The 20th century – conformism and dissent in artistic technique, the opposition between tradition and innovation

This article presents the rapid changes in art that took place at the beginning of the 20th century due to scientific and technological progress: the electricity, the telegraph, the radio, later on the television, atomic physics, petrochemical products, plastic, computers, and so on. My analysis draws on how fast culture reinvented itself through technology, the conquests of the Industrial Revolution being an important stimulus for artists’ imagination that fought against tradition. It is noted, therefore, in the first decades of the twentieth century a new sense of experimentation emphasized in art. The transformations that materials and artistic media undergo are radical, the artistic techniques used so far (painting, sculpture, drawing, architecture) being affected by “loans” coming from the utility area, the non – aesthetic area. This article focuses on the changes of artistic technique and mediums invented by the artists of Cubism, Dada Movement, Surrealism and Constructivism