Contemporary Art

Spiritual to Material

contemporaneity

• this trace through the multiple strata of contemporary art today moves from the spiritual to the sacred through materiality of art and the de-materialization of art
• themes and variables are significant in shaping of the contemporary archive which examine in what ways it means to be contemporary

modernism- part of this experiment was to challenge the hierarchy of painting under Greenberg. Greenberg meanwhile was establishing a solid approach to painting, abstract art called formalism which is a particular branch of art and art criticism.

To challenge paintings was to challenge institutions; paintings had been religious/theology- challenged its dominance

Duchamp challenged what art was and what it worth.

Bauhaus intended to sell- designed theatres, spaces, furniture, everything that was commercially viable.

Conceptual art - Art of ideas

(1960's-1970's)

-Conceptual art shifts from an emphasis of form and aesthetics to consider the thinking process: this was considered central to arts making as the essence of art: ideas and concepts were given. Conceptualism challenges the visual and the status of the art object.