What is Contemporary Art Now? (Week 2)

Before we get to the contemporary heres a way that helped me to organize the time periods of art:

Now for the present:

Contemporary art as we know it is conundrum of sorts. We have been in the contemporary phase now for over three decades and still no name has been coined to describe the art being made. By definition, all art at one point in time has been contemporary. Art made in the past was contemporary at the time of its creation and so will be of art made in the future.  This brings us to the valid question that Terry Smith asks, what is contemporary art now?  What is the art that has been made for these past three decades about, what bonds it together other than the time of its creation?

While the authors of the provided texts have described their ideas of how to explain the contemporary I have gathered their ideas and organized them in a way that made the most sense to me, four key themes if you will. 
Just like every other period of art history artist in the contemporary are making work in different mediums and under different themes.  The major themes that I have found through the reading are interchnagable at times or at least connectable.

Smith speaks of the deliberately  ambiguous, a strategy that I have often noticed myself in contemporary art. For example Elmgreen and Dragset’s Powerless Structures – Traces of a Never Ending History, depicted below.

Art like this asks many questions of the viewer but never answers them. According to Smith, high art or high quality conceptual art pieces like the above are concerned with posing questions about themselves. Here the contemporary is much like the  past periods, Modernism and Postmodernism that both internally critiqued their own practices. Modernism critiquing the medium or the aesthetic and Postmodernism critiquing the meaning of the art work.

New media and digital imagery seem to be a key theme that separates the contemporary from any other period.  With the creation of the internet in 1990 the contemporary period began and so many things changed. Through the internet art became more accessible and a new way of appropriating art became available as well. Technology itself is always changing thus changing mediums as well as transforming ways to show art. Could this be another reason why the contemporary is so hard to define, because it is changing at such a rapid pace?

Jean-Francois Chevrier uses the term ‘tableu form’ to describe large scale, detail oriented photographs.  Examples of artist who use this form are photographers such as Jeff Wall of Gregory Crewdson, both who create large scale, almost cinematic, detail heavy scenes. These large works take away from any intimacy that the viewer could have felt with the piece, instead the viewer feels distant from the work and can not identify with it or the subjects.

 Jeff Wall's After Invisible Man, above offers the viewer so much detail but yet the scene is almost unreadable, we can not connect with the man who's back is faced to us or with the fantastical scene that has been created. This somewhat relates back to the idea of the deliberately ambiguous, this is a well constructed piece that seems to give us no answer, only questions. Perhaps a lot of this is due to the heavy digital reconstruction of his work. 

Gregory Crewdson's cinematic scenes made thanks to expansive technology are also too whimsical for us as the viewer to identify with. 


On the other hand is the theme of Globalization, expanding culture and equality. Both Smith and Azoulay talk about the importance of globalization in contemporary art. This theme is thought to engage all viewers in a way that they can either connect with the subject or gain some sort of information. 
The Merriam- Webster Dictionary defines Globalization as: the development of an increasingly integrated global economy mark especially by free trade, free flow of capital and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets.
Basically the idea of globalization itself spreads equality throughout different cultures. 
I think that art that address these themes is especially important. Art that addresses current issues functions as art as well as historical documentation and a way to spread a message to the masses. 
Fried talks about how some photographers take a more 'artistic approach' to this theme and especially the sub-theme, images of violence and suffering. Fried talks about work like Luc Delahaye's images of conflict and how they are too large scale or 'tableau' to identify with. 

Above is one of Delahaye's images. Perhaps it is because i am not experiencing it in exhibition format but I feel drawn to this image in the way that Azoulay describes images of violence and suffering. Azoulay says that through images of suffering the spectator is given a responsibility, she believes that the subjects of suffering are looking past the camera to potential viewers. Through these images we are asked to show sympathy for the subjects and through that action we somehow identify with something we may have never experienced. I think that this is such an important way that photography works today, it can expose us to things that we may not ever really experience ourselves.  


The last theme is Mixed forms and style. Of course this theme is not specific to the contemporary but it is often used. I feel like I have seen it especially in architecture and film and of course the ever present mixed media art. Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycles are a well known example of a mixture of different styles and concepts. 


I mentioned how some artist might encompass most or all of the themes mentioned. The main one, who was also mentioned in two of the articles as being a good example of a contemporary artist is William Kentridge. I have always been personally drawn to Kentridge's animated short films dealing with the South African apartheid. Through this work Kentridge brings together at least three of the themes I mentioned. He combines the traditional medium of drawing with film ( a new media) thus making a mix of forms that have to do with the concept of globalization, expanding culture and equality through images of pain and suffering.