Contemporary Artists : Art No Authority Can Tell Your Own Body With A Knife

When cavemen were around, they used art as a way to record their huntings and stories. As the world became more civilized, art became a valued part of a sophisticated society. The early 20th century believed art should reflect only beauty. However, people experienced traumatic events like World War II, and 9/11 and artists took these experiences creating art that was drastically different from the beautiful meadow fields. Ever since then, art has become more provocative leading to debates on whether some contemporary art today is art. Although many people dislike contemporary art, controversy exists because art reflects current culture and our culture has controversial events and every person has a different has a perspective about it.

is the most living influential postwar American artist moved beyond Abstract Expressionism toward Minimalism. He believes into shapes possibilities to be able to give you narrative sentence.

A massive artistic change begins with a sense of something about this is wrong. The next step is anger against the wrong and a decision to rectify it. Later, the anger and need for change bleed into every artistic form to revolutionize culture itself. There is no better example of a counter-culture movement than America in the 1960’s, as defiance of previous social norms took place in the Civil Rights movement, the beginning of feminism, and the construction of a radical “hippie” lifestyle. Through cultural changes came rapid controversial evolution in the arts, particularly in music and fashion.

I'm sure artists can agree that art is not something written in stone, it is a matter that is always changing. Looking back at eighteenth century artist and comparing them to artists of today, there are many factors that have changed; from composition and color, to technique and even canvases. There are always trends in the design field. Personally, I don't believe that a single artist can have the responsibility of making a direct impact on the world of art; however, he/she can influence and impact his/her audience to go out and make a difference. So in an era where every individual is caught up and distracted with the media to be focused on world problems, the only real way to communicate with the world is through media, which is where illustration and entertainment come into play.

Art is a human construct, it is bound to the artist that creates it just like each person is bound to the age in which they live. Art is as much a part of the artist, as words are part of the person that spoke them. It is the Human Spirit to want to progress from your predecessor, to use your forerunner's knowledge to break away and accomplish more. Art, being intrinsically entertained with the Human Spirit follows this trend. Each style having a base of knowledge from a previous style, but instead of replicating it, taking it further. Thus art reflects the Human Spirit's want to progress as much as it reflects the artist that created it and the time it was created in.

Bruce Nauman is an American artist born in 1941, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He has been recognised as one of America’s most influential and innovative contemporary artists of the 1960s. His work blends ideas from Conceptualism, Minimalism, performance art, and video art, characterising Post-Minimalism art. Nauman works in a wide variety of mediums including sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance and installation, and draws inspiration from the speech, activities and materials of everyday life. His topics often suggest the problems of today’s society, making reference to fear, contempt, love and hate. He became interested in the way in which a process

Bruce Nauman was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he has been recognized as one of the most innovative and provocative of America’s contemporary artist. Nauman found that if he was an artist and was in a studio, then what ever he was doing in the studio must be art. At that point, art for him became more of an activity and less of a product. He works in the various mediums of sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, and installation. He creates art more in the way which a process can be transformed and become a work of art. A lot of his ideas came from the wake of minimalism in the 60s. He often used his own body, shown on video completing repetitive tasks. Art for Nauman, is a random system of codes and signs, like any other

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks states, “Art Hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home” which is true for many viewers when experiencing Bruce Nauman’s work. Nauman is classified as a contemporary American artist whose works also incorporate ideas of post-modernism and minimalism. He has been making art since the early 1960’s and has moved through many different mediums as his art progressed and his style changed. At first Nauman was a painter who soon ended that career and turned to sculpting, photography, film, and video. Bruce Nauman’s works of art have interested me and inspired my final assignment by his professional legacy, inspirations, and techniques.

As postmodernism visual culture seems to strive for originality and freshness, it utilizes the past. What a paradox, what specificity of postmodernism it is. ! Your example of Ron English work is fun and a great illustration on the subject.

Understandably, this could be construed as laziness on the part of the artists. In David Harvey’s writings on Postmodernity, he discusses the chaos and superficiality that has accompanied our modern condition. Modernism had a certain idealism accompanying it, and Postmodernists, Harvey argues, have attempted to co-opt that idealism while at the same time diminishing the accomplishments of Modernism. “As even Jencks admits, Postmodernists have taken over all the achievements of the Modernists in architectural design, although they have certainly altered aesthetics and appearances in at least superficial ways” (Harvey, 179). This of course is the exact same practice that modern musicians are engaging in, claiming the musical achievements of those that came before and dressing them up in a new aesthetically appealing way. Harvey goes on to make the argument that this co-optation is occurring because of essentially a lack of imagination, or desire, in the Postmodernists in creating new Grand Narratives.

Art overall is created and adored by numerous amount of people for many reasons, such as amplifying shared common visual language. The word art often branches into many different movements and components. Modern art or Contemporary art is one those components; this specific genre began mainly in the 1860’s to the 1970’s. During, this time period artists began throwing aside their own beliefs in a spirit of experimentation and the bringing of new ideas. The purpose of Modern art is to beautify one’s surroundings with intrigue, its often very diverse and cannot be easily defined through a list of visual characteristics, artistic themes or cultural concern. Moreover, Modern art is often hard to understand by people because, unlike Egyptian tomb paintings or Greek sculptures, it speaks to the dramatic social, political and technological changes of the last 50-60 years, and questions many of society’s values and assumptions. Also, Modern artists known for incorporating a great deal of abstraction into their works and representational forms to convey their ideas more elaborately; Rene Magritte is one of those artists.

However, the term modern art can be applied to many artistic genres; this is because the intent of modern art is to convey the artist’s perspective “as it exists in the world”.

Today, Art has gone through many changes. Abstract art dominates art today shows ambiguous life a man lives, in contrast to the unambiguous art of the past. Modern does not have spirituality and cultural values and beliefs in the past and is now a reflection of a materialistic life of today. Bill Henson, a portrait artist used his 12 year old Olympia as a nude model for his portrait drawing. This brought much controversy that he was exploiting the body of an under - age girl as his own gains. This shows that art is used for popularity and financial gain. The message behind art is to show ideas and ideas that are relevant to society. Art is meant to enliven life and things, though modern art shows more if life’s negativeness. Galleries, parks and museums view to the public with meaningfulness and with the appreciation for art. Art is still effective as hand written material was seen in the walls of Ancient Egypt. Modern art stimulates the thought and fosters greater

The beginning of 20th century was a time of drastic change. New developments were made in the arenas of the classical sciences, social science, psychology and philosophy - each challenging traditional thought. Industrialization and the introduction of many new, challenging concepts in the fields of politics as well as the development of new technologies gave artist more freedom to innovate and break the rules of traditional art. By using new materials, techniques and the new approach artists were pushing boundaries of what has previously been accepted art practice in order to invent radically new styles.

“Modern painting, breaking through old conversation, has released countless suggestions which are still waiting to be used by the practical world.”(Gropius) The birth of modernism and modern art goes back to the Industrial Revolution, a period that lasted from the 18th to the 19th century, in which rapid changes in manufacturing, transportation, and technology profoundly affected the social, economic, and cultural conditions of life in Western Europe, North America, and eventually the world. Before the 19th century, artists created art pieces for wealthy people and institution places like the church where they can create art works about storytelling of religious or mythological scenes . These arts were there to instruct the viewers.However, this changed when during the 19th century many artists began to create works that were about people, places, or ideas that interested them, and of which they had direct experience. With the popularization of the idea of a subconscious mind, many artists began exploring dreams, symbolism, and personal iconography as avenues for the depiction of their subjective experiences.Challenging the notion that art must realistically depict the world, some artists experimented with the expressive use of color, non-traditional materials, and new techniques and mediums.