Comparison of Seurat & Dechamp

Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon On the Island of La Grande Jette"

and "Nude Descending a Staircase" by Marcel Duchamp

Among the many art historians and theorists who have made an attempt to determine the means and methods by which the artistic term "modernism" is developed, is Sandro Bocola (1999) in The Art of Modernism: Art, Culture and Society from Goya to the Present Day, which concludes that "modernism" is a trend in art that rejected "historicism" and "classicism" and became an art that "mirrors the scientific revolution. The trailblazing discoveries of psychoanalysis and the new physics, the effect of technological and industrial progress, (44).

In the terms of macro-history that spans the centuries of art, "Modern" art usually refers to a period that typically encompasses the 1860s and lasts to the 1970s and this term is the most common description used to describe the style and the ideology of art produced during that era. It is this more specific use of modern that is intended when people speak of modern art. "The term modernism is also used to refer to the art of the modern period. More specifically, modernism can be thought of as referring to the philosophy of modern art" (Bocola 44).

When used in that sense, and also in the sense of Bocola,

"modernism" refers to the creative strategy (or strategies) of the artists who choose to let their art reflect the mood or the temper of the times.

Bocola goes further, arguing that the resulting dynamics

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tual painters. "Experimental artists work incrementally, their innovations appear gradually, and they generally do their best work late in their careers; conceptual artists innovate more suddenly, produce individual breakthrough works, and usually do their best work" (Tansey and Kleiner 23) When Seurat, for instance, was at the Ecole, almost all of the discussion was about Impressionism, which was considered the "Modern Art" of the time. However, Impressionism was too limiting and Seurat rejected that. This rejection is understandable as teenaged angst, but it goes deeper to technique. Almost all of the criticism of Seurat was concerning his technique and not his vision. The thinking of the establishment was that "Quality in art is not just a matter of private experience. There is a consensus of taste. The best taste is that of the people who, in each generation, spend the most time and trouble on art, and this best taste has always turned out to be unanimous, within certain limits" (Bowness 44). Duchamp, on the other hand, was on the inner circle looking out. His artwork before the 1913 Armory Show in New York is comfortable but derivative. If you study his "Chess Players" you see a perspective that would have pleased Ce

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