Contemporary art



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the series Contemporary art
Artists

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Museums, Fracs,
Movements, Schools of Art,
Demonstrations,
Contemporary music

Gate:Contemporary art

In its common meaning, contemporary art represent all the current forms of art. It tends to include art since years 1960, the displacement of the artistic "scene" of Paris (school of Paris) with New York mark the beginning of the "contemporary" time of art. It succeeds thusmodern art.

Synopsis

Introduction

Fine arts with the Visual arts

The contemporary art has as a base the experiments of the modern art, and the breach opened asserts regularly by Marcel Duchamp, who had released the practice of the art of the traditional constraints of representation. The post-modernistic thought formulated the majority of the inherent problems to the contemporary art, freed from the ideological currents (Communism and capitalism), without however preventing committed artists from criticizing the political or ideological abuses.

In France, the creation of faculties ofvisual arts constitute a base of dispute of the academic teaching of Fine art ; formerly foreign matters with the field of the teaching of art, sociology, ethnology, esthetics and others, direct artistic research with the tuning fork of its recent evolutions.

With the formal research of Beautiful succeed of the new aesthetic ways of research, of which most radical, conceptual art, minimalism, performance, corporal art, the significance and the perception of art modify durably, who is directed sometimes in ways has first sight hermetic with the uninitiated persons.

Certain currents, such them New Realistic, Free Figuration and trans avant-garde, like certain franks-tireurs, do not leave however the traditional médiums, while modifying their creative steps radically. The bursting of the types of medium (painting is often forsaken with the profit of installations, performances or others) and contents of the?uvres modifies in-depth the networks of mediation of art; to new galleries are added new contexts of exposure.

Contemporary art at the era of the globalisation

From years 1980, arts with strong "technological" component make their appearance, withvideo art, data-processing art then, thereafter, numerical art, bio-art... The list is not-exhaustive and follows very close the projections of industrial research.

In years 1990, the Western contemporary art granted its "label" has many artists resulting from the countries called "in the process of development", has little close absent formerly. The paradigms of the globalisation and the loss of the traditional spatio-temporal reference marks developed the personal modes of approach, or biographical components, sociological, even religious, are developed within the steps of work.

The relative democratization ofInternet play an increasingly important part in the reception and the mediation of the contemporary art, upstream exposures themselves, who integrate the official structures of mediation more and more. Changes which have occurred within the most developed countries (in particular the part growing of tertiary sector) caused a need more and more generalized for art, what does not return the task of the artists, crisis obliges, easier for as much. Contemporary art, if there remains often obscure or provocative with the eyes of general public, today much more is accepted and spread that before; a surge of work of unequal qualities returns it diverting and generally requires a personal investment on behalf of the public. (see art and esthetics)

Dimensioned on the Internet, the?uvres of contemporary art are also a potential financial basket, who do not exclude them effects of mode with the detriment of really original work.

Between medium and mediation

Following médiums traditional (painting has oil, blood, bronze, marble...), the contemporary art was particularly fond of delicacies new médiums, even of non-médiums. In particular, the vocation éphémere or "in progress" of a number of?uvres question the concept even of medium, who becomes often a simple vector of mediation rather than a stable support. That joined the change of the carriers data started in the Eighties, who désincarnent themselves gradually with the profit of a logic of "relation":

  • "tangible" Mediums
  • "technological" Mediums
    • software data processing
    • mechanical systems (Stelarc)
    • alive genes (bio-art)

Let us add that certain médiums, as the photography which becomes "plastician" (Joel-Peter Witkin), the cinema, who becomes "experimental" (series of Cremaster of Matthew Barney), acquired the statute of art to whole share, and constitute today autonomous categories. Concept ofmulti-media art, largely called into question today, question the statute of?uvres resulting from installations, often mélées performances, such as they appeared in years 1950.

Limits of art and babelisation

The provocative impulse of art, if it is far from to have died, is not any more one sine qua non of creation. In years 1970, following May 68 and with the revolts coeds in the world, the provocative virtue of art was given to the style of the day, at least with the eyes of general public. body art and the performance in particular put at evil the limits extrèmes of the values tolerated by the Western companies. Crucifixions of animals of Hermann Nitsch, the roll of Michel Journiac fact from its own blood, settings in scenes masochists of Gina Breads, always seem provocations free and wounding.

The provocation in art is seldom free, it exposes the psychic complexes in?uvre within a company or of a group of individual given. Hans Haacke, when it was invited to represent Germany with the German house of Biennial of Venice, broke the flagstones of the house to point out the origin of the foundation of the house, under the Nazis. The examples abound in this direction and invite the public to try to know the contents of the?uvres, a priori opaque in many cases. The "good taste" does not exist in contemporary art, because the artist ceased being a simple executant of?uvres financed by one patron, who defined his statute before Rebirth.

Artistic movements in contemporary art

The Sixties

The Seventies

The Eighties

Years 90-00

Figures on the Contemporary art

Average price

  • 1990 : base 100
  • 1991 : 120 (higher)
  • 1992 with 1997 : around 40
  • 1998 with 2001 : progression up to 60
  • mid-2001 : mini-crisis with 49
  • 2002 : increase with 60
  • 2003 : 65
  • 2004 : 70
  • mid-2005 : 75

Leaves the countries in the world market

Figures starting from the sales of the 01/10/2004 to the 30/09/2005: The United States 58%, The United Kingdom 27%, France 3%, Italy 2%, Germany 2%, others 8%.

  • Evolution on behalf of France: 35% in 1990, 9% in 1995, 5% in 2003, 3% in 2004. This fall on behalf of France in the world market is explained mainly by the fact that many fortunate people left the country during this period for more lenient tax skies, in particular towards England.
  • Evolution on behalf of the United Kingdom: 4% in 1990, 27% in 2004.

Large fairs

  • Art Basel Miami Beach with Miami Beach : last in October 2004, 190 exhibitors, 33 000 visitors.
  • Arco with Madrid : last in February 2005, 290 exhibitors, 75 500 visitors.
  • Art Basel with Basle : last in June 2005, 275 exhibitors, 56 000 visitors.
  • Friezz Art Fair with London : last in October 2005, 160 exhibitors, 47 000 visitors.
  • Fiac with Paris : last in October 2005, 220 exhibitors, 83 000 visitors.
  • Art Cologne with Cologne : 39e edition in October-November 2005, 250 exhibitors, ? visitors.

Large purchasers

Museums of contemporary art

The United States

France

See the article List museums of contemporary art in France.

See too

Internal bonds

Bibliography

  • Barthelemy Schwartz, A mixed Art of economy, Ab irato, 1997.
  • Fred Forest, Operation and dysfunctions of the contemporary art: a lawsuit for the example, Harmattan, Paris, 2000.
  • Elisabeth Dressmaker, Contemporary art, instructions, Filipacchi, 2004.

External bonds

Gate Contemporary art - Reach the articles of Wikipédia concerning the contemporary art.


 

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