Modernism is defined as the period lasting from the late 19th century to the late 20th century, approximately 1850 to 1970 (Brettell, 11). The modern art era engulfs multiple art movements, including Impressionism, Cubism and Expressionism. Famous artists from this time period include Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. Regardless of the movement or artist, modern art set out to free art from the classical expectations of earlier artworks — it didn’t follow previous traditions of a true-to-life look and the typical subject matter of the religious and wealthy. Modern art was focused more on the medium of art than the subject of the art. Post-modernism is defined as the era immediately following modernism, encompassing the art made from 1970 to the present day (Bertens, 40), and included movements such as minimalism, performance art, and conceptual art. Famous post-modernists include Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. Post-modernism, like modernism, was focused on redefining how art was viewed — unlike modernists, however, post-modernists were concerned more with the artist than the subject or medium of art.
In 1908, Claude Monet finished a painting titled Sunset in Venice. The painting, as the title suggests, depicts a building, presumably in Venice, with water in front of it and a sunset behind. Clearly influenced by the Impressionist movement, Monet creates his painting using vibrant colors and indistinct lines. The foreground is entirely water, mainly the reflection of the reds, oranges and yellows of the sun but also the blues of the water itself. The middle ground is a tall building painted in dark hues of blue, purple and red; similar to the foreground, the background is a sky of almost entirely red, orange and yellow, although green and blue are present as well. The horizon creates a nice balance between the foreground and background, and the building serves as the focal point, immediately drawing the eye. The artist’s brush strokes are visible and create a hazy feel to the work — the colors produce a surreal feeling, and the lack of hard lines creates a smooth, peaceful mood. Although the work is not made to look realistic, the viewer can clearly distinguish the artist’s intention of a scene at sunset. Sunset in Venice was created at the peak of Modernism and is a direct example of how artists of the time moved away from highly realistic paintings and toward subjects that would have been taboo half a century prior.
In 2009, Jaison Cianelli created the abstract painting Bursting Sun. The painting is abstract, but a sunset is visible. Made of high-contrast colors, it consists of a yellow and green foreground, a dark red and purple horizon, and a bright red, orange and yellow background. The “sun” is emphasized using white paint to the right of the canvas — it has such high contrast to the rest of the work that it is almost mesmerizing and makes it difficult to look anywhere else. The artist’s influence is distinctly visible: the background was created using a brush, but the rest of the painting was unmistakably made with a technique similar to Jackson Pollock’s, paint splattered across the canvas to create a beautiful and unique effect. The work can easily be identified as a sunset, yet it was produced using the techniques of post-modernism — the image is abstract, with no location or subject appearing in the work. To the viewer, it appears the artist was attempting to capture the feeling of a sunset, not one sunset in particular. According to Cianelli’s website, his goal was to harness the energy of a sunset rather than to simply depict one.
When comparing these two artworks, the influence of their respective periods in art becomes evident. Both artists crafted paintings on canvas of sunsets, yet they took very different approaches. Monet’s goal was to capture the impression a particular sunset, at a particular location, has on a person. Cianelli, on the other hand, had a much broader goal — producing an image that gives off an energy the viewer could recognize as reminiscent of a generic sunset. They used the same medium and somewhat similar palettes, but the technique of applying paint to canvas was entirely different. Monet’s influence is visible in the work, though not done on purpose so much as to create an effect in the image; Cianelli, by contrast, deliberately makes his influence known, drawing attention not to the subject of the art but to what he, the artist, has created. Both pieces of art are brilliant in their own way.