Grandstand | The crisis of contemporary art, a problem of discourse or practice?
I choose to introduce this present report which tries to dissect the notion of contemporary art to explore its foundations and analyze the problems that divide it between a crisis of discourse and a crisis of practice; by the quote from the author Gaëtan Faucer: “contemporary art is the archeology of the present”; to evoke in the first place the temporal dimension of the concept in itself.
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| Grandstand The crisis of contemporary art, a problem of discourse or practice |
The notion of "contemporaneity" that makes up the term contemporary art is first and foremost a historical notion. Etymologically speaking, “contemporaneity” also means “simultaneity” and is contemporary what is in the same period. The "contemporary" would therefore be everything that relates to the way of today and what is done today.
Applied to art, this notion acquires an aesthetic specificity that can become controversial, since the actors do not have the necessary distance to actually appreciate the works (time factor).
Contemporary art generally encompasses all works of art produced from the mid-twentieth century to the present day (with the end of the Second World War and up to the present day).
But the designation “contemporary art” should above all not be taken only chronologically, because all contemporary productions do not necessarily belong to the contemporary approach, nor do they claim to be such.
The expression "contemporary art" is in fact used with a more restricted meaning to designate the creations of artists claiming a transgression of the borders between artistic fields (that is to say that the plastic arts open up to experiment with theatre, cinema, video, literature, etc.), or a transgression of the “boundaries of art in itself as conceived by the protagonists of modern art, for example (the movement which just precedes the latter)”; towards a form of emancipation abandoning the classic attitude for new experiments without limits, breaking the system of categorization of art and establishing new relationships with the work.
But let us also remember that the expression "contemporary manner" has already been used before to speak of artists who are still alive and active or who may still be, which in this case would place the origin of the "contemporary method" as early as the 1960s. , precisely with the appearance of “pop art, conceptual art, “Happenings or video art”.
It is with these artistic currents that would end the period of modern art and the theory of Clement Greenberg who defined it as "the search for the specificity of technique", also announcing the advent of the phenomenon which succeeded it called contemporary art !
In this permanent search for a definition of contemporaneity, art criticism and institutions play an important role. Thus, art forms whose issues do not reflect the trends promoted by “contemporary” criticism are generally excluded from the contemporary approach. And what further confirms the important dependence of the latter on its mediators is that from a geographical point of view, the planet of contemporary art has only been globalized from the great artistic places particularly covered by the media. , which are essentially Western!
Let us see vaguely the chronological evolution of the analysis of the phenomenon of contemporary art according to some reflections of thinkers and sociologists who have appropriated this historical rupture:
For Anne Cauquelin, in 1992, the criteria which characterize contemporary art are neither solely linked to the period of production, nor to the content of the works (forms, references, materials), but should rather be sought beyond the artistic, in “sociopolitics, philosophical themes and in the whole system of socioeconomic globalization.
Nathalie Heinich thought in 1998, in her book "The Triple Game of Contemporary Art", that it was up to specialized mediators (art critics, collectors, institutional officials) to integrate these transgressions in order to broaden the boundaries of art towards more permissiveness and openness for the artists as well as the public.
But in 2005, Marc Jimenez speaks to us of the "indefiniteness" of Art created by contemporary art, due to the multiplication of contemporary artistic experiences, each as varied and improbable as the other, and declares leaving to the critics of art the care of delimiting Art and Non-Art!
For his part, Alain Badiou supports in 2014 the unusual criterion of contemporary art by specifying, "non-imperial art must be as firmly linked as a demonstration, as surprising as a night attack, and as high as a star ". Contemplating some atypical contemporary approaches which do not lack authenticity despite the absence of the material involvement of the artist in his work, leaving room instead for poetry and the concept in all singularity.
Sometimes provocative, sometimes tender, Louise Bourgeois embodies uncompromising freedom. Exploring her own flaws and cracks, she plays the spider-woman, the unworthy old lady. She has tackled all genres in her disruptive quest for invention and innovation; what she seeks with art is not to create an image or even to express an idea, but rather to invite, through her immersive universes, the viewer to experience an emotion from her past that she immortalizes through its facilities. Art is for her the place where she can explore her childhood traumas, both a passage and an outlet.
Through her practice, she gives shape to her experience and her memories. Once exorcised into objects, her obsessions become materials for her to analyze, trivialize and control in order to overcome them.
Christian Boltanski himself, through different devices, presents us with the absent, the disappeared, the dead. Certainly no corpses, but paradoxically, faced with all this emptiness evoked, the memories, the tragedy, the pain, the suffering, the drama and the mourning are very present.
Through different installations, all characterized by fairly technically elaborate scenographies, between visual, sound, tactile dimensions, etc., the artist expresses by all means the precariousness of life, leading the spectator with each experience on a real multidimensional journey making of the strange and unexpected essential elements in his artistic experiences.
Bill Viola, on the other hand, deals largely through his richly crafted videos with the central themes of human consciousness and experience, and ideas that revolve around such fundamental subjects as birth, death, love, emotion, aspects of consciousness up to a kind of dimension of humanistic spirituality. His artistic expression depends on electronic technologies, sound and image in new media, also setting up pure and extremely immersive universes.
The consideration of this unpredictable phenomenon that is contemporary art therefore depends essentially on criticism and on the entire media machine that works on it in its direction or against its direction.
The important thing is to put it forward to feed the buzz system that affects the popularity of the act, however banal it may be. Its glorifying headlines make us understand that the crisis in contemporary art has never been a problem of practice but rather a problem of discourse. I would like to recall at this level of development the scandalous headline that turned the Web upside down on December 8, 2019: “a banana sold for 120,000 dollars then eaten! », to talk about the surprising work of the artist Maurizio Cattelan, entitled «Comédien», which is presumed to be a banana taped with an adhesive roller on a wall of the stand of the Perrotin gallery during the exhibition of the contemporary art fair Art Basel which was held from December 5 to 8, 2019 in Miami, United States, acquired by a French collector for 120,000 dollars. But what is shocking in all this is that she was devoured in full public on December 7, 2019 by another artist David Datuna, who considers his gesture as a “perforation”.
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