CONTEMPORARY ART
A Semi Personal View

If the term Contemporary( art ) means ‘belonging to the same time’ ( The Concise Oxford Dictionary), then anyone alive today could be said to have lived in the Contemporary Art age. This would also include Modernism – if you are over 65 – and Postmodernism ! However, Contemporary art , relative to past movements and ‘isms’, is generally understood to mean unconventional art to some extent.

In the 1890′s, at the advent of Modernism , I’m sure participating artists would have seemed ‘wild’ and shocking but in today’s world Modernism could be seen as quite traditional and logical , fitting within a structure of objective knowledge ,science and reason. There were rules and signposts from the past which gave depth and value to the paintings/objects produced. The artworks spoke for themselves in a language we could all understand. Nowadays a lot of what passes for art needs a written explanation in order to be understood !

Postmodernism , which was a reaction against Modernism paved the way for Contemporary art which is a totally different ballgame reflecting the evolving culture of our times. Religion and science are going through a metamorphosis – Quantum physics tells us that maybe ‘thinking makes it so’. Scientists are finding anomalies in what were previously ‘facts’ and that the universe is behaving in strange and irregular ways.

Now, no-one is quite so certain of the certainties any more!

Today we have been taken over by technological advancements; television, computers and an explosion of publishing. Everyone’s opinion not necessarily ‘knowledge’ , counts and can have it’s moment on stage. This is very exciting – but also comes at a price and the price is information overload , (soon to be treatable by the NHS ?), a society spinning ever faster, the centrifugal force stretching the content thinner and thinner, like elastic, and therefore ever more superficial and the content is shallow. It has to be – there’s no time for depth!

This is the environment of Contemporary art.

What happens to elastic when stretched too far? Something snaps and twangs back to square one!! Are we going to see a revival in classical painting – beautiful nudes or gentle landscapes.? Or maybe the New Art will be cave painting!!

It seems to me that a lot of the movements associated with postmodernism such as Conceptual art, Performance art, Installation art and Intermedia are the same movements we think of when talking about Contemporary art.
I personally have a bit of a problem with Video art which is under the umbrella of Intermedia. Why should Video art be in an art ‘gallery ‘and not in an art ‘cinema’ ? As far as I’m concerned it’s primarily technology, not art. Of course, most Video art would crash at the box office , and cinemas , unlike state funded art galleries have to make a profit to survive, so somehow galleries were persuaded it was ‘art’……….

If the ‘ idea’ is the all -important thing – then every invention ever dreamed up can be called art – including a sewer.!
Likewise Conceptual art – surely ,most art has an idea behind it – even if the idea is to throw paint at the canvas? Switching a lightswitch on and off seems like a slap in the face to intelligent people and de-values the Turner Prize. Turner would be true to his name and Turn in his – er ,grave whilst the so-called artist who won it laughed all the way to the bank.
Again – in my favourite book , the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of an artist is ‘one who practices fine art’, and ‘fine arts’ are defined as ‘ those appealing to a sense of beauty’…….. so where does Conceptual, Video, Installation, come in? OK – Performance may just squeak in – but why not put it in a Theatre?

So I have mixed feelings about the Contemporary art age – I did think of it as an ‘Age Of Confusion ‘but perhaps we should re-name it The Age Of Delusion!

Jane Gray