exploration had not yet been enabled by the increased casting off of tradition which came
along with the radically changing culture later in the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century.
In music, for example, the twelve notes of the well -tempered scale can only be sequenced to form
an interesting or pleasing melodic line in a limited number of ways according to the rules of classical
composition and it became increasingly difficult to avoid cliches in classical composition. Even a pre-
Romantic composer such as Mozart, a great “borrower”, was considered to be “conventional , but
good”. He developed the form of the piano concerto in a series of subscription concerts in order to
give the experts something interesting as well as provide an enjoyable experience for the general
concert –going public. During the Romantic era, his reputationwas not as great as the more innovative
and rule-breaking Beethoven, who was thought to be a somewhat crazy composer, known to the public
primarily for some dance and march tunes.
Beethoven was approached by a man carrying one of his manuscripts who pointed out a passage and
said: “Look here you have doubled your fifths. This is not allowed.” Beethoven said: “Let me see that.”
He looked at the passage, handed back the manuscript and said: “I allow it.”Beethoven personified the
Romantic notion of the eccentric genius. My music literature professor used to exclaim “Great Scott !
the man must have been deaf!” (which of course he was).
Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system is an example ofan attempt to overcome the limitations of
traditional composition. The somewhat esoteric music produced by this system has never come into
widespread usage however.
The later resurgences of obsession with originality which occurred well into the late 20th century had
different historical contexts, but the Romantic notions of originality and creative genius had become
accepted by artists and the public at some level throughout the period. Cezanne, for example, was
considered to be on a track to originality by his fellow painters. The Impressionists evidently did not
consider themselves to be making as radical a break with tradition as Cezanne.Cezanne regarded
El Greco as the master painter most to be emulated , but he “couldn’t help making Cezannes” Trusty p.1
The often used metaphor of seeing farther by standing on the shoulders of giants, which dates
back as far as Bernard of Chartres in the twelfth century, is in complementary opposition to the notion
of reinventing the wheel. An obsession with originality would seem to ignore the complementary nature
of these paired concepts. A more balanced approach would allow that imitation and copying had validity
beyond the initial training of students.
The conceptions of originality as arising either from within the naturally gifted artist (something from
nothing) or from a dialog with existing work has been posited by Millen as being poles of a
complementary pairing of opposites.2 The first of these opposites is creatio, which embodies the idea
of creation from within or from an intangible supernatural force that works through the artist (the
artist as prophet). “ Creatiois associated with neither hard word nor skill, but within an unconscious
forcethat results in a workfree of any borrowed elements”3. This idea of natural talent “embodies the
Romantic ideal of originality as individual freedom from cultural influence”4 (the artist as an outsider).
But pure creatioresults in a gap between art and its audience. To communicate some meaning, art
must resonate with the feelings and experiences of its audience in a way it can recognize and feel
without prior knowledge of the intent or theoretical stance of the artist. This need for a work to contain
somrthing recognizable implies the existence of a cultural tradition to which the artist must touch base
in order to communicate. Millen cites the pole represented by working within a tradition as being
described by the term inventio.
Inventio involves the reworking of existing works to form new art without any inspiration. There
would be some, perhaps not conscious, choices involved in creating the reworked art and this would
imply that completely pure inventio does not exist no more than does its opposite pole . Inventio
involves hard work, skill, training and wide knowledge of existing art.
Someone who might assert that an artist could not develop her/his own style because they
knew too much art history would be speaking from a Romantic point of view, espousing creatio . They
regardnot being able to develop one’s own unique style as a handicap. Someone like Linda Nochlin
who asserts that “original work (and thought) is invariably attained in dialogue with already existing
work”5 is speaking from a point of view , espousing inventio, that regards creative originality as a
Romantic myth.
Francis A. Waterhouse takes the position that Romantic originality could be a recognition and
celebrity-seeking gimmick which involves substituting the different for the difficult, the novel for the
traditional.6 Romantic originality (creatio) would not be acceptable to Waterhouse as a way of
avoiding the difficulty of being noticed without having first demonstrated a superior skill and
craftsmanship within established conventions (inventio).
Waterhouse further decries the public acceptance of Romantic originality in the nineteenth century
and of the ever more eccentric “isms” which followed in the next hundred years. Heclaims that the
public has been gullible in accepting art which lacked grounding in the “essentials” because only the
aristocracy had leisure time to develop discriminating taste. This is reminiscent of the argument that
the masses were not capable of governing at the time the electoral college was established in the United
States. Moreover, as will be pointed out below, public acceptance of Romantic expressiveness did not
come as quickly as Waterhouse seems to imply.
Waterhouse’s examples are not very convincing, however. The music of Chopin, (in his Polonaises for
example), is not without nobility as Waterhouse claims. The use of divergent rhythms is not at all a
substitute of the different for the difficult. Try playing Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, which every now
and then calls for the right and left hands to play different rhythms simultaneously , to appreciate this.
Waterhouse claims that Corot could not draw faces, but that he could draw well enough to produce
landscapes of “haunting lovliness”7.
A better example might be drawn from later on in the century. We are informed in art history that
Picasso was an accomplished portrait artist early in his career, but that he was competitive with other
artists such as Matisse in maintaining a leadership role in the avantgarde of the 20th century . They did a
lot of “borrowing” from each other and Picasso’s work has been termed “derivative” by critics who
espouse a philosophy of creatio .
In some ways it seems that Picasso’s public successled him to buy
into the myth of his own genius later in his life when he produced work which seems to fit
Waterhouse’s paradigm of substituting the different for the difficult . Tom Wolfe, on the other
hand, describes Picasso as handling fame without deserting his “bohemian values”8 ( whatever
those might be).
As an interesting aside, Andrew Trusty gives Picasso credit for best stating the principle, “Good artists
borrow; great artists steal”. This doctrine apparently originated with art professor Marvin Henry Bartel,
but has been restated by composer Igor Stravinsky as, “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal” and
again by T.S.Eliot as,“Immature poets borrow; mature poets steal”. Trusty p.3,4
Picasso is often considered to have produced no “significant “ work after Guernica, but he was
creating original work through an extensive dialogue with existing work rather than as an isolated
“genius”. His late work often consisted of homage through interpretations of works by Delacroix (Les
Femmes d’Algier),Manet (Le Dejeuner surl’Herbe), Cranach, Courbet, Rembrandt , Poussin and an
extensive series based on works of Velasquez such as Las Meninas and the portrait of the Infanta
Margarita. Those who decry his work after Guernica as a decline, possibly think that his art should have
continued to be political and didactic.
Although the Romantics believed in creative originality (creatio) as embodying freedom from cultural
influences, they still believed that art had a moral and educational function and had the power to
improve society and was essential to social progress. Eisenman9cites the example of the views of the
Socialist critic John Ruskin (of Ruskin vs. Whistler fame later in the 19th century) toward the wo0rk of
landscape painters of the Romantic era such as Constable and Turner. For Ruskin, the genre of
landscape painting, even though it focused on representation of nature , was not free of moral
implications.
Constable, a Tory whose views on society were opposed to those of Ruskin, nonetheless had the
ambition “scientifically to record for purposes of instruction and moral suasion, his vision of England as
richly productive, a land of social peace and hierarchic stability…(his large paintings) were intended to
carry the ideological burden of history paintings: they were to enshrine for future generations the
conservative social vision of the class of industrious rural gentry to which the artist belonged.
German (and American) landscape painters of the Romantic era such as Friedrich had similar views
of landscape ‘s task of reconciling self and other, nature and society through the unique procedures of
landscapemimesis and idealization”.10
The rise of a middle class capable of supporting the arts in the 19th century freed the artist from the
oppressionof wealthy patronage. But the new bourgeois often cultivated a taste for the arts as a
status symbol and artists became aware of a gap between their expressiveness and a public they
“viewed as ‘capricious and simple –minded’ (Shelly). . . Romantic artists finally were unsure about just
what values, morals and precepts should be represented in their works.”11
Eisenman 12uses the concept of the “public sphere” to explain what happened to change the idea of
the nature of art in the mid-nineteenth century. The public sphere was defined by the philosopher
JurgenHabernmas as being “that realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion
can be formed”.Eisenman discusses the manner in which the bourgeois public sphere which existed in
the Romantic era began to suffer a decline in consensus in the late Romantic age. He cites signs of
working -class dissent such as “trade unions, working-class corresponding (debating) societies, utopian
socialism, dissenting churches , feminism and an expanding radical press” as being signs of the breaking
up of the bourgeois public sphere.
Eisenman cites the example of Constable’s late work which became more painterly and expressive,
(i.e. moredescriptive by the term creatio), as political and cultural dissidence became more prevalent in
English society. Constable loosened his hold on mimesis and painted his feelings. He wrote: “Painting for
me is but another word for feeling.”13The conservative social vision of his earlier landscapes could no
longer be maintained. He wrote “:“Though I am here in the midst of the world, I am out of it, and am
happy. I have a kingdom of myown, both fertile and populous, my landscapes and my children”14 The
increased bravura which Constable had earlier condemned as an “attempt to do something beyond the
truth”15 now becamecharacteristic of his late work. Turner, Constable and the German painter Casper
Friedrich ,all responding to the turmoil of their times with works of increased painterliness, strange
color,personal expression and abstraction, came to be regarded as “prescient forerunners of the
Impressionists and Expressionists”16
Eisenman17 points out that the dichotomy of representation and abstraction, the doubting of the truth
of representations like the early landscapes of Constable, and the embracing of the materiality of the
formof a painting (e.g. increased painterliness and strong color) is characteristic of and constitutes a
definition of“modernism”(orthe closely related term“modernity”)18 . According to
Eisenman, modernism occurs “ whenever a well-entrenched set of cultural traditions (for
example, those associated with Classicism) collides with a new complex of social and political
hierarchies.18 Eisenman points out that the general term “modernism” can also be applied to
earlier work such as the imagery of William Blake or Francisco Goya. The modernist
movement in art, whose development is being examined in this paper, is represented by
Eisenman19 as being one of three strategies adopted by painters in response to the collapse of the
bourgeois public sphere during the Second Republic in France (1848-51). (Constable died in
1837) These developments took place primarily in France, but had similar manifestations
elsewhere in Europe.
The first of the three adopted strategies posited by Eisenman was to settle for a culturally
diminished role for art. Artists who adopted this strategy produced “ideologically pliant,
culturally compliant and stylistically eclectic Academic and official painting. It was an art
designed to entertain a middle class audience. It was termed “the art of the JusteMiileu” or
“golden mean” because it attempted to blend basically irreconcilable revolutionary and
monarchical traditions. Eisenmancites the example of Antoine-Louis Bayre’s sculpture Lion
Crushing a Serpent (1833)as being an allegorical celebration of the July Revolution of 1830,
the resultant constitutional monarchy of Lois-Philippe and the Orleanist compromise. So the
sculpturecould be interpreted “as the French people crushing the Bourbon dynasty or as
Orleanist law destroying Republican anarchy.”20
At this time the Academy encouraged a revival of history painting as a hybridized genre
(“genrehistorique”) which emphasized the achievements of grandshommesof French history
ratherthan large-scale paintings with politically tendentious subjects taken from Greek or
Roman antiquity.Although it had a classical theme, Eisenman cites Thomas Couture’s