In The Formalesque: A Guide to Modern Art and its History, Bernard Smith coins 'the Formalesque' for what is still described as 'Modernism'. Smith wrote that the history of 20th-century visual arts could no longer be written as a succession of avant-garde movements. Modern art was no longer modern. It was old. Smith argued that a return to the concept of period style was inevitable. Modernism - the dominant 'style' of art that emerged between the end of the 19th century and which continued until the 1960s should be recognised as a period style, like 'romanesque' or 'arabesque'. Smith says:

I have written this book as a critical introduction to the study of 20th-century art which is still described as 'Modernism'. But the word cannot be used to describe the art of the 20th century forever, for it is now a part of the past. So, is it not better to agree that it is now part of our past, wiser to take a distanced view rather than see it as continuous with the art of our own time? If we do that it should be possible to view it as a period style emerging around 1890 which dominated art in its practice, theory and history, until the 1970s. As the dominance of what we still call Modernism began to decline over thirty years ago, isn't it a bit absurd to persist in calling it Modernism? So I have coined the word Formalesque as a better name for it, as one might refer to the Gothic or the Baroque.