What is Contemporary Art?

Contemporary art often creates confusion among many people. This term usually refers to various artistic expressions from painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance, to video art.

A simple answer to what contemporary art is art made by artists living today. The definition usually includes art produced from the late 20th, and early 21st centuries, until now.

The issue is getting complex when someone arrived at the characteristics of contemporary art.

There are no defining characteristics of contemporary art. Contemporary art reflects diverse contemporary problems, from cultural identity, social and structural critique, and environmental crisis, to redefining of art. Every contemporary artist explores their own style, materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that usually challenge existing boundaries and definitions. As consequence, contemporary art has an abundance of features, resources, ideas, and styles.

Contemporary art no longer merely deals with aesthetic pleasure, but art’s contribution to society through challenging traditional ideas and values. For example, contemporary artists give voice to marginal identity by questioning current values and beliefs.

In contemporary art, the audience is also not a passive object, instead has an active role in constructing meaning, and even completes the artworks. The audience’s reflections and responses are important since the artwork is usually thought-provoking and demands further actions.

Contemporary artists were inspired by the postmodernism movement that questioning mainstream art patrons and embrace “artistic pluralism” or a variety of artistic expressions. As result, various arts and styles grow from contemporary art.

Here we collect some contemporary art movements and artists that have been covered in Artstribune.com:

1. Pop art
The pop art movement emerges in the post-war era in Britain and America. Pop artists often use mass and commercial-produced objects as accessible art.

Andy Warhol is one of the prominent artists of the pop art movement. Warhol was famed for his colorful silkscreen portrait of Marilyn Monroe (1964). His works are surprising, and contrast from traditional and modern art. Warhol defies the boundaries between fine art and everyday life objects.

2. Conceptual art
Conceptual art emphasizes the idea behind the works. Conceptual art is often associated with the 1960s and 1970s art movements, although it actually happened before these two decades.

Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) was mentioned as the first conceptual artwork. Another example is Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (2019), a banana duct-taped to a wall. Jen Haaning’s two blank canvasses ‘Take the Money and Run’ also belongs to conceptual art. Conceptual artworks are a response to the increasingly commercialized art world. They could not be easily bought and sold, and also not necessarily be displayed in a gallery.

3. Minimalism
Minimalism is characterized by simple geometric shapes like squares and rectangles. The art movement challenges the existing way of “making, disseminating, and viewing art”.

Donald Judd is one of the leading minimalist artists. In his work, Judd uses three-dimensional colorful boxes that make special space. Judd breaks the view of art that says simple form and color as less beautiful.

4. Happening art
Happening art is theatrical events made by artists. Artists usually perform in an environment or installation created within the gallery.

A living sculpture by Sethembile Msezane can be an example. In her happening art, she dressed like a mythical character ahead of the Louis Botha Statue. Louis Botha is a symbol of masculinism, dominant figure, white male, and colonialism. The living sculpture that she performs indicates the existence of black women in public space.

5. Installation art
Installation art is an immersive three-dimensional construction that could transform the viewer’s perception of space.

Yayoi Kusama’s artworks are the best exemplar of this art. Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms will bring the audience to step into six captivating mirror rooms. The cube-shaped rooms are made of mirrors as their walls, the ceiling, and the floor. The room creates a dazzling, immersive, and breathtaking sensation of infinite space.

6. Earth art
Earth art (also known as Land art) is art made in the natural landscape. For example, making structures in the landscape using natural materials, such as stones, soil, grass, or algae.

One of the prominent earth arts is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970). Spiral Jetty is so remarkable. It was submerged because of the raising of water level in 1972, but thirty years later, the lake’s water levels became lower and Smithson’s work reappeared as the basalt rock covered by white salt. It indicates how the artwork adapts to the natural processes.