by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: May 12, 2008   Last Updated: August 20, 2010

Contemporary art is the art of the present time. It is the kind of art now being produced. Generally speaking, it sometimes takes in art that has been produced in the last fifty years. As the word contemporary tells us, it means art that is being practiced now. The word 'contemporary' when next to art takes on shades of other meanings, however. And In years hence it will mean something else entirely and curators and art museum directors will try to pin down the art that is being created in our lifetimes. It is necessary that they do so because it makes it neat and easy to showcase. In other words, it makes their job clearer. It will need a new label, unless the word 'contemporary' forsakes itself for the sake of art.

They, the art dealers, like the contemporary art they work with, will not quite succeed. Only a small fraction of what is being produced today will last long enough to give others a chance to look back and see what today's art world is like and to give future generations glimpses of how we lived and thought. The rest will end up in the trash heap and at garage sales and stashed away in dusty attics.

Contemporary art is in full bloom in college art labs. Students at this age love the freeing promises it offers and while most of them producing it will go on to other things once their required hours are over, a few will continue on. To learn more of contemporary art secrets I read an interesting expose by Marcia Tucker on the where and the why of this kind of art. She founded and directed The Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City for twenty-one years.

The article "Art. Questing for the new definition of Contemporary Art" was published by the New York Times March 28, 1998. As she explained, and I tried to explain in my first two paragraphs, contemporary art needs to have a name of its own. It has taken on new meanings. There is contemporary art being created today and there is regular art' being created. By 'regular art' I mean art that is acceptable by the majority of people.

The kind of art she writes about, her kind of art, is an art apart from accepted art; in fact it is most often shocking and uncontrolled. This is not to say the artists are all freakish characters that set out to create some of the bizarre type of art they do, but as artists they often have no other choice. They do what all artists have always done; they follow where their art conscience leads.

It is true that most people do not like to change their conception of what they

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