Contemporary art: what it is, characteristics, and main movements

Today, we live in an age characterized by speed. Not only do fashions appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, but they also spread to the speed of light, thanks to the rise of technologies such as the Internet, mobile applications and networks social. Contemporary art, of course, cannot be understood outside of this reality.

Despite the fact that from the second half of the 20th century we can no longer talk about artistic movements as such, we do there are a series of patterns that characterize contemporary art, and that we are going to analyze in this article.

what is the contemporary art?

Contemporary art is considered to be those artistic manifestations that are included in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. The very word, “contemporary”, entails a continuous expiration and renewal, since, obviously, a hundred years from now we will not be able to continue calling current art “contemporary art”.

Contemporary art is based on the inexistence of solid and representative movements, as the “isms” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were. So,

contemporary art is a clear child of its time, since it represents absolute freedom of creation. We can almost describe a specific trend for each existing artist. It is the triumph of individuality against the community.

Even so, and perhaps paradoxically, we can distinguish a series of common characteristics, which we will discuss in the next section.

• Related article: "Is there an art objectively better than another?"

General characteristics of contemporary art

In broad strokes, we can list 4 essential characteristics of the art that we call contemporary. Let's see them below.

1. The use of new technologies

Although in general every new artistic manifestation goes hand in hand with a technical innovation, it is true that, in In the case of contemporary art, innovation is a basic characteristic to support its own definition. For example, in the gestation of Flemish art in the 15th century, oil painting, which was invented at that time, was very important; but we cannot say that this new technique constituted something essential in the birth of this new style.

However, we can affirm that new technologies have a lot to do with the formation of contemporary art. On the one hand, photography and cinema, which were the basis for many of the creations of the first avant-garde of the 20th century; for another, digital techniques and networks, essential to understand current art.

Thus, one of the most important elements that characterize contemporary art is the use and exploitation of new emerging technologies which, by the way, has given origin of the name of one of the most current (and also most heterogeneous) currents of art from the late 20th century and early 21st century: New media art or art of the new media.

2. Virality and mass consumption

Another of the characteristics that underpin contemporary art is its virality and the rise of mass consumption or mass consumption. We cannot understand current art without linking it to the speed of communication and the general public's access to artistic creations. This is a fact that began to be noticed at the beginning of the 20th century, with the generalization of newspapers and magazines and with the growth of the consumer society; however, it is not until the second half of the century and, especially, at the beginning of the 21st century, when this phenomenon has increased thanks to the Internet, mobile devices and networks social.

This extraordinary virality, never seen before, makes it easy for an artist's creation to travel around the world in just a few hours (sometimes minutes). In addition, the high levels of consumption that humanity lives today cause a greater "need" for art on the part of the general public, as well as greater access.

3. The development of “subcultures”

At the end of the 19th century, and for the first time in the history of art, different simultaneous artistic currents known as “isms” appeared. From then on, the proliferation of aesthetic currents advanced with increasing speed, to the point that, at the beginning of the 20th century, we find avant-gardes that overlap with each other over time.

This multiculturalism and simultaneity of artistic expressions reached its peak in the mid-20th century with the proliferation of called "subcultures", that is to say, social groups with their own cultural expressions that differ considerably from those accepted by the "officiality". This is the case, for example, of graffiti and urban art.

4. The progressive relativization of art

Last but not least, we find a relativization (when not trivialization) of art, which began at the beginning of the 20th century with the first avant-gardes and has continued to the present day. days.

Throughout history, artistic movements have been guided by an idea of ​​beauty. Obviously, this idea has varied over the centuries and has been very different depending on the culture that emits it. However, the phenomenon of artistic negation, that is, of the non-existence of an aesthetic-guide, is something absolutely recent.

Perhaps the first to establish the negation of art and, therefore, of an aesthetic, were the Dadaists, a group of disenchanted intellectuals who established themselves as a movement in 1916. The Dada movement was not, of course, the first avant-garde, but it was the first to violently and absolutely deny artistic creation.

A few years before, the futurists proposed an aesthetic, an ideal of beauty, in this case based on speed and progress. They were transgressors in terms of form, but in no case did they deny the existence of art. In fact, they spoke of the "beauty of a racing car at full speed." The dadaistsHowever, they broke with everything ideal. Without knowing it, they were laying the foundations of future contemporary art.

• You may be interested in: "What are the 7 Fine Arts?"

The era of “postmodernity”

Contemporary art bases its discourse not on transgression (this had already been done by the avant-garde), but on the break with the very concept of creation and author. Questions are established about authorship, the validity of the artist's point of view, originality and the very value of the work of art. This is what has been called “postmodernity”.

This break with artistic formalities makes him enter into a frank contradiction, since, at the same time as they question the validity of art galleries, foundations, artists, etc., they use all of this to legitimize Legitimize, why? Because in the postmodern era, any object can be considered a work of art, which is why it needs an institution with sufficient authority and prestige to endorse it as such.

Some of the contemporary art movements

Below we are going to review some of the most important movements in contemporary art, from its appearance in the 1960s to the present.

1. The "pop art"

Emerged in the 1960s by artists as important as Andy Warhol, "pop art" or popular art reinvented everyday consumer objects and turned them into art objects. Thus, any everyday element was likely to be a work of art and, furthermore, and thanks to improved reproduction techniques, any home could afford to access them. It was the dawn of art as a consumer object.

2. The "op art"

The denomination is the abbreviation of optical art, that is to say, optical art. The term was coined by the magazine Time Magazine in 1964, and made reference to the artists who played with optical illusions to energize their creations. Although “op art” had its heyday in the 1960s, we can find its genesis in earlier avant-garde movements, especially in the surrealism. One only has to remember Dalí and his “paranoid-images”, as he himself called them, which made the eye see elements that, in principle, were not represented in the painting.

3. "psychedelic" art

The creative wealth of the 60s of the 20th century is manifested in all these movements that acquired a great impulse during these years of demonstrations, the hippie movement and the birth of the countercultures.

Specifically, the so-called "psychedelic" art has a lot to do with the boom in the consumption of hallucinogenic substances like LSD (in fact, this trend is also called "lysergic" art in "honor" of this designer drug), and its aesthetics reflects the altered states of consciousness produced by its consumption. Thus, "psychedelic" art presents fractals and vivid and brilliant colors, as well as optical and phosphenic effects (sensation of seeing spots of light when the retina is adequately stimulated).

4. The body art

It is about the artistic creation that uses the human body as a support. Thus, aesthetic patterns are formed through painting, piercing or tattooing, and it was particularly popular in the 1970s.

5. the graffiti

The quintessential decade of graffiti was the 1980s. It is a completely free art (and, most of the time, illegal) that uses public surfaces for expression. These are generally compositions of words with a message, but we also find high-quality figurative painting. Usually, these representations are made using the aerosol technique.

6. “poor” art

At the end of the 1960s, a movement of Italian artists arose who claimed the art made with “poor” materials, that is, of daily use and low or no cost. The “povera” artist created his works with wood, clay, leaves, fabrics, rocks and other materials that, in general, could be found in nature or in the urban landscape.

7. hyperrealism

Contrary to what many people believe, contemporary art is not based solely on completely new languages. For example, in recent years the so-called hyperrealism, an artistic expression that mimics reality with pinpoint precision, in an absolutely photographic way.

8. new media art

It is the art that makes use of the most advanced technologies to develop itself and to access the public. The preferred medium of these artists is, of course, the Internet. He new media art or art of the new media he interacts with the viewer, appropriates existing works and creates his creations in collaboration with other artists. Some examples are interactive art and the metaverse.