I think it’s important to read works of authors and poets from the time when modernism was first taking off. Because of this, I’ve chosen to include some of Baudelaire’s work. I think he was one of the important forerunners of the movement and cannot be ignored.

Foster, Hal, Rosalind E. Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, and David Joselit. Art since 1900: modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism. London: Thames & Hudson, 2016.

This text seems like a great introduction to modernism, because it contains many different articles from different authors regarding modernism. Additionally, it cross-references other works for more potential avenues of research.

Mao, Douglas, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz. Bad modernisms. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

‘Bad’ behavior was one of the rather alluring aspects of modernism. Raunchy attitudes, drugs, and excessive habits were so prevalent during this time period and really effected the ideas that drive modernism. This text delves into the repercussions and perhaps benefits of the modernist era.

Sturken, Marita. “Visual Culture.” Grove Art Online, June 2, 2011. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T2093950.

This text discusses how and why modernism began to take a step away from the more traditional academic art. A lot of focus on what ‘art’ itself is is placed within the text.

Walter, Christina. Optical impersonality: science, images, and literary modernism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2014.

This text heavily discusses how the Modernist artist and his or her work interact with each other. The artist and the work cannot exist in a vacuum, and Walters explains this well, while also approaching the psychology behind the Modernist movement.

1. Egon Schiele : June 12th, 1890 - October 31st, 1918, Austrian

- Egon Schiele ignored every common convention for drawing the figure and instead, rendered his figures to be grotesque and almost terrifying. His figures were not meant to look pretty or correct: they were meant to invoke emotion.

2. Vassily Kandinsky : December 16th, 1866 - December 13th, 1944, Russian 

- Vassily Kandinsky was, very obviously, much more interested in feelings and intuition than in academic-style art. His work focused on color and capturing emotion, and not on the rigorous academic-style art of the past. 

3. Gustave Klimt : July 14th, 1862 - February 6th, 1918, Austrian 

- Gustave Klimt worked a lot with the figure. However, his figures evoked so much emotion - sexuality, sensuality, and lust were common themes. His work is primal and beautiful, and much more about the feelings of the viewer than about the technical effects. 

- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec would have floored the sensibilities of the artists of the past. His work was sexy and evocative and exuded gluttony. 

2. Marcel Duchamp : July 28th, 1887 - October 2nd 1968, American-French

- Marcel Duchamp was the antithesis of the Renaissance and classical painters. His work likely wouldn’t have even been considered ‘art’ to the makers of the more classically-composed subject matter. His work was as far from religion as one can be. 

3. Egon Schiele : June 12th, 1890 - October 31st, 1918, Austrian 

- Egon Schiele was very interested in sex and perverse, in a sense, imagery. He did some paintings that referenced old biblical works; however, he put himself or other figures as the sort of God-like figure, which is very unacceptable within the Church. 

1. Salvador Dalí : May 11th, 1904 - January 23rd, 1989, Spanish

- Salvador Dalí created bizarre, surrealist paintings and sculptures. Aside from his work, which was cutting-edge for the time, Dalí himself always seemed to be a bit of a performance artist. His flamboyant costumes and controversial actions — he and his wife once dressed as the Lindbergh baby and the kidnapper at a party — were as much a part of Dalí’s art as his paintings and sculptures were.
 

2. Jackson Pollock : January 28th, 1912 - August 11th, 1956, American 

- Jackson Pollock’s work was as much about the energetic, dancing movement that it took to create the work, as the work itself. The large, dripping paintings were unlike anything ever seen before. Pollock played more with the tactility of the paint and the gesture of the marks than with any of the formal art qualities used in the past. 

3. Mark Rothko : September 25th, 1903 - February 25th, 1970, American 

- Rothko cut all of the extraneous information out of the canvas that could possibly be cut out. His paintings contained only what he deemed to be necessary to convey information: most of the time, it was simply two or three colors. He pushed aside any concept of figuration and focused purely on the ocular aspect of how one views art. 

1. Vincent Van Gogh : March 30th, 1853 - July 29th, 1890, Dutch 

- Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings were very much about van Gogh’s own feelings. He struggled with mental health throughout his life and painted as a form of escape or rationalization of the emotions he was feeling. He created many self portraits, all executed to capture his own ideas. His work was as far from patron-motivated as one can get. 

2. Gustave Courbet : June 10th, 1819 - December 31st, 1877, French

- Gustave Courbet was infamous for outright opposing the Salon. Courbet wanted nothing to do with the artistic trends that were rampant in France at the time, and instead, almost selfishly pursued what he considered to be ‘art’. 

3. Yayoi Kusama : March 22, 1929, Japanese 

- Yayoi Kusama is very opinionated about who should see her work and how it should be viewed. Kusama ostensibly does what she wants, and does not often work with commissions, if ever. Her visions drive her art, and thus, Kusama cannot be told what to do. 

- Willem de Kooning took a very abstract approach to dealing with the figure. He ignored the traditional conventions of painting the figure, and instead distorted the form and used bright, arbitrary colors. None of the ‘old’ ways of painting the figure were presented in de Kooning’s work. 

2. Enzo Cucchi : November 14th, 1949, Italian

- Enzo Cucchi, much like de Kooning, uses bright, unexpected colors to depict the figure and nature. His forms are often exaggerated, with figures being elongated. His use application of paint is very unique to his work. 

3. Ronald Davis : June 29th, 1937, American

- Ronald Davis takes the traditional idea of perspective and distorts it in ways that many more traditional artists never thought to. His abstract perspectival paintings invent new, incredible forms of dimensional shapes that are not based off of architecture, but rather simply mathematics. His work strays from the traditional academic perspectival drawings in that they invent forms that likely would not be able to exist in the real world, yet are compelling nonetheless.