An Introduction to Contemporary Art

            As an artist – or at least as someone who is interested in creating – I’ve always been interested to see what new and current artists are making. I’ve found that art nowadays has gotten a bad rap. Most of my “non-artists” friends complain that anything these days can be a work of art, or they will look at a piece and say, “I could do that. A five year old can do that.” It sort of makes me wonder, “Is that true? Can anything be art?” It seems like the stereotypes of traditional art – realistic oil paintings and well-crafted marble sculptures – has shaped the mainstream’s perspective and expectations for art. But art has been and always will be changing, and these stagnant expectations are becoming unrealistic. In 1995, Alex Melamid & Vitaly Komar surveyed various countries around the world, asking what people expected from art. The results were consistent among countries, and were quite shallow. Most people wanted, or expected, to see children, famous people, animals, and a beautiful landscape. Melamid and Komar compiled these results to create a series, The Most Wanted Paintings. But these paintings, which were formed out of the expressed desires of the people, turned out to be actually quite undesirable. These paintings were nothing short of uninteresting and unspectacular.

            These expectations are being challenged and are beginning to shift as art is drastically changing from what it once was. Nowadays, as contemporary art grows increasingly diverse, the line that defines art becomes vague and unclear. Art is no longer restricted to realism and the classic media and forms – drawing, painting, printing and sculpture – that seemed to exclusively dominate the art world before the turn of the 20th century and the beginning of the Modern Art movement. (It’s important to remember that Contemporary Art is art that is being created in the present, by currently living artists. Modern Art is an art movement that began over a century ago.) With experimentation with new media as languages for expression, the bounds for art are ever expanding. Marcel Duchamp works in the Modern Art movement changed our expectations of art. No longer only focusing on the physical piece presented, but the ideas and concepts art brings forth. Contemporary artists are continually testing and challenging these boundaries, leading us to the question: what is art? As both an artist and an art viewer, I have built a set of criteria for what I consider to be art.

Art – any thing created with the intent to express or explore an idea, and also evokes some thought or emotion from the viewer. Art is a conversation between the artist, or creator, and the viewer and must satisfy the criteria from the perspectives of both the artist and viewer.

            However, even my opinion isn’t right or wrong. I too am just learning and immersing myself in contemporary art. So let’s learn about the ambiguity that is contemporary art together. I’ll examine a few artworks and see how these interact with this definition. And throughout this blog I’ll take a look at contemporary artists and artworks and discuss the themes and topics that these artists explore. As I discuss these ideas, I’ll use vocabulary words that are necessary to talk about art. As I use them, I’ll define their meanings so that you too can understand and use these words in the future. So let’s dive in and look at some art.

Alex Melamid & Vitaly Komar, United States: Most Wanted Painting,  1995. Oil on Canvas.

Oil painting inspired by surveying the 1001 U.S. citizens about what they expected to see in a painting.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917. Urinal.

Appropriation of the readymade urinal in the gallery setting changed the paradigm and expectations of art. Art then became about the discussion of an idea over the pure material presented.