I always took the term 'contemporary art' quite literally - art
that is contemporary. This allows for a contemporary art gallery
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to show local artists to exhibit something
that might be considered pastiche in New York City but a
meaningful reflection of local culture.
The ebb and flow of capital culture means that those who hold
decision-making power in markets like NYC, London, or Berlin will
occasionally farm contemporary art outside of their immediate
social bubble. The stamp of "outsider art" is just one form of
such "validation." But it's all just contemporary art.
But I'm rather unimaginative in such matters. The definition of
"art" is simply anything that reaches beyond
functionality. Anything that is purely functional in conception is
engineering. That's a pretty low bar for "art" but I think we've
seen the bar become pretty low in the 20th century. And "art" is
better for it.
/David
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Today's Topics:
1. how the term 'Contemporary Art' is used
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2023 05:32:30 -0700
From: [email protected]
To: "<nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the
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<[email protected]>
Subject: <nettime> how the term 'Contemporary Art' is used
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I had a recent on-line discussion with writer and artist Matthew
Collings recently offered a critique of the term 'contemporary
art' the
gist of which was that it was too loosely applied to actually
mean
anything significant.
I took issue with Matthew arguing in effect was that it was more
interesting to look at how the term was actually used.
The term 'contemporary art' (e.g.Turner Prize) functions a bit
like the
term 'literary fiction' (e.g. Booker Prize) Both terms signify,
*as an
ideal* an author/artist is willing to raise difficult and
complex
questions, live with doubt and ambiguity even opacity. Refuse to
give up
all its secrets immediately, refuse to be likeable, And above
all retain
a degree of ungraspability. This makes relatively high demands
on the
audience, as well as on themselves. To get the benefits audience
and
artist have to put in the work. As the cliche goes.. its for
anyone but
not for everyone.
David Garcia
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