Is the ‘Modern’ Passé?

Thursday, January 16, 2014, 7-9pm

A program of Framing Narratives: Renaissance to Modernism

Gallery Talk featuring Mark Cheetham, Professor, University of Toronto Department of Art.

Art of the early and mid-20th century featured in Framing Narratives: Renaissance to Modernism – by Klee, Matisse, Moore, Picasso, Schlemmer and others – is foundational to our received notions of modernism in art and modernity in Western culture more broadly. These artists frequently focused on the human form, whether in a broadly humanist or more specifically existentialist and historical contexts. Exploring both the wisdom and limitations of this emphasis on the human condition, Mark Cheetham asks if modern art of this sort retains its aesthetic and ethical authority today.