CASE STUDY
"Modernism reads like a history of revolutions"
Two groups of artists who sought to interpret the world in new ways were the fauves and the abstract expressionists; such artists include Henri Mattisse and Jackson Pollock. This essay will attempt to explain how these groups of artists have interpreted the world in their art making.
Henri Mattisse was deeply affected by the work of the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists; the series of traditional exhibitions of Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gaugin at the turn of the century impelled his work towards new methods of painting and a new philosophy of art. It was in the area of colour. Mattisse had been fascinated by the colour theory of Seurat and Signac so much that he proceeded to commence the most aggressively colourful movement in painting since the middle ages. He abandoned all the academy theories for making pictures. …
