Contemporary Art

There are many things to be considered in making an art work. An idea is not enough. Rhythm, color, harmony and texture are some of the basic elements of art  that could be given importance. An effective artist should be well knowledgeable about the principles involving the use of proper color, or how to choose texture into the art, how to create harmony and how to put rhythm. He should also know about the form of art he is using.
 
What is Contemporary Art?
 Contemporary art refers to art made and produced by artists living today. Today's artists work in and respond to a global environment that is culturally diverse, multifaceted, and technologically advancing. Working in a wide range of mediums, contemporary artists often reflect and comment on modern-day society. Since the early 20th century, some artists have turned away from realistic representation and the depiction of the human figure, and have moved increasingly towards abstraction. In New York City after World War II, the art world coined the term "abstract expressionism" to characterize an art movement that was neither completely abstract, nor expressionistic. Nevertheless, the movement challenged artists to place more emphasis on the process of making art rather than the final product.

Contemporary art is content about abstract expressionism, minimal art, figurative painting, pop art, hyper realism, optical painting, neo- expressionism, feminist art, ephemeral art, video art, digital art, sculptures, and architectures.

Contemporary artists working within the postmodern movement reject the concept of mainstream art and embrace the notion of "artistic pluralism," the acceptance of a variety of artistic intentions and styles. Whether influenced by or grounded in performance art, pop art, Minimalism, conceptual art, or video, contemporary artists pull from an infinite variety of materials, sources, and styles to create art. For this reason, it is difficult to briefly summarize and accurately reflect the complexity of concepts and materials used by contemporary artists. This overview highlights a few of the contemporary artists whose work is on view at the Getty Museum and the concepts they explore in their work.




 Source:
 http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/classroom_resources/curricula/contemporary_art/background1.html

The Early Years (1901-2000)

Art goes with the changes of the world. If there are developments and improvements in science and technology, art is also went through these changes. Art goes with the evolution of time thus creating the so called "Modern Art". Modern Art means art of the contemporary period or art of the modern time. These arts already possessed new styles and were done using new and more advanced methods which can be totally different from the conservative form of arts. It was the French painter Paul Cezanne, who made the first breakthrough in modern art. He changed the shapes of his object if necessary and he used bright colors.
Many modern artists followed Cezzane and left some of the traditional techniques of art. From the 20th century up to present, art has different forms.
-Impressionism                                    
-Post-Impressionism
-Fauvism
-Neo Impressionism or Pointilism
-Cubism
-Dadaism and Fantasy
-Surrealism
-Futurism
-Non-objective or Neo plasticism
-Abstract Expressionism
-Optical Art
-Pop Art

There are so many artworks of different artist with their styles of art in this era. The most favorite and inspired of my style of art in this era is the Fauvism and Surrealism.

MODERN ART

Modern art is usually refers to works produced during the approximate period 1860's-1970's. Painting, sculpture, architecture, and graphic arts characteristic of the 20th and 21st centuries and of the later part of the 19th century. Modern art embraces a wide variety of movements, theories, and attitudes whose modernism resides particularly in a tendency to reject traditional, historical, or academic forms and conventions in an effort to create an art more in keeping with changed social, economic, and intellectual conditions. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic for the traditional arts, toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. There are many subject maters in this era. In Neoclassicism is about mythology, history and literature. In Romanticism is about landscapes, people, revolution, and peace. In Realism is about ordinary people and landscapes. In Post- Impressionism is about still life, portrait, exotic locations, landscapes and interior. In Impressionism is about nature, still life, scene in everyday life and the city of Paris. Modern art begins with the heritage of painters like Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Vincent van Gogh all of whom were essential for the development of modern art. Modern Art also witnessed the emergence of new media, like Photography.

Art Beyond The West

Coatlicue

This Era, Art Beyond The West is about the history, traditions and cultures and they tour the different artworks and architecture in Africa, America, China, Japan and India. The overall predominant styles in their art are the following:
-Realism
- Symbolism
-Abstractionism
-Naturalism

The Subject Matter:
-Shrines
-Religious Tribe
-People

It shows the different artwork styles from the earliest times to the present. Some of the earliest rock

art in Africa and Australia predates the famous Paleolithic cave paintings in France and Spain. The Indus Valley Civilization, Shang-dynasty China, and the earliest Native American ritual centers in South America were contemporaneous with New Kingdom Egypt and early Babylonia in

Mesopotamia. The ancient, pre-Islamic traditions in the arts of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and adjacent lands along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea lie beyond the West, but they played important roles in the development of Western art in antiquity and they are usually included in

studies of Western art. Directly or indirectly, these and other ancient non-Western civilizations gave birth to the cultures and art styles, many of which represent cultural ideas that remain vital forces in the modern world. Some early Asian cultures coalesced into large states or confederacies, as in India and China, while the cultural units in Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Native America generally
remained smaller and were organized more discretely around regional leaders and deities. But all of these groups, large and small, celebrated their identities through the arts, with religious rituals that often included prayers, song, dance, chants, architecture, elaborate forms of costuming, monumental art and portable art forms. Together, these non-Western cultures represent the majority of the land, people, and works of art produced around the world from prehistoric times to the present day, and some of them are poised to become leaders in the international art world of the twenty-first century.

The most favorite in Art Beyond the West is the Art style in Japan because the paintings is relaxing and mild, it is simple but nice and their artworks is based in Nature.  

BAROCCO "Baroque"

The term Baroque probably ultimately derived from the Italian word "barocco", which philosophers used during the Middle Ages to describe an obstacle in schematic logic. Subsequently the word came to denote any contorted idea or involuted process of thought. Another possible source is the Portuguese word barroco (Spanish barrueco), used to describe an irregular or imperfectly shaped pearl, and this usage still survives in the jeweler’s term baroque pearl. Baroque art above all reflected the religious tensions of the age - notably the desire of the Catholic Church in Rome (as annunciated at the Council of Trent, 1545-63) to reassert itself in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Thus it is almost synonymous with Catholic Counter-Reformation Art of the period.

Baroque art is like the 4th era, the Renaissance art but there are different:Time

-Renaissance artists like Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael Sanzio, and Leonardo Da Vinci are more famous than Baroque masters Bernini and Caravaggio.
-Renaissance art began early in the 1400s, while Baroque came later in the 1600s.
-Renaissance art works did not completely depict human emotion, while Baroque art focused more on showing them.

The most important characteristic of Baroque art:

-Time 

-Motion

-Drama

-Space

-Light and Shadow

Subject matter:

- Religious

-Mythological

-Superstitious

Predominant Style:

- Classicism

- Realism

- Naturalism

Many Catholic Emperors and monarchs across Europe had an important stake in the Catholic Church's success, hence a large number of architectural designs, paintings and sculptures were commissioned by the Royal Courts of Spain, France, and elsewhere - in parallel to the overall campaign of Catholic Christian art, pursued by the Vatican - in order to glorify their own divine grandeur, and in the process strengthen their political position. By comparison, Baroque art in Protestant areas like Holland had far less religious content, and instead was designed essentially to appeal to the growing aspirations of the merchant and middle classes.

Catholic-inspired Baroque art tended to be large-scale works of public art, such as monumental wall-paintings and huge frescoes for the ceilings and vaults of palaces and churches. Baroque painting illustrated key elements of Catholic dogma, either directly in Biblical works or indirectly in mythological or allegorical compositions. Along with this monumental, high-minded approach, painters typically portrayed a strong sense of movement, using swirling spirals and upward diagonals, and strong sumptuous color schemes, in order to dazzle and surprise. New techniques of chiaroscuro (is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.) and tenebrism (is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image.) were developed to enhance atmosphere.

Trompe l'oeil

-a style of painting in which things are painted in a way that makes them look like real objects.

-something that misleads or deceives the senses : illusion.

This era are so nice and amazing, this is like the renaissance but the baroque is unique than the renaissance because the paintings have motion, drama and so on. Some paintings is about "feminism" or the scene about women, "nude" and brutal scene.  

Judith and Holofernes

Susannah and the elders