The State of Art History Contemporary Art

The State of Art History: Contemporary Art Author(s): Terry Smith Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 92, No. 4 (December 2010), pp. 366-383 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29546137 . Accessed: 18/03/2014 09:31 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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The

State of Art History:

Art

Contemporary

TerrySmith

are we

What art has

to make

of the

become?to

recent

the

that

signs of many,

surprise

contemporary of

many

including

those most directly involved?a field within the discipline of art history?An initial reaction is that thishas been a long time coming. centrated

the

Throughout arts visual

twentieth

production

century, across the

appeared?intermittently the names frequency?in

"contemporary" creasing

organizations,

private

galleries,

globe, but then

art

of

art spaces, until during the 1990s it reached in

culmination

names

the

of museums

the word with

in?

artists'

societies,

art centers,

public

of con?

in places

alternative

its institutional

and

auction

house

this period, the departments. Throughout interpreta? public art remained, tion of current for the most the part, province art has of art critics, art theorists, and curators. Contemporary

long been the primary focus in art schools, as the end point

of

instruction

practical but course,

and

rarely

the

it been

has

hot

of informal dis? topic terms. in historical In

framed

university departments of art history until the 1990s, contem? at all?during the closing days of porary art appeared?if courses

as

such

Art,"

covering trajectories, longer "Modern "Art of the Twentieth Art,"

Art,"

or

"Art since

of a country

or

or as

1945,"

region.

With

"Postwar

Century," on in courses examples few textbook exceptions,

age reflected this situation. The Library of Congress

maintained until

the when

2000,

art"

temporary

to

"Introduction

the art cover?

system

"Modern Art?20th category subject century" it added "Con? "Modern Art?21st century." not re? in searches but is appears keyword

garded as a subject field. there

Out toward impacting of artists

in

of

the contemporary on all of these in midcareer,

have

art,

wide-scale

however,

rates, accelerating Recent art, the work

arrangements. in contemporary and

market,

shifts

at

occurred

issues

in museum,

transformations

theory,

gallery

practice

to

schools graduate art their temporary major

professional specialization. ments to serve this need.

tique and

shaken

Already

their

art

expect

They

to make

intend and

teaching

history

by decades

culture"

that would

discipline,

place

the modern

at all.

Despite

these

academic

concerns,

Art"

has

temporary

appeared

in the

Art History'

title of chairs

remains

rare?the

for

depart? of cri?

oppor?

"Contemporary some

time,

first, perhaps,

How

archive?

I claim

do

a

topic

to have

of

idea

any

its overall

and

shape

direction?

" on 'The that asked for re? "Questionnaire Contemporary' on flection the strange between the fact that conjunction " an institutional in its art' has become object 'contemporary . . . sense" own and the "new that "in its very right" heteroge? seems to float free of historical present neity, much practice and critical determination, definition, conceptual judg?

ment."2

Four years earlier, in the buzz of Art

publication art porary

1900,

of

was

a

sure

its potential?in

of

sign

somewhat

its timeliness,

"contem? shame?

characteriza? To its

its contemporaneity.

short,

the 2005

of

concept and

awkwardness and

that followed

a nascent

surfaced, history" haltingly mood in Pamela M. Lee's apt caught as "a useful the phrase catachresis."3

faced?a tion

since

challenge, The ques?

tions filling the air in Los Angeles were precipitous out

flushed

inevitably,

answers

premature

this

me,

in their

and, Pre

rush.

sentism is only themost obvious danger that lies in taking the on

contemporary art scholars, at

its own

just

word. just would

its own one

Because coming be

historical,

terms.

is, for Compliant parroting art in traps contemporary taking art however is, contemporary history a on into being, the state of report the

Nevertheless, premature.4 In what I set out follows,

is in progress.

art

to contemporary ical,

of

and,

as a field

conceived above

all,

of

art historical

considerable a

prolegomenon theoret?

critical,

inquiry.5

or

cut? debate departments as an earlier, separate

tunities are increasingly opening up. While

seems

one

work

period and worry if the contemporary, too, will demand a if it favors historical different kind of art history?indeed, consciousness

an

What do I do when my artist changes her work before I finish my dissertation?1 Meanwhile, the journal October circulated a

now

con?

as

counts

What

before all the others? What if "my artist" suddenly refuses to cooperate? How do I relate my topic to "the field" when no

belatedly, research

the option of subsuming art history within the "visual

emerging off dates

of art history field

research

ment?

and

lists of dissertation topics. A clear majority of appli?

pepper cants

the world

contemporary art? Should we do history that is like the art it studies? Are we reallydoing criticism, or perhaps theory (note to self: itmay already be out of fashion) ?Whatever happened to critical distance, scholarly objectivity, disinterested judg?

"Con? dat?

ing from 2001. At the College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles in 2009, the recently formed Society of Contempo? raryArt Historians held its firstpublic panel before a huge crowd. Excited speculation abounded: Can we do history of

Contemporary Artists Do Art History as Art Direct participation by artists in art historical debate is not a new thing. In the early and mid-1970s some members of the

Art &

group of conceptual artists took part, Language their through published writings and their exhibited work, in the intense rethinking about the conflicted nature of the origins ofmodernism, then a hot topic within the discipline.6 These debates motivated Jeff Wall's firstmajor works, and the issues

writings,

Michael Wall's

raised and

then his

to

continue actual

works,

resonate: count

as

indeed, key

his

own

contributions.

Fried correctly calls attention to the presence?in history painting-size, digitally manipulated, but seem?

his interpretations of inglyeveryday, backlit photographs?of the absorption/theatricality dialectic in modern French van derRohe Foundation, painting.7 InMorning Cleaning, Mies Barcelona,

1999,

this appears

in, among

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many

other

elements,

THE

1 Jeff Wall,

Morning

van

Mies

Cleaning,

der Rohe Foundation,

Barcelona,

1999,

STATE

OF ART HISTORY:

cinematographic

mains, (one

a

to the most and refined temple expensive a of entitled he which, Dazon, symbol sculpture

aesthetic obscures

with his sudsy fluid) is equally important to thiswork's affect. T. J. Clark, then, might reasonably feel that his narrative of embedded

modernism's

sociality

also

an

had

impact.

in fact, the initiallydistinctive but increasingly conver?

And, gent

approaches

This

kind

of both

of others) have been ans'

has

scholars

of engagement

struggles

modernist

with

with

that

pastiche,

(and,

a number

of course,

thematized inWall's work since 1978. history,

quotation,

art's has

with

and

history,

to do

histori?

with

post? or historicism.

nothing

appropriation,

It takes art historical definition of what is, and has been, at stake what

in modernist is most

Other work

kinds

art

at stake

to be

an

in making

of art historical

of a number

important art now. rumination

of younger

within

component are woven

contemporary

artists,

into and

the they

go just as deep. How are we to interpret a work, made in 2005 by an artist who lives between Berlin and New York and exhibited at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, entitled The Complete

History ofPostcontemporaryArt (Fig. 2)? Josephine Meckseper creates

installations

similar

to those

pioneered

by

artists

waste, then gathered contradictions

into awkward, flashy allegories of the

of contemporary

room, Meckseper's

life. Presented

nizable,

in a darkened

Art The CompleteHistory ofPostcontemporary

shopwindow-style commodities. At

everyday to see them

invited

as

common

increasingly

ifwe

are

experience

display the same

of

easily time,

recog? we are

from the future, looking these days. Specifically,

display recalls those shops in East Germany exposed, as

1989, system

from

more

various

after

wastes,

a

pasts

as

frequently

an this

of a symbols cul-de-sac. suddenly, temporal so and will do exist everywhere,

of modernity's

repositories that had become,

Pockets

of

inequalities

income

in all

increase

societies. Meckseper symbolizes the confusion over the 2005 vote against the European Union constitution by including a toy rabbit that holds a flagwith "Oui" and "Non" on either and

face, played her

which

wittily

spins

on

is that

implication

its base.

a famous

references

the

Each work

of the objects of contemporary and

reputations

the

dis? art; of

relevance

artists such as Joseph Beuys and JeffKoons will fade just as quickly:

late modern

contestatory

art

and

the

art

of

high

capitalism triumphant are alike subject to entropy. Thus, the ironic title of her installation appears inside the display, inscribed

on

in gold

the cover

of a leather-bound

volume:

the

book itself is clearly over a century old. It sitsbehind glass, in a shop that is closed, making it impossible to read. Nonethe? its title taunts

less, porary

rang?

ing from Mike Kelley to Isa Genzken and now ubiquitous among her generation: objects selected from the delirious output of commercial culture and the detritus of urban

first, a

at

suggests,

357

in lightbox,

transparency

photograph,

73% X 138V4 in. (187 X 35i cm) (artwork?Jeff Wall; photograph provided by theMarian Goodman Gallery, NY)

the posing of the cleaner as concentrating on adjusting his equipment, oblivious to the shaft of sunlight raking across the foreground of the picture (Fig. 1). Yet this emphasis on a workingman displaced within a building that was, and re?

ART

CONTEMPORARY

art

us with

is, already,

Meckseper's

larger

the

that even

thought

postcontem

ancient

history. is even argument

stronger

than

what

this array of failed allegories implies. She always shows her vitrines alongside sets of her photographs of antiglobalization demonstrations 3).

She

clearly

in Berlin, favors

the

Washington,

and

elsewhere

protestors'

perspective

but

(Fig. recog?

nizes (as Beuys arguably foresaw) that its current imagery? and art that simply serves it?is also losing its power, its

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ART BULLETIN

358

DECEMBER

20 10 VOLUME

XCII

4

NUMBER

2 Josephine Meckseper, The Complete Art, 2005, History ofPostcontemporary mixed media in display window, 63 X 9SV2 X 235/8in. (160 X 250.2 X 60 cm) (artwork? 2010 Artist Rights Society [ARS], NY/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; photograph provided by Saatchi London)

Gallery,

on

purchase

a critical

contemporaneity.

Both

that

projects

are

past

their

are

peaks?indeed,

in decline.

A

different politics, a different ethics, and a different imagery are

needed.

future

Meckseper's to draw in order

work our

projects attention

an

archaeology to the urgent

of the need

to

develop an ontology of the present.8 It comes as no surprise thatmany artists today are deeply interested in the nature of time, in temporalities of all kinds?social, entific,

personal,

eternal?and

bodily, in

the

geologic,

world

intersections

historical, between

to deal

efforts

locked

Leftism,

into dialectical historicism, and globalizing capitalism, dis? tracted by its own delusory paradise of commodities, are

sci? them.

Many artists are fascinated by how temporalitywas treated by their predecessors, from which theydraw inspiration in their

a way

of

with

art's

approaching

textured

concerns.

present

internal

between

interplay

For history,

artists,

this becomes

some, that

those

is, the densely

who

knew

each

other as well as those connected by imaginative sympathy. Its raw materials

for one's

between core

error,

successors

objects, subject

of

and

example

trial and

orientation, laid

are

ideas, the

art

...

influence,

ideas

incompletely In other words,

people,

and

historian's

of artists as different as Tacita Dean this

interplay

becomes

a

primary

trails

realized, the

connectivity that is the

institutions attention.

and

suggestion

In

the

hands

and Josiah McElheny, material

for

their

art

(Figs. 4, 5).9 Despite their differing perspectives, many artists today use art historical reflection to tackle pressing issues about what it

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THF.

4 Tacita

Dean,

still from

Cinema,

Homage

toMarcel

sound,

13 min.,

continuous

OF ART HISTORY:

STATE

ART

CONTEMPORARY

359

Section Broodthaers,

2002, 16mm film, color with optical loop,

edition of 4 (artwork? Tacita Dean; photograph provided by the Frith Street

London)

Gallery,

is to live in the present. Art historians might be emboldened to follow suit, beginning with the reality that many have for decades,

avoided assiduously seem to no longer

until

so obvious

it became

as

move?nascent

the worldwide

remarkable:

during the 1950s, emergent in the 1960s, contested during the 1970s, but unmistakable since the 1980s?from modern to contemporary

ceptualized? of art

art. How

con?

Is it a question of style, of change within the taken

history a (contestatory,

be

this phenomenon

might

as a

autonomous

relatively

and

unpredictable,

incomplete)

entity? Or confluence

is it

of what took shape initially as distinct developments in the visual arts in the various regions of the world, taking place at the separate nodes of artistic production, but then filling the

connections

yet multidirectional

transnational In either

them?

this

has

case,

between

in art occurred

change

inde?

or is it pendently of all other transformations in the world, part

of a more

complex, I suspect to another?

conditions

some by to be made within

indicated

came

the world's lines

that

are,

at once,

rate,

and

open

toward

How might the emergence modern

be

traced

of

in

latter answer

the

how

set of

to each

contemporary

art

to shift from modernity taken together, inquiry, acute,

theoretically art to come.

Contemporary

Becoming

one

contemporary art from perspec?

might help us to approach tives

of

aspects

Certain

contemporaneity.

that

from

is closer to the truth of the situa?

of these pairs of questions tion,

shift

multifaceted

historically

accu?

use

language

in

general,

and

art dis?

course in particular? Confining ourselves to English, we may note that theword "modern" isgiven a long listof meanings

in the OxfordEnglish Dictionary Online. First, the root, adjecti? val definition (2.a.): "Of or pertaining to the present or recent

times,

as

distinguished

from

the

remote

past;

pertain?

ing to or originating in the current age or period."10 The second meaning is an applied one (2.h.): "Of a movement in art and

architecture,

or

the works

produced

by

such

a move?

ment: characterized by a departure from or a repudiation of

values." Contrastive traditional peri styles and to the core, modern of essential is, clearly, meaning no is modern that which foremost, is, first and

"modern":

longer of a time, age, or period modo,

and

now,"

"just

becomes

is itself a

that is past. This CE

the sixth-century

modernization:

Latin

from

derives

usage

on

"modern,"

modernus,

anal?

ogy to hodiernus, "of today." The Oxford English Dictionary recognizes thismovement ofmeaning by listing "Being at this now

time; The

as

existing,"

it to be

ing

word

its first definition,

while

acknowledg?

rare.

obsolete,

is

"contemporary"

in most

used

commonly

lan?

guages to refer to the passing present. Its etymology is as rich as

that which

exist

Robert

Hans

Jauss,

It is capable

for "modern."11

being,

at once,

in and

apart from

has

others,

among

distinct but related ways of being

to

shown

a number

of calibrating

of

in or with time, even of

time. Current

of the

editions

OxfordEnglish Dictionary give four major meanings. They are on on "to," being turning placed prepositions, sense or of is the strong time. There "at," "from," "during" or to the same the time, (l.a.); age, period" "Belonging or sense of "Having existed but also entangled coincidental,

all

relational,

lived from the same adventitious mostly

date,

in age,

equal

"Occurring

at the

coeval" same

(2);

moment

and of

the time,

or during the same period; occupying the same definite pe? riod,

of the contemporary within the

or

accepted odization

simultaneous"

contemporaneous,

three meanings of being ness,

comprehends in the present,

sense

of beings

that

each other and to the time that they happen

also

being

aware

that

they

can

be

in no

of

Each

(3).

a distinctive

are

these

of present to

present

to be inwhile

other.

The Oxford English Dictionary's fourth definition of "con? temporary" brings these radically diverse conjunctions of persons, things, ideas, and time together and heads them in one

direction:

"Modern;

of or

characteristic

of

the present

period; especially up-to-date, ultra-modern; specifically desig? nating

art

building, does Why

of

a

markedly etc. decoration, this strike

us now

or furniture, quality, characteristics." modern

avant-garde having as odd,

even

anachronistic,

as a

definition of theword "contemporary"? After all, it lists those

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370

ART BULLETIN

DECEMBER

2010 VOLUME

XCII

NUMBER

4

5 Josiah McElheny, An End toModern? aluminum, ity, 2005, chrome-plated electric glass, and lighting, hand-blown steel cable and rigging, diameter 16 ft.

Wexner State

Center

for the Arts

of Ohio

Ohio

Columbus,

University,

(art?

work ? Josiah McElheny; photograph by Tom Powel, provided by theAn? drea

of contemporary

elements

life and

that are most

art

within

modern,

that exceed modernity as we know it,and are thusmost likely to lead, define, and eventually constitute the modernity to come.

When

another

we

pair

the

two

sets

insinuates

interpretation

of

the

has not only reached parity with themodern, it. The

two concepts

have

finally

exchanged

ing: the contemporary has overtaken fundamental

condition

of

this "time,

however,

definitions,

itself:

age,

ithas eclipsed

their

core

or

period."

mean?

as the As

not

we

shall see, both of these usages have been prevalent in recent decades, in art worlds as in wider spheres, with the weight overwhelmingly on the side of the modern being a strand

New

Gallery,

not vice the contemporary, a been transfer, or simple

versa.

But

York)

this changeover state from one

translation,

(modernity) to another, similar one (contemporaneity). The state of what it is to be a state, the conditions as to what counts

contemporary

the modern

has

Rosen

as

a

are

condition

changed.

We

might

anticipate,

then, thatwhatever we might identifyas characteristic of the contemporary, itwill not be singular but rather multiple in nature.

There are art historians who have made and

when,

how,

neous

elements

work

under

writers

why in their

examination

on

art have

it a point to track noted

of art: descriptions of any occurrence

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contempora?

traces that

within coincides

the

THE

its moment

with

or of attention

of creation,

or

to events

at that happen qualities art historians to tend regard in a work of art as distractions

Some ments

in importance?even measured historical

recede more

the work's

same

the

This

achievement.

ele?

contemporaneous they believe, from sight?once

recognizes

of

away

clearing

a

true nature

the

of

the afterbirth

has been applied even to themost innovativemoments in the history of modern art. Of a key 1911-12 painting by Pablo Lawrence

Picasso,

comments:

Rainey

. .

".

the

yes,

title Ma

not an indication the painting's of where 'contemporaneity,' is being real work done."12 ismore interest in the incidence of the term There tracing in institutional art discourse. If one tracks its "contemporary" as a current art in of usage contempora? general descriptor

neous textswritten in themajor European languages in their home countries and their colonies from the 1870s until now, along

its

ums,

galleries, a clear houses,

arts muse? in the naming of visual deployment museums and of and auction departments picture

emerges.

quickly

"Contemporary"

pears rarely and randomly for much a

being gent

plethora

art

terms

of alternative is usually

("modern"

of the period, for new,

one

just

of

current, and

these,

in each

doubles

decade.

the

By

1990s,

ap? emer?

"modern?

"contemporary"

had come to be the predominant descriptor of both current and

recent

tation,

art, and

of all and

distribution,

of

of presen?

modes

its associated

almost

interpretation,

entirely

ban?

ishing all other labels, including those associated with "mod ern.

Quantity, of course, has its own kinds of weight. But the main

for art history

interest

the critical purchase tions

in the actual

lies

of these usages

meanings

in their specific situa?

1850s

the

during and historical

timeless,

been

long truly modern Linda Nochlin

of a

historians,

to the centrality

of

1860s in favor

themes

life has

temporary creation

and

regarded art. Among has most

painters and

rejected of

depictions as foundational

imaginary, of con? to the

English-language drawn effectively

art atten?

to this moment.

"contemporaneity"

In her now classic studyRealism she showed that the Realist artists

imagined possible,

to

chose

ones, as

paint and

distinct

as

concrete, to do from

so

objects, opposed tangible manner in the most direct

academic

illusionism;

to

moreover,

they selected subjects from the everyday life around them rather than from the allegorical, symbolic, or historical themes favored in theAcademie Royale des Beaux-Arts. This is to use the term in its ordinary "of today" meaning, the sense that it had at the beginning of themodern period in

the

freshly made

of artists,

organizations

a part

in

and other profes?

a small

albeit

already cen?

seventeenth played

of guilds by academies

Yet

one,

their

given

circumstances

specific

could

the contempo?

surprise

rary into prominence. In Prague in 1796 the Society of Patri? otic Friends of theArts set up their Picture Gallery of living to the public.

open

These

were

Friends

Patriotic

Bo?

hemian noblemen whose high cultural aspirations had been suddenly isolated by Emperor Joseph IFs centralization of imperial administration inVienna.10 Under the aegis of Louis XVIII, the Musee des Artistes Vivants was established in the In contrast

in 1818.

Palace, Paris, Luxembourg collections in Paris, public

each

to the other

to old

devoted

masters?at

the Palais Royal (open since 1784), other rooms of the Lux? embourg itself (since 1750), and, above all, the Louvre (since was

1793)?it

as a musee

conceived that would

judgment the artist's

cultural not

enough but also

deemed

artworks were

works in

storage

attics.

This

only serve

to

soon

influence, to

for pro?

multimuseum,

in all spheres of itself

proving

flexible of artists

between

negotiate national

of

worthy

destined

system subsequently appears

cooperative European

pass

Lesser

permanent protection. museums or vincial

a site of de passage, display ten years to the Louvre,

on

those

death,

generations and international

patrimony

ex?

change.16 On a less loftybut equally pragmatic level, pioneer Social Darwinist Andrew Carnegie, in Pittsburgh in 1896, "the

conceived

Exhibition"?the

Chronological

best

paint?

ings produced in the world each year, from which the best would be awarded a prize, purchased for the Carnegie Mu? seum

and

in annual

hung

In each

ishing display.17 kind of distinction and that

anticipated the chosen

these

drawn

being works

of

coexist

a

to create

sequence of

we

cases,

but

all with

art would,

self-replen? a different

note

art's

between

manifestations,

time-boundedness,

The Prehistory of the Contemporary That increasing numbers of French Realist

tion

and

of utterance.

sculptors

past.

after

there

deceased?or

371

guiding aspirations to join the ranks of the great artists of the

and

ism" did not become prominent until the 1960s). Usage increases noticeably during the 1920s and 1930s, followed by a substantial upsurge in the 1960s, and from then on, it almost

sional

their During

it was

ART

CONTEMPORARY

to

opposed

institutionalized?predecessors. to art as tury, openness

artists,

Jolie echoes one of the period's popular songs, but that is a case of period brie a brae, a dapper wink intended to signal

with

as

artists

practicing

the replacement

will

that,

disappear gaze

an artist paid by time as others.

OF ART HISTORY:

STATE

past, a

present, sense

strong

their necessary despite for overlapping peri?

productively

ods, thus contributing to the historical continuity of art itself. Explicit institutional naming occurred mostly during the twentieth

In 1910, century. patrons, with the Bloomsbury group in London in order Society

associated

rary Art more than

twenty

colonies

British cieties

were

tions,

in

years

old"

throughout formed,

mostly to local

opposition

for

writers,

and

collectors

set up the Contempo? to works "not acquire In national collections.18

the

1930s,

as

artists'

so?

exhibiting organiza? The charter of the

academies.

Contemporary Art Society founded

art

contemporary

inMelbourne

in 1938 is

typical: By

the

expression

art"

"contemporary

ismeant

all contem?

porary painting, sculpture, drawing and other visual art formswhich is or are original and creative or which strive to give expression to contemporary thought and life as opposed to work which is reactionary and retrogressive including work which has no other aim than representa

art.14 Intimations begun

to appear

of

the

contemporary

earlier.

Indeed,

as they

a distinct are

present

value

had

whenever

art institutions are inclined to favor the work of currently

Most

French

"contemporary

institutions had, by the 1930s, come art"

as

the

latest

phase

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in the development

to see of

ART BULLETIN

372

a

painting

of modern

tradition

self-enriching

2010 VOLUME

DECEMBER

moderne],"

[peinture

art,

4

NUMBER

death

"modern

especially at least

back

dating

XCII

to Paul

Ce?

zanne, ifnot all theway to Edouard Manet.20 Now, in official Tart

usage,

encompasses

contemporain" the Revolution.

since

the

of art

entirety

and

"contemporary"

in the

is evident

"modern"

conception

Art, New York. With regard to H. Barr Jr. noted in a 1931 director Alfred collecting policy,

of the Museum

of Modern

to the

address The

trustees:

historical

as

such

the Metropolitan,

acquires

art

of modern

as

such

the

Gal?

Luxembourg

lery in Paris, the T?te Gallery in London, or the Stedelijk in Amsterdam. It is the proper part of their Museum to take chances on the acquisition of contemporary program and painting sculpture,a policy which would be unwise on of their

National

or

Rudenstine

Angelica conception ern with solution But

conservative

Gallery

the

'contemporary,' to the dilemma of

Barr

document,

"To

comments,

two years

earlier, to

sought

the

the notion

equated and

of an

it offered

the

term

in the United

for audiences

it

as

regarded its parent

pressionist, it renamed

the narrow,

foundational at

values

core

the

of

Art

quickly

in itspreferred terms, at

States?so

Francophile to and give

organization American itself

and

Scene,

the

so

much

in

that,

Institute

other

on

focus space kinds

abstraction

to German of

of Contemporary

figurative

Ex? art,

Art.24

It should not surprise us that around this time?a period of extraordinary historians began

economic

and

to notice

art

turmoil?certain

political "the uncontemporary

nature

of

the contemporary" (Wilhelm Pinder) and "the contemporary

existence

and younger" ,25Nor that, (Arnold Hauser) a to this chaos, "Contemporary Style" appeared,

of older

in reaction

especially in Britain during its efforts at economic and social reconstruction followingWorld War II, largely in household design ware (where it remains as a category to this day) ,26

The important point about all of these examples is that each represents a quite different, utterly specific conjunction

of artistic porary"?for however,

one

tendencies, that the

time,

examples

of which

the name

took

Taken

in that circumstance. hint

at the richness,

and

"contem? together,

the complex?

ity,of the prehistory of the contemporary within themodern. They

suggest,

too,

tivemodernities"

the

a mix

interest

project?in

that may

lie?for

the

"alterna?

tracking these largely forgotten

pathways.27

Setting the Contemporary Agenda In the long aftermath ofWorld War II, visual memory was haunted by specters of recent trauma: photographs from the

as well

"create

concrete

through

varying

quotation of blank, black

lengths

covered

surfaces,

berg's

and

of mediated

as has

what

embodiment

with

or

black

comment

voice-over

screen.

Robert

Rauschen? house

white

paint

during 1951 and 1952, served as mere receivers of light, shadows, and the passage of time. In the latter year, John used

Cage

these

in his

works

"concerted

action"

re?

(later

named TheatrePiece No. 1) at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. Cage's famous 4' 33", firstperformed by David Tudor on August 29, 1952, in a concert of contemporary is less a stretch

music, more

a

staged

there

as

of "silence," of

interruption

and

then. Andy

the

it is often

Warhol's

and

described,

flow of measured

so

time,

as taking place, in his

contemporaneity,

series, derived not simply from the use of

inAmerica

in fact, were

(many,

images

up-to-date

1948, when itsBoston branch wished to break away fromwhat of

before"

pave?

Fontana's

Aires,

to

determination

the

Lucio

(gutai) using everyday objects and simple actions. Meanwhile, the cinematic Yves Klein sought the void and Guy Debord his antifilm limits of mechanical Hurle with reproduction ments enfaveur de Sade of June 1952, disrupting white screen

Death

interesting

of Modern

Museum

The

in defining themodern

succeeded least

"23

'contemporary.'

1954

done

into

informs

spirit in Buenos written

Blanco,"

artists'

been

right

original the mod?

the modern."22

institutionalizing in the museum's isolate

the

this extent,

art itself, he insisted on "the progressive, original and challenging rather than the safe and academic which would naturally be included in the supine neutrality of the

modern

the Gutai

burned

silhouette

flash. This

that temporality itself can be experienced

Rijksmuseum.21

that of

when,

the Louvre,

counterparts,

the museum

of

1946

with

what is believed to be certainly and permanently valuable. It cannot affordtorun theriskoferror.But the opposite is true

the part

by "Manifesto

and

museum,

of museums

the atomic

never

A similar switching between rhetorical uses of the words

the human

camps,

ment

to a decade

up

old,

and he constantly recycled his imagery), but rather from his evocation of the rising tide of the spectacle society's image flow while at the same time his ability to arrest each im? age?by stamping itout, pinning itdown, through singular? and

ity, repetition,

variation.

Warhol

his

applied

entire

stra?

tegic ensemble to the depiction of themost pressing issues of the

day,

not

least

the

assassinations

endless

seemingly

of

leading political figures, including those offering hope. Com? mon

to all

from

of

socially

adventitious

these

is a

works

managed

retreat

timekeeping, to the

occurrence,

from

historical an

and common

time, to

openness

of

incipience

things, to the coming into being of a subjectivity that displays itself to other becoming-subjects. These qualities appeared in art throughout the world: for example, in the shift from to Neoconcretism

Concretism

in

the work

of Lygia

Clark,

Helio Oiticica, and many others in Brazil during the 1960s. If artists took the lead in facing the demands of the con? temporary

in the

1950s

and

1960s,

can we

say that critics were

most prominent in both obstructing (the formalists) and facilitating (everyone else) openness to these values during the latter decade, to be followed by theorists in the 1970s; that the market returned to reclaim the agenda during the 1980s,

whereas

curators

art-world

dominated

self-definition

during the 1990s; while since the turn of the century collec? tors, followed quickly by auction houses and art fairs,have led in highlighting what counts as current art?Generalizations of this typeare themselves evidence of the "branding" priorities

that prevailed within communications media during the later twentieth century and early years of the twenty-first. They

were,

however,

often

heard

in "art

talk,"

so let us

take

indicators and ask how ideas of contemporaneity within

and

between

riences

as

surfaced

them.

as and entire presentness, amounting, to the of itself, that one creation expe? perpetual as a kind of insiantaneousness, as one if though only

It is this continuous it were,

them

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THE

were infinitelymore acute, a single infinitelybrief instant to see

be

would work

in all

long enough its depth and

to

everything, to be

experience forever convinced

fullness,

"Art and as

seem

would

the

Fried's

to define

Objecthood," to transcendence. portal

But

his

no

had

"contemporary"

special

the

(forwhom

to iden?

meaning)?was

what was essentially modernist inmodernist art, and to do tify so by denying its contemporaneity as incidental to it.To him, this art did not in any important way participate inmodern times,

or

modernite,

modernity,

the

much

however

like;

it

might be a product of these times, it did not figure them, represent most

material even

achieved

became,

in effect,

itself

that, any

in

the

viewer

of

degree its own time

kind

specific Fried

saw

its messianic

cludes

with

Edwards:

Jonathan

of art,

in

that

it in

Nor

viewer.

berg

on

trembling was more

concerned

of aesthetic

preacher

with

Art

"Contemporary

feel, when

sometimes style."29

More

of

member

for

the

a useful

offered

(and, perhaps,

"public" at those moments

happens

he

important,

itmeant

ing of what

an

with

confronted

contemporary a viewer

when

and

work

art to throw of of art that had

out

critics,

for an

to

The

arrived.

of direct

and

experience,

art's

contemporary

It combines

epochal.

further instan

a demand

present?with

that

It is this double one

that makes

suggests,

claims

a member

of

public.30

The broader relevance of these examples is that theypoint to the widespread tendency to isolate one quality of, in this

case,

the

of

experience

contemporaneity

seen examples where the artwork

a work

in a more

itself, or

of

general

it is assumed aspects

of

art

as

sense.

the We

key have

to art's already

that certain qualities of

its dissemination,

or

national?contemporaneous kinds of value distinctions art

avant-garde

countries,

Brazil,

notably

in many

practice Argentina,

and

of

travel

international

and

the greater

distri?

and

curators,

cultural

officials

understood

the

of

idea

in 1956

internationalization

above

meant,

all,

international

challenge and

in

spaces; artists

American

North

pean

1962 to

Euro?

attracting

Argentine

competi?

tions; in 1964 itbrought the "new Argentine art" to inter? national centers; in 1965 it brandished the "worldwide" success

of Argentine after 1966, with

synonymous

before

"imperialism" ... ^9 positivity/

its previous

ting

art

the

internationalism

local

public;

became and

and,

increasingly upset

"dependence,"

were in terms of similar articulated relationships as a bind seen not for ambi? of provincialism, only in the settler colonies but also as pervad? produced art system, in New York.33 Reiko then centered ing the entire

In Australia,

accept?without

that

These

to

is first of all a matter

it is one

or

provincial, difference. marked

ease

finally,

responding

future be instantlyaccepted.

Steinberg

experience,

be

in the

immersion

taneity?total

an unknowable

then

it may

because

significance

then,

contemporary,

local

breaking out of isolation, in 1958 it implied joining an international artistic front; in 1960 itmeant elevating Ar? gentine art to a level of quality that would enable it to

the

temporality and insists that the time for just this new kind of art has

local,

avowed

. . .whereas

Membership

to it. This is what is "con? response art: it invites the viewer into a new

adequate about such

temporary"

for

and

hitherto,

other

contrast,

"internationalization":

the

new world of seeing that thiswork

fully knowing why?the requires

framework

the

served

In

of publicity about contemporary art. Such finely tuned relationships could change very quickly, as Andrea Giunta has demonstrated by tracking how Argentine artists,

to be a

through

were

increasing

initial shock to recognize that he or she is being asked by this

works

of

the example

contemporaneity

Uruguay.31 They accelerated during the 1960s, following the

understand?

passes

into

centers,

("contemporaneously").

since long American

South

unfamiliar

still means) art.

tied

way

culture

metropolitan

time

had

Plight of Its Public." In this 1962 essay he defined "plight" as "simply the shock of discomfort, or the bewilderment or the anger or the boredom which some people always feel, and all people new

in some

issuing from the center, and that theywere doing so at the

same

Stein?

Leo

election,

as

themselves the

had the quite specificmeaning of identifying the inequitable, conflicted state inwhich artists felt themselves to be working. They sought acknowledgment that at least some local artists were producing art of the same kind and quality as that

individual art

the highly attuned,

the cusp

con?

that Fried

is grace."

of

bution

above

the

eighteenth-century

saw

one

in their

so absorbed

wonder

Small

of

"Presentness

in mind

If Fried had

critic

presence.

the words

In many parts of the world, especially in local art worlds

that

orities

a crude,

quotation makes clear, one might glimpse the possibility of doing so. This is apprehension of art as a kind of supplication before

and

to the future.

of actual,

great

sense,

to

them?

in the present

of variety

encompassing

artistsmight consciously reject such an ambition. Their pri?

work so

autonomy zone. It was

its

more

and

Minimal

as

no it required its occasion. At most,

strictest rise

a

truly modernist

a

contrast,

it, in

to its viewer.

the work

apprehend literalism. The

theatrical

was

Nor

them.

picture

to

time

could

of all,

contemporary register, that the viewer takes

profound insistence

art's

least

them,

not that these "defini? only study is suggesting to time and in fact emphases that are quite specific become?at least with but also that they gradually this

regard to the intentional outlook of those holding

more open

contemporane? concert goal?in

with that of his mentor, Clement Greenberg term

1967 essay

373

are

place,

These words, the culmination of Michael

ART

CONTEMPORARY

ideas or attitudes held by the artist are similarlydefinitive. In contrast, tions"

it.28

by

ity

the

OF ART HISTORY:

STATE

certain

a

concept tious art

Tomii has explored the emergence inJapan in the 1960s and 1970s of a sense that truly contemporary art (gendai bijutsu) should

be

part

of an

international

(kokusai

contemporaneity

tekidojisei). Local critics had Euro-American art inmind as their model of the latter, as well as a set of distinctions between earlier kinds ofmodern and avant-garde art inJapan and theWest.34 Olu Oguibe, Sidney Kasfir, and Simon Njami, among others, have drawn attention to the traffickingback and

forth

between

art centers

in Africa

and

those

in

Europe,

as countries actively struggling for their independence called on their artists to participate in freedom fights and then nation building, while the artists were also discovering the enticements ternational

and

challenges

audiences.35

Since

of presenting 1989, much

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their work curatorial,

to

in?

critical,

ART BULLETIN

374

and

historical

attention of

peripheries toward

DECEMBER

has

the Soviet

its center,

2010 VOLUME

as

Empire,

a

precipitating

that Maoist

argued dominant

the

framework

4

NUMBER

to at the paid developments as that structure contracted

been

to cul?

attention

renewed

as they hesitatingly

tural change at the borders of Europe, expanded.36 It can be

XCII

idealism

revolutionary for late modern

art

served in China

in

interest

models

Western mid-twentieth-century led to exper? postmodernism avant-garde term for the up contemporary Japanese

current

and

imentation.

and

early-

Taking

art (gendai bijutsu), thiswas labeled xiandai yishu and trans? as

lated

"modern

reacted

against

same

time

rary art, resent

art." During the censorious newly

a

more

became term

the

dangdai

clearly is now the

yishu rary art." External markets. the

of

pursuit

of

regime,

in such

interest

as a Subsequently, "four modernizations,"

art of

of

and

late nineteenth

century

relentless

expe?

rienced in Beijing, Shanghai, and elsewhere. Could they be turning art practice in a modernizing direction? While some sharp contrasts in medium, subject matter, and style still traditional,

separate

modern,

and

aesthetic

contemporary

tendencies, all of which persist, it is evident that China's determined commitment tomodern nation building within a context is globalized encouraging nances these between tendencies.37

conso?

to seek

artists

many

to the contemporary

the modern

from

(or,

in some

the

cases,

in different parts of the world is, I submit, the greatest challenge facing those who would write histories of reverse) recent

and

current

art. The

of

diversity

these

guar?

changes

antees that there will be no single story (and thus no style change

in art as

such)

but

rather

but identifiably specific histories. The

Postmodern

many

parallel,

Moment achieved

succeeded

been

in recent

ubiquitous

Minimalism

and

even

a

prom?

candidate

to

years.

But

Conceptualism

nothing as art

has styles.

"What is postmodernism?" was a key question of the 1970s that persisted into the 1980s, but it lostmuch of its punch when itbecame a taste throughout the culture. While itwas a style in architecture for a time (signifying littlemore than

pastiche historicism, despite?and perhaps partly because of?Charles Jencks's manic efforts tomake it a catchall), it did not add up to a period style in any other of the visual arts. Indeed, these were rapidly diversifying beyond the limits of each medium and delighting in the unpredictable potential? ities of

exchanges

between

mediums

and

Candice

In the short the

the

Gener?

"Pictures

such

Breitz.

was

debate

a

no

was

that progress

it seems

to us,

available

retrospect

postmodernism

premises:

obvious

of one

symptom

that no

inevitable,

longer

that its own

of

one

big storywas going to dominate any sphere of human activity, including the arts and the history of thought, in the foresee? able future. Sometime in the late 1980s itbegan to dawn on opinion makers in the art world that, perhaps, we might always live in the aftermath of this "crisis," that thatwill be our "history"?to be suspended in a shifting thatwill never bring another

into

paradigm like

"modern,"

of what

it had of

In

place.

circumstances

these

in art,

another

of

the

a state

it becomes out

perpetually

"con?

to mean

seemed

suddenly set out to mean:

being

style

predominant

or

time,

at

of

least

there ever be another

coherent

in social

period

cultures or epoch in human thought? In this sense, theword comes

"contemporary" "out it," but

of

to mean

time,"

to be

not

in a

suspended

"in"

state

or

time, or

after

"with

beyond

history, a condition of being always and only in the present, and of being alienated from itwhile being trapped within it. This sense of the plurality of the present reached itsapogee during the 1970s and 1980s. While the attack on universaliz? theories?whether

ing

sion,

human

ones

religious

"master

secular

about

progress

about

narratives" and

or

predestination,

among

others,

Jean-Francois

the

interpretation

art world, state

of

"late and

Harvey been

longer

was

Lyotard,

succes? dis?

specialist

influential as

of postmodernity offered

theorists

by capitalism," was more Fredric Jameson, latter maintained lasting. The

as

such

historical

courses such as the unfolding history of art?launched

ever,

such

the dominant style of the period. Much effortwent into promoting the "return to painting," while installation, video, large-scale photography, digital media, and cinematic have

of

by, in the

the current as David

such

and has powerful that the work of

artists such as Andy Warhol displayed "the cultural logic of late

contingent

become

modes

label

the purport

an Art-world discourse varied between "anything capitalism."38 as art, or what? was inclusiveness of whatever goes" presented

the years after 1970, no art tendency as as to thrust inence itself forward

In

culture

The

ation" in New York and Los Angeles, and of the continuing work of artists such as JennyHolzer, Cindy Sherman, Marlene

presumptions

Discerning what isdistinct and what is shared in these shifts

their

media.

to capture as that of

moments

important

and

in mass

not subject to historical unfolding. Will

art

in European been

but

periodlessness,

the conditions

have

increasingly is too narrow

"postmodern"

opposite

patronage

themselves

immersed

becoming brief

saw

artists

temporary,"

"contempo?

up opened result of China's

that led to realism and then high modernism in the middle

movement.

art

some

the

contempo? came to rep?

art")

translation

standard

at

and

international

yishu ("today's a contemporary

was

what

Dangdai and

aware

state

artists

Chinese

when

1990s,

while

Dumas,

from 1949 until the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1978. During the 1980s a resurgence of critical consciousness allied with

curred

(intermediality,

dium specificity,was the new direction). These

not me?

changes oc

and

to

efforts

give

and

responsible

accounts

grounded

of

the "de-definition" as itself (of course, paradoxically) definitive of

curator

Australian

contemporaneity.

Bernice

Murphy,

realiz?

ing in 1993 that "Contemporary art, although ithas for a long time belonged within the sphere of modernity, is increasingly

adopting other frameworks of value and meaning that break beyond the classical period ofmodern art's development," was led to the following: "Defining 'contemporary' art: a moving framework Cameron,

of

time

and in

sensing

concerns."39

1989

that

American

current

art was

curator increasing

Dan in

quantity and diversifyingin scope so rapidly that itwas ceasing to be subject to the (generally benign and enabling) control of art-world

institutions

and

noted

personnel,

that

on code art's of values has contemporary grip in recent years, and much ened of the more interesting this

being produced cant

change,

loos? art

today seems to be a result of this signifi?

wherein

values

are

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both

more

up

in the air

THE

and more point

recent

he

qualities,

specifically,

art historians

Few

totally,

ing and

going

to these

responded on

artists

among

and

ogy,

historicism

between

century, on Kulturgeschichte on the other, was

to be

now

academic

self-designated

out.

played

replacement, to the traditional,

confined

local

exceptions. and in broad

struggle,

new

No

nor was

one

studio,

and

In a

as "modern"

just

not

and

period,

just

moment.

In my

than what

period in some

recent art,

something more

designate present

come

has

master

"contemporary"

even

and

style has

less a

March

the gulf

between

and

less a

periods style of making

art

contemporary

had opened up because the great historical role given art within modernity (above all by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich had been fulfilled in late modern art. Art had Hegel) achieved Brillo

its "end," boxes,

its historical

served

Conceptualism,

Warhol's

purpose.

other

and

ten?

"philosophical"

dencies signified that themost advanced human thought had changed itsnature. Art had, in effect, become philosophy. It could

not,

story was

over. that

surprise

transmute

therefore, In

the aftermath

of

art would

subsequent

a new

art: that style of it is no this achievement,

into

seem

The

"posthistorical."

sense of aftermath becomes a rich vein in the works byWall and Meckseper discussed above. In the later 1980s and early 1990s,

the

the

institutionalization

of

"Contem?

of the transnational turn, and impact global art of of the emergence diversifying contemporaneity? to a rather comfortable amounted plural? "posthistorical"

porary the

however?before Art,"

the

ism.Others identifya discomforting pluralism. For example, Amelia Jones: Perhaps most profoundly, art since 1945 has insistently, in ways varying as widely as the kinds of people making it, of the visual arts (like any form of explored the contingency in which works of art (including way expression)?the performances, within personal than we

circuits and can

live

events,

of meaning, collective ever

exist

etc.)

economic desire

that

fully understand.43

and and

are

come social

far more

to mean value,

the

register

art

Contemporary

other

among on

entry

"modernism,"

art in general and

confusion.

ongoing

in

Accessed

led with: can

be

defined

as

variously

art

pro?

duced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary the first view, but museums support their collections define rary art commonly

of

would

art produced

sinceWorld War

as

II.46

contempo? of

consisting

A similar picture of neglecting the obvious emerges from a textbooks published survey of the major English-language or so accounts of the the include that years past thirty during art of those years. Many have appeared inmultiple editions, are

some

modern

an

entries

2009, Wikipedia

and

complex

two

every

updated

continued Danto,

de? consistently the "modern

art,"

"modernista,"

include

English

companions,

to

are no more

there

after

of art, and

1960s,

on avant-garde Although organi? particular.44 in their zations that include titles appear, "Contemporary" an the term art" is rarely granted entry of its "contemporary as to its comment if so, it receives either derogatory own, and,

a

come

"modern

in

definitions

likely craft

it designates

however,

art than a style of using styles.42 To

of

impossibility as a concept or is blandly sketched.45 Online

para?

than simply the art of the

view,

happens narrative

a

to denote

and

Some

styles.

design

the

Danto

vein,

parallel

as

such

although it is often conflated with modern

art

of

terms

in architecture,

movement"

its "end," fulfilled its

reached

purpose.41

"de

to

entries

voted

succinctly summarized the effect of changes in art since the 1980s:

So

375

this sense

this challenge,

of the spectrum. Since the art dictionaries, encyclopedias, of art terms have collections

and

glossaries,

iconol iconography, and modernist hand,

one

the

arts. Art history had

based

with

dealt

end visual

language

Belt?

profession

as a

into view

of Hans

crisis: the dramatic

twentieth

come

had digm if it were

the

pushed

history into its second major during

were

Danto

in art practice,

that changes Belting recognized scale social had formations, the

discussions curators.

and

critic Arthur

philosopher-art

ART

CONTEMPORARY

Challenged

art historians

have

conventional

certain implies, contem? and only

porary. definition"

OF ART HISTORY:

the impossibility of the contemporary? Let us begin at themost

these

possessing art has become

The Textbooks How

past.40

in

Precisely current

than at practically any single

hotly debated

in the

STATE

in massive

use,

to five years

in response

in school,

quantities,

to their

college,

and

university art and art history courses. As of 2008, only one book meant ism

and art" as a chapter "contemporary heading, since from Abstract War World II, by Expression? to and the 1980s."47 "Neo-Expressionism, photography used

had

it art

The phrase "contemporary art" is used in passing in the 1999 edition ofMarilyn Stokstad's ArtHistory, the only occasion on which it is indexed as a category in all the volumes surveyed.48 Alert to the languages of theirmoment, and to the need to tomes

their mammoth

keep

all

up-to-date,

of

the

canonical

survey texts plumped, during the 1980s and 1990s, for "post? as

modern"

their

preferred

term.

Overall, academics and publishers have lagged a long way behind the rest of the art world in adopting "contemporary" as

the name

field

subspecialist surveys

its current

for

by

of

books

authors?mainly art and the

contemporary

and on

recent art

the

in the activity. Even of recent decades, to

British?alert convolutions

of

the variety of are its discourse,

undertaken beneath such headings as Art since 1960 or the more combative AfterModern Art.49Open-ended compilation books favor titles such as Art Now or Art in theTwenty-first some of the flavorof the art Century.50Others carry into print they

favor;

Mathew

thus,

Collings?in

savvymove?labeled ists)-promoting,

artist-critic-television English a typical against-the-grain

presenter yet market

his irreverent, yBa (Young British Art?

all-over-the-shop,

paintball-style

celebration

of post-1960s art This IsModern Art.51 Recent

books

on

contemporary

art

are

divided

between

by minimal text and pictorial compilations accompanied brief artists' statements (the Taschen model), anthologies of

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ART BULLETIN

376

DECEMBER

2010 VOLUME

essays interpretative by theorists, or Blackwell model), provisional are

artists

certain

XCII

at

attempts as

themes?such

tackling

curators

and

critics,

current

One

concern.52

uses

the

and,

in

to art

chapters

to be of

. . . ," then the

culture,

popular

abstraction, narrative, object, quotidian representation, nature and the body, deformation, technology, identity, ituality,

architecture,

few

been

globalism, have textbooks

and

politics, with attempted,

time, spir? A

audience.53

more

to come.

sure

as

such

authors,

have

who

Stallabrass,

Julian

experienced

firsthand the excesses of the yBas, Taylor begins critical

"Willful

premise: a massive with

bined

in the artwork,

obscurity

in

expansion

from a com?

then,

infrastructure

the

for

as

contra? the defining may contemporary cases to gen? in some diction that has animated and helped erate much true since of the art of our time."55 This has been art?this

be

the later 1960s but reached a series

Through

of acute,

taken

engaged

rates the unfolding of a variety of tendencies in international

art,

a wider

including

artists

that

prominent outside place contexts cultural

the

scant

receive

Also

surveys.

formative

whose

of Euro-America. from

More artists

these

which

expe? is

typical emerged

wait-and-see

cent exception

art,

contemporary the journal

An

clos? re?

interesting

isArt since 1900, produced by four authors, all

historians

outstanding

typifies

open-endedness omnibus textbooks.

of most

chapters

the

especially

October.

art and

of modernist

through of presenting

Instead

critics

active association

their

an

short

each

chapters, or

tion, rence.

publication, The paradoxical

contemporaneity This

history.

according is a result fascinating of modern than art, rather an

is, in itself,

effect

of

as

the process

to

to how that

organize evolved they had because

Nevertheless,

of

the

two of

For

Bois)

jamin

of

perspectives

D.

Krauss

(Rosalind

informal,

Buchloh,

continues a

in Cubism

sourced into

revolutionary

the present.

avant-gardism,

and Russian faktura, has echoed but

and

Yve-Alain

ultimately

futile

struggle

and

Surre?

For

Ben?

sourced

since the 1960s as a

by

certain

neo-avant

garde artists against the seductions and the degradations the

"Culture

Industry."

The

fourth

author,

Hal

Foster,

past

twenty

. . . and

on

a

Buchloh

the other,

the model having

neoavant-garde"?as is candid, equally

noting

of a historical become "dys? that "the bour?

to be we

not

modus

of us."08

The

only

left to contemporary

option

it

artists,

seems, is to bear exacting witness to the present (and future) impossibility of the cold optimism that drove the modernist here

be

may

that

of

criticism,

not

art.

Peter

has recently put a sharp edge to this possibility. the Citing deeply reflexive work of Art 8c Language during the 1980s and 1990s, he argues:

Osborne

It is the historical movement of conceptual art from the idea of an absolute antiaesthetic to the recognition of its own inevitable pictorialism thatmakes it a privileged me? diating form; thatmakes it, in fact, the art in relation to which

of em?

phasizes the psychoanalytic aspects of artmaking within these trajectories.56 Taken together (itself a breathtaking historical hypothesis), these views amount to the closest thing to ortho

contestation

over

"post-conceptual of art, so much

and of meanings possibilities ... out. In this respect, fought art" is not the name for a particular type as the condition for historical-ontological

the production

of contemporary

art

contemporary

applied of October, that is,

to what we might call double modern?

respectively?that H.

inDada

heroic

authors

vis-?-vis

ism?formal alism

the

this amounts

the

operandi remains profoundly opaque and incomprehensible to most

pri?

each author (engagingly set out in long introductory essays), a set of parallel histories is implied, although never spelled out.

contemporary

over

has critically, "irretrievably disappeared," "social and formations for which institutional by not have any terms but and whose concepts yet,

replaced only do

their collective

differing

art

the now

to narrate

ways

plausible

of

they acted first as critics, and only by implication as histori? ans.

there

albeit

related,

the authors

as editors

in?

geois public sphere" towhich both previous avant-gardes were

of the display of its unfolding

in making

the book,

of

and,

postmodernism,

orga?

contemporaneity's

that art has

acknowledge

years?" He describes the two "primarymodels" that theyhave used during this period?"on the one hand, the model of a modernism medium-specific challenged by an interdisciplinary

its occur?

of

"Are

asks,

practices

myriad

exhibi?

work,

to the year

oritizing of the contemporary:

decision

one

treats

of which

event

the authors

concludes,

Foster

book.

nized around styles,mediums, or themes, the book is divided into

not,

deed changed inways that exceed the frameworksused in the

with

account

it has

ism, or, more

avant-garde.59 The impasse

attention.

Pragmatic, ing

in biennials

recently took

riences

in such

is usual

than

range

is that he includes, in the later chapters, work by

unusual

a late modern? art remains that contemporary an after-modernism, in condemned accurately, as as to mourn, conscience and trenchantly elegantiy possible, In the roundtable its own anachronism. with which discussion is that

functional."57

nar?

Taylor

descriptions,

since

avant-garde

in the 1990s.

its peak, perhaps,

Art

since the 1960s, but it leaves ambiguous the question of whether anything fundamental has changed. The implication

the book

The first of this crop was Brandon Taylor's The Art ofToday (1995), revised and retitled ContemporaryArt (2004) and Con? Art: Art since 1970 (2005).?4 Like other English temporary

art that exists among the development of modern the United States, especially. to artists active 1900 includes entries devoted many

doxy about scholars?in

iden?

place,

"Art and

rubric turn,

(the how

showing

time,

tity, the body, language, or spirituality?deemed devotes

4

NUMBER

It is "post-conceptual he

art and

temporary

art"

that

art

in general.

in this broader

understood

that determines

on,

goes

the

is to be

contemporaneity of art criticism

requires

sense, con?

of all

the

art

and

history

that they articulate "the qualitative historical novelty of the present," from which the past may be "made legible."60 This me

strikes force

of

as

an

acute

postconceptualism

late modern

art,

in perception as the most that

especially

its recognition trenchant

created

recognizes must be historical

in contemporary

in its orientation,

albeit

the

of critique Euro-Ameri?

within

can frameworks and spheres of influence. And that art criticism,

of

it correctly

circumstances, paradoxically

so.61

But his prescription remains, as he acknowledges, essentially as art,

modernist

art

criticism,

and

art

history.

It does

not,

I

believe, fullymeet what contemporaneity now requires of art and scope,

its articulators: more

lateral

that are

demands in

their

broader

experiential

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in

geopolitical

character,

and

THE

than modernism

in their theoretical challenge

deeper whatever

can

stamp

have

in circulation

been

and

as

The

Curators

that since the 1990s,

other,

most

their arguments

"mega-exhibitions."

to a head

certain

advanced

ideas,

wide-ranging tors, who made

through

quite

effectively what became

came

them

between

contention

of

known

in the years around 2000, and they resonate still.

the exhibition

landscape of the

from "the Global South" entered themental art world.

Euro-American

The

art

la terre, contemporary

de

Magiciens

of this work,

power

rather

than

the relatively simplistic curatorial program, signaled the pos? sibilityof a genuine internationalism. This global movement culminated inDocumenta Ilm 2002, an exhibition in which artists whose origins by in character stood out. tional

and

work

curators,

artists,

and

critics

inspirations In between these a

undertook

were

transna?

major

mission: a series of historically oriented exhibitions drawing worldwide attention to the importance of the visual arts during the decolonization struggles inAfrica, in particular.62 Okwui

a leader

Enwezor,

of

this effort,

in art of the world having

all outcome as the manifestation at a

arrived

state

best

as a

described

the over?

summarized

constella?

"postcolonial

tion."

role

also

and

art today is refracted, not just from the

specific

site of culture

critical

sense?from

and the

but

history

in a more

also?and of a complex

standpoint

geopo?

represent

idea that modernist its owrn

within

relations

tion

after

on

exchange

imperialism. around

constellated based

of

as a consequence . . . The

current

the norms

discontinuous,

of

aleatory

of artistic

globaliza? context

art

porary one

requires art history7: and, on hand,

nial

discourse

modern

us

to refer

its roots

encompassing tional aesthetics" rator

on

the other,

exerts

on

of

evokes

the museum's

ty'sunstoppable

collections

art

"instead

is an argument to be made that the revolutions that originally produced modern art, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have not been concluded or

There

founding innovations and debates. The

art

today

can

museum,

they

version

developed

of

the

of renewing itself from

contrast,

from speaks but complex primary in and engagement with Enwezor

in

emerges, immersion

much

been

have

in

their

intended

and

are

of

active

recently

outside

and

of "alternative" at a kind

aiming

of

"rela? cu?

by

proposed

em?

his

updated

art to include centers

the

(alter means

others

less

scale,

example,

art,"

"Altermodernism"

States. the

in

smaller

reach?for

its

of Europe the

incorporates in Latin

and

"other"

in English):

"transform"

altermodernism

summation,

Bourriaud

offers

this definition:

starting

from

an assumed

that

heterochrony,

is, from

disdaining poralities, indeed for any era?a

nostalgia positive

for

the

tem?

vision

and

avant-garde

of

chaos

com?

and

plexity. It is neither a petrified kind of time advancing in loops (postmodernism) nor a linear vision of history (modernism), an through present,

but

a

art-form

tracing

lines

of disorientation

experience all exploring

positive

in all directions

dimensions of

time

and

of

the

space.66

to a core aspect art?its of contemporary geopo? points It does and temporal not, however, contemporaneity.67 amount to a of the others in the sense idea just dis? large at? has Enwezor cussed: it is constrained by its disavowals.

This

litical

into moderni?

revision

In art

of one

Altermodernism can be defined as thatmoment when it became possible for us to produce something thatmade

of the

project:

thus that contemporary superseded?and as the extension and understood ongoing

most

sees itselfas a constellation of ideas linked by the emerging and ultimately irresistiblewill to create a form ofmodernism for the twenty-first century." Conceiving this spirit as "a leap to a synthesis between modernism and rise that would give

is

today.63

of recent

level quite specific to the

art is capable

artist's

ideas

the

sense

In sharp contrast to such views, many believe that the signif? icant art of today remains modernist at its core. In 2000, Museum of Modern Art chief curator Kirk Varnedoe firmly locked

cen?

twentieth

a vision of human history as constituted by multiple

that postcolo?

the pressure

its narratives

on

the

this kind of participatory

modernism

. . . critical Any or contem? of Modern base

of

dawn

"postproduction has He Bourriaud.6?

Nicolas

phasis

accent.

discourse,

and

within,

belonging

interests

currently

that

Most

perspectives.

those postcolonial, on creolization, forms,

to the foundational

that argu? at this

Few other ideas have had the potential to rival this clash of

the

in imperial

sense, presented

realities.

the world's

hybridization, and so forth, all of these tendencies oper? a specific ating with cosmopolitan interest in the exhibition systems

the

since

resources.

the presumption ways, out of each

litical configuration that defines all systems of production and

art?as

immediate

the

post-colonialism,"

Contemporary

and

these remarks are on one

While

practitioners and the United

educational

real

is collected

tury.64

who

certain

dates,

art

progressive

historical

in Contention

at

Contemporary as part of modern

is, in a very

377

responding to, and expanding upon the framework of initiatives and challenges established by the earlier history

cura?

by

Art art

Museum

substantial

From 1984, the curatorial team at the Centro Wifredo Lam in Havana dedicated itself to building networks between artists in the "nonaligned" countries constituting the Third World and to showcasing the results in the Bienal de la Habana, most successfully in the 1989 exhibition. In the same year in Paris,

of Modern

Museum ment.

To grasp this,we need to acknowledge there

of

allow.

ART

CONTEMPORARY

OF ART HISTORY:

STATE

be

of those

collection of the

tempted to absorb it into his "postcolonial constellation" by framing itwithin four categories he identifies "as emblematic of the conditions of modernity today: Supermodemity,andro and aftermodernity"m modernity,speciousmodernity Revising Whatever

theNew Art History one's

that a viable proaching

specific

reservations,

these

examples

indicate

theoretical and historical framework for ap?

contemporary

art?one

that

captures

its actual

diversity, but neither prohibitively reduces nor randomly multiplies it?is coming into view. Crucial to thispossibility is

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ART BULLETIN

378

DECEMBER

2010 VOLUME

of art historians

begun

of the generation to undertake close

artists,

small

certain

the work

studies

and

groups, I am calling art. draw on They what

during porary

the the

of

to track

teenth-

and

shared

their work. The

already individual

(or

the past half

during

the continuing and modernism

crisis

of nine?

to revisit

and

retrofashion.

merely

The

in?

interpretative

stitutions need to take stock of work by artists either long dead (Warhol, by more than twenty years) or nearing the natural

of

end

and

long of mature generation in ways distinct 1970s the

time

and

survivors

from

view of pendent to see them and What ing.69 movements internal ism

from the

in ways

are

understood

as

respects

the United

being

States

"an

more

ernism,"

art integrated an eye to their

with

less of a break

in

art

for mod?

"mourning and political critique at first felt; previously

than

subse?

art historians?those

emerging

art as part

past

been

art

than

more

various,

pervasive,

previously acknowledged.70 this revisionist remains, activity

But

artistswho were active in the United trails

the presumption transformation

real

an

from

A more

that

accounting

in actual

the world,

in

and

them,

the

nodes

productive art centers.

cities

largely,

artistic

the

era

are

still as

changes

some

Some is where

This

resources

in

some

the

areas

the

South are beginning studies

comparative real work

to be

needs

for

settings?Africa,

to be recorded

are

being

done,

as

example?remain

Are

the

histories

that

contemporary

art

re?

quires best written by continuing to apply the methods, val? ues, and world pictures forged bymodern art history, includ? ing the revisions that have animated the discipline as a whole since the 1970s? If so, we would expect the characteristics of contemporary

art

to become

clear

as

these

researchers

made

tra

readily

they have presenta?

been

advanced

by Alex

of a new

the

historical

of

a

toward

come

have "

spectatorship

contemporary,' This proposition Does last) question:

global

cooperation

collaboration,

of an of art

aesthetics

East,

to be

a match

between

world

historical

epoch it, a quint in con? viable

the face

period?on

structural

volatile

pairing?remain

ments

circumstances.

The

11, 2001, the subsequent and

States

of

this new

and

of

is a fragile

temporary conditions? After all, periodization

on September

avant

as 'the constructed discursively in the of art.73 period history a second raises for the moment, (and,

modern

in such

and

technological imaginary from shift in strategy and

as

such

a new

art historical

universal

inte?

exhibitions

global

reemergence new forms

surprising concludes: "These

a

identifies

the subject of many

becoming

forms,

gardist and the somewhat He

He period. as factors such

between

art

hybrid

in 1989,

of integrated electronic spread of economic neoliberalism sig?

the proliferation rise of a new

works,

high-tech

the

and

"war

on

terror"

abroad?and

in their home

attacks

conducted various

territories

and

launched

incursions into the inside other

by abroad?led

many

the

govern? to see

1989 and 2001 as bracketing a post-Cold War moment which

the United

States

as a

acted

in

neoliberal

"hyperpower," in all economies, while prevailed spectacle-led dominated however, consumption public spheres. By 2008, with the administration of United States President W. George economics

at home

Bush discredited system

in a

state

some

optimism, ever

Periodizing Contemporary Art? We might focus the position that has been reached by posing questions.

terri? recon?

of

have

and abroad, and

collapse,

the world financial

Barack

Obama

elected

States in a spirit of all-embracing

been

prompted

a further

to discern

sea

change inworld affairs.74 "The contemporary" isbeing sliced

fragile.71

two

have

has

approach

president of the United

under?

urgently,

re-creations

confluence

biennials,

United

with

the art

with

present temporal recent virtual

exhibitions,

cinematic

constructive

hegemonic

Middle

way

to deal

wish

(a vividly

"history" of survey

the emergence

as

they hap?

associated

who

of globalization, the and the dominance

culture, nal

and

counts

is what

between these trafficking them and the major modern efforts and of achievements

between

Nevertheless,

assessed.

in

and

transnational and

artists from the Global taken.

on

focused

States and Europe

they did a whole. We

tracks

persistent

the advanc?

Alberro, who argues that the end of the Cold War

practice

that what in art as

in

in their specific ways in each of the cultural regions of

pened

and

and

into

one is a frustrating that situation, to as in the ironic and protest parody,

quick

essentially

and the United States; and feminism is being shown

art back

tions of the performance group Our Literal Speed.72

Europe

much

and

structions,

and

been

of

tory that decades

experimentation as Fluxus as are are such the elevated, graded groupings scenes innovations of artists in smaller-scale outside working are still largely art centers what considered the in major to have

and

judgment

of their time on the terms that it is forging, and those who see

affect.

down?

suspended

of contemporary

slide

confrontation

less subject to the charge that it

indirect

quent

current

invited to

is that of being of

ingmaw of a (diluted, false modest) modernism. This would also leave us less able to approach the art of the past through the forms in which that art is available to the present. For

artists'

more

or a

state

gration and antiglobalization

Minimal?

open-ended; Conceptual now as a appears Europe

to

think?

in

and

vital

then,

and

practice

aspects,

of administration"

aesthetic

by inde?

than it seemed at the time, while

within global Conceptualism, was

promoted at an

productivities:

in some

as,

at

in a

present

versable)?this

and

that occurred

coherent,

powerfully

1960s advanced

to arrive

be

minutely and multiple

with high modernism other

would

current

the

the

interpretations redefinitions

examined

being

For

see

to

in art changes to present useful

to be

seemed

being

the

incessant

the great

complexities

is

productive art historians,

that moment

from

careers.

danger here

only then to take up the task of tracingwhat would amount to a slow-motion

to contem?

of revisionist

the

register

active

itsmodernist history. Their interest in the 1960s

is not

1970s

4

have of

tendencies

methodologies

twentieth-century

recomplicate and

who

shift from modern

and

the birth

NUMBER

the work

"new") art history, those developed

century

XCII

do

finer. of

Immediacy, puts

pressure

ural

to historians.

the urge

to divide

to be more

Or,

markers

necessary

is natural

course,

on

within

the

to

it. And

into

accurate, narratives

of

history.75

Do

they

remain

in

periods?itself periods of

collective agency that constitute themodern writing

this,

necessary

have

individual

approach

turn, nat? been and

to the

in contempo?

rary conditions? If conditions have changed fundamentally, which other kinds of historical markers are called for?Given that art is always subject to largermovements of this kind yet

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THE

is also,

in certain

we most

autonomous

ways, map

accurately are These

within

how

them,

their

the neling a one-to-one

us from chan? that prevent questions of current into self-evident practice heterogeneity era and con? match between the contemporary

temporary

art.

stances?

the

and Art History

Contemporaneity In

in much usage?and word "contemporary"

ordinary language world discourse?the ever

is

as

itself,

concept

we

con

of meaning:

depths

extraordinary

or

simultaneous,

up-to-date,

happening, But the

neous.

art

unreflective

to: what?

defaults

has

seen,

came

tempus

into use,

and remains in use, because it points to a multiplicity of relations between being and time. It originated in precisely thismultiplicity and has served human thought about it ever since.

The

also

contemporary

contention

recent centuries, bly, in the modern?that have

those

sought with greater

to a new

us

brought

We

to

subservience

associated

the

persists, terms?nota?

for

modern.

of

and

This

has

emergence

place.

Contemporaneity itself has many histories, and histories within the histories of art.While it is, Iwill argue, the ground? ing

condition

of

art,

contemporary

and

the

thus

primary

object of any history of the art of today, contemporaneous also

qualities

may

venture

to suggest,

have

been

in art

present

the way

all

goes

some

To

questions. unexpected awareness of the disjunctions

us

extent,

between

every?

by this idea, I

It pushes and

back.

what

and

always

art historical quest unleashed

where. The

and

being

to ask was

how, time

regis?

teredwithin the symbolic languages that adorned the caves of Africa, marked the deserts and the rocky plateaus of what became

was

Australia, was

and

Europe,

in the

painted on

caves

the plains

created

of what

and

became

islands

of what

became Asia and the Pacific? How many ancient bodies did it mark, and what would such a mark look like, compared to those made by the Originary Beings, those given by the those

ancestors, ditional, and

or

to the present,

territories

invitingly?among current contemporaneity.

contemporaneous indicated

to standard

is, according or condition this means

above,

a

"a

definitions,

sense In the expanded all by the defined above

state." state

play ofmultiple relations between being and time.Obviously, this has been a vital part of human experience since the beginning

of

from

consciousness,

the first

opera?

cognitive

tions (indeed, it is a condition of their operation).

self-evident

is the

fact

that

other

relations?not

Equally

least,

struc?

tures of religious belief, cultural universalism, systems of evolved to mediate thought, and political ideologies?have these

ones.

particular

the past

During

encompassing

power

versalizations,

has

of the contestation

of

twenty

years,

however,

expansion of the sense that the

there has been a noticeable these

weakened

structures, considerably,

everywhere

evident

their

force

not

least

between

them.

near

thing

all

Nowadays, that is around

us,

far,

surface

and

every

Uto?

the modern

toward the frictions

of multiplicative

and

within

depth.

us,

every? is

Modernity

aging in Europe and ailing in theUnited States; having tried Mao's version, China is building on that of Deng Xiaoping and Milton Friedman; in Southeast Asia globalized hubs are while

created;

continually

state

elsewhere

state

after

sacrifices

its citizens in the rush to plug itself in as a resource provider economies.

leading

toxic mix

This

of resignation

and

aspiration is at odds with themessage

coming from the planet

itself:

material

of ever-expanding

that pursuit

for

well-being

all on the modern model will lead to the extinction of the species. The human compact with the earth is being broken: its repair Renewed

in fact, we

is urgent;

is

fundamentalism

even

its consciousness

Do

too late. begun indicator that almost

have

may

just

one

as uni because It is no

to itself.

stranger

these factors (just some among many others) constitute of a new

evident

ing?so rable

or does

era,

in the coexistence

temporalities and animal being,

but

their

antinomic

of

mismatch? incommensu?

multiple, at every level of human and even unto extending things?

pervasive

perhaps

indicate that we have passed beyond the cusp of the last historical period that could plausibly be identified as such? This question is,at present (and in principle), unanswerable, but that it can be put is significant. The forwardmovement of

History, along with themany counterhistories it engendered during the modern period, has been derailed and is in de? cline. Globalization has recently reached the limits of its ambitions

hegemonic

yet remains

in many

powerful

domains.

The decolonized have yet to transform the world in their image (it is, after all, early days in a long struggle,much of it conducted below the radars of publicity). None of these global formations in itself sets the agenda for our times. It is their

con?

fundamental

in the most distinctive qualities of

life, shaping

contemporary

our

structures

that

contemporaneity

dition, that is manifest

the

interactions

between

humans

and the geosphere, themulteity of cultures, the ideoscape of global politics, and the interiorityof individual being. of these

understanding close expect made

historical

what

are

the

shapes

situation

the

of contemporary connections it, but

within

structural

forces

for our implications we art? Paradoxically, might and the art between this situation

when our

that constitute

shape and

379

into spheres signified by

of advancement

If the contemporaneity are past, periods

up everywhere, more many pasts appear?vividly,

the multiple

Contemporaneity

tra?

immanent,

terms)

so on,

And

it. Nowadays,

through

(in our

that became

iconic?

pia difference

the outlines

accord?

its emergence

sketched

stage us all.

that awaits

ART

CONTEMPORARY

every kind of past has returned to haunt the present, making

often

similar,

precision

have

in

the concept

with

to account

overlapping phenomena to dominant values. ing from

originated, more powerful

often

other,

against

and

relative

to the

contempora?

have

OF ART HISTORY:

longer viable to divide the globe

might circum?

in these

its transformations

STATE

matching one. Atomic

amount I believe, not, they will a historical between and period heterogeneity

might

seem more

to a an

art

likely,

but thatmay be the other pole of a false dichotomy inherited from more

modern appropriate

A mobile, thinking. to circumstances

in-between in which

is

formation the

contempo?

raneity of differences is the rule. Given the picture of uneven contention between the forces painted above, we might ask whether a similar situation is apparent in art. My own thoughts on thisquestion are drawn from the lines

of inquiry that I have pursued since 2001.1 have attempted to

discern emergent

the

lineaments

world

of contemporaneity an introduction

condition:

as a nascent appears

and in

the

paragraphs you have just read.76 I have also traced the emer? gence of conceptions of the contemporary within modern art

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ART BULLETIN

380

a

discourse,

historical

have

to

art

in turn

late modern,

art.

previous

are

that

of

standing

above.77 provided ideas that may be of art from

out

recognition

Of

most

that

there

us

obliging

style, is

of modernity

early modern, to relevance has

and,

under?

indeed,

much is

discussion

this

since

been,

our

to revise

the

a

1950s,

the

has

in distinct

occurred

of art,

history

in each

ways

above all on

so on, depending

and

culture,

so on,

and

politics,

tioning of that culture in the world the

Thus,

city,

local

on

and

the

posi?

system, itself dynamic.

of continuing

importance

nation,

region,

the preexisting

"alternative

the

moder?

art

is being

each

embraced,

generated,

or

opposed,

in

tempered,

place.

The main outcome of the global warring since the 1950s the forces

between tion

of decolonization

is that difference more

with

neous, different,

has

of us more

those

and

of

globaliza?

contempora?

increasingly aware of what

is shared,

what

with

along

become

is essentially to others. If we

relative

were able to step back and look at these diachronic develop? ments synchronically?as if they were moving through the frame of the present from the (always reimagined) past to the future?we

(unimaginable)

would

I believe,

see,

certain

driv?

ing flows of energy ("currents" might be a useful metaphor) across

passing clusters. modern

visual

less

and

most

constant

but

of

and,

always

perhaps, most cele?

partial the leading,

by

their

including

brated, and most expensive artists of the day. (I have tagged these

with

efforts,

and

deliberate

ened

in many

and, on

sequent

the

geopolitical Euro-American tique.

with

been

threat?

art made

contemporaneity), centers and

Its concerns

has

a second: art con? by in world affairs (their

overturned places, turn transnational

the

outside mostly to postcolonial and tradition nationality,

cri?

dedicated

identity,

are

also shared by artists in exile and in diaspora, as well as by those with critical perspectives working in the centers. Art of this kind fills the main international exhibitions, especially biennials, and is increasingly being collected by museums and

smaller tant

current

third

The

others.

cohort of

(mostly younger)

scale

and

with

more

than

ambitions,

of

that

but

modest, of

those

in networked

collectively,

is

the

ever-growing

nonetheless

impor?

currents.

other in

groups,

the

are working at a

artists who

Acting or associations,

loose

individually, these artistsmeditate on the changing nature of

time, Among

place, them

ues?an raise

and

are

and artists,

mood architects,

in

the world and

planners

around who

them. explore

relationships with specific environments, both

sustainable

social

media,

natural,

obvious questions

within

framework

of

val?

ecological to the in crisis. These artists planet to the nature of these days, the temporality

response as

the

thus

to one

subscribe

as I

Whatever

offered

in tone

art, descriptive art critical

also

permits,

those

they

character.

noted

some

hope, form

in

Yet

above.

more

general

histories

take,

hypothesis in tendency, partial as It is, of course,

but

the

discussion

here

in conclusion.

points

art wor?

of contemporary

thyof the name should draw on the efforts to date, but at the same time should be built on a framework that is distinct that which

from

modern

underlay

They should recognize from

earlier

the art of modernity.

art,

the legacies, both positive and prob?

art?modern,

paramodern,

premodern,

or other. They should show how each underwent, or is still connected

its unique yet It is no coincidence

undergoing,

scholarship its modern surpasses precedents art because and criticism history irresistible sistant, but nonetheless

assimilate

to contem?

transition

that a worldly art criticism one is coming into existence,

poraneity. art historical

from

perspectives

in European

and a

it has?in

that

American re?

conflicted,

manner?been

decolonizing,

and

to

obliged

and

postcolonial,

indigenous interpretative practices.79 In the names of both embedded locality and critical cosmopolitanism, a worldly approach to art defines itself against parochialism, jingoistic and

nationalism,

universalizing,

art

"globalized"

discourse.

We need a variety of kinds of critical practice, each of them alert to the demands, limits, and potentialities of both local and

distant

connections locality on

and

suggested not,

that

have

distance

local

In

artistic

between

arts, or

local

subsume

therefore,

eralizing

to the actual

distance.

and

practice,

possible trans

manifestations, them

and

art and

remaining alert to the possibilities

distant

by other,

on

focus

connections

existing

could

and

locality

to a

amounts actual

as

as well

worlds,

between

ideas elsewhere, while tices

"remodernism"

provocation, current This

"retrosensationalism.")

current

worlds

connected

is the continuation

aspirations,

but

renovation

effective

distinct

visible,

and

beliefs,

their

renewal,

in three

field

first, because

practices,

active less

our

The

and

are

remarks

lematic,

nities" project into the present, while at the same time paying attention to the specifics of the ways inwhich contemporary

share no They outlook: what

effect.

and

the

is all. contemporaneity as an art historical

in which

circumstance

contentious

to contemporary modes in the making, of art throughout theworld. and distribution interpretation,

affect

it

what

about

and

they share is that theirwork is the art being called out by the

about

seismic

about

vis-?-vis dislocation, making in mediated interactivity,

between exchanges nor no mode, prefer

These

shift from modern

This

of place possibilities is to be immersed fraught

follows.78

summary

contemporaneity

4

NUMBER

(as we write and read) deep changes in contem?

precipitating porary

XCII

contemporary

approach schematic

A of

emergence

been

to certain

led

seeking

perspectives.

The

has

of which

summary

These

explorations to those interest

2010 VOLUME

DECEMBER

ideas,

regional

and

prac? art-writing We should

relevance.

these

inherent

developments in the concept

under of "world

the gen? nor

art,"

see them as subject to (what I regard as the failing) hegemon

of

art." "global Place making,

most

common

the substance

world concerns

picturing, of artists

of contemporary

and these

being.

connectivity days

because

Increasingly,

are

the

are they over? they

ride residual distinctions based on style,mode, medium, and ideology. They are present in all art that is truly contempo? rary.Distinguishing, precisely, this presence in each artwork is themost important challenge to an art criticism thatwould

be adequate to the demands of contemporaneity. Tracing the currency of each artwork within the larger forces that are shaping this present is the task of contemporary art history. Mather Award of the TerrySmith, 2009 recipientof theFrank Jewett is Andrew W. Mellon Art Association, Professor ofContem? College at Art and the University ofPittsburgh and a porary History Theory

visitingprofessor in theFaculty ofArchitecture,UniversityofSydney (see www.terryesmith.net/web)[Department of theHistory ofArt and Architecture, University ofPittsburgh, Frick Fine Arts 104, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260, [email protected]].

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THE

Notes and the anonymous I thank Richard J. Powell for his editorial guidance readers for The Art Bulletin for their trenchant and improving comments. My colleagues in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Univer? sityof Pittsburgh, helped me during a seminar on this topic. I also thank those their writings are cited I regularly discuss these questions: with whom of the Institut National throughout. I am grateful to Richard Leeman d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris, for inviting me to pursue these questions there in on May 2007, and for publishing an earlier version of parts of my thinking these matters. This essay is dedicated to the memory of John Hope Franklin, 1915-2009. questions were among those identified by the Society of Con? Hudson, Alexander temporary Art Historians founders?Suzanne the panelists: Pamela M. Lee, and Joshua Shannon?and Dumbadze, Miwon Kwon, Richard Meyer, and Grant Kester. " on 'The Contemporary,' 2. "A Questionnaire October, no. 130 (Fall 2009): 3-124. See also the essays collected in "What Is Contemporary Art?" E-flux, nos. 11 (December 2009), 12 (January 2010), at http:// and http://www.e-flux.com/journal/ www.e-flux.com/journal/issue/ll issue/12; and "13 Theses on Contemporary Art," Texte zurKunst 19, no. 74 (June 2009): 90-118. 1. These

3. Pamela M. Lee, review of Art since 1900, by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Art Bulletin 88, no. 2 (2006): 380. 4. Among the approximately sixty essays in the Art,Bulletin that, since the as part of the mid-1980s, comment on a subfield of art history?either series "The State of Art History" or "A Range of Critical Perspectives" or as studies of a particular impact on the discipline (the "blockbuster" discusses contemporary exhibition, the independent scholar)?none art as a distinct object of inquiry. In his "Conflicting Logics: Twentieth Century Studies at the Crossroads," Art Bulletin 68, no. 3 (1986): 536 42, Donald Kuspit was concerned above all with the impact of semiot? ics and poststructuralism on art historical methodology. This concern are understood, mostly, to impact is typical: contemporary phenomena on art history from outside itself, and to disturb its "natural" disposi? tion to retrospection. Contemporary art breaks in occasionally, usually as an example mentioned in passing. An instructive exception isJo? seph Kosuth's contribution to the debate in "Writing (and) the History of Art," Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (1996): 398-416. The most prescient prior treatment in this journal isKaty Siegel's review7of Art since 1940: Strategies ofBeing, by Jonathan Fineberg; Abstraction in theTiuentieth Cen? tury:Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline, by Mark Rosenthal; and Theories and Documents of ContemporaryArt: A Sourcebook ofArtists' Writings, by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, Art Bulletin 79, no. 1 (March 1997): 164-69. Its a pe? opening paragraph includes the remark, "A discipline without riod, contemporary art history could be defined as the attempt to fill the gap between George Heard Hamilton and Artforum."Hamilton was a Yale professor and author of Painting and Sculpture inEurope 1880 1940 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972). 5. See Terry Smith, "Pour une histoire de l'art contemporain (Prolego menes tardifs et conjecturaux)," 20:21 Siecles, nos. 5-6 (Autumn 2007): 191-215.

6. See, for example, Ian Burn, "Thinking about Tim Clark and Linda Nochlin," Fox 1, no. 1 (1975): 136-37; Terry Smith, "Doing Art His? tory,"Fox 1, no. 2 (1975): 97-104; Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden's thinking had a direct influence on the courses at the Open University established under the direction of Charles Harrison, including Modern Art ?f Modernism: Manet toPollock (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Open Univer? sityPress, 1983). Artists continue to contribute compellingly to this de? bate. See, for example, Mark Lewis, "Is Modernity Our Antiquity?" in Documenta 12Magazine No. 1:Modernity? ed. Georg Sch?llhammer, (Cologne: Taschen, 2007), re? Roger M. Buergel, and Ruth Noack ed. Sch?llhammer printed in Documenta Magazine: No. 1-3, 2007 Reader, (Cologne: Taschen, 2007), 40-65. 7. Michael Fried, Why PhotographyMatters as Art as Never Before (New Ha? ven: Yale University Press, 2008), 66. Wall acknowledges this in an in? terview by Peter Osborne, "Art after Photography, after Conceptual Art," Radical Philosophy, no. 150 (July-August 2008): 47. 8. These values are posed by Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity: Essay on theOntology of thePresent (London: Verso, 2002). On Meckseper's work, see Marion Ackerman, ed., JosephineMeckseper (Ostfildern, Ger? many: Hatje Cantz for the Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart, 2007). 9. See the projects profiled in Jean-Christophe and Germaine Greer, Tacita Dean (London: heny's discussion of his installation An End no. 3 Rothkopf, "1000 Words," Artforum 44,

Royoux, Marina Warner, Phaidon, 2006); and McEl toModernity, 2005, in Scott (November 2005): 236-37.

10. I am drawing on the definitions in various versions of the Oxford En? glish Dictionary as given in print form in the 1989 revision and subse? quently found online, at www.oed.com.

STATE

OF ART HISTORY:

CONTEMPORARY

ART

3g|

in Literaturge? 11. Hans Robert Jauss, "Modernity and Literary Tradition," schichteals Provokation (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970). An English transla? tion is in Critical Inquiry 31, no. 2 (Winter 2005): 329-64. An excellent review of the term "modern" bearing on the visual arts may be found in chapter 1 of Peter Osborne, The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant Garde (London: Verso, 1995). 12. Lawrence

Rainey, 20, 2000, 15.

"In a Dark Mode,"

London Review ofBooks, January

13. To arrive at these preliminary observations, two sample surveys were undertaken, the first during 2001-2 using particularly the resources of the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, the second during 2002-3, at the University of Pittsburgh. In both cases, initial searches through WorldCat were supplemented by searches through a range of world? wide specialist catalogs, guides, and bibliographies, followed by those made available by the major art research institutions of the United States, and then by searches through the catalogs of significant Ameri? can and European libraries. Searches were made into the holdings of selected South American and Australian libraries and institutions. The search was for the occurrence of the terms "modern" and "contempo? languages in the titles of books rary" or their cognates in the European and articles, exhibition catalogs, pamphlets, or other publications, in the naming of visual arts museums, galleries, exhibition spaces, or de? partments of museums and auction houses. Two searches were made through a number of editions of dictionaries of art and glossaries of art terms, noting the incidence of definitions of the words "modern" and "contemporary" and their cognate terms and the content of the entries formodern and contemporary art institutions, movements, asso? ciations, and so on. While the survey does not claim to be complete, the patterns and repetitions in the data suggest a clear general picture. 14. Linda Nochlin, Realism (Harmondsworth, U.K.; Penguin, 1971), 25-33. 15. See Nadezda Blaziekov?-Horov?, ed., 19th-centuryArt: Guide to theCollec? tions of theNational Gallery inPrague (Prague: National Gallery, 2002), 7. 16. The most thorough study of what he shows to be the mutuality of the to the display of contemporary art in its broadest institutions dedicated sense?their competitiveness, emulation, and interdependence?is J. Pedro Lorente, Cathedrals ofUrban Modernity: The FirstMuseums of Con? Art, 1800-1930 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1998). Bruce Al temporary thuser, Collecting theNew: Museums and ContemporaryArt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), has a useful introduction. 17. John R. Lane and John Caldwell, introduction to Carnegie International 1985 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 1985), 11. For a detailed see Kenneth study of the specifics of the early Carnegie Internationals, Neal, A Wise Extravagance: The Founding of theCarnegie International Exhi? bitions 1895-1901 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996). For another view of this history, and of the subsequent years of the Carne? gie International, see Vicky A. Clark, Carnegie Museum ofArt (Pitts? burgh: Carnegie Museum of Art, 1996). 18. See Judith Bumpus, The ContemporaryArt Society 1910-1985 (London: CAS, 1985); and Alan Bowness et al., CAS: British ContemporaryArt 1910-1990: Eighty Years of Collecting by theContemporaryArt Society (Lon? don: Herbert Press, 1991). 19. Charter of the Contemporary Art Society, Melbourne, quoted in Ber? nard Smith with Terry Smith and Christopher Heathcote, Australian (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001), 218. Painting 1788-2000 20. For example, Rene Huyghe and Germain Bazin's Histoire de Tart contem poraine: La peinture (Paris: Editions Alcan, 1935); and Christian Zervos, Histoire de Tart contemporaine (Paris: Cahiers d'Art, 1938). 21. Alfred H. Barr Jr., "An Effort to Secure $3,250,000 for the Museum of Modern Art," Alfred H. Barr Jr. Papers, official statement, April 1931, Museum of Modern Art Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, New York. "The Institutionalization of the Modern? 22. Angelica Zander Rudenstine, in "Post-Modern or Contemporary?" Some Historical Observations," International Committee of ICOM for Muse? Conference proceedings, ums and Collections of Modern Art, D?sseldorf, June 25-30, 1981, 48. 23. Cited in John Elderfield, Modern Painting and Sculpture: 1880 to the Present (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2004), 12. 24.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Dissent: The Issue ofModern Art in Boston (Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1985). Its 1948 statement con? cludes: "in order to disassociate the policy and program of this institu? which sur? tion from the widespread and injurious misunderstandings round the term 'modern art,' the Corporation has today changed its name from the Institute of Modern Art to the institute of contempo? rary art" (ibid., 52-53). A reverse situation is just becoming visible: the current media and market notoriety of Contemporary Art has led some of those building institutions to house it, seeking the broadest public for it, to return to "modern" as a safer name: thus, the Gallery of Mod? ern Art, Brisbane, which opened in late 2006. See Daniel Thomas,

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3g2

ART

BULLETIN

DECEMBER

2010 VOLUME

XCII

NUMBER

4

Art Gallery and Its Gallery of Modern Art," Art "The Queensland Monthly Australia, no. 197 (March 2007): 23. 25. Wilhelm Pinder, Das Problem der Generation in derKunstgeschichte Europas (Berlin: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1926), quoted in and glossed by Arnold Hauser, The Philosophy ofArtHistory (Cleveland: Meridian, 1963), 248. The political circumstances ofWeimer Germany, and its led Ernst Bloch to take challenge toMarxist historical materialism, as critical analytic concepts. contemporaneity and noncontemporaneity See Bloch, Heritage ofOur Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), esp. part 2. This is a direct precedent tomy own usage. 26. See Lesley Jackson, (London: Phaidon,

"Contemporary":Architecture and Interiors of the 1950s 1994).

27. The best summary of this important art historical task is the introduc? tion by Kobena Mercer to his book Cosmopolitan Modernisms (London: Institute of International Visual Art; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005). With regard to the contemporary in Indian art, see Geeta Ka pur, When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in In? dia (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2000). An important precedent to such studies is the pathbreaking work, since the 1950s, of Australian art his? torian Bernard Smith. Among his books, most directly relevant to this discussion isModernism's History (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998). 28. Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Artforum (June 1967), reprinted in Art and Objecthood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 166. 29. Leo Steinberg, "Contemporary Art and the Plight of Its Public" (lec? ture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1960), published inHarper's Magazine, March 1962, and reprinted in Steinberg, Other Criteria: Con? frontations with Twentieth Century Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 5. 30. Pierre Bourdieu famously argued that itwas this acculturated accep? tance of what is essentially an empty experience as, in fact, a full one that constituted, in bourgeois societies, the "love of art" as such. See Bourdieu and Alain Darbel, The Love ofArt: European ArtMuseums and Their Public (London: Polity Press, 1990). 31. See, for example, Mario Pedrosa, "Environmental Art, Postmodern Art: Helio Oiticica," Correio deManh?, June 26, 1966, trans, and reprinted in Donna de Salvo, Open Systems:Rethinking Art c. 1970 (London: T?te Publishing,

2005).

32. Andrea Giunta, Avant-Garde, Internationalism and Politics: Argentine Art in the 1960s (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007), 9. 33. See Terry Smith, "The Provincialism tember 1974): 54-59.

Problem," Artforum 13, no.

1 (Sep?

34. Reiko Tomii, "Historicizing 'Contemporary Art': Some Discursive Prac? tices in Gendai Bijutsu in Japan," Positions 12, no. 3 (2004): 611-41. " 'Create What Has Never Been Done Before!': See also Ming Tiampo, Gutai Discourses of Originality," Third Text 21, no. 6 (No? Historicising vember 2007): 689-706. 35. Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor, Reading theContemporary:African Art from Theory to theMarket Place (London: Institute of International Visual Arts; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999); Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, Con? 1999); Simon temporary African Art (London: Thames and Hudson, in Africa Remix: ContemporaryArt of Njami, "Chaos and Metamorphosis," a Continent (London: Hayward Gallery, 2005); and Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, ContemporaryAfrican Art since 1980 (Bologna: Damiani, 2009). 36. See, for example, Marina Grzinic, Situated ContemporaryArt Practices: Art, Theory and Activism from (theEast of)Europe (Frankfurt: Revolver; Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU, 2004); Group Irwin, East ArtMap: Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006); and Boris Groys, Art and Power (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008). of 37. See, for example, Li Xianting, "Major Trends in the Development Contemporary Chinese Art," in Chinese New Art, Post-1989, ed. Chang (Hong Kong: Hanart T Z Gallery, 1993); John Clark, Mod? Tsong-tzung ernAsian Art (Sydney: Craftsman House; Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998), esp. his concluding chapter, "Contemporary Art"; Wu Hung, Chinese Art at theCrossroads: Between Past and Future, between East and West (Hong Kong: New Art Media, 2001); chapters by Gao Minglu, Wu Hung, and Jonathan Hay in Antinomies ofArt and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity and Contemporaneity, ed. Terry Smith, Okwui En? wezor, and Nancy Condee (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008); and Qigu Jiang and James Elkins, eds., First "China Contemporary Art Forum"?2009 Beijing International Conference on Art Theory and Criti? cism (Beijing: China Contemporary Art Forum, 2010). 38. Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capi? talism," New LeftReview, no. 146 (July-August 1984): 59-92, reprinted in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic ofLate Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991). 39. Bernice Murphy, Museum of ContemporaryArt: Vision and Context (Syd? ney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1993), 136.

Cameron and Anna Palmquist, Vad ?r samtida konst?What Is Con? 1989), 7. Quite undistracted by ques? temporaryArt? (Mallm?: Rooseum, this is the most sustained and subtle explora? tions of the postmodern, tion of these questions published at the time.

40. Dan

Belting, The End of theHistory ofArt? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Belting's view of the subsequent best direction for art history is given in his Art History afterModernism (Chicago: Uni? versity of Chicago Press, 2003).

41. See Hans

42. Arthur C. Danto, After theEnd ofArt: ContemporaryArt and thePale ofHis? tory(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 10. 43. Amelia Jones, ed., A Companion toContemporaryArt since 1945 (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 15. This is the conclusion to her introductory essay "Writing Contemporary Art into History: A Para? dox?" 44. For example, Edward Lucie-Smith, The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984), 122; and Erika Lang muir and Norbert Lynton, The Yale Dictionary ofArt and Artists (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 464-65. My own entry in the Dic? tionaryofArt attempted to avoid this dilemma, both in itself and by my insistence on pairing itwith an entry on modernity: see Terry Smith, "Modernism" and "Modernity," inDictionary ofArt, ed. Jane Turner 1996), 777-78, and Grove Art Online. (London: Macmillan, 45. Respectively, Reginald G. Haggar, A Dictionary ofArt Terms (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1962), 92; and N. E. Lathi, The Language ofArt from A toZ: Writ inPlain English (Terrebonne, Ore.: York Books, 1997), 39. 46. Wikipedia, s.v. "contemporary art," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con temporary_art, accessed March 2009. The French entry ismore up to date: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_contemporain. and John Fleming, A World History ofArt, 3rd ed. (Lon? 47. Hugh Honour don: Laurence King, 1991), 695. The authors dropped this heading from their next edition in favor of "Towards the Third Millennium." See idem, A World History ofArt, 4th ed. (London: Laurence King, in the 1991 1995), 803. A similarly epochal use of the term appeared and ninth edition of Gardner's Art through theAges, but had evaporated by 2001. See Horst de la Croix et al., Gardner's Art through theAges, 9th ed. (Fort Wrorth: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1991; 10 ed., 2001). 48. Marilyn Stokstad, Art History, rev. ed. 1999), vol. 2, 1165.

(New York: Harry N. Abrams,

49. Respectively, Michael Archer, Art since 1960 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997; 2nd ed., 2002); and David Hopkins, AfterModern Art: 1945-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). and Uta Grosenick, Art Now 50. Respectively, Burkhard Reimschneider (Cologne: Taschen, 2001); and Susan Sollins, Art:21, Art in theTwenty first Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001). 2000). Collings, This IsModern Art (New York: Watson-Guptill, 52. Compilations: Uta Grosenick and Burkhard Reimschneider, eds., Art at the Turn of theMillennium (Cologne: Taschen, 1999); Grosenick and eds., Art Now: 137 Artists at theRise of theNew Millen? Reimschneider, nium (Cologne: Taschen, 2002); and Grosenick, ed., Art Now Vol 2: The New Directory to 136 International ContemporaryArtists (Cologne: Taschen, 2005). Anthologies: Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung, eds., Theory in Con? Art since 1985 (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005). Thematics: temporary Edward Lucie-Smith, Art Tomorrow (Paris: Pierre Terrail, 2002); Linda In the Weintraub, (New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2003); Making Gill Perry and Paul Wood, eds., Themes in ContemporaryArt (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Open University, 2004); and Thames and Hudson's excellent series Art Works, including Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar, Place (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005). The list of themes in the text comes from the chapter headings in Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel, Themes of ContemporaryArt: Visual Art after 1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 51. Mathew

53. Eleanor Heartney,

Art &

Today (London:

Thames

and Hudson,

2008).

and Nicol 54. By Brandon Taylor: The Art of Today (London: Weidenfeld son, 1995); ContemporaryArt (London: Penguin, 2004); and Contempo? raryArt: Art since 1970 (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2005). 55. Taylor, ContemporaryArt, 9. See, by Julian Stallabrass: High Art Lite (Lon? don: Verso, 1999); Art Incorporated: The Story ofContemporaryArt (Ox? ford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and ContemporaryArt: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 56. Hal Foster et al., Art since 1900: Modernism, Anti-Modernism, Postmodern? ism (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005). Foster's interest in psycho? analysis does not lead to a distinct history of modernism, although it certainly issues in distinctive accounts of the works that he, the author of the majority of the entries, treats. Among a number of astute reviews of the book, see Charles Harrison, "After the Fall," Art Journal 65, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 116-19; and various authors in the "Interventions Re? views," Art Bulletin 88, no. 2 (2006): 373-99. 57. Foster et al., Art since 1900, 679.

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THE

58. 59.

Ibid. I evoke here the argument of T. J. Clark, Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History ofModernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). A stance is that historical modernism may have been less melancholy in art and the world at large, but its sidelined by recent developments core qualities remain capable of serving as the foundation of convinc? ing art, were the right artists to grasp them afresh. As we have seen, this is precisely what Michael Fried argues is occurring in the work of certain contemporary photographers, notably JeffWall.

60. Peter Osborne, "Art beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Criticism, Art History and Contemporary Art," Art History 27, no. 4 (September 2004): 666-67. 61. One pertinent paradox is that since the 1970s, criticism of contempora? neous art has been most effectively practiced by writers based in the in contrast to the out-there, implicated situation of the academies, most prominent writers of the previous generation. A further paradox is that these academics have held as models (positive and negative) not only their immediate predecessors but also the engaged reviewers of art since Denis Diderot. See, for example, Terry Smith, "Clement Greenberg at 100: Looking Back toModern Art, Conference Sackler Museum, Harvard University, April 3-4, 2009," CAAReviews, posted July

14, 2009, http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/1298. 62. Notably, the exhibitions curated by Okwui Enwezor, including Trade Routes: History and Geography (The Hague: Prince Claus Fund; Johannes? Council, 1997); and, with burg: Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Chinua Achebe, The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movement in Africa 1945-1994 (Munich: Prestel, 2001); and Documenta 11, Platform 5: Exhibition (Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2002). 63. Okwui Enwezor, "The Postcolonial Constellation," tinomies ofArt and Culture, 208-9, 232. 64. Kirk Varnedoe, York: Museum

Modern Contemporary: Art atMOMA of Modern Art, 2000), 12.

in Smith et al., An? since 1980 (New

65. Nicolas

Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les Presses du Reel, 2002); and Post-Production (New York: Lucas and Sternberg, 2002). See Claire Bishop, "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics," October, no. 110 (Fall 2004): 51-79.

66. Nicolas Bourriaud, "Altermodern," in Altermodern: T?te Triennial don: T?te Publishing, 2009), 12-13. 67.

(Lon?

I have noted this aspect in a number of recent essays. See, for exam? Critical ple, Terry Smith, "Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity," Inquiry 32, no. 4 (Summer 2006): 681-707; and "Creating Dangerously: Then and Now," in The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society, ed. Okwui Enwezor (Seville: Bienal Internacional de Arte Contempor?neo de Sevilla, 2006).

68. Okwui Enwezor, "Modernity and Postcolonial aud, Altermodern T?te Triennial, 27-40.

Ambivalence,"

in Bourri?

69. As argued for by James Meyer, "The Return of the Sixties in Contem? porary Art and Criticism," in Smith et al., Antinomies ofArt and Culture, 323-32. 70. Among exhibitions that have contributed to this direction, see, for ex? ample, Ann Goldstein, ed., Reconstructing theObject ofArt: 1965-1975 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1995); Paul Schim? mel and Russell Ferguson, eds., Out ofActions: Between Performance Art and theObject: 1949-79 (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998) ; Luiz Camnitzer, Jane Farver, and Rachel Weiss, Global Conceptu alism: Points ofOrigin, 1950s-1980s (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 1999) ;Richard Flood and Francis Morris, eds., Zero to Infinity:Arte Pove ra 1962-1972 (London: T?te Gallery, 2002); Goldstein, ed., A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Museum of Art, 2004); Helen Molesworth, Work Ethic (Baltimore: Baltimore Mu

STATE

OF ART HISTORY:

CONTEMPORARY

ART

333

seum of Art, 2003); Carlos Basualdo, ed., Tropic?lia: A Revolution in Bra? zilian Culture 1967-1972 (S?o Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2005); and Mari Car? men Ramirez and Hector Olea, eds., Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2004). Among new scholarship on the protohistory of contemporary art, see, for example, Pamela M. Lee, Chronophobia: On Time in theArt of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004); Martha Buskirk, The Contingent Object of ContemporaryArt (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003); Anne Reynolds, Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003); Alex Al berro, Conceptual Art and thePolitics ofPublicity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003); the revisions being pursued by the scholars of the art of Asia, South America, Central Europe, and elsewhere noted above; and revisit surveys such as Cornelia Butler et al., WACK! Art and theFeminist Revolution (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007). 71. See, for example, the discussion moderated by Chika Okeke-Agulu, "The Twenty-first Century and the Mega Show: A Curator's Round table," Nka, Journal of ContemporaryAfrican Art, nos. 22-23 (Spring-Sum? mer 2008): 152-88. A recent compact disc, OLSSR: Our Lit? 72. See www.ourliteralspeed.com. eral Speed Soundtrack Recordings, Bitter Stag Records, 2009, includes tracks such as "Reading Rosalind Rrauss" and messages on the packag? ing such as "stuffnear art that is not art which is treated as if itwere art is now the substance of most serious art." "Periodising Contemporary Art," in Crossing Cultures: Con? flict, Migration and Convergence; The Proceedings of the32nd International (Melbourne: Miegun Congress in theHistory ofArt, ed. Jaynie Anderson no. 130 (Fall 2009): yah Press, 2009), 935-39; also published in October, 55-60.

73. Alex Alberro,

74. By, for example, W. J. T. Mitchell, Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9-11 to thePresent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 75. Jameson, A Singular Modernity, 94-95. 76. This interpretation is argued more fully in the introduction to Smith et al., Antinomies ofArt and Culture. See also Marc Auge, The Anthropology of Contemporaneous Worlds (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and His? toricalDifference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Gior? "What Is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays (Stanford: Stan? gio Agamben, ford University Press, 2009). 77. See also Richard Meyer, What Was ContemporaryArt? (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming). summary is drawn from Terry Smith, What Is ContemporaryArt? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Similar but belated shifts from modern to contemporary architecture are explored in idem, The Architecture ofAftermath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); and "Currents of Contemporaneity: Architecture in the Aftermath," Architectural Theory Review 11, no. 2 (2006): 34-52. The ideas advanced in relation to recent debates on world art history here are positioned in idem, "World Picturing in Contemporary Art: Iconogeographic Turning," Journal of theArt Association ofAustralia and New Zealand 6-7, nos. 2, 1 (2005-6): 24-46. They were first sketched in idem, What Is ContemporaryArt? ContemporaryArt, Contemporaneity and Art toCome (Syd? ney: Artspace Critical Issues Series, 2001).

78. This

79. A snapshot of these changes within international art history is to be found in Anderson, Crossing Cultures, 2009. See also Rex Butler and Robert Leonard, eds., "21st Century Art History," special issue of Aus? and Hans tralian& New Zealand Journal ofArt 9, nos. 1-2 (2008-9); eds., The Global Art World: Audiences, Belting and Andrea Buddensieg, Markets, and Museums (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2009).

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