contem__porary

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Pixar’s 3-D characters in Toy Story are composed of surfaces with triangles.

They convince us that a stack of triangles is conscious and feels pain—the inspiriting of crafted characters.

That’s artistic creativity.

Alvy Ray Smith. A Biography of the Pixel.

2021

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Humor is a product of serious contemporary thought.

Revealed in the significant paintings and sculpture of our time.

Paul Rand. Thoughts on Design.

1947

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

The arts of ancient China, India, and Persia reflect a humorous spirit in the design of masks, ceramics, and paintings.

American advertising in its infancy also demonstrated this tendency toward humor.

Paul Rand. Thoughts on Design.

1947

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

It’s artwork with a piece of code behind it.

There is no longer a programmer and an artist. They are one and the same.

Arthur I. Miller. How Cutting-Edge Science Is Redefining Contemporary Art.

2014

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Graffiti and street art poetically break the monopoly of messages on the urban fabric, and at the same time open up questions on the nature of public space and the right to the city.

Graffiti and Street Art.
Reading, Writing and Representing the City.

2017

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

I am inherently linked to the time that I was 
born into,

a time rooted in

contemporary art

and the subcultures of

hip-hop,

skateboarding,

and

graffiti.

Virgil Abloh.

Abloh-isms.

Edited by Larry Warsh.

2021

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Kruger, Weiner, Ruscha and word artists all share with advertising the ability to give words a visual plasticity, a tendency to adopt linguistic forms, although frequently banal, have an indisputable hold on the unconscious.

Joan Gibbons. Art and Advertising.

2005

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Identities, stereotypes, narratives as history.

Barbara Kruger. Graphic designer at Condé Nast. Head designer of Mademoiselle by 1967.

Eschewing distinctions between art and design, Kruger works with ‘pictures and words’.

Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers. Berg.

2007

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Amplifying the alterations and combos that renders into idiosyncratic, articulate and personal pictures using algorithmic settings and tools.

Such an approach shows Photoshop as a medium in its own right.

Charlotte Cotton. The Photograph as Contemporary Art.

2004

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Graffiti’s early pioneers never got the recognition they deserved inside the art world.

Artists get left behind despite crucial contributions to the creative and cultural conventions of the genre.

Jeffrey Ian Ross. Routledge Book of Graffiti and Street Art.

2016

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Objects of art are expressive, they are a language.

Each art has its own medium.

Art speaks an idiom that conveys what cannot be said in another language.

John Dewey. Art as Experience.

1934

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Art is the “indefinable.” 

1958

Klein exhibited the “indefinable” as the “Void” by painting an entire gallery – except for the ceiling and the floor – white and presenting the empty space.

Yves Klein. Overcoming the Problematics of Art.

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

1957

Blue monochrome paintings, all identical.

Collectors chose among the eleven.

Prices, were all different.

Pictorial quality of each painting is perceptible by something other than its material and appearance.

Yves Klein. Overcoming the Problematics of Art.

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

A post-museum would have to be built intentionally as software that can graft onto different platforms. It would not relate only to one building.

It is the software.

András Szántó. The Future of the Museum.

2020

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

The art world’s dominant ideology is to ratify anything that the artist chooses to call art.

If art is to advance beyond this dominion, it will be through different art media to illuminate our relation to Being.

Paul Crowther. How Pictures Complete Us.

2016

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Miró and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related.

Alastair Sooke. Roy Lichtenstein.

How Modern Art Was Saved by Donald Duck

2013

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Abstraction allows artists to demonstrate that art can exist on a two-dimensional surface, in the same way it exists in the unconscious mind—independent of nature, time, and space.

Eric Kandel. Reductionism in Art and Brain Science.

2016

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Art-making and art-viewing create a space for engagement that allows us to contemplate and respond to a changing world.

Jessica Holtaway. World-Forming and Contemporary Art.

2021

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

The modern and contemporary understanding of art as fluid seems to contradict art’s original purpose: to withstand the flow of time.

Boris Groys. In the Flow.

2016

#whatisart

[contem__porary @contem__porary]

Presenting us with alternative experiences, art has the ability to stimulate our political imagination and populate it with new, perhaps revolutionary, ideas.

Eliza Steinbock, Bram Ieven & Marijke de Valck.

Art and Activism in the Age of Systemic Crisis.

2020

#whatisart