Let’s discover contemporary art

Contemporary art is a very broad and varied panorama that embraces multiple approaches to creativity. It is a field in continuous evolution and transformation due to its tendency to adapt to the changing contexts of our world, reflecting its contradictions, complexities and urgencies.

Contemporary art or modern art?

The term contemporary art can be mistakenly thought to indicate only art produced “now”. In reality it includes experiences that since the 1960s have introduced marked elements of rupture with the art produced up until then. Unlike the latter, contemporary art does not have movements or styles to which it refers but only attitudes that converge in questioning the concept of art itself. Modern art identifies the art produced between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century. What characterizes this production is the presence of various artistic movements, some examples of which are: Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism, Suprematism, Dadaism and Abstract Expressionism. What unites them is the expression of the need to break with past traditions and the openness towards stylistic and material experimentation. To give visual form to modern art, we can cite works such as the very famous “Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” by Umberto Boccioni, Jackson Pollock’s drip painting and Salvador Dalì’s “Persistence of Memory”. A further difference between modern and contemporary art is the historicization that concerns the former and which the latter is not subject to due to its complexity and contemporaneity. In fact, we speak of contemporary art despite the fact that it includes experiences that are no longer contemporary to our present because it indicates trends that are not yet completely historicized or concluded.

When contemporary art was born

Defining the genesis of contemporary art is not simple and is still a source of debate today.
According to some, its origins should be sought in the 1960s, a period in which events took place within which contemporary art began to crystallize: the staging of three exhibitions. The first dedicated to Pop Art inaugurated in 1962, the other “Primary Structures” of 1967 which presented the minimalist movement. The last dedicated to conceptual art at the Kunsthalle in Bern entitled “Live in Your Head”. Conceptual art, minimalist art and pop art represent the point of junction and exchange between the end of modern art and the beginning of conceptual art according to this reading.
Others, on the other hand, claim that contemporary art began with a return to the painting of the 1980s.
Its genesis is therefore difficult to define and a subject of discussion, but we can search for it in substantial social and artistic changes, which, like those mentioned above, took place between the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.

Its value

Leaving aside the monetary value attributed to works of art, we can focus on a cultural and social value that transcends the previous one. We can understand art as an element of disruption in everyday life, a questioning of automatic attitudes towards the unexpected or considered. An example of this is the work of Gianni Pettena, who with works such as “Clay House” opens his work to the unexpected, to the event as well as reflecting on everyday concepts taken for granted, such as in this case the concept of home. Contemporary art has a very important value because it reflects the society in which it is produced, namely ours, proposing alternative points of view and questioning established values. The most addressed themes in current artistic practices are: migration and globalization, society and culture, the body, memory and archive, identity politics and institutional critique.

Artistic practices

In the history of art, traditional artistic practices are painting, sculpture and architecture. Starting from the assumption that the element that permeates all contemporary art is the questioning and elimination of the limit of what can or cannot be defined as art. This characteristic determines the fact that any practice can be defined as art, today art has in fact undergone a transformation in terms of complexity: there is no longer a single discipline, artistic techniques mix together. It is therefore difficult to understand how many types of art exist today because the artistic horizon is now very broad and saturated with techniques and modes of expression that are not even conventionally artistic: from video to installation, from design to architecture, from sound design to performance, they are skills that often meet and hybridize with traditional practices such as painting and sculpture.

Can we talk about artistic movements today?

Since contemporary art is vast and heterogeneous, it is difficult to identify specific artistic movements. We can perhaps identify different attitudes within the artistic panorama, for example those who seek realism in painting and those who favor abstraction, from those who are inspired by design and architecture to those who distance themselves completely, to those who develop practices starting from scientific studies or new technologies. The umbrella term of contemporary art is therefore what includes all the varied artistic intentions present today.

Alessandra Redondi

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