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Contemporary Art in 2006 |
Over the years, art history has been neatly categorized into time periods and art movements, such as Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and
so forth. It's interesting to see how artists in one period inspired those at a later time, how styles evolved, and to see the progression up to
our current times. But what is happening in our current times? Are there "movements" taking place now? What is the current "ism?"
Artsology recently visited a contemporary art fair in New York City, where galleries and artists from around the world came to showcase their latest
art. We wanted to show you a few of the things that we found, and let you draw your own conclusions. |
| * Our apologies: we didn't have time to record every artist's name and titles of all of the artworks. However, our purpose here is to show
you the diversity of styles, and to give you a general overview of things happening now. |
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| The contemporary painting at left is meant as a commentary on the staggering prices spent on art
masterpieces. The text "Lot 137 No lot" refers to the sale of a Picasso painting titled "Boy with a pipe" (above right) which
sold at Sotheby's auction house in 2004 for $104 million! |
| Not all contemporary art is made for the purpose of commentary, however. These two beautiful works by Ashley Bickerton
have an abstract, decorative quality. |
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Contemporary art is much more than just painting. This is a large scale photograph, with a very curious and mysterious image.
The old man is sitting in a puddle, which might initially seem funny. But his back is turned toward us, and we can't see his face ... has he just
had an accident? Why is he just sitting there? Should we feel sorry for him, or laugh at him? There's no way to know what happened
immediately before or after this moment - all we have is this moment, and our curiosity. |
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This was easily the largest painting we saw at the art fair. It must have been 10-12 feet high and 25-30 feet long. The intense red abstraction
exploded in a burst of color as soon as one saw it. |
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This was definitely one of the smallest paintings we saw. It is only about 3 inches tall, and the amount of perfectly-painted detail of this person's face at this small scale
made it a fascinating painting to see. |
| This next piece shows that landscape painting is still alive and well in 2006. Although somewhat abstracted, it brings to
mind classic Cezanne landscapes. |
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| Contrasting this elegant landscape is a wild mixed-media sculpture/video piece by Tony Oursler. Video of several different faces
and individual eyes and mouths are projected onto this irregular-shaped form. |
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| This is just a very small sampling of the art presented at the art fair. There were displays by over 100 contemporary art galleries, with
literally thousands of art works being displayed. But hopefully this will show you what a range of styles are currently being made by living artists ...
find the art galleries in your home town and see what the local artists are doing! |
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