Kenmarc Ian D.

R Piñero
XII-STEM Imperial Jade

What is contemporary arts?

 Contemporary art is the art of today, produced by artists who are living in the twenty
first century. The contemporary art provides an opportunity to reflect on
contemporary society and issues relevant to ourselves, and the world around us.
Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse and
technologically advancing world.

5 examples of contemporary arts

Rachel Harrison, Huffy Howler, 2004

Huffy Howler upset one’s expectations regarding the materials that could make up a
sculpture. Most of its components—including handbags, gravel, and binder clips—were
either very close to being garbage, or very cheap. But the New York-based Harrison
was able to bring these unusual materials together into a unique kind of cohesiveness
that brilliantly teetered between coherence and absurdity. Her sculptures have been
labeled “complexes,” and unlike Robert Rauschenberg’s iconic 1950s and 1960s
“combines,” which were an integration of painting and sculpture into one, Harrison puts
together objects that never entirely seem to combine. Harrison’s work, and others
included in the New Museum’s 2007 opening exhibition “Unmonumental,” offered a
counterpoint or even a rejection of the sculpture that dominated the preceding years: the
big, brash, Neo-Pop of artists such as Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami. These artists
continually invested substantial time, energy, and money exploring new, ever-shinier
materials to fabricate ever-bigger monumental objects to dominate our public spaces.
Looking around the New Museum’s show, it was hard to imagine a starker contrast.
Olafur Eliasson, The weather project, 2003
Upon entering the Tate’s Turbine Hall, visitors to Eliasson’s The weather project were
greeted by a huge glowing orb that hovered near the ceiling. A fine mist filled the hall,
diffusing its spellbinding glow throughout the room. Because this work by the Danish-
Icelandic artist effectively used the entire volume of the space, it was called the largest
indoor contemporary artwork ever produced. The installation became a phenomenon, and
over two million people visited during its run.
The weather project fits into a wider trend, beginning in the late 1990s, in which museums
began to regularly install monumental-scale artworks indoors as exhibitions unto
themselves. Critics have compared these installations to amusement park rides and
viewed their spectacle and pomp as a frivolous pandering to the masses. Yet seen in a
more positive light, engaging and experiential contemporary installations are, for one, a
great way to get the larger population into the museum to see other works.
Kehinde Wiley, Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps, 2005
Critics often read Wiley’s painting, and his production as a whole, as a powerful
questioning of Western art history. As the interpretation goes, Wiley rejects and upends
the subjugated or inferior roles in which black or brown men have been represented and
places them front and center. Yet as Wiley himself undoubtedly also knows, his work is
more complex than this. This work, for example, both lampoons the hyper-masculinity of
the original piece (Neoclassical painter
Jacques-Louis David
’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps from 1801) but also subtly presents male sexuality as a
subtext—something rarely seen in Western art history.
Wiley’s success is just one example of how African American art has become much more
visible in American galleries, museums, and academia in recent years, after centuries of
either exclusion or (at best) inconsistent representation. All the same, major issues
remain—the amount of solo shows devoted to African American artists is also still quite
small, and while values are increasing for works by historical and contemporary African
American artists, this work is still heavily undervalued by the art world compared to the
work of white artists of similar accomplishments or career status.
Vik Muniz, Marat (Sebastião), 2008

Jardim Gramacho, a 321-acre plot of land on the northern edge of Rio de Janeiro, was
the world’s largest garbage dump until it closed in 2012. Between 2007 and 2010, the
Jardim became a kind of studio for Brazilian-born, New York- and Rio-based artist
Muniz
. The artworks created there became a series called Pictures of Garbage, which recreate
iconic images from art history using trash collected from the dump.
Muniz’s work prompts a number of important questions regarding contemporary art.
Ethics is a good place to start, especially regarding collaborations with “marginalized” or
poorer segments of society, which has become a common practice for contemporary
artists interested in socially engaged art. Pictures of Garbage also considers the
aesthetics of contemporary political art. Muniz’s work is political, but it does so by avoiding
straightforward propaganda and retaining various conceptual layers through its complex
formal processes. Very broadly, this is characteristic of much politically engaged art
today—for it to succeed from a critical and especially market point of view, it cannot be
too straightforward or too heavy-handed with its messaging.
Ai Weiwei, Remembering, 2009
On May 12, 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake devastated Sichuan Province in western
China, killing thousands of young students whose schools may not have met country-
wide building standards. The government refused to investigate, and Chinese artist and
activist
Ai
was compelled to act. The son of a poet who was denounced and exiled by the Chinese
government, he had made a career out of creating artworks promoting freedom of
expression and human rights, and in the process, challenging Chinese cultural values
and political authority.
Ai’s most celebrated works related to the earthquake were large-scale sculptures that
utilized backpacks as their primary medium. Remembering consisted of nine thousand of
these backpacks arranged so that they spelled out “She lived happily for seven years in
this world” in Chinese characters. The highly public and prominent placement
of Remembering—it covered the massive front facade of the Haus der Kunst in Munich,
one of Europe’s most influential art museums—left little doubt as to the institution’s
support of the work. At once minimal, monumental, historical, and very
emotional, Remembering stood as a powerful and indelible example of a work of art’s
ability to engage directly with ongoing political and social issues.