CAUGHT IN BETWEEN: MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

The history of art is one of the most difficult tasks to pin down. As what previous chapters have shown, significant ideas,
canons and tradition, preferences and dominance of styles, media, and, mode of production were the definitive
characteristics that segment art history into identifiable periods and movements; identifiable, but not necessarily precise. It is
important to note that the periods and movements are themselves testament to the connection of art and culture in the
everyday life. As it is examined and analyzed in context, it becomes increasingly apparent that art is not detached from;
rather, it is embedded in the affairs of the society in which it exists. It offers a glimpse as to the beliefs of specific eras and
how these beliefs were translated into how people saw themselves and the world and how they chose to come into terms
with it- all in flux.

This lesson attempts to provide a glimpse of contemporary art and how it was understood, defined, and represented, not only
within the bounds of the art world, but also beyond it.

DEFINING THE CONTEMPORARY

The term “contemporary” seems simple and straightforward enough to define. There is this assumption that it need not be
asked; rather, that it must already be understood. But with an attempt to do so, one finds it is a lot harder to grasp. The
complexity of defining the term is attributed to the fact that people have dissenting views on the interpretation of the “present,”
of “today,” or what the “now” means- these are often ideas that follow the word contemporary. Even more so, is when it is
hinged on the word “art” and suddenly it becomes a bit fuzzy.

There are museums, for example, that include name of artists, art forms, or artworks in their institution’s name, but seem to
champion works that arguably fall under an earlier period. For example, the institute of Contemporary Art in London which
was founded in 1947 includes in its mandate “the promotion of art that came to be from that year onwards.” Clearly the
timeline is a bit skewed if the assumption is that contemporary art started decades later. For the New Museum of
Contemporary Art in New York, its starting point is dated at 1977; while the TATE framed contemporaneity in a ten-year
rolling basis and was placed under the bounds of their Museum of Contemporary Art.

Another source of confusion is the fact that in the colloquial, “modern” and “contemporary” are considered synonymous. This
however, is not the case when these terms are used in the context of art. Therein, they refer to two different ( but
consecutive) periods qualified by different approaches to artmaking and the functions that art served. To better make sense
of contemporary art, perhaps it is best to dial back to its predecessor, modern art.

Modern art saw the digression of artists away from past conventions and traditions and toward freedom. There is the famous
adage of “anything goes.” With the world becoming increasingly complex, it required an art could accommodate such range
and breadth. Roughly between the 1860s to late 1970s, creatives celebrated the novel opportunities in art, from the materials
to its manipulation and ways often illustrated in their figurative works; however, these artists gave their nod to abstraction.
The tenets of this period were not only reflected in its art, but it was also evident in the way people lived and conducted
themselves, the social issues that were relevant, fashion, music and the wide range of images and activities they were
engaged in. this period saw the heavy mass production of goods, along with the encouraging environment made possible by
industrialization, new technology, urbanization, and rise of commercially driven culture. There was also a palpable
secularization of society, interest in nature, and primacy of the self and individuality. Artists were committed to developing a
language of their own- original but representative. What this means is that artists drew the world but in his own terms. It was
no wonder that within this period grew a vast number of different movements.

The period that ensued was touted contemporary art. In order to move forward, it is necessary to underscore that this can be
better understood after a starting point has been established. Compared to the dense taxonomy of modern art, contemporary
art had fewer- isms under its wing. Perhaps this was also due to the fact that it is still unfolding.

Effectively, this period can be traced from the 1970s to the present. There is a reason behind this cutoff. The cutoff was
hinged on two reasons:

1. The 1970s saw the emergence of “postmodernism.” The affix was a clue that whatever followed was segregated from
its precursor.
2. The 1970s saw the decline of the clearer identified artistic movements.

Social Context: In Between Modern and Contemporary Art

Reaping the benefits and drawbacks of the dramatic changes that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century,
the social, political, and cultural context continued to provoke the artist to create. There is a potent source of reference for his
works so that he may continue to question the existing and emergent values of society. This multiplicity of perspectives
brought to light a more difficult terrain to map out in terms of clear and distinct movements because what compelled artists’
works were not prevailing medium, technique, or style; rather it was the themes and concerns they addressed. And the
conversation was no longer limited to geographic locales, but became increasingly a global conversation.

“Art may be spoilt for choice. In a world where nothing is seasonal or regional any more, there is no home base from
which to operate. And so the arts today can be seen as responding to a number of issues, some from within their own
structures of means and techniques, some more widely understood as issues within society. Typically none is resolved.”(
Tamplin, 1991)

Contemporary art was heavily driven by ideas and theories, and even the blurring of notions of what is and can be considered
as “art,” with the involvement of television, photography, cinema, digital technology, performance, and even objects of the
everyday. It was the idea that was more important that its visual articulation.

There were several art movements that were caught in between the succession of modern and contemporary art. These
movements laid the groundwork for the transition into contemporaneity. Reeling after the war, one of the early movements
was abstract expressionism (early 1940s to mid- 1960s) which took the basic tenets of abstraction and combined with it with
gestural techniques, mark-making, and a rugged spontaneity in its visual articulation. Often affiliated with New York painters (
hence being called the New York School), some of them include Clyfford Still, Kackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett
Newman, and Mark Rothko, who were committed to creating abstract works that had the ability to convey and elicit emotion,
especially those residing in the subconscious. Two major styles emerged from this: that of action painting and color fields.
Action painting underscored the process of creation in that it showed the physicality, direction and most often, the spontaneity
of the actions that made the drips and strokes possible. On the other hand, color fields emphasized the emotional power of
colors. From the vivid demarcations to the more toned-down transitions, these bands of color were akin to the effect of
landscapes.

Creating energy was at the center of “op art” or optical art (early 1960s onward). Much like what was discussed in the lesson
on elements of art that dimension can be implied even on a two-dimensional surface or plane, op art relied on creating an
illusion to inform the experience of the artwork using color, pattern, and other perspective tricks that artists had on their
sleeves. From making it seem like a section was protruding out or receded in the background, to creating movement, works
under this movement showed a certain kind of dynamism. It inspired several artists in different countries to create their own
iteration of op art: Hungarian artist Victor Vasrely, British artists Bridget Riley and Peter Sedgley, American Richard
Anuszkiewicz, and Israeli Yaacov Agam. Other artists expanded their works to include other materials such as nails,
plexiglass, and metal rods, including Jesus Soto, Guenther Uecker, Enrico Castellani, and Carlos Cruz- Diez.

The quest for actual movement in works created responded to by kinetic art ( early 1950s onward). Harnessing the current
and direction of the wind, components of the artwork which was predominantly sculptural, most were mobiles and even
motor-driven machines, was an example of how art and technology can be brought together. Artists known for creating kinetic
art were Naum Gabo, Alexander Calder. Jean Tinguely, Bridget Riley, and Nicholas Schoffer. One of the most recent kinetic
artist to gain attention is Theo Jansen with his massive sculptures or beasts, as he likes to refer to them. Using plastic tubes
and PVC pipes, he has created several life forms that took over the sea-side.

In Japan during the post-war, platforms that were grounded on movement and a sense of dynamism were utilized to convey
ideas attached to the new-found freedom, individuality and openness to the international sphere. Termed gutai (1950s-1970s)
which means embodiment or concreteness, it preceded the later forms of performance and conceptual art. The goal was not
only to explore the materiality of the implements used in the performance, but also to hold a deeper desire to make sense of
the relationship that is truck between the body, the movements, and the spirit of their interaction during the process of
creation. Gutai straddled between multiple platforms from performance, theatrical events, installation and even painting. The
founder of the Gutai Art Association or Gutai Group was Yoshihara Jirõ in 1952. Other known gutai artists were Tanaka
Atsuko, Saburõ Murakami, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, and Shozo Shimamoto. Entitled “Challenge to the Mud”(
1955), Kazuo Shiraga utilized his body, writhing in a pile of mud. The shapes formed, and the state of the mud were left as is
after his performance, and was kept as part of the exhibition as a kind of action-painting. This is one of the most important
examples of gutai.

Another movement was minimalism which cropped up in the early 1960s in New York, and saw artists testing the boundaries
of various media. It was seen as an extreme type of abstraction that favored geometric shapes, color fields, and the use of
objects and materials that had an “industrial” the sparse.

“The new art favored the cool over the ‘dramatic’: their sculptures were frequently fabricated from industrial materials
and emphasized anonymity over the expressive excess of Abstract Expressionism. Painters and sculptors avoided overt
symbolism and emotional content, but instead called attention to the materiality of the works.” ( Wolf, n.d.)
Another assumption was that its subtext was deference to truth, as a thing was presented as itself, without pretentions or
embellishments. It also had a very utopic aura about it. Some of the key figures in this movement were Agnes Martin, Robert
Morris, Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, and Donald Judd.

The other movement is pop art. It first emerged in the 1950s but found its footing in the 1960s. it drew inspiration, sources,
and even materials from commercial culture, making it one of the most identifiable and relatable movements in art history.
Artists became increasingly critical about how what was being exhibited in art spaces had no relationship with real life. What
could be more real than what you saw, used, ate, watched, heard, and read! Hence, they turned to commodities designed
and made for the masses, particularly drawing inspiration and material from ads, packaging, comic books, movies and movie
posters, and pop music. The aim was to also elevate popular culture as something at par with fine art. A defining feature was
the discussions on the hierarchy ( and divide between) of “high culture” and “low culture”; “fine art” and “low art.”

The following was an excerpt from a letter written by Richard Hamilton, a pop artist, addressed to his friends Peter and Alison
Smithson:

“Pop art is: popular (designed for a mass audience), transient ( short-term solution), expendable ( easily forgotten),
ow cost, mass produced, young ( aimed at youth, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business.”( Hamilton, 1957)

Perhaps one of the most critical statements against pop art was its use of very banal and “low” objects and subject matters,
lacking the elevated aura that other believed art required. It was also seen as an absence of critically in that objects appeared
as it is, seemingly no different from how they were used in the daily life. If at all, it ironically seemed too “cool” as well that it
also became somewhat detached to the life it purportedly talked about. Some of the artists that are most identified with pop
art is Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Hamilton, Tom Wesselman, Ed Ruscha and Roy
Lichtenstein, with a number of them coming from careers in the commercial art as illustrators, graphic designers, and even
billboard painters. It is because of this that their works had a seamless quality about it.

But perhaps the most pertinent movement that solidified the move to contemporary art was postmodernism. By the very
name, it was a nudge to formalize the critique toward modernism and its claim over art for the better of the twentieth century.
More than anything, it was grounded on the shifts in the belief systems that were in place in the 1960s. First used in 1970, the
term was difficult to affix to any style or theory and perhaps that was the point. Postmodernism encroaches on other smaller
movements that included conceptual art, neo-expressionism, feminist art, and the Young British Artists of the 1990, among
others.

Grounded on skepticism about ideals and grand narratives, it was rooted in analytic philosophy during the mid- to late
twentieth century, which highlighted the importance of individual experience and was often steeped in complexity and
contradiction. As an upshot, formerly established rules, barriers and distinctions were abolished. In a sense, the artist’s
creativity was in its most free- with an anything goes” disposition, artworks fell within the broad spectrum of the humorous to
controversial works that challenged not only taste but also former sensibilities and styles. Awareness of styles was not for
them to copy or be governed by them, but to borrow, critique, and even turn on their heads. During this time, some of the
guiding principles were the multiplicity of narratives, relativity, and even interdisciplinary. It is important to note that there were
attempts to overturn the notion that all progress was positive, the hierarchy of races, and that art has a definitive goal. In
relation to the last one, one emergent aspect was also underscored in the experience and engagement with art and that was
the importance of the viewer. Here, the idea of the sole authorship of the artist is put to the test, that it is the intention of the
artist during the time of creation- the end-all and the be-all of the appreciation of work because it is where the sole meaning
lie- is disputed.

Some of the sub-movements under this broad umbrella were minimalism, conceptual art, video art, performance art,
installation art, and even feminist art, although they were widely accepted and recognized to be formal movements during the
1970s, they were in fact already in existence as early as the 1920s.

CONTEMPORARY ART

We can observe that there were overlaps with the acceptance and practice of these movements. They were not overlapping
with each other, but they were embedded in a social order that was in fact somewhat “disordered.”

One of the main developments during this time was the turn from the traditional notions of what art is: from paintings and
sculptures to the more experimental formats. These included film, photography, video, performance, installations and site
specific works and earth works. Even these formats tended to overlap, leading to interesting and dynamic, and otherwise
unheard of” combinations of concepts, subjects, materials, techniques, and methods of creation, experience, and even
analysis. Compared to other periods, it can be argued that contemporary art is the most socially aware and involved form of
art. The subject matter of its works was one of the most pressing, heated, and even controversial issues of contemporary
society.

OTHER CONTEMPORARY ART MOVEMENTS

NEO-POP ART

In the 1980s, there was a renewed interest in pop art specifically to Andy Warhol’s works and his contemporaries. What made
it different from pop art was that it appropriated some of the first ideas of Dada in which ready-made materials were used for
the artwork. Dada was a movement that was very much against the values of bourgeois, the colonial and even the national. It
was both anarchic as it was referencing anarchy- the war ensued because of the values the movement abhors and despises.
Aside from this, it does not only referenced popular culture, but more importantly, criticized and evaluated it, often using
popular cultural icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie O, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, among many others. Some of the
artists involved in the revival of pop art was Katharina Fritsch, Daniel Edwards, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, Mark Kostabi, and
Damien Hirst, to name a few. Compared to their predecessors, they were more affront about their evaluations about the world
through the works.

In Koon’s “Puppy,” he uses computer modeling to create a behemoth of a sculptural work- a giant topiary- that refers back to
saccharine ideas of sentimentality, security and banality: flowers, a puppy (West Highland terrier), Hallmark greeting cards,
and Chai pets. This work articulates his exploration of the limits that exist between the mass or popular and the elite culture.

PHOTOREALISM

The resurgence of figurative art, where realistic depictions is a choice, is a proof how varied and fragmented postmodernism
is. In photorealism, a painstaking attention to detail is aimed, without asserting an artist’s personal style. These drawings and
paintings are so immaculate in their precision that it starts to look like it is a photo without a direct reference to the artist who
created it. Two of the known photorealist artists are Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter.

CONCEPTUALISM

Other movements were informed and shaped by pop-art, such as conceptualism. As opposed to celebrating commodities as
references to real life, conceptualism fought against the idea that art is a commodity. This movement also brought to the fore
issues brought about by art institutions such as museums and galleries where works are peddled and circulated. Some of the
major conceptual artists are Jenny Holzer, Damien Hirst, and Ai Wei Wei.

“In conceptual art, the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art,
it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.”( LeWitt, 1967)

PERFORMANCE ART

Performance art is related to conceptual art, whose rosters of well-known artists include the likes of Marina Abramovic, Yoko
Ono, and Joseph Beuys. As a movement, it began in the 1960s and instead of being concerned with entertaining its
audience, the heart of the artwork is its idea or message. Here, the audience may even be an accomplice to the realization of
the work. Performance art may be planned or spontaneous and done live or recorded. Since it is also durational in nature, it
is also considered as ephemeral works of art. An interesting proposition is that performance is not about the medium or the
format; rather, it is how a specific context is made in which through engagement or interaction, questions, and conditions will
be fleshed out.

INSTALLATION ART

Compared to traditional art formats, installation art is a kind of an immersive work where the environment or the space in
which the viewer steps into or interacts with (going around installative art) is transformed or altered. Usually large-scale,
installation art makes use of a host of objects, materials, conditions, and even light and aural components. These works may
also be considered site-specific and may be temporary or ephemeral in nature. Well-known installation artists are Allan
Kaprow, Yayoi Kusama, and Dale Chihuly.

An example of a public installation art is the “Cadillac Ranch,” comprised of 10 Cadillacs of different models ranging from
1949 to 1964. Buried nose-first into the ground, each car is seemingly equidistant from each other and forming a straight line.
From its original site along Interstate 40, it was moved in 1997 to its new spot two miles westward along the interstate. The
cars underwent several changes from the first time they were installed as they were located in a public space. It didn’t take
long before graffiti found its way onto the surfaces of the cars, and was painted different colors such as gray. It also had a
pink phase in the 1990s, wherein all cars were painted pink.

EARTH ART
Sometimes considered as a kind or a spin-off of installation art, earth art (or land art) is when the natural environment or a
specific site or space is transformed by artists. It is a kind of human intervention into a specific landscape or terrain. Earth art
is different from environmental art in a sense that it does not focus on the subject (environmental issues or concerns) but
rather on a landscape manipulation and the materials used, taken directly from the ground or vegetation ( rocks or twigs).
Artists known for Earth Art are Robert Smithson, Christo, Richard Long. Andy Goldsworthy, and Jeanne-Claude.

STREET ART

This art movement is related to graffiti art as it is a by-product of the rise of graffiti in the 1980s. artworks created are not
traditional in format but are informed by the illustrative, painterly and print techniques and even a variety of media (even video
projections). Some of the examples of this include murals, stenciled images, stickers, and installations or installative/
sculptural objects usually out of common objects and techniques. Since these works are most commonly found in the public
sphere, various people who have access to them have formed the impression and perception of the artworks themselves.

These works operate under interesting circumstances since they are unsanctioned and do not enjoy the invigilated
environments of museums and galleries. However, these works also end up in them, as street artists also hold more
traditional exhibitionary formats in the white cube. If it is in the open space, there are no governing rules in its production and
sometimes, in the interaction. Known street artists include Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, and Banksy’s
popularity is evidenced by the creation of a film documentary that spoke about him and his works. Gordon Matta- Clark,
Jenny Holzer, and Barba Kruger are some of the known street artists.

Some of the artists and movements discussed are examples of the rich array of works produced and are still being produced
today. The twenty-first is steeped in promise and excitement. Although some of the movements discussed may have waned
or are no longer being practiced, new artists with their own creative imagination and ways of producing art are changing the
landscape once again. It would not be surprising if in the future, art students like you will be confronted with even more
diverse movements that attempt to come into terms with himself, society, and the world in which he lives.