Modern Artwork, Explained
Modern artwork is used two ways, and the difference matters when you are specifying art.
Strictly, Modern art refers to the historical period running roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, the era from Impressionism through Abstract Expressionism, when art broke from academic tradition toward experimentation with form, color, and abstraction.
In practice, in briefs and interiors and searches, modern artwork means art with a modern sensibility: clean, confident, abstraction friendly, and free of ornament and nostalgia. That is the sense this page uses, and it is what most designers mean when they ask for it.
Modern compared with contemporary
Modern refers to a sensibility with a defined visual vocabulary of abstraction, bold form, and reduction. In a brief it signals clean, timeless, and not trendy.
Contemporary refers simply to art being made now. It has no single look, and in a brief it signals current and of the moment.
A piece can be both. A piece can be neither. When a brief says modern, it is almost always asking for the sensibility rather than the period.
The modern vocabulary in hospitality
Modern artwork earns its place in hospitality because its core values of clarity, confidence, and reduction are the same values driving modern hospitality interiors.
The common expressions are pure abstraction, geometric composition, minimal statements, layered works that add depth to modern restraint, and architectural or fine art photography.
Keeping modern from going cold
The standing risk of modern artwork in commercial space is sterility, producing rooms that photograph well and feel like nowhere.
The correctives are material and specific. Textural work gives light something to do. Warm substrates such as wood soften a hard palette. Colors drawn from the property's actual region beat a universal greige.
Modern works commissioned for a specific property carry its particulars inside a clean vocabulary, modern in language and local in accent. That combination is difficult to buy off the shelf, and it is most of the reason site-specific work exists as a discipline.
Related
Abstract artwork covers the forms of abstraction in detail.
Modern artwork with abstract overlays covers layered compositions.
The Art Specifier's Guide covers the full range of styles, materials, and spaces.
5th Wall Editions develops modern works as original commissions for hospitality properties.