LESSON 9: Caught in between: Modern and These movements laid the groundwork for the transition

Contemporary Art into contemporaneity.One of the early movements was;

•The History of Art is one of the most difficult task to -Abstract Expressionism (early 1940s to mid 1960s)
which took the basic tenets of abstraction and combined
pin down.As what previous chapters have shown, significant
with it with gestural techniques.
ideas, canons and tradition, preferences and dominican of
styles, media and mode of production were the definitive •In Japan during the post war, performs that were
characteristics that segment art history into identifiable grounded on movement and a sense of dynamism were
periods and movements ;identifiable, but not necessarily utilized to convey ideas attached to th new found freedom,
precise. individuality and opennessto the international
sphere.Termed gutai (1950s-1970s) which means
DEFINING THE CONTEMPORARY embodiment or concreteness, it preceded the later
•Contemporary art was heavily driven by ideas and theories, forms of performance and conceptual art.
and even the blurring of notions of what is and can be
-The goal was not to explore the materiality of the
considered as art, with the involvement of television,
implements used in the performance, but also to hold a
photography, cinema, digital technology, performance
deeper desire to make sense of the relationship that is struck
etc. between the body, the movements and the spirit of their
interaction during the process of creation.
•The term contemporary seems simple and straightforward
enough to define.There is this assumption that it need not be •The founder of the Gutai Art Association or Gutai
asked; rather, that it must already be understood. Group was Yoshihara Jirõ in 1952. Other known Gutai
artists were Tanaka Atsuko, Saburõ Murakami,
•The complexity of defining the term is attributed to the Kanayma Akira, Mukarami Saburo, and Shozo
fact that people have dissenting views on the interpretation of Shimamoto.
the present, of today, or what the now means— these are
One of the most important example of gutai is;
often ideas that follow the word contemporary.
-Entitled Challenge to the Mud 1955, Kazuo Shiraga
•There are museums, for example, that include name of utilized his body, writhing in a pile of mud. The shapes
artists, art forms, or artworks in their institution’s name, but formed, and the state of the mud were left as is after his
seem to champion works that arguably for under an earlier performance, and was kept as part of the exhibition as a
period. kind of action-painting.

For example: Another movement was;

-The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, which
Minimalism
was founded in 1947 include in its mandate “the promotion
-cropped up int early 1960s in New York.
of art that came to be from that year onwards”
-It was seen as an extreme type of abstraction that
favored geometric shapes, color fields, and the use of
For the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New objects and materials that had an “industrial” the
York, its starting point is dated 1977; while the TATE sparse.
framed contemporaneity in a ten year rolling basis and was -Some of the key figures in his movement were Agnes
placed under the bounds of their Museum of Martin, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, Carl
Contemporary Art. Andre, and Donald Judd.

•Another source of confusion is the fact in the colloquial Pop Art

-It first emerged in the 1950w but found it in the 1960s
modern and contemporary are considered synonymous.
-It drew inspiration, sources, and even materials from
This however, is not the case when these terms are used in the
commercial culture making it one of the most
context of art. identifiable and relatable movements in art history.
-To better make sense of contemporary art, perhaps it is best -”Pop art is popular (designed for a mass audience ),
to dial back to its predecessor, modern art. transcient(short term solution), expendable (easily
forgotten), low cost, mass produced, young (aimed at
There were several movements between the succession youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big
of modern and contemporary art: business” — Hamilton 1957
•One of the most critical statements against pop art was its use of
2. Photorealism- the resurgence of figurative art,
every banal and low objects and subject matters, lacking elevated
where realistic depictions is a choice, is a proof
aura that other believed art required.
how varied and fragmented podtmodenism .
In photorealism, a painstaking attention to detail
Some of artists that are most identified with pop art is;
is aimed without asserting an artist's personal
1. Andy Warhol
style.
2. James Rosenquist
-These drawings and paintings are so immaculate in their
3. Claes Oldenburg
precision that it starts to look like it is a photo without a
4. Richard Hamilton
direct reference to the artist who created it.Two of the
5. Tom Wesselman
known photo realist artists are Chuck Close and
6. Ed Ruscha
Gerhard Richter.
7. Roy Lichtenstein
Postmodernism- the most pertinent movement that soldified the
3. Conceptualism-This movement also brought to
move to contemporary art.
the fore issues brought about by art institutions,
-By the very name, it was a nudge to formalize the critique toward
such as museums and galleries.Some of the
modrnism and its claim over art for the better of the 20th century.
major conceptual artists are Jenny Holzer,
Damien Hirst, and Ai Wei Wei.
Contemporary Art
“In a conceptual art, the idea or concept is the most
We can observe that there were overlaps with the acceptance and
important aspect of the work. When an artists uses a
practice of these movements. They were not only overlapping with
conceptual form of art, it means that all of the
each other, but they were embedded in a social order that was in fact
planning and decisions are made beforehand and the
somewhat disordered.
execution is a perfunctory affair”— leWitt 1967.
One of the main developments during this time was the turn
4. Performance Art-is related to conceptual art,
from the traditional notions of what is art is; from paintings
whose rosters of well-known artists include the
and sculptures to the more experimental formats.These
likes of Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, and
included;
Joseph Beuys.
-film
Performance Art may be planned or spontaneous and
-photography
done live or recorded.Since it is also durational in nature,
-video
it is also considered as ephemeral works of art.(e.g
-performance
Cadillac Ranch)
-installations
-site specific
5. Earth Art-sometimes considered as a kind of spin
off of installation art, earth art or land art is when
•Even these formats tended to overlap and compared to other
the natural environment or a specific site or face is
periods, it can be argued that contemporary art is the most
transformed by artists. It is a kind of human
socially aware and involved form of art.
intervertion into specific landscape or terrain.
Earth art is different from environmental art in a sense that
it does not focus on the subject but rather on landscape
Other Contemporary Art movements:
manipulation and the materials used.Artists know for
1. Neo-Pop Art-in the 1980s, there was a renewed interest
Earth Art are Robert Smithson, Christo, Richard
in pop art specifically to Andy Warhol's works and his
Long, Andy Goldsworthy, and Jeanne-Claude
contemporaries.What made it different from pop art was
that it appropriated some of the first ideas of Dada in
6. Street Art-This art movement is related to graffiti
which ready made materials were used for the artwork.
ast as it is a buy-product of the rise of graffiti in
Dada-was a movement that was very much against thevalues of the
the 1980s. Artworks created are not traditional in
bourgeious, the colonial and even the national.
format but are informed by the illustrative,
painterly and print techniques and even a variety
One of the example is;
of media.
Koon's “Puppy”, he uses computer modeling to create a behemoth
of a sculptural work—a giant topiary—that refers back to Some examples of this include murals, stenciled images,
saccharine ideas of sentimentality, security and banality. stickers, and installations or installatives/ Sculptural
-This work articulates his explorationof the limits that exist between objects usually out of common objects and techniques.
the mass or popular and the elite culture. This works operate under interesting circumstances since
they are unsactioned and do not enjoy the inculcated
environments of museums and galleries. As street Artists
also hold more traditional exhibitionary formats in the
white cube. Known Street