The twentieth century saw an explosion in artistic forms that both presented non-realistic images, especially Abstract Expressionism and Cubism, or depicted elements of everyday life or lower culture, as Pop Art did. In this, one of the key forerunners to these movements was the late-nineteenth-century movement known as Impressionism. Impressionism had vivid brushstrokes that made images look less realistic, and intentionally depicted scenes of everyday life, like farmwork, cafés, and parks.

The movement known as Pop Art was developed in the post-World-War-II era, taking inspiration from various elements of low culture and popular culture. Often, artists like Andy Warhol and Robert Raushenberg used advertising images in subversive ways, or as the actual artwork itself. Jasper Johns used images of Americana like the American flag in odd ways, while Roy Lichtenstein copied images from comic books.

Amedeo Modigliani was a Jewish painter born in Italy in 1884, but who gained fame in Paris in the 1910s. Embracing many aspects of modernism through associating with fellow modernists in the Montparnasse section of Paris, Modigliani established a unique form of portraiture which featured elongated shapes and empty black eyes. Modigliani died of tuberculosis at the age of 35 in Paris in 1920.

Abstract Expressionism was developed in the immediate post-World War II era as a specific genre of painting that featured non-realistic shapes and took inspiration from free-form styles of music like jazz. Earlier artists like Wassily Kandinsky were pulled into the movement, which was further pushed by artists like Jackson Pollack, with his "drip method," and Willem de Kooning, whose odd figures and textural paintings were archetypical of the movement.

Futurism arose from the destruction of World War I and the advances of the machine age as an artistic movement that championed modernism, speed, and technology. Its principles were set forth in the Futurist Manifesto, written by the Italian artist Filippo Tommasso Marinetti. The movement was primarily Italian, with a few prominent Russian adherents, and had an unfortunate close relationship with the Fascist movement in Italy under Benito Mussolini.

In its earliest form in the late nineteenth century, photography was a modern invention that was usually used to capture modern images, such as cities, war, and machines. One notable exception was the American photographer Ansel Adams, whose work focused on the landscapes of the American West, particularly the new national parks. Adams developed the "Zone System" in order to be able to create contrast in his final print to allow for the proper look in his landscape photography.

Claude Monet's massive Water Lilies (in French, Nympheas) series are masterpieces of impressionist painting, showing light and color in his subject through painting on a giant scale, which allows the viewer to see the brushstrokes in the painting. Monet made dozens of paintings in the series, all of which have no horizon or obvious markers of space not covered by water lillies. The most famous examples are housed in the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris, in a round room specially constructed and lit to contain only four mural-sized paintings.

Diane Arbus believed that a camera had an ability to bring truth out in people due to its inherent awkwardness. Arbus' photographs were exclusively in black and white, and typically portrayed "odd" people of various kinds in New York City. Diane Arbus was a mildly successful newspaper and magazine photographer who only achieved artistic fame after her suicide in 1971.

Edward Hopper's painting style was realist to the point of being almost simple, with plain depictions and colors. Where Hopper proved singular was in the way he framed his compositions, revealing an inner depth and detachment to the people in his paintings. Hopper as extremely reclusive and introverted, rarely giving any interviews or clues to any deeper meaning in his work.

Jackson Pollock began his career as a rather "normal" abstract artist, using paint and brushes conventionally. After World War II, he developed his "drip method," which saw Pollock lay a canvas on the floor of his studio, take a paintbrush, and splatter the canvas with the paint from above it. This "drip method" created vivid paintings of different colors and textures that had no traditional forms.