![Terry Smith in Smith, T., O. Enwezor
and N. Condee (2008). Antinomies of
Art and Culture: Modernity,
Postmodernity, Contemporaneity.
Durham, Duke University Press.
‘contemporary art’
an experience of time
‘The word ‘‘contemporary’’ has always
meant more than just the plain and
passing present. […] The term
calibrates a number of distinct but
related ways of being in or with time,
even of being in and out of time at
the same time.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/artworldsdefiningthecontemporary-200121222546/75/Artworlds-defining-the-contemporary-Prof-Neil-Mulholland-22-2048.jpg)
![DOCUMENTA 13 : the book of books,
catalog 1/3 / [Artistic Director, Carolyn
Christov-Bakargiev; Head of Publications,
Bettina Funcke]. Ostfildern, Germany :
Hatje Cantz, [2012]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/artworldsdefiningthecontemporary-200121222546/75/Artworlds-defining-the-contemporary-Prof-Neil-Mulholland-23-2048.jpg)
![…the exhibition becomes a
type of anthropological
research in which the artwork
and other forms of figurative
expression are treated in a
similar manner, which is
frequently done in museums
devoted to other periods and
fields, but for some reason it's
not something we do when it
comes to contemporary art.
(Massimiliano Gioni in Bonami
2013, 16
Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Plötzlich diese Übersicht [Suddenly This Overview],
1981-
Il Palazzo Encyclopedia/The Encyclopedic Palace, part of the 55th Biennale di
Venezia 1st June > 24th November 2013, Italy
Curated by Director Massimiliano Gioni](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/artworldsdefiningthecontemporary-200121222546/75/Artworlds-defining-the-contemporary-Prof-Neil-Mulholland-30-2048.jpg)
Uploaded byMasters of Contemporary Art Theory
Artworlds | defining the contemporary | Prof Neil Mulholland
The document discusses the concept of contemporary art, exploring its definitions as a culture, genre, and period. It raises questions about the characteristics and shared expectations across various sub-genres, presenting examples from notable artists and artworks. The text emphasizes the complexity of contemporary art's relationship with time and its evolving nature within different cultural contexts.
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Artworlds | defining the contemporary | Prof Neil Mulholland
- 1. Shimabuku Mobile Phone and StoneTool (2014) iPhone, iPad, iPad mini and ancient stone tools, Dimensions variable artworlds | defining the contemporary Professor Neil Mulholland neilmulholland.co.uk confraternityofneoflagellants.org.uk
- 2. Unfortunately Jake can’tbe with us this week. SEMINAR GROUP 2, 11.10 – 12.00, Teaching Room 02, Old College will not take place. Please follow the instructions he sent by email to attend an alternative class. If you are unsure, come to Emma’s group in J05 at 11.10am or 12.10pm! Seminar changes this week
- 3. What does itmean to state that art is (so) contemporary? Tino Sehgal This is So Contemporary performance at the Venice Biennale 2005 www.kopenhagen.dk
- 4. ‘contemporary art’ a culture agenre a period a style ??? Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019, installation view at the South London Gallery. Photo: Andy Stagg
- 5. Hebdige, D., 1979.Subculture the meaning of style, London; New York: Routledge. ‘contemporary art’ a culture Proposition: Contemporary art is a (sub)culture.
- 6. Sarah Thornton Seven Daysin the Art World (New York: Norton, 2008) ‘contemporary art’ a (sub)culture Contemporary art is a ‘branch’ of human culture.
- 7. Merlin Carpenter Die CollectorScum “The Raf Simons Celebration Paintings” February 10th - March 15th, 2008, Reena Spaulings New York Image: http://billionjournal.com/time/54b_files/ Merlin%20Carpenter_Die%20Collector%20Scum_Rena%20Spaulings_2008.jpg ‘contemporary art’ a culture Problem: Noise/Signal? Which aspects of contemporary art as a culture command our attention? e.g. this performance-painting raises issue of scale Micro: the cultural significance of the compositional decision of using a black plastic bucket to hold black paint (culture as embodied gesture) Macro: gross equity capital invested in all contemporary art (culture as a symbolic representation of wealth)
- 8. ‘contemporary art’ a genre Proposition:Contemporary art is an approach to cultural production that has typified characteristics and shared expectations. e.g. this metacommunicative painting…. © John Baldessari Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell 1966-68 acrylic on canvas 173.36 x 143.51 x 3.81 cm Source https://www.thebroad.org/art/john-baldessari/tips-artists-who-want-sell
- 9. ‘contemporary art’ a genre GenreTheory: “Recipes are a genre; but genres are not recipes.” Freadman, A. (1987). Genre and the New Rhetoric. London: Taylor and Francis: 49. e.g. Fluxus event scores and happenings © Alison Knowles Proposition #2: Make a Salad 1962 Happening, materials/dimensions/duration variable Source https://www.wikiart.org/en/alison-knowles/make-a-salad-1962
- 10. Whitechapel Documents ofContemporary Art book series ‘contemporary art’ a genre Problem: Sub-genres? e.g. Pop, installation, post/net-art, ANTART, performance, environmental art, bioart, neoism, bad painting, accelerationism, studio art, etc. Are there typified characteristics and shared expectations that cut across all sub-genres of contemporary art?
- 11. ‘contemporary art’ a genre:e.g. studio art Ryan Gander Felix provides a stage #8-(Eleven sketches for ‘A sheet of paper on which I was about to draw, as it slipped from my table and fell to the floor’), 2008 Poster paper 300 x 450 cm. featured in: Site: The Artist's Studio Inside-Out February 6 - May 30, 2010 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
- 12. ‘contemporary art’ Proposition: Contemporaryart is a period What does it mean to state that art is contemporary rather than to hold that it is modern, prescient, traditional, nostalgic, postmodern, ancient...? Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990, V&A London 2011
- 13. Google Books ngramof ‘Contemporary ‘ https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph? content=contemporary&year_start=1700&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccon temporary%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Ccontemporary%3B%2Cc0 ‘contemporary art’ a period
- 14. Lot 153 ‘BARR,Alfred H (1902-1981), Jr. Cubism and Abstract Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1936. 4o. Original tan cloth; pictorial dust jacket (some soiling and toning, chips along lower edge and at head of spine). https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/barr-alfred-h-1902-1981-jr-cubism-and-5388669-details.aspx ‘contemporary art’ a period Supercessionism - one time period follows on from that which precedes it towards an inevitable telos (endpoint) Supercessionism is a chronologic related to modernism’s ‘peculiar propensity for understanding time that passes as if it were really abolishing the past behind it.’ (Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern,1993, 68)
- 15. 1960 Home Office BetterHomes & Gardens https://www.flickr.com/photos/americanvintagehome/ 4585250851/in/photostream/ ‘contemporary’ a period style ‘Contemporary style’ = late 1950s/early 1960s interiors such as this:
- 16. John Lewis andPartners west elm Mid-Century Desk, Acorn 2020 https://www.johnlewis.com/west-elm-mid-century-desk-acorn/p3254251? sku=234663833&s_ppc=2dx92700046359354015&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclid=EAIaIQobChM IjPichZ6S5wIVgbHtCh1j7QDqEAQYAyABEgJ20fD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds 1960 ‘contemporary style’ 2020 mid-century modern
- 17. John Lewis andPartners west elm Mid-Century Desk, Acorn 2020 https://www.johnlewis.com/west-elm-mid-century-desk-acorn/p3254251? sku=234663833&s_ppc=2dx92700046359354015&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclid=EAIaIQobChM IjPichZ6S5wIVgbHtCh1j7QDqEAQYAyABEgJ20fD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds ‘mid-century modern’ an anachronic pseudomorphic style
- 18. Keith Farquhar John LewisPartnership 2000 Acrylic on Canvas Courtesy of the artist “Nowadays, the idea of returning to ‘the eternal and the immutable,’ or of forging new forms of both, appears anachronistic, quaint, and feeble, or worse, infantile.” Terry Smith in Smith, T., O. Enwezor and N. Condee (2008). Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. Durham, Duke University Press.
- 19. John Lewis andPartners west elm Mid-Century Desk, Acorn 2020 https://www.johnlewis.com/west-elm-mid-century-desk-acorn/p3254251? sku=234663833&s_ppc=2dx92700046359354015&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclid=EAIaIQobChM IjPichZ6S5wIVgbHtCh1j7QDqEAQYAyABEgJ20fD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds ‘mid-century modern’ a creative anachronism?
- 20. Rodney Graham, "TheGifted Amateur, November 10th, 1962 (2007) dye coupler transparency in fluorescent lightbox 286.1 x 556 x 17.8 cm National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
- 21. Terry Smith What isContemporary Art? ‘contemporary art’ an experience of time ‘the thickening of the present’
- 22. Terry Smith inSmith, T., O. Enwezor and N. Condee (2008). Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. Durham, Duke University Press. ‘contemporary art’ an experience of time ‘The word ‘‘contemporary’’ has always meant more than just the plain and passing present. […] The term calibrates a number of distinct but related ways of being in or with time, even of being in and out of time at the same time.
- 23. DOCUMENTA 13 :the book of books, catalog 1/3 / [Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev; Head of Publications, Bettina Funcke]. Ostfildern, Germany : Hatje Cantz, [2012]
- 24. Guillermo Faivovich andNicolás Goldberg’s El Taco, Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, 25.09.–14.11.2010
- 25. El Chaco Meteorite,Campo del Cielo, Chaco, Argentina
- 26. Artist book "TheCampo del Cielo Meteorites – Vol. II: Chaco", produced by dOCUMENTA (13), published by Verlag Walther König. Between October 26 and December 22 2012, Faivovich & Goldberg presented part of their Chaco-related research at the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building at 5 East 3rd Street NYC. as part of Resonance.
- 27. Chronopolitics: 'the relationship betweenpolitical behaviour of individuals and groups and their time-perspectives.’ (Wallis 1970, 102). What politics of time do people need to develop and share in order to understand a culture as something that takes place ‘in our own time'? Aboriginal Chaco communities protesting against the proposed removal of El Chaco Meteorite, Campo del Cielo, Chaco, Argentina Source: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/corbett/documenta-2012_detail.asp?picnum=2
- 28. Here + Now:Scottish Art 1990-2001 by Maria Lind and John Calcutt ‘contemporary art’ as presentism? ‘Presentism is widely understood to mean the practice of representing, interpreting, and, more importantly, evaluating the past according the values, standards, ambitions, and anxieties of a later “present”.’ (D'Arcens 2014, 181)
- 29. Il Palazzo Encyclopedia/TheEncyclopedic Palace, part of the 55th Biennale di Venezia 1st June > 24th November 2013, Italy Curated by Director Massimiliano Gioni
- 30. …the exhibition becomesa type of anthropological research in which the artwork and other forms of figurative expression are treated in a similar manner, which is frequently done in museums devoted to other periods and fields, but for some reason it's not something we do when it comes to contemporary art. (Massimiliano Gioni in Bonami 2013, 16 Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Plötzlich diese Übersicht [Suddenly This Overview], 1981- Il Palazzo Encyclopedia/The Encyclopedic Palace, part of the 55th Biennale di Venezia 1st June > 24th November 2013, Italy Curated by Director Massimiliano Gioni
- 31. Video still fromEpisode 3, by Renzo Martens (2008) 90 mins Exhibited at the 6th Berlin Biennal (2010) KW Institute for Contemporary Art www.berlinbiennale.de
- 32. John Lewis andPartners west elm Mid-Century Desk, Acorn 2020 https://www.johnlewis.com/west-elm-mid-century-desk-acorn/p3254251? sku=234663833&s_ppc=2dx92700046359354015&tmad=c&tmcampid=2&gclid=EAIaIQobChM IjPichZ6S5wIVgbHtCh1j7QDqEAQYAyABEgJ20fD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds ‘anachronism?’ anachronic time
- 33. Illustration from CarlJung’s The Red Book 1913– 30 ink, tempera and gold paint on paper, 40 × 31 cm, Courtesy: © 2009 Foundation of the Works of C.G. Jung, Zürich. First published by W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2009 Il Palazzo Encyclopedia/The Encyclopedic Palace, part of the 55th Biennale di Venezia
- 34. This certainly lookslike the world as it is now. No longer does it feel like ‘‘our time,’’ because ‘‘our’’ cannot stretch to encompass its contrariness. Nor, indeed, is it ‘‘a time,’’ because if the modern was inclined above all to define itself as a period, and sort the past into periods, in contemporary conditions periodization is impossible. Terry Smith in Smith, T., O. Enwezor and N. Condee (2008). Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity. Durham, Duke University Press.
- 35. George Kubler The Shapeof Time (1962)
- 36. John Baldessari - Paintingfor Kubler 1966-68 Acrylic on canvas 172.4 x 143.5 cm
- 37. Bedwyr Williams TheStarry Messenger at the Wales Pavilion in the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Venice, 2013 HD video 16:9 15mins
- 38. “Duration has differentrates. It cuts into different lengths, and it displays different kinds of shapes.” - George Kubler, The Shape of Time. Reconsidered, Perspecta, Vol. 19 (1982) 112 Bedwyr Williams The Starry Messenger at the Wales Pavilion in the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, Venice, 2013 HD video 16:9 15mins
- 39. multiversal: multiple artworlds existing + emerging genres entangled different shapes of time overlapping
- 40.