Modern art for "dummies"

Modern art is intriguing, because it is not at all easy to understand it. We are not talking about how difficult it is to enjoy it, especially for an unprepared viewer. But you still want to know, don't you?

We have compiled a small cheat sheet on contemporary art, where as illustrations - the work of famous artists and sculptors. Forgive us connoisseurs and art historians, this is rather a joke, and perhaps our own attempt to systematize and remember everything.

(Total 16 photos)

Source: Bright Side

1. If you see colored squiggles and spots, as if the artist was running and slapping paint from the heart, then this is abstract expressionism.

Jackson Pollock, "No. 5". This is the most expensive painting in the world, sold for $140 million. Usually, instead of a title, abstract paintings have a number or the first words that come to mind, such as "Car Juice No. 689."

2. Pollock draws. Here, by the way, you can feel like them.

3. If this is a toilet bowl, a brick, an excavator, garbage and other boring things, but they were put under glass and given an abstruse explanation, then this is conceptualism.

Damien Hirst, "For the Love of God" (platinum skull with diamonds, shows the triumph of the religion of the golden calf). Joseph Beuys, "Chair with fat" (and this is an attempt to "merge with nature on a mystical-shamanic level").

4. The same toilet, but without any explanation - readymade. The artist just took the toilet and put it on a pedestal, and everyone nods their heads cleverly: yes, yes, they say, we understand. And we understand, why not understand here.

Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal in a store (according to another version, he found it in the trash) and put it up under the name "Fountain" and under the pseudonym R. Mutt (fool). Incidentally, "Fountain" was sold for $ 1 million with a ponytail.

5. If what you see in the picture looks like a bad dream, then this is most likely surrealism. In general, we say "surrealism" - we see Dali. We say "Dali" - we see surrealism.

Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory.

6. Jacek Yerka, "The City Lands".

7. When it seems that the artist has brazenly cheated by passing off a photo as a painting, this is hyperrealism. And if everyone is wet or naked, then do not hesitate at all.

8. Someone took a picture from a glossy magazine and clumsily colored it in Paint, and when they got a little bolder, redrawn the comic? And all poisonous flowers? Well, it's definitely pop art.

Works by Andy Warhol.

9. Roy Lichtenstein, In the Car. Jeff Koons, "Dog".

10. If you ask yourself the question: “Is this some kind of witchcraft or am I just drunk, will my eyes burst?” - be sure that this is op-art (another option is that you still waved before meeting with art).

11. If something tells you that the artist had five in drawing as a child, you have a picture in the style of constructivism.

Joseph Albers, Adoration of the Square. El Lissitzky, The New Man.

12. Poster by Alexander Rodchenko.

13. If an artist plays the piano upside down, dances in a cake costume, wraps himself in a python and lies in the center of a burning star - in general, he does his usual things, but in front of everyone - this is called a performance.

Tilda Swinton in the performance "Wardrobe" hugs with clothes. Joseph Beuys in the performance "Coyote: I Love America and America Loves Me" locked himself in a room with a coyote for three days.

14. A happening is almost the same as a performance, only with the participation of the audience. He also has no script and no one knows where this fun will lead.

Yves Klein wallows the audience in paint and draws to the music of the orchestra.

15. You enter the hall, where there are chairs with nails, and mannequins with suffering on their faces are sitting on them - do not be alarmed, this is an installation. In short, this is such a work of art that you can enter and touch everything there.

Installation "In Orbit" in the Dusseldorf Museum.

16. Ilya Kabakov, "The man who flew into space." "Mirror Maze" in Hyde Park (London).