What is Contemporary Art? An In-Depth Look & Guide | Turner Contemporary
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2024
- So what is Contemporary art? How do you interpret art? How do you read art?
For many people, coming up with a definition for contemporary art can be tricky. While its title is simple, its meaning may not be as clear. In this video, our very own Engagement Assistant Jo gives you a definitive and handy guide on how to interpret, read and experience art.
Contemporary art is continuously evolving and more artists are taking advantage of new technology to further their creativity. This includes code-generated art, which can produce everything from abstract pieces to futuristic vector portraits. As advances in artificial intelligence continue, some artists are using technology to create hyperrealistic portraits that test the boundary between reality and imagination. Many up-and-coming contemporary artists are stunning the world with their original approach to art. On top of putting their own twists on conventional forms like painting, sculpture, and installation, they've also popularised unexpected forms of art, like embroidery, origami, and tattoos, proving the endless possibilities of the all-encompassing genre.
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Thank you for helping me understanding how to approach an appreciation of contemporary art. I am often baffled when confronted by contemporary art and then my hackles go up. I find I have to subdue my initial instinct and give time and space to the work, tapping into what the art is saying and how I might connect with it. Your video gives focus to what I can look to appreciate.
Thank you so much for this video! This should be classified as essential viewing, helping consumers of art with strategies and approaches to engaging with any art or art form. We are not generally taught how to see, how to describe, how to analyse or discern characteristics and features, how to dive deeper into personal relevance and big subject ideas. I appreciate this content very much.
Great guide, if I ever became an art teacher I’d show my students this video x)
You are the best. Thank you so much. I need my own Art Gallery here in Jamaica. Be safe and be happy.
The perfect video about art. Her voice, the b-rolls, the minimalistic nature of the video, and her accent ugh 😍
Agreed❤
Let me begin by telling you that when my brother was just starting school, he rebelled at the rules of spelling.
Why did words have to be spelled in a particular way?
Why couldn't he spell them as he wanted to spell them?
He resented the rules and he resisted the authority of those who made them !
Keep this in mind.
I think that Conceptual art originated with people who could not and would not do the difficult work required to become a 'traditional' artist.
Can't master the necessary skills ?
No knowledge of perspective?
Can't draw?
Don't want to have to learn color theory?
Can't master composition?
No knowledge of human anatomy?
Can't render tonal values
Can’t be bothered ?
These are skills that you have to WORK at to perfect.
It’s difficult.
It takes…..effort.
But, you say that you want a fast track to the exalted position of "artist “.
Well then, belittle the importance of those skills and debase the notion that they are a prerequisite to creating art.
Instead, create an art genre that you CAN do.
A new genre.
And let's call it Conceptual art.
Conceptual artists claim that IDEAS and CONCEPTS are the main feature of their art.
They can slap anything together and call it ''conceptual art'' confident that viewers will find SOMETHING to think about it no matter how banal or trivial the artist's concept!
There is no way conceptual art pieces can be judged.
The promoters of this art have attacked the motives and credibility of authorities and critics who might disparage the work.
They have rejected museums and galleries as defining authorities.
They reject the idea that art can be judged or criticized .
All of this results in a decline in standards.
And when you jettison standards, quality suffers.
There really IS such a thing as BAD art !
We know this only because we have standards and criteria by which such things can be evaluated.
It seems that conceptual art comes down to a basic idea:
No one has the right or authority to make any judgements about art !
Art is anything you can get away with !
A whole new language has been created to give the work an air of legitimacy and gravitas.
Conceptual art is 'sold' to the unwary public with ....."ArtSpeak".
ArtSpeak is a unique assemblage of English words and phrases that the International Art world uses but which are devoid of meaning!
Have you ever found yourself confronted by an art gallery’s description of an exhibition which seems completely indecipherable?
Or an artist’s statement about their work which left you more confused than enlightened?
You’re not alone.
Here are real examples of ArtSpeak:
'Works that probe the dialectic between innovations that seem to have been forgotten, the ruinous present state of projects once created amid great euphoria, and the present as an era of transitions and new beginnings.''
Or
''The exhibition reactivates his career-long investigation into the social mutations of desire and repression. But his earlier concerns with repression production--in the adolescent or in the family as a whole--give way to the vertiginous retrieval and wayward reinvention of mythical community and sub-cultural traditions.''
This language is meant to convince me that there is real substance to this drivel which is being passed off as art.
I don't buy it.
But plenty of other people DO buy it.
Not because they love the work.
They are laying out enormous sums in the belief that their investment will bring them high returns in the future.
One Jeff Koons conceptual piece is three basketballs suspended in a fish tank.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Three_Ball_Total_Equilibrium_Tank_by_Jeff_Koons,_Tate_Liverpool.jpg
Here is Koons' own ArtSpeak explanation of his floating basketball 'concept' verbatim:
“ This is an ultimate state of being.
I wanted to play with people’s desires.
They desire this equilibrium.
They desire pre-birth.
I was giving a definition of life and death.
This is the eternal.
This is what life is like, also, after death.
Aspects of the eternal”
Rather lofty goals for 3 basketballs suspended in a fish tank!!
It sold for $350,000.
I wonder what it would have fetched without Koons' name attached to it.
Or take the case of Martin Creed's ball of crumpled white copy paper.
www.abebooks.com/signed/Work-sheet-paper-crumpled-ball-Creed/7404135374/bd
He made almost 700 of them!
Some sold for hundreds of dollars.
Martin Creed, when asked during an interview how he would respond to those who say the crumpled paper ball isn’t art said :
“ I wouldn’t call this art either. Who says, anyway, what’s good and what’s bad?”
Interviewer:
''When confronted with conceptual art, we shouldn’t worry whether it’s art or not because no one really knows what art is.''
Is this what art has come to??
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Something radical has happened to the art scene in the past 60 years.
Cubism slid into non-representational art....what is often called Abstract.
Abstract or non-representational art is a legitimate and often profound genre.
But to many people, it appeared as if this new style had no structure, principles or standards of evaluation.
It’s markings seemed random and arbitrary.
Something that anyone could do.
Any composition of blotches or scribbles was “Abstract Art”.
This was the slippery slope that led to the abandonment of standards in art.
Art is what I say it is....and lots of people jumped on the art bandwagon.
Anyone can be an artist.
Anyone can mount a show.
And who is to say if it has value or not ?
A tacit agreement has formed among critics, galleries, publications and auction houses to promote and celebrate certain artists and styles.
Objects with no artistic merit are touted and praised .
Their value increases with every magazine article, every exhibition in a prestigious gallery.
And when they come up for auction, sometimes the auction houses will lend vast sums to a bidder so that it appears as if the work of the particular artist is increasing in value.
The upward spiral begins and fortunes are made.
And many are reluctant to declare that the Emperor is, in fact, naked lest they appear boorish unsophisticated Philistines !
This is what dominates the art market today.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
It has corrupted politics.
It has corrupted sport.
It has corrupted healthcare.
It has corrupted religion.
And now it has corrupted art.
But, there is reason to hope.
As much of the wisdom of the Greeks and Romans was kept alive through the Middle Ages in small pockets of learning and culture, ateliers have sprung up around the world that are devoted to preserving and handing down the traditional visual arts: drawing, painting and sculpting to each new generation.
And when this craze for conceptual art has burned itself out and when visual art is no longer looked on as mere decoration and when schools that have dissolved their art programs want to reestablish them again, the world will find these skills preserved through the atelier movement.
The mechanisms that create value, particularly monetization, are often extremely persuasive. It’s hard to argue with entities with power and money, regardless of whether they correlate to hard work, quality, thoughtfulness or even morality. I’m not sure that’s ever going to change, whatever happens to art tends.
@@iridescentsquids Alas…there’s wisdom in your reply.
Spot on.
Really thought provoking and inspiring video 😊 Many thanks!
This is a wonderful video. Thank you. it really helped.
Lady, you give fantastic advice and you seem all kinds of auwsum. Thank you 💞
Destroy all barriers 🔥
Very nicely filmed and valuable information❤❤❤
Thank you this video is really really useful that I understand how to watch artwork😮
Who gives these names to art movements (modern, postmodern, contemporary, fauvism, impressionism, etc.)? Who distinguishes between various art movements and on what basis? Are there paintings/painters that belong to more than one movement?
Very much clear
It is great !! thank you!! please,where we can see more lecturea of this women?
great video
Not all contemporary art is capable of sustaining the levels of interrogation which had historically been expected of art making in the past.
I love the idea of “interrogation” when approaching art. I think it’s useful to see if art “holds up” and regardless of when something was made the results of that effort often surprise me.
That said I would point out that a lot of art that crumbles under interrogation was made in the past. It just doesn’t get displayed or resold, and a lot of contemporary art is still going through a cultural sifting process and is a painfully mixed bag. When it’s brand new it gets elevated as best as the gallery can manage. And certainly if a museum has invested in it they’ll give it the best display they can muster. The contrast between presentation and quality/integrity can be startling at times.
For the ordinary people doesn’t matter the brush, the technique, etc of a paint; that’s the problem. I like a paint if impresses me visual, emotional, significance. If a painting must be explained by critics why I should I like it, for me isn’t art
Thank you
Succinct and really useful
It is difficult to put the definition in one specific mould considering how its been interpreted in recent times, when "Dadaism" as a group was formed it will be difficult to put them in a niche of acceptance as at that era. As we grow and consider a lot of factor that comes into play, perhaps we should consider the use of the word 'creativity in all its ramification". All these are just my thoughts and others might not necessarily agree with me.
Malevich's "Black Square" put an end to the depiction of reality and laid the foundations for the development of all contemporary art. Before the First World War, Hobbes' ideas reached their limit, as historians say, the spirit of war was simply in the air. 1911 Gioconda is stolen, the French blame the Germans for everything and France is going to declare war on Germany. The feeling of the inevitability of the approaching end was expressed by Malevich with his Black Square. In the future, his ideas will serve as an impetus for Victor Vasarely and the creation of a new style in Op-art art - on the basis of which all computer graphics are built. We are on the verge of discovering a quantum computer, and light plays the main role here,
therefore "Victory over black..."ua-cam.com/video/ALW8-tclRHk/v-deo.html is inevitable.
🤩
Where was this video 5 years ago haha
Gosh is tourism is looked down on in the future, God help the art galleries
Oh my goodness you would laugh so hard if you watched me paint I think it takes me so long is that my process is largely looking at my work I would say 80% looking 20% pain 😂
Art IS
To answer your question at the end.... no, nothing changed in my view, one of the pieces was 2 rocking chairs and a branch slapped ontop
😎 Thanks for the great video. 💞FYI - You might be interested in a great looking inspirational art book, it's called “The STOP LOOKING START SEEING book”.
So patronizing...
If you have to do mental gymnastics to determine if a pice is good or not good. Than its probably not a good pice of art
Some pieces of art are done through mental gymnastics, it’s meant to be provocative, some art is made to look good. Both are good in my opinion
I can understand if a piece was *purposefully* designed to have a few different interpretations, and accidentally has a few interpretations that can make sense, but if the meaning is literally "anything" then that just sounds lazy
@@markbanks6623 just because you can interpret art however you want, that doesn't mean the same applies to people's comments lol
@@markbanks6623 What I meant was that you're going out of your way to grossly misinterpret what I was trying to say
a byproduct of art
If everything is art, nothing is
What the hell is pudding? Does she mean desert?
Let's use the negative to define the positive! I think an Art should bring a rush of blood to your head, flushing your thoughts into pieces. You'd want to hug it and be with it. You don't want to time the minutes and your legs would not move even if you must. Contemporary Art is, however, very cognitive, the exact opposite of what should be.
No. Most 'modern' or contemporary art is snake oil, or the Emperor's new clothes. Unfortunately, art galleries and 'experts/critics' seem to be in a competition to see who can promote the most pretentious, self indulgent nonsense claiming to be art. If everything is art, then the actual word 'art' is redundant.
Discussions about “what’s art” are often super dry and boring. But I agree there’s a lot of pretentiousness.
Art is everything. Its just the audience have diff theories of art.
@@ARTBUS1 if 'art is everything' then the word 'art' ceases to have any meaning.
the word Art is everything that involves creation. Art is both creation and the consciousness that interprets that creation.
@@ARTBUS1 bakers and plumbers are artists. It’s not untrue. The question gets diluted as the answers do lol
Avant-garde? Surely that's a tired, hackneyed modernist art trope. Art that continuously attempts to push the envelope loses touch with its roots and attenuates (in whatever tradition it emerges from), declines into the search for novelty and sensation. Contemporary art, ultimately, can only mean art that is made now and if humans survive another 100 years, which looks like a very remote possibility, then the art made now will be called what?: Once contemporary art? How about we just call it 'art' and be done with? I've seen nothing radically new in any gallery over the past 30-40 years of extensive art viewing. Furthermore, let's not be afraid to try and distinguish between good and bad art - a total taboo now. After all, we should do the same with political systems (capitalism is BAD, etc) and politicians.
Art has never been so narcissistic and irrelevant
Garbage accompanied by psuedo analytical babble,contemporary art in a nutshell.
Boring art
It is just always very unfortunate that significant, influential and important is always equated with expensive.
-If one considers that contemporary art is bought only to increase its value, that is a sad number in itself.
-If one further considers that those who assess this value are ultimately only (mainly) women who did not manage to study something "real" because of the high study requirements, then switched to art history or art science and are now leading curators or museum directors, then this naturally casts a completely different light on the current art scene than one would normally think.
-If one asks oneself why today's art is so incredibly flat, uniformly the same worldwide, banal and above all only decorative, one could almost get the idea that this trend of uniformity, this egalitarianism, is deliberate.
So the real ability and the Geniehafte one would like in our today's time no more.
These uniform-thinking and ultra arrogant rulers of the art scene, so ultimately determine what is so to speak "exhibition-worthy art" and what is not.
I don’t like contemporary art.. I like art from exactly 100 years ago…. Artists had a much more enlightened attitude in 1923.
Same with architecture. Yes we have good modern examples, but brutalism is brutal. Be it a building, a painting, or some unfathomable installation.
🤢