UNDERSTANDING ART. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Art criticism seems to have mixed up the message and the language in artworks. Studies of art history concentrated on means (languages) like style and iconography, in full conviction that this is the message. As a matter of fact, Modern art deals with “being human in Modernity”. It means being dynamic, uneasy, asking questions and venturing experiments. Modernity elaborated the content of “refusing to participate”. Ideas and scenes by Shakespeare, Goethe, Goya, Cézanne and Blok may illustrate the specific negativism towards sociopolitical realities. In the twentieth century Modern art (entering the phase of Avant-Garde) channeled its contents across three main mechanisms. One can describe artistic message as “anthropologically friendly”, “anthropologically aggressive” and “anthropologically neutral”. Art for people's sake exists within Modernism since the pioneer paintings by Matisse. Art as challenge and punishment came in with young (Cubist) Picasso and early Malevich. Art as message not for people arised with Duchamp and Schwitters to be followed by experiments on several lines. Concept art and land-art supposedly prolonged the course of “anthropological neutrality”. The proposed anthropological typology makes a move towards meanings and contents in art which have been neglected until now by art criticism.