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Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since World War II.

The institutions of contemporary art
Contemporary art is exhibited by commercial contemporary art galleries
Contemporary art gallery

A contemporary art gallery is a location where contemporary art is shown. The term art gallery is commonly used to mean art museum , the rooms displaying art in any museum, or in the original sense, of any large or long room....
, private collectors, corporations, publicly funded arts organizations, contemporary art museums or by artists themselves in artist-run space
Artist-run space

An artist-run space is a gallery space run by artists, thus circumventing the structures of public and private galleries.Artist-run spaces have become realised as an important factor in urban regeneration....
s.






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Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since World War II.

The institutions of contemporary art


Contemporary art is exhibited by commercial contemporary art galleries
Contemporary art gallery

A contemporary art gallery is a location where contemporary art is shown. The term art gallery is commonly used to mean art museum , the rooms displaying art in any museum, or in the original sense, of any large or long room....
, private collectors, corporations, publicly funded arts organizations, contemporary art museums or by artists themselves in artist-run space
Artist-run space

An artist-run space is a gallery space run by artists, thus circumventing the structures of public and private galleries.Artist-run spaces have become realised as an important factor in urban regeneration....
s. Contemporary artists are supported by grants, awards and prizes as well as by direct sales of their work.

There are close relationships between publicly funded contemporary art organisations and the commercial sector. For instance, in Britain a handful of dealers represent the artists featured in leading publicly funded contemporary art museums.

Individual collectors can wield considerable influence. Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi was the co-founder with his brother Maurice Saatchi, Baron Saatchi of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which became the world's biggest before the brothers were forced out of their own company in 1995....
 has dominated the contemporary art market in Britain since the 1980s; the subtitle of the 1999 book Young British Artists: The Saatchi Decade uses of the name of the private collector to define an entire decade of contemporary art production.

Corporations have attempted to integrate themselves into the contemporary art world: exhibiting contemporary art within their premises, organising and sponsoring contemporary art awards and building up extensive collections.

The institutions of art have been criticised for regulating what is designated as contemporary art. Outsider art
Outsider Art

The term Outsider Art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English language synonym for Art Brut , a label created by France artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by Psychiatric_hospital inmates....
, for instance, is literally contemporary art, in that it is produced in the present day. However, it is not considered so because the artists are self-taught and are assumed to be working outside of an art historical context. Craft activities, such as textile design, are also excluded from the realm of contemporary art, despite large audiences for exhibitions. Attention is drawn to the way that craft objects must subscribe to particular values in order to be admitted. "A ceramic object that is intended as a subversive comment on the nature of beauty is more likely to fit the definition of contemporary art than one that is simply beautiful."

At any one time a particular place or group of artists can have a strong influence on globally produced contemporary art; for instance New York artists in the 1980s.

Public attitudes

Contemporary art can sometimes seem at odds with a public that does not feel that art and its institutions share its values. In Britain in the 1990s contemporary art became a part of popular culture, with artists becoming stars, but this did not lead to a hoped for "cultural utopia".

Concerns

A common concern since the early part of the 20th century is the question of what constitutes art. This concern can be seen running through the "modern
Modern art

Modern art is a term that refers to artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s through the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era....
" and "postmodern
Postmodern art

Postmodern art is a term used to describe an art movement which was thought to be in contradiction to some aspect of modernism, or to have emerged or developed in its aftermath....
" periods. The concept of avant-garde
Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
 may come into play in determining what art is taken notice of by galleries, museums, and collectors. Serious art is ultimately exceedingly difficult to distinguish definitively from art that falls short of that designation.

Contemporary art prizes

Some competitions, awards and prizes in contemporary art are
  • Emerging Artist Award awarded by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
    The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

    The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is one of the few non-collecting contemporary art museums in the United States. Founded on Ridgefield?s historic Main Street in 1964, the Museum enjoys the curatorial independence of an alternative space while maintaining the registrarial and art-handling standards of a national institution....
  • Hugo Boss Prize
    Hugo Boss Prize

    The Hugo Boss Prize is awarded every other year to an artist working in any medium, anywhere in the world. The prize is administered by the Solomon R....
     awarded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
    Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

    The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which opened on October 21, 1959, is one of the best-known museums in New York City and one of the 20th century's most important architectural landmarks....
  • Factor Prize in Southern Art
  • Turner Prize
    Turner Prize

    The Turner Prize, named after the painter J.M.W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under 50. It is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain....
     for British artists under 50
  • Jindrich Chalupecky prize for Czech artists under 35
  • Participation in the Whitney Biennial
    Whitney Biennial

    The Whitney Biennial is a biennial Art exhibition of contemporary United States art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, New York, USA....
  • Vincent Award
    Vincent Award

    The Vincent Award is awarded every two years to a European artist that judges believe "will have significant, enduring impact on contemporary art."...
    , The Vincent van Gogh Biennial Award for Contemporary Art in Europe, founded by The Broere Charitable Foundation and hosted by Stedelijk Museum
    Stedelijk Museum

    The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for modern art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It is located at Museumplein, close to the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Van Gogh Museum....
    .
  • Marcel Duchamp Prize
    Marcel Duchamp Prize

    The Marcel Duchamp Prize is an annual award given to a young artist. The winner receives ?35,000 personally and up to ?30,000 in order to produce an exhibition of their work in the Modern Art museum ....
     awarded by ADIAF and Centre Pompidou.
  • The Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramists, awarded by the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery
    Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery

    The Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery is a public Art museum located in Waterloo, Ontario, Ontario, Canada. The CCGG is a national gallery exhibiting Canadian silica artwork, including Ceramics , glass and Vitreous enamel work....
  • Ricard Prize
    Ricard Prize

    The Ricard Prize was founded in 1999 and in 2006 its name changed to Prix Fondation d?Entreprise Ricard.The prize is awarded each year during the Parisian art fair FIAC by a committee of French collectors to an artist under 40 years old featured in an annual group show curated by a different curator each year....
     for a French artist under 40.
  • Deste Prize
    Deste Foundation

    Deste Foundation or Deste Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art is a museum in Athens, Greece.It was established in 1983 by art collector Dakis Joannou, which the purpose of organizing exhibitions and supporting publications that explore the relationship between contemporary art and contemporary culture....
     for young Greek artists, held every two years; funded by Dakis Joannou
    Dakis Joannou

    Dakis Joannou is a Greek Cypriot Cypriot industrialist based in Greece. He is considered to be one of the leading collectors of European contemporary art ....
     .
  • John Moore’s Painting Prize
    John Moore’s Painting Prize

    Named after the Liverpool philanthropist, John Moores Painting Prize, is a bi-annual open painting competition with shortlisted entries exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool....


History

This table lists art movements by decade. It should not be assumed to be conclusive.


1950s

  • Abstract Expressionism
    Abstract expressionism

    Abstract expressionism was an American post?World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris....
  • Bay Area Figurative Movement
  • Lyrical Abstraction
    Lyrical Abstraction

    Lyrical Abstraction refers to two related but distinctly separate movements in Post-war Modernist painting.European Lyrical Abstraction is an art movement born in Paris after World War II....
  • New York Figurative Expressionism
    New York Figurative Expressionism

    New York Figurative Expressionism of the 1950s represented a trend where "diverse New York artists countered the prevailing abstract mode to work with the figure."...
  • New York School
    New York School

    The New York School was an informal group of American poets, Paintings, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City. The poets, painters, composers, dancers, and musicians often drew inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, Jazz...

1960s

  • Abstract expressionism
    Abstract expressionism

    Abstract expressionism was an American post?World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris....
  • Bay Area Figurative Movement
  • Color field
    Color Field

    Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. Inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism with many of its important early proponents being among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists....
  • Computer art
    Computer art

    Computer art is any art in which computers played a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation....
  • Conceptual art
    Conceptual art

    Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional Aesthetics and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called Installation art, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions....
  • Fluxus
    Fluxus

    Fluxus?a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"?is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s....
  • Happening
    Happening

    A happening is a performance, event or Situationist International meant to be considered as art. Happenings take place anywhere, are often multi-disciplinary, often lack a narrative and frequently seek to involve the audience in some way....
    s
  • Hard-edge painting
    Hard-edge painting

    Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. Color transitions often take place along straight lines, though curvilinear edges of color areas are also common....
  • Lyrical Abstraction
    Lyrical Abstraction

    Lyrical Abstraction refers to two related but distinctly separate movements in Post-war Modernist painting.European Lyrical Abstraction is an art movement born in Paris after World War II....
  • Minimalism
    Minimalism

    Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and Minimalist music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features....
  • Neo-Dada
    Neo-Dada

    Neo-Dada is a label applied primarily to the visual arts describing artwork that has similarities in method or intent to earlier Dada artwork. Neo-Dada is exemplified by its use of modern materials, popular imagery, and absurdist contrast....
  • New York School
    New York School

    The New York School was an informal group of American poets, Paintings, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City. The poets, painters, composers, dancers, and musicians often drew inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, Jazz...
  • Nouveau Réalisme
  • Op Art
    Op art

    Op art, also known as optical art, is a genre of visual art, especially painting, that makes use of optical illusions."Optical Art is a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing." Op art works are abstract, with many of the better known pieces made in only blac...
  • Performance art
    Performance art

    Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time....
  • Pop Art
    Pop art

    Pop art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in UK and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of Fine Art since Pop removes the material from its context and isolates...
  • Postminimalism
    Postminimalism

    Postminimalism is a term utilized in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism....
  • Washington Color School
    Washington Color School

    A visual-art movement of the 1960s, the Washington Color School was originally a group of painters who showed works in the "Washington Color Painters" exhibit at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, DC from June 25-September 5, 1965....

1970s

  • Arte Povera
    Arte Povera

    The term Arte Povera was introduced in a time where artists were taking a radical stance at the end of the sixties. As in the rest of Europe and North America, the late sixties was a period of social upheaval in Italy....
  • Ascii Art
    ASCII art

    ASCII art is a 20th century art movement that utilizes computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable character defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters ....
  • Bad Painting
    Bad Painting

    Bad Painting is a style of crude, roughly drawn figurative painting. The artist Neil Jenney described his work as "bad drawing" in the early 1970s and the term was adopted by Marcia Tucker for a 1978 exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City....
  • Body art
    Body art

    Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos and body piercings, but other types include scarification, scarification, scalpelling, shaping , body suit and body painting....
  • Artist's book
  • Feminist art
  • Installation art
    Installation art

    Installation art is the use of sculptural materials and other interesting material to transform a space or, argueably, an area. Installation art is not necessarily confined to gallery spaces and can be any material intervention in everyday public or private spaces....
  • Land Art
    Land art

    Land art, Earthworks, or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked....
  • Lowbrow (art movement)
    Lowbrow (art movement)

    Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures....
  • Photorealism
    Photorealism

    Photorealism is the genre of painting based on making a painting of a photograph. The term is primarily applied to paintings from the United States photorealism art movement that began in the late 1960s, early 1970s....
  • Postminimalism
    Postminimalism

    Postminimalism is a term utilized in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism....
  • Process Art
    Process art

    Process art is an artistic movement as well as a creative sentiment and world view where the end product of art and craft, the :wikt:objet d?art, is not the principal focus....
  • Video art
    Video art

    Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or sound reproduction data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations....

1980s

  • Appropriation art
  • Demoscene
    Demoscene

    The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing Demo , which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in Real-time computing on a computer....
  • Electronic art
    Electronic art

    Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media or, more broadly, refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electronic music....
  • Figuration Libre
    Figuration Libre

    Figuration Libre is a French artistic movement of the 1980s. It is the French equivalent of Bad Painting and Neo-expressionism in America and Europe, Junge Wilde in Germany and Transvanguardia in Italy....
  • Graffiti Art
  • Live art
    Live Art (art form)

    Live Art is a term used to describe all acts of performance undertaken by an artist as a work of art.The term came into usage in the United Kingdom in the middle of the 1980s to recognize both new and existing performance based work as a form of creative expression that is not only independent of the traditional visual art forms, but also o...
  • Mail art
    Mail art

    Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. The term mail art can refer to an individual message, the medium through which it is sent, or an artistic genre....
  • Postmodern art
    Postmodern art

    Postmodern art is a term used to describe an art movement which was thought to be in contradiction to some aspect of modernism, or to have emerged or developed in its aftermath....
  • Neo-conceptual art
    Neo-conceptual art

    Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in the 1980s and particularly 1990s to date that derive from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s....
  • Neoexpressionism
  • Transgressive art
    Transgressive art

    Transgressive art refers to art forms that aim to transgress; i.e. to outrage or violate basic mores and sensibilities. The term transgressive was first used by American filmmaker Nick Zedd and his Cinema of Transgression in 1985....
  • Video installation
    Video installation

    Video installation is a contemporary art method that combines video technology with installation art. It is an art form that utilizes all aspects of its surrounding environment as a vehicle of affecting the audience....

1990s

  • Cynical Realism
    Cynical Realism

    Cynical realism is a contemporary art movement in Chinese art, especially in the form of painting, that began in the 1990s. Beginning in Beijing, it has become the most popular Chinese contemporary art movement in mainland China....
  • Information art
    Information art

    Information art is an emerging field of electronic art that synthesizes computer science, information technology, and more classical forms of art, including performance art, visual art, new media art and conceptual art....
  • Internet art
    Internet art

    Internet art is art which uses the Internet as its primary medium or platform. The Internet and its connections to the world are the basis of the work....
  • Massurrealism
    Massurrealism

    Massurrealism is the name given to an art genre characterised by the convergence of surrealism and mass media, including the influence of pop art....
  • New media art
    New media art

    New media art is an art genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technology, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art technologies, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology....
  • Young British Artists
    Young British Artists

    Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom, most of whom attended Goldsmiths College in London....

2000s

  • Pluralism
    Cultural pluralism

    Cultural pluralism is a term used when small groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities. One of the most notable cultural pluralisms is the caste system, which is related to Hinduism and also the example of Lebanon where 18 different religious communities co-exist on a land of 10,452 km?....
  • Relational art
    Relational Art

    Relational Art is defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, co-founder and former co-director of Paris art gallery Palais de Tokyo as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." Artworks are judged based...
  • Software art
    Software art

    Software art refers to works of art where the creation of software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks....
  • Sound art
    Sound art

    Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....
  • Street art
    Street art

    Street art is any art developed in public spaces ? that is, "in the streets" ? though the term usually refers to art of an illicit nature, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives....
  • Stuckism
    Stuckism

    Stuckism is an international art movement that was founded in 1999 in British art by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote Figurative art in opposition to conceptual art....
  • Superflat
    Superflat

    Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. It is also the name of a 2001 art exhibition, curated by Murakami, that toured West Hollywood, Minneapolis and Seattle....
  • Videogame art
  • VJ art
    VJ (video performance artist)

    A VJ is a performance artist who creates moving visual art on large displays or screens, often at events such as concerts, nightclubs and music festivals, and usually in conjunction with other performance art....


See also

  • Art for art's sake
    Art for art's sake

    "Art for art's sake" is the usual English language rendition of a French language slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function....
  • Classificatory disputes about art
    Classificatory disputes about art

    history of art and philosophy of art have long had classificatory disputes about art regarding whether a particular cultural form or piece of work should be classified as art....
  • Contemporary art museum
  • Digital art
    Digital art

    Digital art most commonly refers to art created on a computer in digital form. In an expanded sense, "digital art" is a term applied to contemporary art that uses the methods of mass production or digital media....
  • Electronic art
    Electronic art

    Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media or, more broadly, refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electronic music....
  • Medium specificity
    Medium specificity

    Medium specificity is a principle in aesthetics and art criticism that developed during the period in art history called Modernism. According to Clement Greenberg, who helped popularize the term, medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate...
  • Plop art
    Plop art

    Plop art is a pejorative slang term for public art made for government or corporate plazas, spaces in front of office buildings, skyscraper atriums, parks, and other public venues....
  • Reductive art
    Reductive art

    Reductive art is a term to describe an artistic style or an aesthetic, rather than an art movement. Movements and other terms associated with reductive art include Minimal art, ABC art, anti-illusionism, cool art, rejective art , Bauhaus aesthetic, work that emphasizes clarity, simplification, reduced means, reduction of form, streamlined com...
  • Wabi-sabi
    Wabi-sabi

    represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi....
  • Burmese contemporary art
    Burmese contemporary art

    Burma is a country in Southeast Asia which has endured isolation for the last four decades. It is also a country with deep rooted Buddhist beliefs. The contemporary art scene in the country reflects these facts, and the art is often related to Buddhism and the difficult socio-political situation....


External links