Modernity vs. Contemporary

[gwendolyngrey]

This post of Katherine's, about Koons' giant, pink balloon dog being on display at Versailles, made me laugh, but many of the comments posted also brought up one of my big pet peeves.

Modern art is NOT the same thing as contemporary art.

The era of Modern art had its roots in the 19th century, really started to take off at the turn of the 20th century, and had its heyday in the 1950's and early 60's when abstract expressionism was The Thing.  Modern art was all about finding the true essence of a medium, and creating art solely for art's sake.  Jackson Pollock is probably the prime example of a modern artist, as his painting were literally about nothing BUT painting.

The problem with modern art, however, was that art for art's sake wasn't sustainable.  How many times can you splatter paint across a huge canvas before an audience is completely bored?  Modern art was replaced with Post-modernism, and by 1980 the world was solidly post-modern.  As for what post-modernism actually IS, well, that's a whole 'nother discussion. 

Contemporary (ie. current) artists are post-modern.

Any artist that has emerged since 1970 is post-modern.

Jeff Koons is very much a contemporary artist, and as such, is NOT modern.

Comments

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

A very good point. Non-particularly-artsy people (like me) tend to lump all art that (for example) doesn't reproduce "the real world" into the term "modern art," but a little thought makes it obvious that this "modern art" has been around, like you said, for a good 100 years. I do like the designations - thanks!

[koshka-the-cat.livejournal.com]

Real world vs. scholarship. I was basically an art history minor (I didn't take the studio art class since I didn't have the background for it) and the "modern" class covered things covered by the real world definition of modern. Same with science--theory, organic, and many others mean different things inside and outside the field.

"Modern" art museums have "contemporary" art in them as well--the term goes beyond its scholarly meaning.

Also, the contrast of the word modern with the historic setting? I just like the way the words work against each other--contemporary doesn't work the same way.

Ahh, what fun the English language is...

[idlewild-grey.livejournal.com]

Truth!

Technically, it's all a matter of semantics. I suppose one could say stuff like "an interesting juxtaposition of historic and post-modern aesthetics"... but it sounds very... stuffy. (and you might implode)

I suppose I just wanted to offer up the term "post-modern" instead of "modern".