Later Europe and Americas, 1750–1980 CE
What this domain tests
Modernity: Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the twentieth-century avant-gardes through early postmodernism. Concepts: Enlightenment rationalism vs. Romantic emotion/sublime; academic salon and the hierarchy of genres; photography's effect on painting; en plein air and optical color; avant-garde rejection of convention; abstraction (nonobjective vs. abstracted); readymade and institutional critique; manifesto, -ism, and medium specificity; site-specific and earthworks.
Traps
- Impressionism vs. Post-Impressionism: optical immediacy vs. structural, expressive, or symbolic use of color and form.
- Abstract vs. nonobjective: abstraction derives from observed form; nonobjective refers to no subject at all. Read the question's wording.
- The readymade shifts the question from craft to context and artist's designation.
- Don't equate avant-garde with "popular"; much of it was scandalous and market-marginal at first.
Rule of thumb
For any modern work ask: What convention is this rejecting, and what institution (salon, academy, museum, market) does that rejection target? Avant-garde meaning is relational.
Worked example
An ordinary manufactured object exhibited as art is a readymade; the art claim rests on the artist's selection and the gallery context, not on fabrication.