Contemporary Art: Definition, Origins, and Essential Characteristics

Contemporary art often challenges traditional art conventions, seeking new forms of expression and exploring a wide range of themes, from social and political issues to personal and existential concerns.

The multifaceted nature of contemporary art makes it difficult to define precisely, but it is this same diversity that makes it so fascinating and relevant to our time.

Creating a definition of Contemporary Art can be a problematic task.

Although its title is simple and direct, its modern meaning is not as clear.

Fortunately, understanding what constitutes 'contemporary' is entirely possible, once the history of the concept is traced and its underlying themes are explored.

Contemporary art deals with issues we are living through now, so we don't have historical distance to perceive it from afar, we are immersed in this world of many events, and it speaks to that.

We live at the same time the violence in different aspects in various places around the world, the technological advancement, the issues related to consumption, to sexuality, the existential questions that concern each individual, all of this being treated at the same time, now.

We are living a period of disordered informatics, where all things happen at the same time with deviations that we find all the time to think about the daily life.

There is a general answer to the question 'What is contemporary art?' but there is also a more specific answer.

The general answer is surprisingly simple: Contemporary Art is 'art that was and continues to be created during our lives.' In other words, it is contemporary to us.

The problem with this answer, of course, is that 'contemporary' can vary with the age of the person.

If you are 96 years old, there is a certain overlap between the 'contemporary' and 'modern' art in your life - hence the need for a more specific answer.

Here are two good rules to distinguish between Modern and Contemporary:

. Modern art emerged from the Impressionist movement.

It began approximately around 1870 to the years of 1960 or 1970.

. Contemporary Art counts from the years 1960 or 1970 to this moment.

1970 is the cut-off point for two reasons.

First, it was around 1970 that the terms 'postmodern' and 'postmodernism' emerged, which means that the art world was full of modern art and something new and substantially different had arrived.

The other reason is that 1970 seems to mark the end of easily classifiable art movements.

Although classification may be difficult, Contemporary Art is collectively much more socially conscious than any previous period of art.

Many of the last 30 years' art have been related to a contemporary issue or another: feminism, multiculturalism, globalization, bioengineering, and AIDS awareness, for example.

Modern art, on the other hand, was defined as the point at which artists felt free to:

. rely on their internal visions;

. express those visions in their work;

. use real life (social issues and images of modern life) as a source of subject matter;

. experiment and innovate as often as possible.

Modern Art has been described as art in which traditions were set aside and replaced by experimentation.

The Museum of Modern Art traces Modern Art back to the Industrial Revolution, which lasted from the 18th to the 19th century and generated changes in manufacturing, transportation, and technology that profoundly affected the social, economic, and cultural conditions of life in Western Europe, North America, and eventually the world.

Contemporary art, on the other hand, has been described as a reaction to modern art, reflecting a society that values globalism, cultural diversity, and technology.

Some art historians claim that Contemporary Art began with Pop Art, with artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and defined by their interest in portraying mass culture.

Contemporary works have very specific characteristics.

They often are unfinished objects, which do not have a formal classical beauty, or in other words, the ugly can be beautiful, because Contemporary Art obeys its own logic, what happens in the world now, what emerges and brings traversals for all of us, the human urgencies, even if we are dealing with artists from distant times, what creates relationships and connections with this moment, is contemporary.

As in Contemporary Art, the action, or the concept is what matters most, the idea can be expanded using different materials that can create a dialogue between them, where the same ones make a synthesis about you.

 

To understand the rest of this journey, continue to our next article: Contemporary Art: Expressions, Languages, and Notable Artists.