Complexification
Complexification is an interesting (and well designed) site that I found via Make Magazine's blog. It is a gallery of generative artworks done in the Processing programming language by Jerry Tarbell. If you check it out, be sure you not only view the static images but also launch the applets so that you can trigger Tarbell's generative algorithms and see new artworks being formed.A thought that has been in the back of my head lately is how New Media art often seems to be automatically considered Contemporary. But that isn't always the case... for example, generative art (such Tarbell's) is often focused on formal aesthetics in a way that I'd characterize as Modern.
I suppose the temporal names all these art categories have (new, contemporary, modern) does nothing to help clarify... Many, many people (including those who should know better) seem to think that Contemporary refers to a time period (i.e., art being made today is Contemporary because it is contemporary). But that's not really any more true than all art today is Modern because we're modern. Post-Modernism seems to confound as well... more than once it's been argued to me that there can never be another art movement because everything that comes after Modernism will be post-modern (I usually counter by pointing out by the same logic we're all making Post-Impressionist art). And of course the cherry on top is the Pre-Raphaelites who were founded 300 years after Raphael's death.
Incidentally, the Wikipedia currently has a particular bad definition of Contemporary Art. I spent a week or two discussing it with the folks who edit the entry... I managed to convince them to mention the idea that Contemporary doesn't not simply mean "art made today." But overall, the entry tries to describe the movement as a moment in time. For example:
The institutions of art have been criticised for regulating what is designated as contemporary art. Outsider art, for instance, is literally contemporary art, in that it is produced in the present day.The idea of outsider art always makes me a bit queasy. I find the category patronizing and overly focused on the human-interest aspect of the artists' lives (i.e., the artist is insane, has a low IQ, a murderer, etc.). Oddly, while I agree most "Outsider Art" isn't Contemporary Art (because the intention behind the art isn't really Contemporary), faux-Outsider Art (which is Contemporary) was a fad for a few years recently. If this seems wrong-headed, consider this... a child's scrawling might be reminiscent of of Picasso or a Pollock, but that doesn't mean the child is a Modern artist (because the child isn't trying to address Modern concerns).
Labels: art movements, computers, generative art, interactive, Wikipedia
posted by Ethan at
8:41 AM
4 Comments:
Yeah, it doesn't look like you made that much headway on Wikipedia. :-) The article bluntly states that Contemporary Art is art produced either since WWII, or at the present time... which clearly includes landscape still lifes bought down at the local Art Mart.
In addition, the proposal you were tentatively advancing instead -- that CA consists of art from the *movements* since WWII
-- seems to me also problematic. What constitutes a movement? The definition is actually circular, because what you really mean is a contemporary art movement. In fantasy illustration, from the 1960s on, Boris Vallejo and Rowena attracted hordes of admirers drawing mighty-thewed warriors and bikini'd swordmaidens. Clearly by any reasonable definition this is, all lowercase, a post-WWII movement in art. But equally clearly it's not what you mean.
Is it really too late to advocate for some other umbrella term which would make clear what we're really talking about, in a way that could be communicated to laypeople -- like the wikipedia editors? I'm not saying one could change it by fiat, but perhaps one could talk about some alternative, with the goal that ultimately museums and syllabi would start using some non-absurd term....
I am drawn back to the term "high", as in Contemporary High Art, which seems to me sort of honest. What we're really talking about here is power relations. A given movement, or body of work, wouldn't necessarily need to be conceptual or intentional, for instance, to gain a foothold in the museums and courses that actually define what you mean by Contemporary Art. There could be an anti-conceptual reaction movement that could make headway, for instance. But the real litmus test is that it captures the attention of the concentrations of social and financial capital represented by universities, museums, arts columns in the NYT, and so on.
Contemporary High Art would be a non-absurd term, because in looking at the watercolors from the Art Mart, you'd be asking the question "is this High Art?", ie "does it hold a position on the heights of the economic pyramid which organizes power relations in our culture?" And that, stripped of pretense, is what the questions that a curator deciding whether or not to hang it in a museum ("is it important? relevant? significant? part of the tradition of the avant garde?") really come down to.
Wikipedia editors and other hoi polloi would immediately understand that Contemporary High Art does not refer to comic book covers -- unless and until those comic book covers happen to be embraced by the organizations of the intelligensia, academia, museums, etc.
We'd still argue about what was "High", in other words, but then we'd actually be recapitulating the real discussion which takes place in the process of canonization and cultural valorization... while the term "CA" has us, as you did on wikipedia, arguing about what is "Contemporary", and forced therefore to take linguistically absurd positions.
What you say makes sense, but I think it is unfortunate to start tossing around the terms "high" & "low" art... they are a bit obnoxious as terms and I think people who find themselves defined as doing "low art" would not appreciate the label (whereas they probably wouldn't mind being described as not doing Contemporary Art).
Hmm... see, I think at first blush it's more insulting to be told that you're not doing Contemporary Art, because it either suggests that what you're doing is not art, or that it's art somehow frozen in time... that it's beholden to the nineteenth century or the 1930s, even though you just did it now.
This sort of reminds me of the term "Old Testament", and the unconscious prejudice I often encounter among well-meaning non-Jews who imagine that Judaism is a snapshot of ancient Israelite religion... that it's what came "before" Christianity. Essentially, the Jews are frozen in time while Christianity has moved forward... all that stuff with the Mishnah and the Gemara and the Pirke Avot is just more of the same, or not really relevant.
Similarly, even accepting that "Contemporary Art" is a misnomer, your discussion with the Wikipedia editors seems to imply that movements in commercial or popular art do not change anything fundamental -- that those are still old masterly or modernist aesthetics at work, preserved and fossilized, even if their creators think they are doing something new.
Maybe high and low aren't the right terms -- maybe we should use "gallery" and "street"? But in any event, I would rather be told I am doing 21st century commercial, popular, street, or even trash art, than be told I am not doing 21st century art at all.
MoMA did a "high and low" show a number of years ago...really great, actually. Worth looking at the catalogue.
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