Easter College

Teacher Education Department

Easter School Rd, Guisad, Baguio City

Module 8: Contemporary Art

Course: GEC 4

Course Title: Art Appreciation

Course Schedule:

Topic 1: Contemporary Art

Course Learning Outcomes:

1. Identify the key characteristics of contemporary arts;

2. Give personal opinions on the deviation of contemporary arts from its preceding eras;

3. Create a sample of earth art.

Time Frame: 3 Hours

Learning Experiences:

Observe the figure on the right side. Is this an art? Why or why
not?

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The history of art is one of the most difficult tasks to pin down. As what previous modules have shown,
significant ideas, canons, and tradition, preferences
and dominance of styles, media, and mode of
production were the definitive characteristics that
segment art history into identifiable periods and
movements; identifiable, but not necessarily
precise. It is important to note the periods and
movements of art are themselves testament to the
connection of art and culture in the everyday life.
As it is examined and analysed in context, it
becomes increasingly apparent that art is not
detached from; rather, it is embedded in the affairs
of the society in which it exists. It offers a glimpse
as to the beliefs of specific eras and how these
beliefs were translated into how people saw
themselves and the world and how they chose to
come into terms with it – all in flux.

This lesson attempts to provide a glimpse of contemporary art and how it was understood, defined, and
represented, not only within the bounds of the art world, but also beyond it.

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 Contemporary Art

Defining Contemporary

The term contemporary seems simple and straight forward enough to define. There is this assumption that
it need not to be asked; rather, that it must be already be understood. But with the attempt to do so, one
finds it is a lot harder to grasp. The complexity of defining the term is attributed to the fact that people
have dissenting views on the interpretation of the “present”, “ of today”, or what the “now” means – these
are often ideas that follow the word contemporary. Even more so, is when it is hinged on the word “art”
and suddenly it becomes a bit fuzzy.

There are museums for example that include name of artists, art forms, or artworks in their institution’s
name, but seem to champion works that arguably fall under an earlier period. For example, the Institute of
Contemporary Srt in London which was founded in 1947 includes in its mandate “the promotion of art
that came to be from that year onwards.” Clearly the timeline is a bit skewed

Contemporary Art

One of the main developments during this time was the turn from the traditional notions of what art is:
from paintings and sculptures to the more experimental formats. These included film, photography, video,
performance, installations and site-specific works and earth works. Even these formats tended to overlap,
leading to interesting and dynamic and otherwise “unheard of” combinations of subjects, concepts,
materials, techniques and methods of creation, experience and even analysis. Compared to other periods,
it can be argued that contemporary art is the most socially aware an involved form of art. The subject
matter of its works was one of the most pressing, heated and even controversial issues of contemporary
society.

Other contemporary art movements

Neo-pop art

In the 1980s, there was a renewed interest in pop art especially to Andy Warhol’s works and his
contemporaries. What made it different from pop art was that it appropriated some of the first ideas of
Dada (*check on Dadaism) in which ready-made materials were used for the artwork. Dada was a
movement that was very much against value of bourgeois, the colonial and even the national. It was both
anarchic as it was referencing anarchy – the war ensued because of the values the movement abhors and
despises. Aside from this, it does not only referenced popular culture, but more importantly, criticized and
valued it, often using popular cultural icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie O, Madonna and Michael
Jackson, among others. Some of the artists involved in the revival of pop art was Katharina Fritsch,
Daniel Edwards, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, Mark Kostabi, and Damien Hirst, to name a few. Compared to
their predecessors, they were more affront about their evaluations about the world through their works.

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 American Jeff Koons, “Puppy” (1992). Stainless steel, soil and flowering plants

In Koon’s “Puppy,” he uses computer modelling to create a behemoth of a sculptural work – a giant
topiary that refers back to saccharine ideas of sentimentality, security and banality: flowers, a puppy,
Hallmark greeting cards, and chia pets. This work articulates his exploration of the limits that exist
between the mass or popular and elite culture.

Photorealism

The resurgence of figurative art, where realistic depiction is a choice, is a proof how varied and
fragmented post modernism is. In photorealism, a painstaking attention to detail is aimed, without
asserting an artist’s personal style. These drawings and paintings are so immaculate in their precision that
it starts to look it is a photo without a direct reference to the artist who created it. Two of the known
photorealist artists are Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter.

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Performance Art

Performance art is related to conceptual art, whose rosters of well-known artists include the likes of
Marina Abravomic, Yoko Ono, and Joseph Beuys. As a movement, it began in the 1960s and instead of
being concerned with entertaining the audience, the heart of the artwork is its idea or message. Here, the
audience may even be spontaneous and done live or recorded. Since it is also durational in nature, it is
also considered an ephemeral works of art. An interesting proposition is that performance is not about the
medium or the format; rather, it is how a specific context is made in which through engagement or
interaction, questions, concerns, and conditions fleshed out.

Installation Art

Compared to traditional art formats, installation art is a kind of an immersive work where the
environment or the space in which the viewer steps into or interacts with (going around installative art) is
transformed or altered. Usually large scale, installation art makes use of a host of objects, materials,
conditions and even light and aural components. These works may also be considered site-specific and
may be temporary or ephemeral in nature. Well-known installation artists are Allan Kaprow, Yatoi
Kusama, and Dale Chihuly.

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An example of public installation art is the “Cadillac Ranch,” comprised of 10 Cadillacs of different
models ranging from 1949 to 1964. Buried nose-first into the ground, each car is seemingly equidistant
from each other and forming a straight line. From its original sit along interstate 40, it was moved in
1997 to its new spot two miles westward along the interstate. The cars underwent several changes, from
the first time they were installed as they were located in a public space. It didn’t take long before graffiti
found its way on the surfaces of the cars, and was painted different colors such as grey. It also had pink
phase in the 1990s, where in all cars were painted pink.

Earth Art

Sometimes considered as a kind or a spin-off of installation art, earth art (or land art) is when the natural
environment or a specific sit or space is transformed by artists. It is kind of human intervention into a
specific landscape or terrain. Earth (environment issues or concerns) but rather on landscape manipulation
and the materials used, it was taken directly from the ground or vegetation (rocks or twigs). Artists know
for Earth Art are Robert Smithson, Christo, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, and Jeanne- Claude.

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 “Spiral Jetty”

Street Art

This art movement is related to graffiti art as it is a by-product or the rise of graffiti in the 1980s.
Artworks created are not traditional in format but are informed by the illustrative, painterly and print
techniques and even a variety of media. Some of the examples of this include murals, stencilled images,
sticks, and installation or sculptural objects usually out of common objects and techniques. Since these
works are most commonly found in the public sphere, various people who have access to them have
formed the impression and perception of the artworks themselves.

These works operate under interesting circumstances since they are unsanctioned and do not enjoy the
invigilated environments of museums and galleries. However, these works also end up in them, as street
artists also had more traditional exhibitionary formats in the white cube. If it is in the open space, there
are no governing rules in its production and sometimes, in the interaction. Known street artists include
Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey and Banksy. Banksy’s popularity is evidenced by creation
of a film documentary that spoke about him and his works. Gordon Matta – Clark, Jenny Holzer, and
Barba Kruger are some of the known street artists.

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 Comparing to the arts that we have tackled from the pre-
historic to the European arts, arts of today has evolved
from the restrictions and characteristics of each genre.

One of the predecessors of neo-pot art is Dadaism. Dada

was an artistic and literary movement that began in
Zürich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I
and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war.
Dadaism Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of
materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities.

These are some examples of Dadaism.

Left Figure. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp pencilled a mustache and goatee on aprint of Da Vinci’s Mona
Lisa and inscribed the woe, “L.H.O.O.Q.” Spelled out in French these letters form a risque pun: Elle a
chaud au cul, or “She has hot pants.” Intentionally disrespectful, Duchamp’s defacement was meant to
express the Dadaists’ rejection of both artistic and cultural authority.

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 Right Figure. Duchamp’s Fountain.

By taking these objects out of their intended functional space and elevating them to the level of “art,”
Duchamp poked fun at the art establishment while also asking the viewer to seriously contemplate how
we appreciate art.

It should be noted that Neo-Pop Art is not really a new art movement, but rather an evolution of the old
Pop Art movement. During the early years of Neo-Pop Art a common theme was the use of animals in
their art, especially in the work of Jeff Koons, Katharina Fritsch, Keith Haring and Damien Hirst. Their
obsession with portraying or even using members of the animal kingdom into their work comes out in
Keith Haring's cartoon dogs, Jeff Koons' inflatable plastic rabbits and carved dogs, Katharina Fritsch's
giant menacing rats, or Damien Hirst's formaldehyde dissections.

Being inspirited by Andy Warhol’s work, it depends heavily on mass media, pre-existing items,
celebrities, icons that were popular in the present and pop culture along with the believes and lifestyles of
the majority of Americans.

"Photorealism", "photo-realism" or "photographic realism", describes a style of highly detailed 20th

century realist painting in which the artist attempts to replicate an image from a photograph in all its
microscopic exactness.

Most photorealist painters work directly from photographs or digital computer images - either by using
traditional grid techniques, or by projecting colour slide imagery onto the canvas. 

Richard Estes - Supreme Hardware, 1974) Photo-realists aimed to break down the hierarchies of
appropriate subjects matter by incorporating everyday scenes of commercial life

Performance is a genre in which art is presented "live," usually by the artist but sometimes with
collaborators or performers. It has had a role in avant-garde art throughout the 20 th century, playing an
important part in anarchic movements such as Futurism and Dada.

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The foremost purpose of performance art has almost always been to challenge the conventions of
traditional forms of visual art such as painting and sculpture. When these modes no longer seem to
answer artists' needs - when they seem too conservative, or too enmeshed in the traditional art world and
too distant from ordinary people - artists have often turned to performance in order to find new audiences
and test new ideas.

More recently, performance artists have borrowed from dance, and even sport.

For actual example, check Cut Piece by Yoko Ono at https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=Zfe2qhI5Ix4&pbjreload=101

Installation Art is used to describe large-scale, mixed-media constructions, often designed for a specific
place or for a temporary period of time.

It often occupies an entire room or gallery space that the spectator has to walk through in order to engage
fully with the work of art. Some installations, however, are designed simply to be walked around and
contemplated, or are so fragile that they can only be viewed from a doorway, or one end of a room. 

Plexus 35 by Gabriel Dawe Forest of Numbers by Emmanuelle Moureaux

Land art or earth art is art that is made directly in the landscape, sculpting the land itself into earthworks
or making structures in the landscape using natural materials such as rocks or twigs.

These arts are usually documented in artworks using photographs and maps which the artist could exhibit
in a gallery. Land artists also made land art in the gallery by bringing in material from the landscape and
using it to create installations.

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 Richard Long’s Sahara Circle

Street art is art created on surfaces in public places like exterior building walls, highway overpasses, and
sidewalks. Street art tends to happen in urban areas, and yes, it's connected in certain ways to graffiti.
Street art is usually created as a means to convey a message connected to political ideas or social
commentaries. Not all street art involves painting. It can be done with stickers spread over surfaces or by
methods like yarn bombing, a process where artists cover things like trees and telephone poles with
colorful fibers and knitting. Street art can also be done using stencils, where the creator repeats the image
all over a surface to make a statement.

STREET ART at chiaracorsini1

Creating art that defies viewers' expectations and artistic conventions is a distinctly modern concept.
However, artists of all eras are products of their relative cultures and time periods. Contemporary artists
are in a position to express themselves and respond to social issues in a way that artists of the past were
not able to. When experiencing contemporary art at the Getty Center, viewers use different criteria for
judging works of art than criteria used in the past. Instead of asking, "Do I like how this looks?" viewers
might ask, "Do I like the idea this artist presents?" Having an open mind goes a long way towards
understanding, and even appreciating, the art of our own era.

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 What can you say about the deviation of contemporary arts from its
preceding eras?

Assessment

Collect earth/ land and stones/pebbles. Choose a spot where you could install your own earth art. Think of
who or what motivates and inspires you and use him/her/it as your subject. Take a photo of your earth art
(top view). Make sure that the photo is clear.

Send your assignment via google classroom. Please follow the format:
Photo of your art
Short explanation
3 Photos of you while working on your assignment.

Have these attached on your google docs. (They should be in the same document.) Write your name on
the upper most left side of the document. Use your name as the file name.
Also, convert your assignment to pdf file before passing.

Be guided by the criteria below:

Relevance 5 pts.

Materials 5 pts.

Technique and craftsmanship 10 pts.

TOTAL 20 pts.

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Prepared and compiled by: M

References

Land Art. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/l/land-art

Performance Art. https://www.theartstory.org/movement/performance-art/

Photorealism in Art - A Debated Style. https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/photorealism-art-style

Yoko Ono (1965). Cut Piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfe2qhI5Ix4&pbjreload=101

About Contemporary Art.

https://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_res
ources/curricula/contemporary_art/background1.html#:~:
text=Strictly%20speaking%2C%20the%20term
%20%22contemporary,%2C%20technologically
%20advancing%2C%20and%20multifaceted.

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