Contemporary Art: World Currents argues that, in recent decades, a worldwide shift from modern to contemporary art has occurred. Artists everywhere have embraced the contemporary world’s teeming multiplicity, its proliferating differences and its challenging complexities.
This book shows how contemporary art achieved definitive force in the markets and museums of the major art centres during the 1980s. It then became a global phenomenon as artworlds everywhere began to connect more closely, to become contemporaneous with each other. New communicative technologies and expanding social media are now shaping the future of art. Terry Smith offers the first account of these changes, from their historical beginnings to the present day.
Acknowledgments
General.Introduction: Contemporary Art in Transition: From Late Modern Art to Now
I BECOMING CONTEMPORARY
IN EUROAMERICA
1.LATE MODERN ART BECOMES CONTEMPORARY
Transformations in Late Modern Art:Its Contemporary Aspects
Situationism, Gutai, Happenings: Art into Life/Life into Art
Pop: The Social.Mirror, Refracted
The Object MateriaLized: MinimaLism
Earthworks: Extending ScuLpture's FieLd
ConceptuaLism: Reconceiving Art
PoLiticaL Interventions: Direct Democracy, Body, Solf, SexuaLity
2.THE CONTEMPORARY ART BOOM
The Postmodern Return to Figuration
The Two Germanys
Trauma of the Victimized
The ItaLian Transavantgarde
The American Scene Again
British SchooLs
Critical Postmodernism
Ret ro-Sensational.ist Art
Remodernism in Sculpture and Photography
Big Photography
Spectacle Architecture as Contemporary Art
Contemporary Art Becomes a StyLe
II THE TRANSNATIONAL TRANSITION
Introduction
3.RUSSIA AND {EAST OF] EUROPE
Russia
Art under Late SociaLism
Russian Art Becomes Contemporary
Late Col.d War Modern Art Elsewhere(East of) Europe
Parodies of Official Imagery
Performance Art Tests the Limits
CzechosLova kia
Hungary
The BaLtic Nations
After the Fall: Post-Communist Art?
Romania
The Breakup of YugosLavia
Beyond "Eastern" and "Central" versus
"Western" Europe
Transl,ating the European Ideal.
4.SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA, THE CARIBBEAN
South America
Argentina
Brazil
CoLombia
ChiLe
Mexico
Cuba
Elsewhere in the Caribbean
Seeing the WorLd's Currents
5.CHINA AND EAST ASIA
China
Modern Chinese Art
Contemporary Chinese Art
Taiwan
Japan
ExperimentatArt in the 1950s to 1970s
Contemporary Art
Korea
6.INDIA, SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
India
Pakistan
Thail.and
Indonesia
The Philippines
7.OCEANIA
Papua New Guinea
Aotearoa/New Zealand
Australia
8.AFRICA
Modern Art in Africa
South Africa under Apartheid
Popular Painting and Sculpture in Central.Africa
Commercial.to Art Photography
South Africa After Apartheid
African Art Enters the International.Circuit
9.WEST ASIA
Iraq
Jordan
Iran
Palestine
Israel.
From Hurufiyah to Contemporary Cosmopol.itanism
IIICONTEMPORARYCONCERNS
Introduction
10.WORLD PICTURES: MAKING ART POLITICALLY
One World
GI.obal.Networks
Intervening Critically
Profil.es in Shadowl.and
Bare Labor
11.CLIMATE CHANGE: ART AND ECOLOGY
Art and Environmentalism
Crisis and Catastrophe
Col.l.ective Actions, Sustainabl.e Solutions
Designs for Living
Experimental.Geography
Imaging the Future Dystopia
Eco-Chic, Greenwashing, Spectacl.e
12.SOCIAL MEDIA: AFFECTS OF TIME
Mediation, Immersion, Intervention, Agency
To Be with Time Is AI.I.We Ask
13.CODA: PERMANENT TRANSITION
Notes
Select Bibliography
Selected Contemporary Art Websites
Index
Picture Credits
Note of Thanks
