3D Gallery
Modern Art: The Century That Broke the Frame
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Modern Art: The Century That Broke the Frame is a 3D virtual gallery on MyGallery3D, a walkable online exhibition of 18 works. Step inside and explore it in your browser: no app, no headset.
Welcome to a 3D virtual gallery you can walk through in your browser, tracing modern art from the 1860s to the 1970s. This is the century that broke the frame.
In 1863, Édouard Manet showed Le déjeuner sur l'herbe at the Salon des Refusés in Paris. No single date marks a clean beginning, but that painting cracked open a door. Within fifty years, Cubism had shattered the single viewpoint, and abstraction had abandoned recognizable reality altogether. The old rules did not fall at once. They were taken apart, piece by piece.
Wassily Kandinsky, an amateur musician, believed color and marks could resound in the soul like music. Theosophy and mysticism shaped early abstract pioneers including Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Hilma af Klint. By 1915, Kasimir Malevich had painted a plain black square on white ground, his first entirely abstract work. Abstraction existed along a continuum, from slight departure to total separation from recognizable reality.
Cubism depicted subjects from multiple perspectives at once, reassembling them in abstract form. Picasso and Braque pioneered the movement in Paris from around 1907. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon showed five figures violently painted, reminiscent of African tribal masks. By 1912, Braque and Picasso had introduced collage, pasting newspaper and wallpaper onto canvas, making everyday materials part of art.
Henri Matisse, 1921, 23
Oil on canvas · France
Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection · Henri Matisse on Wikipedia
Winslow Homer, 1885
Oil on canvas · Prouts Neck
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection · Winslow Homer on Wikipedia
Vasily Kandinsky, 1912
Oil on canvas · Germany
Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection · Wassily Kandinsky on Wikipedia
Piet Mondrian, 1935
Oil on canvas · Netherlands
Gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman · Piet Mondrian on Wikipedia
Robert Henri, 1913
Oil on canvas · United States
Walter H. Schulze Memorial Collection · Robert Henri on Wikipedia
Edward Henry Potthast, c. 1915
Oil on canvas · United States
Friends of American Art Collection · Edward Henry Potthast on Wikipedia
Vasily Kandinsky, 1913
Oil on canvas · Germany
Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection · Wassily Kandinsky on Wikipedia
James McNeill Whistler, 1872
Oil on canvas · London
Stickney Fund · James McNeill Whistler on Wikipedia
Amedeo Modigliani, c. 1917/19
Oil on cardboard · Italy
Bequest of Joseph Winterbotham · Amedeo Modigliani on Wikipedia
Julius Gari Melchers, c. 1906
Oil on canvas · Netherlands
Gift of James Deering · Gari Melchers on Wikipedia
Amedeo Modigliani, 1916
Oil on canvas · Italy
Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection · Amedeo Modigliani on Wikipedia
Marsden Hartley, 1909
Oil on composition board · United States
Alfred Stieglitz Collection · Marsden Hartley on Wikipedia
James McNeill Whistler, 1863
Oil on canvas · London
Gift of Honoré and Potter Palmer · James McNeill Whistler on Wikipedia
Robert Henri, 1913
Oil on canvas · United States
Walter H. Schulze Memorial Collection · Robert Henri on Wikipedia
Vasily Kandinsky, 1909
Oil on cardboard · Germany
Bequest of Katharine Kuh · Wassily Kandinsky on Wikipedia
Marsden Hartley, 1917
Oil on composition board · United States
Alfred Stieglitz Collection · Marsden Hartley on Wikipedia
John Singer Sargent, 1897
Oil on canvas · London
Wirt D. Walker Collection · John Singer Sargent on Wikipedia
Marsden Hartley, 1920
Oil on canvas · New York City
Alfred Stieglitz Collection · Marsden Hartley on Wikipedia
