Thoughts on the Chaos of Art History

From the Pre-Raphaelites to Postmodernism. I love labeling art – but the more I learn, the harder it gets. A reflection on the messiness of art history and why not everything fits into neat little boxes anymore.

I'm a person who always seeks nuance.
I struggle to see things as black or white. Whether it's about politics, people, or art, I see that kind of thinking as inauthentic and sometimes even harmful. I want to understand contexts and contradictions, sometimes to the point where it becomes counterproductive. I'm the devil's advocate even when I don't want to be.

I'm rarely satisfied with a simplified truth.
At the same time, I love to categorize. Especially when it comes to art. I want to be able to place artworks within a movement or style. But the more I learn about art, especially modern art, the messier it gets.

This post is about that. An obvious truth to real art historians, maybe, but still something I keep thinking more and more about as I learn and as I try to categorize new artworks.

I’ve started to see art history as well-paved roads that branch off into smaller country lanes, then splinter into thousands of paths before eventually disappearing into the raw terrain that is the contemporary art landscape.

For me, the shift begins somewhere around the Pre-Raphaelites and the Impressionists. Not necessarily the first to diverge, but their influence helped spark the diversity that followed. The Pre-Raphaelites looked backward but brought new ideas about beauty and symbolism. Impressionists liberated the brushwork, how they used color, and how they viewed the world. I see them as the first true branches in my metaphorical road. Before that, there were long straightaways, some curves, and sharp turns. But we were still on the same road, where new ideas replaced old ones.

From there came the late 19th and early 20th centuries with countless new movements. Some replaced what came before, while others ran parallel. Symbolism, Synthetism, Art Nouveau, Dada, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism. Each had its own visual language, theory, and sometimes even a manifesto to live and create art by. They were communities of artists, not just styles. Each had its own distinct visual vocabulary. Here, the big roads had branched out and become many, but it’s still relatively easy to know which one you’re on.

But when we reach the interwar period, and especially after World War II, the idea of a linear artistic progression starts to dissolve. Artists no longer seemed to be trying to overthrow the movement before them. Instead, they began borrowing from all directions. A single painting might bear traces of Futurism, Classicism, and Surrealism at the same time. Many artists no longer wanted to belong to a group or be defined by a movement.

There were still ideas, directions, and temporary associations, like Braque’s and Picasso’s retour à l'ordre, but they left little more than ripples in the ocean the art world had become.

At the same time, the world was shrinking. Print, travel, mail correspondence and later, the internet allowed art to travel faster, further, and with greater impact. Artists began drawing inspiration from more sources than ever before. What had once been a geographic school or a clear doctrine was now a style, a mode of expression, a personal inclination.

From roads to open terrain.

Today, tidy little boxes are no longer enough to sort art into. We need as many boxes as we have artists - and even then it might not be enough. I don’t know if this text has a clear point. Maybe it’s just this: the world isn’t black or white, no matter how much I sometimes want it to be.

1 months ago