Contemporary art: an historiographical and etymological paradox

“Contemporary art, in a literal sense, is what has been produced in our time: current art. However, the fact that the fixation of the concept was made historically at a certain moment, the passage of time makes it move further and further into the past from the contemporary viewer”.

There is no such thing as contemporary art (as a movement or period), because time does not stand still, and what is contemporary now will not apply for the same concept in 30 or 50 years, by which time contemporary artists will be retired or will have died and new artists will inevitably remain contemporary to their respective time, too. It is an expression that critics and academics should be spared. One cannot pretend to call "contemporary" something that will eventually cease to be so, it is like trying to call "new" what is indeed so at a given moment and naturally ceases to be so afterwards; it is a useless battle against time, it is counterproductive to create confusion from an etymological error with no purpose other than to pretend to give a name. For some critics, modern art ends in the 80's, coinciding with the activity of artists who could currently be defined as contemporary, if it is understood that contemporary is "the art that is being made" and that others would well call post-modern art.

Now, postmodern art, as we have tried to define it, should not be exclusive to object art, the postmodern should not ignore drawing, sculpture, painting in an exercise of exclusion of everything that has nothing to do with a concept. The means exist, the different applications too, and these are what define the styles of the time, regardless of the support that can be as new as it is traditional. I do not pretend to be a formalist, but neither can I ignore the amount of art that is made based on form (whether it has a conceptual axis or not, is not a problem of concern at this time) but it is produced even at this time.

As in modern art and the avant-garde, there are different styles, techniques, and thematic axes that are not done together as a movement, as in other periods of art history. It must be understood that in this era the artist works alone and there are few or no groups that work for an artistic movement or assume it as such. We are in Debray's mediasphere where everyone consumes, from the intimacy of their portable devices, but little is discussed or confronted with current aesthetic problems. Little is being used to generate a serious opinion or criticism on matters competent to contemporary art. The artist is only consuming images or at best focusing on his production and critics and historians are too busy with more important issues to devote themselves to identifying, defining and understanding contemporary (current) art.

Giuseppe Alletto