What is contemporary art?

The definition of contemporary art

Contemporary art is notoriously hard to define. The most widely accepted definition of contemporary art is that it refers to artworks created between 1945 and the present day. Contemporary artworks are therefore defined simply by time period, regardless of the style, medium (sculpture, painting, photography, drawing, or printing), or artistic movement they belong to. Contemporary art follows from modern art, which is broad term used to define art produced between the 1850s and 1945.

However, some art historians set the start date of contemporary art in the 1960s with the emergence of pop art, an artistic movement that represented a radical break from modernism.

Finally, a third definition of contemporary art is that it must be an artwork which either relates to practices and aesthetic designs that convey ideas or concepts (such as conceptual art), transcends boundaries between art and what traditionally is not considered art (for instance performance art), or that goes beyond the borders of art as they are understood by modern and classical art.

As we can see, there isn't a clear definition of contemporary art, but rather several definitions of contemporary art that ultimately all complement each other. Indeed, art today has become so diverse, in terms of the mediums, techniques and styles as well as artistic themes or subject matter that it has become impossible to pinpoint one definition.

The emergence of contemporary art

Contemporary, in the broader sense of the word, means belonging to the same time. In the case of the visual arts, this definition quickly becomes troublesome because works labelled as contemporary can be from a wide range of decades and are therefore not necessarily from the same time period. The term contemporary art should therefore not be understood purely from a chronological viewpoint but viewed as a desire and goal shared by contemporary artists to challenge the artistic canons in the same way that modern art had tried to do, but to go further in this approach and put an end to the canonical nature of art Modern art succeeded in turning away from figurative art, and had begun to ask important questions about the very nature of art.

Contemporary art would continue to push this questioning even further. The emergence of minimalism and pop art demonstrated artists' questioning of expected aesthetic qualities and the importance of originality and uniqueness in art. Artists also questioned society, with pop art making use of society's output in order to criticise it. Several significant upheavals led to the emergence of contemporary art. From a social and economic point of view, it was the development of a consumer society (increase in productivity and goods manufacturing, economic growth, the rise of the middle class in industrialised countries) and its excesses that inspired artists.

As the definition of art became ever broader, art forms became more diverse and moved away from cultural institutions, with street art, performance art, and conceptual art. New art forms appeared with the arrival of new technologies, such as video art, computer art, BioArt, and digital art. Finally, the notion of medium (painting, sculpture, drawing, etc.) lost its importance with the development of installations, ephemeral works and works in progress.The medium became a simple vehicle of communication.

Tip: On Artsper, you'll find an extensive catalogue of contemporary artworks created by famous or emerging contemporary artists. To distinguish them from works of modern art, which can also be found on our website, you can find the work's date of creation on its artwork page. In addition, on artists' pages, whether they be painters, sculptors, cartoonists, photographers or printmakers, you'll find their year of birth, which will tell you whether the artist is contemporary or modern.