The Modern Condition and The Artist's Response Essay

The Modern Condition and The Artist's Response - Essay Example In Modern Art 1851-1929 the author, Richard Brettell, says that an obvious but unmediated way that the artist represented the change of their time is by the subject of their work. By painting modern inventions, such as the Eiffel Tower or a lunch at a new cafe in downtown Paris, the artists was recording modernity. Because one abject can be represented in many ways it helps us analyze how the artists felt about the subject. For example, images of the "most important single achievements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries", or the modern city, were very popular subjects. For the purpose of this essay, we will look at how the question of Marxism and the answer of capitalism - and the results from the debate - have slowly transformed society up until this point, affecting and changing social class and consciousness over time and how these changes have been reflected in art forms. Marxism as a whole spurred the onslaught of a different sociological vehicle for governing the masses, a vehicle which contradicted the arguably excessive range of capitalism and what it stood for. By definition then this conflict reflected in art and how the psyche of the collective human race responded to either one or the other. Blamires stated that Marxists saw the chief evil to be eradicated as being the oppression by the capitalists and their allies of the working class (Blamires, pp. 404). Marxism advocated the administration and equalizing of society - all are equal - but failed to take into account the general urge of individuality as experienced by every human being. Due to the competitive and adaptive nature of capitalism, with its emphasis on individuality and the rights of every human, Marxist philosophy and strictures were revealed to be too oppressive, in a grand gesture of irony; human beings desired freedom and unique expression, and a system that regulated and repr essed anything that promoted defiance was seen as limiting and unnecessary. Expressing the notion of change, even gradual, was an easy task for the painters and artists of the transitional times between Marxism/communism and capitalism. Painting life and people in current situations was a means of expressing identification, for self and others. Examples of such works would include Manet's 'Un bar aux Folies-Bergre' (The Bar at the Folies-Bergre) or 'Masked Ball at the Opera'. These images depict a changing time and most notably, a gathering of people and a celebration of life in its individualized freedom. By definition then, these paintings can be seen as symbolic of free will and its execution, in rebellion against oppression and repression as defined by the anti-liberal motion of the Marxist embodiment of social norms. Capitalism in itself is not an absolute expression of individuality. There are still classes and regulatory boundaries, but these are more manageable. As Abrams stated, "the older usage of the term 'capitalism' no longer describes the system as it presently functions". This is implied in other forms of art, such as sculpture and architecture. Because of the individualist drive of competitiveness and self-expression as engendered by capitalism, inter-people conflicts based on viewpoints and opinion become a definite occurrence, and are expressed in art forms