While Studying art in college a professor clarified a point for me, that modern ended in the year 2000 and contemporary art began. That is something that should be known, we are living in the age of contemporary art. Knowing that there is a difference, I feel, allows an assessment to be a little clearer. To asses contemporary art all that one truly needs is a pair of eyes, time and a gallery to walk into, as has been the custom for awhile now, the Chelsea district in Manhattan is one of the best places to see contemporary art.
So when walking into a Chelsea gallery what are you likely to see? A prevailing trend in contemporary art is work about the artist. Work centered on no them or particular concept other then the artist and there life. Often artists tend to focus on a particular section of their life i.e. heritage, political view, their body, sexual orientation etc. currently this subject matter is handled in several ways. The choice of media often accompanies the subject in a symbiotic fashion.
Traditional media: drawing, painting and sculpture are often used for subject media such as political views and sexual orientation. They tend to be straight forward with very little left up to the viewers interpretation. It is hard to misunderstand a portrait of a political figure such as former president Bush with the words Axis of Evil" over it.
Installation art is an extension of sculpture. Artists that work in this media are often trying to make a socio/political statement of some kind; this of course doesn't mean that this is the goal of every installation piece. Sometimes artists are trying to achieve a sensory effect to engage a viewer with more then just eyes. I will always recall a piece I saw in Long Island Cities PS1 Museum. It was a room filled with homemade drums. This piece had several purposes. It was obviously visual, as well as auditory and tactile, since you were allowed to play and hear the drums. It was also socio/political. The artist filled a basin in the center of the room with bullet casings. They felt the intense drumming sounded like machine gun fire and they wanted to bring attention to world conflicts.
Video art has become more and more common these days. This media lends itself to a lot of work portraying the body or sexual orientation. It is often the artist filming themselves or others engaged in some kind of action. It is not a film though. There is no plot, dialogue or story of any kind. Some video art I've witnessed is people diving into a pool with the video in rewind and reflected off of a black stone slab, a man burning his nipple, a ball bouncing around a room, and so on. Video art tends to lean toward the graphic and shocking.
So how do you asses contemporary art? As I have often said, art is a subjective experience. Contemporary art is typically not my taste. Though I do like pieces I feel that have been thought out and well executed. I like being captivated as the drum piece captivated me or the video of the divers did. To say all contemporary art is terrible, as some would, could neither be fair nor accurate. As long as there has been art there has been bad art, in the end though is id for you to decide which is which.