Contemporary art is defined as “art of today” which history of
art to now; referred to as paintings, sculptures, photography, installations, performances,
and video art etc. However today the definition is not quite clear, as there is
different point of views on what “art of today” is. I've chosen are Sara Cwynar, Maya Lin, Hayley Silverman, Kara Walker, Adrienne Elise Tarver. Majority of these artist talk about societal issues such as race, being a women, or struggle of an art movement as well as the system of life.
Sara Cwynar, a Canadian that does installations and photography. Studied English literature at the University of British Columbia, Bachelor's degree in York University, and MFA from Yale University. Inspired by antiqued studio photography, and contemporary commercial imagery. Her art consists of the new, old, nostalgia, futurism, and digital; mixed with pictures or objects. She then photographs them and reproduce them as C-prints. She was especially interested in how images morph and change over time as well as how these changes effect to the world. Such as glamourous objects that will someday lose their luster or objects that were once familiar becomes foreign. It also shows that people care deceived by beauty, and that someday that beauty will also fade overtime. The beautiful images cover the unpleasant truth of reality, as it covers up similarly to a system of control in societal lives. Besides this, she also transformed everyday objects into art. Stating that she wondered about the effect of throwing away objects then reflect them on lives of images over time that connects to a cycle of capitalism and feminism.
Sara Cwynar, Man 1, 2015
Sara Cwynar, Our Natural World (Books 1), 2013
Sara Cwynar, Girl from Contact Sheets 2 (Darkroom Manuals), 2013
Maya Lin, an American architect and sculpture that also does installations, received her Bachelor's degree from Yale and in her senior year won a nationwide competition to create a design for the Vietnam Veteran Memorial. She is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., however, her design had controversy due to her minimalist design, misinterpreting it as to minimalize the historical event, but was later popular to the public over the years. She was later also known for her land art, with her unique minimalist approach to public art. Her outdoor installations created a feeling of belonging, as if it was natural yet interrupted the terrains. Her indoor work also had an environmental focus as well as distant geographic location. And due to this, her art generated a merge of the conceptual and natural world. Inspired by older, mostly men, minimalists that also include historical references in their large-scale public work, Lin developed her art in a way that it would impact the public in a personal way. She aimed her work to create a private conversation to whoever views it.
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veteran Memorial, 1982
Maya Lin, Wave Field, 1995
Maya Lin, The Last Memorial, 2009
Hayley Silverman, an American visual artist that does sculptures, paintings, installations, and videos. Silverman received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculptural Studies with a concentration in Interactive Media from the Maryland Institution College of Art. She’d mix digital manipulation to her prints, painting, and sculptures. Silverman was interested in the discourse between virtual and reality, and seek memories of history through time, space, and mediums. Her videos explored subtle motion and illusory effects through objects filmed or through computer-based manipulation. She’d use low fidelity or computer generated visual techniques and adding slight movements or manipulating the environmental elements, created psychedelic results. Her work thrived on performance as well as a mix of humor and tragedy.
Hayley Silverman, The Living Watch Over The Living, 2017
Hayley Silverman, Bird Figurine, 2017
Hayley Silverman, Order, 2015
Kara Walker, an African-American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, and film maker. She focuses on race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. Received a BFA from Atlanta College of Arts and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Known for her black and white silhouette work that invokes themes of African-American racial identity. Her subjects are styled to traditional African illustration and folklore of the Pre-Civil war in scenes of slavery, conflict, and violence. She would cut black and white paper and set them on gallery walls then project light to cast a shadow. This creates an engaging experience and interaction with the viewer. Although the figures seem simple, it demonstrates brutal stereotypes in situations that are violent and sexual. Illustrating the present social and economic inequalities that separates America.
Kara Walker, Excerpt, 2014
Kara Walker, Boo Hoo, 2000
Kara Walker, False Face, 2017
Adrienne Elise Tarver, A multi-media artist creating installations, paintings, photography, and videos that examines the psychology of space. She received her MFA from the school of the Art Institution of Chicago and BFA from Boston University. Interested in the space people live in, she explored the notions of insider and outsider, perspectives of both the voyeur and the viewer. Tarver's work seeks to exploit people's curiosity and fears that are in barriers and what would happen if those barriers are broken. Although it disregards privacy of others, it encourages exploring these curiosities. And when something is found, it cannot be explained objectively by one side, but either side's perspective on the context. This would reveal to the viewer more about themselves than the viewed. In short, Tarver wishes to explore societal and economic boundaries that restricts people to understand themselves and discourages exploring outside the boundaries. This can be expressed more than just gender or race, but the person as a whole. Tarver's recent work, Stories of Shadows, a series of work photographed and filmed of a young, black, female woman, wearing sunglasses and facing the camera. Tarver created a narrative of the women's life in paintings and documented her home etc. As Tarver felt both familiar and distant to the women, this allowed Tarver to tell her stories and experiences as a woman through her art.
Adrienne Elise Tarver, Eavesdropping 1, 2016
Adrienne Elise Tarver, Secrets of Leaves, 2017
As seen above, many of these artists have different themes of what would be regarded as "art of today". But despite their differences, they all focused on social issues from race to the system of life. I tried to set them in order of art mediums but all of them did installations at some point.
Work Cited
http://www.foxyproduction.com/artists/2944
https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/hayley-silverman/
https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-contemporary-art-definition/
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-contemporary-art-182974
https://www.biography.com/people/maya-lin-37259
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-lin-maya.htm
https://www.artsy.net/artist/kara-walker
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-walker-kara.htm
http://www.peripheralvisionarts.org/tarver-profile/
http://www.adriennetarver.com/biocv/
Sara Cwynar, a Canadian that does installations and photography. Studied English literature at the University of British Columbia, Bachelor's degree in York University, and MFA from Yale University. Inspired by antiqued studio photography, and contemporary commercial imagery. Her art consists of the new, old, nostalgia, futurism, and digital; mixed with pictures or objects. She then photographs them and reproduce them as C-prints. She was especially interested in how images morph and change over time as well as how these changes effect to the world. Such as glamourous objects that will someday lose their luster or objects that were once familiar becomes foreign. It also shows that people care deceived by beauty, and that someday that beauty will also fade overtime. The beautiful images cover the unpleasant truth of reality, as it covers up similarly to a system of control in societal lives. Besides this, she also transformed everyday objects into art. Stating that she wondered about the effect of throwing away objects then reflect them on lives of images over time that connects to a cycle of capitalism and feminism.
Sara Cwynar, Man 1, 2015Sara Cwynar, Our Natural World (Books 1), 2013Sara Cwynar, Girl from Contact Sheets 2 (Darkroom Manuals), 2013Maya Lin, an American architect and sculpture that also does installations, received her Bachelor's degree from Yale and in her senior year won a nationwide competition to create a design for the Vietnam Veteran Memorial. She is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., however, her design had controversy due to her minimalist design, misinterpreting it as to minimalize the historical event, but was later popular to the public over the years. She was later also known for her land art, with her unique minimalist approach to public art. Her outdoor installations created a feeling of belonging, as if it was natural yet interrupted the terrains. Her indoor work also had an environmental focus as well as distant geographic location. And due to this, her art generated a merge of the conceptual and natural world. Inspired by older, mostly men, minimalists that also include historical references in their large-scale public work, Lin developed her art in a way that it would impact the public in a personal way. She aimed her work to create a private conversation to whoever views it.
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veteran Memorial, 1982Maya Lin, Wave Field, 1995Maya Lin, The Last Memorial, 2009Hayley Silverman, an American visual artist that does sculptures, paintings, installations, and videos. Silverman received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculptural Studies with a concentration in Interactive Media from the Maryland Institution College of Art. She’d mix digital manipulation to her prints, painting, and sculptures. Silverman was interested in the discourse between virtual and reality, and seek memories of history through time, space, and mediums. Her videos explored subtle motion and illusory effects through objects filmed or through computer-based manipulation. She’d use low fidelity or computer generated visual techniques and adding slight movements or manipulating the environmental elements, created psychedelic results. Her work thrived on performance as well as a mix of humor and tragedy.
Hayley Silverman, The Living Watch Over The Living, 2017 Hayley Silverman, Bird Figurine, 2017Hayley Silverman, Order, 2015Kara Walker, an African-American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, and film maker. She focuses on race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. Received a BFA from Atlanta College of Arts and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Known for her black and white silhouette work that invokes themes of African-American racial identity. Her subjects are styled to traditional African illustration and folklore of the Pre-Civil war in scenes of slavery, conflict, and violence. She would cut black and white paper and set them on gallery walls then project light to cast a shadow. This creates an engaging experience and interaction with the viewer. Although the figures seem simple, it demonstrates brutal stereotypes in situations that are violent and sexual. Illustrating the present social and economic inequalities that separates America.
Kara Walker, Excerpt, 2014Kara Walker, Boo Hoo, 2000Kara Walker, False Face, 2017Adrienne Elise Tarver, A multi-media artist creating installations, paintings, photography, and videos that examines the psychology of space. She received her MFA from the school of the Art Institution of Chicago and BFA from Boston University. Interested in the space people live in, she explored the notions of insider and outsider, perspectives of both the voyeur and the viewer. Tarver's work seeks to exploit people's curiosity and fears that are in barriers and what would happen if those barriers are broken. Although it disregards privacy of others, it encourages exploring these curiosities. And when something is found, it cannot be explained objectively by one side, but either side's perspective on the context. This would reveal to the viewer more about themselves than the viewed. In short, Tarver wishes to explore societal and economic boundaries that restricts people to understand themselves and discourages exploring outside the boundaries. This can be expressed more than just gender or race, but the person as a whole. Tarver's recent work, Stories of Shadows, a series of work photographed and filmed of a young, black, female woman, wearing sunglasses and facing the camera. Tarver created a narrative of the women's life in paintings and documented her home etc. As Tarver felt both familiar and distant to the women, this allowed Tarver to tell her stories and experiences as a woman through her art.
Adrienne Elise Tarver, Eavesdropping 1, 2016 Adrienne Elise Tarver, Secrets of Leaves, 2017As seen above, many of these artists have different themes of what would be regarded as "art of today". But despite their differences, they all focused on social issues from race to the system of life. I tried to set them in order of art mediums but all of them did installations at some point.
Work Cited
http://www.foxyproduction.com/artists/2944
https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/hayley-silverman/
https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-contemporary-art-definition/
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-contemporary-art-182974
https://www.biography.com/people/maya-lin-37259
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-lin-maya.htm
https://www.artsy.net/artist/kara-walker
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-walker-kara.htm
http://www.peripheralvisionarts.org/tarver-profile/
http://www.adriennetarver.com/biocv/
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