How to tell at a glance if it’s contemporary art

A. You could say that that contemporary art is present-day art. In both cases, we are talking about the art that is created today. The term contemporary art is more frequently used because it is more all-encompassing.

Modern art
The terms modernism and modern art refer to the art of the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in the Western world. Both visual artists and architects rejected the conventions of the past and sought new avenues that were more closely adapted to the world in which they lived. Modern art ends in the late 1960s. Guido Molinari’s Mutation rythmique bi-jaune belongs to the modern art period.

A. Specialists consider that contemporary art begins in about 1970. Artists continued with the transformations that began with modern art. This was a time of intense creativity and growth in the number of artistic movements that sought to revolutionize practices.

R. It’s the art that is produced today. The subjects and techniques are highly diversified. Because their concerns—both social and artistic, artists are often ahead of their time. In Marines, Jérôme Fortin uses plastic containers found on the shores of the Saint Lawrence. Cut out, stretched and pinned to the wall, they become intriguing objects that spur us to think about the place of garbage in our society.

R. An abstract work does not imitate visible reality as we perceive it. Instead, we see combinations of shapes or colours. Painters such as Denis Juneau in Espace jaune and Claude Tousignant play with shapes and colours. Others manipulate materials and colours, such as Louise Robert in No 78-54, No 78-263-A-B.

A. Art movements are often named after the fact, and they are often named by art critics. A movement is a group of artists that have adopted a new outlook on art. Sometimes, they are in physical proximity and work together. Occasionally, a movement transcends the borders of a particular country to inspire artists in different countries to adapt it to their social and artistic context.

For example, Pop Art got its start in England and the United States. Quebec artists working at the Atelier Graff produced works in the same spirit.

Each artist’s work is unique, and over the course of their lifetime, artists change the way the way they paint or sculpt.

A. Forget your preconceived ideas: accept the fact that you’ll be surprised and trust yourself. You might have all kinds of reactions ranging from disgust to surprise, from admiration to amusement. Artists do not necessarily seek to represent what is beautiful: they also seek to destabilize us, force us to reflect and have opinions. They draw on the life that surrounds us and give us a world to look at.

The best way to become familiar with contemporary art is by looking at it in order to be able to make connections. Introductory texts, labels (displayed next to a work in museums), books about art history are all good ways to demystify art history and to learn a foreign “language”.

A. It’s simplistic, lazy and even cowardly to say that. Children draw spontaneously, whereas artists are aware of the images they create. The fact that you haven’t mastered their language and feel you have no frame of reference does not mean the work is devoid of meaning. The difficulty artists face is retaining the simplicity of childhood while capitalizing on their maturity.

You mustn’t look at contemporary art the same way you would look at an old painting. It could appear to be made of debris, badly executed or, even worse, overly simple, as is the case of the vertical bands in Guido Molinari’s Mutation rythmique bi-jaune. But daring to create a painting such as this at the time the artist created it took courage and a desire to break with convention. What interested Molinari was the interaction of colours, not a faithful depiction of reality.

A. Sculpture is no longer just an object in marble or bronze on a pedestal. It no longer has any boundaries. The subjects, the materials and technical processes used are highly varied. The following are all sculptures: Sans titre by Jean-Pierre Morin is made from shaped, welded steel; Ovexpansible rouge by Jean Noël is made from assembled thermoformed plexiglass; Loop by Henri Saxe consists of modules of assembled and welded aluminum; and Trophée by Josée Fafard is made from recycled otter fur.

Sometimes you see the word “installation” on a label. It can be difficult to determine the boundary between installation and sculpture. Most of the time, installations exist in space. Some are even created specifically for the place where they will be exhibited.. Pierre Granche’s Inclinaison VILLE Inclination. Immeuble de la Banque Royale is part of an installation comprising 16 architectural elements and 20 cloud elements, made primarily from wood, cardboard and rusting steel. Michel Goulet’s Exil/exode consists of two chairs and 20 steel boxes.

A. In traditional landscape painting, just like in contemporary art, you can’t be certain the landscape you are looking at really exists. It could have been put together from sketches and photos that the artist collected and combined, for example, Raymonde April’s Les Pèlerins de la croix lumineuse. Artists represent nature without imitating it. And landscape does not necessarily mean countryside and nature. It can be an industrial or urban scene, as in Liliana Berezowsky’s Muir Park Series.

A. Like landscapes, still lifes and nudes, the portrait has been part of the history of Western art. Before the emergence of photography, some portraits served as a source of information: for example, a fiancée wanted to see what her future husband looked like! In portraits of artists by Richard-Max Tremblay, the personality of each artist is reflected in the way the image is framed: a wide shot for Guido Molinari and John A. Schweitzer, close-ups of Betty Goodwin, Françoise Sullivan and Dominique Blain. Clara Gutsche, with Les Sœurs Adoratrices du Précieux Sang. Le jardin depicts the subjects in their environment: here, they are playing.

Artists have long created self-portraits, either in paintings or photographs. In Femme nouée, Raymonde April photographed herself in nature, while in Moi-même, portrait de paysage, all that can be seen is her shadow.

A. Artists are driven by a strong desire to create something that no one has asked them to do and to which they dedicate their lives. They observe, pass judgment and take a critical, personal and sometimes humorous look at society. Artists like Raymonde April and Peter Krausz create works that take something private as a starting point but end up expressing something universal.

Today’s artists also have ties with artists who came before them. Those who study at art schools learn to master techniques, take art history courses and discuss aesthetic issues to develop their creative and intellectual autonomy. Even today, people still learn to draw, sculpt nudes and paint still lifes from models. To break the rules, you must first master the techniques and become familiar with the historical references to find inspiration or to make fun of them.

For example, in Beyond Sweeties, Naomi London makes reference to the salon style, a means of hanging paintings that was all the rage in nineteenth-century galleries. The works are stuck together and cover practically the entire surface of the wall.

A. Except in a few cultures where religion prohibited the depiction of the human body (Islam and Judaism), the body, whether clothed or nude, has always been present in art. But the way it is depicted has changed dramatically over the course of the twentieth century. The body has become a favourite subject, since art today is often driven by the self, the inner “me”.

Some artists use their own bodies as a medium: they test the mind’s limits for tolerating suffering and explore the relationship between being naked and being clothed, internal and external, parts versus the whole, through changing or mutilating the body, through self-metamorphosis and by photographing themselves during performances and happenings. This focus on the body also provides food for thought about identity and sex. This is what Josée Fafard did in Trophée.

A. They use everything from graphite pencils to domestic waste, from new technologies and oil paints to photographs and prints. Peter Krausz used tar in l’Île devant Chinon and painted Fragment no 1, de la série Natura Humana using the age-old technique of fresco, a technique that was very popular in the Renaissance. And yet, he used a salvaged object, an old radiator, to frame his work.

Artists transform waste materials into art objects, sometimes changing them until they are no longer recognizable. Jérôme Fortin cut up and stretched plastic bleach bottles to create Marines, Betty Goodwin’s print Collapsed Vest One (Crushed Vest) was made from a vest that once belonged to her father, and Josée Fafard used recycled otter fur in her sculpture Trophée.

Today’s artists often use photography, video and the Internet, which allows them to integrate a number of elements: live, real-time images, stills and scripted texts. The devices they use are now part of our daily lives; they are faithful and discreet witnesses but they produce images that can easily be manipulated on a computer.

A. Not all visual artists turn out to be stars, but that does not mean they are not producing interesting art. The visual arts have a more limited role in today’s society compared to film, music and sports. Fewer people buy works of art than CDs. There is no market if there is no one interested in buying art. The leading galleries are located in cities where there is a certain level of prosperity, such as Toronto and New York.

To survive, lesser-known artists must do something else besides art to earn a living, such as teaching or technical work at a museum. Artists gain fame when their works become part of private or museum collections with a good reputation in the national or international art community, and when they take part in exhibitions, both at home and abroad. Art critics, gallery owners, and exhibition curators play a major role in establishing an artist’s reputation.

A. Gaining public recognition is a long and difficult process, and not every artist wants to make the effort needed to achieve this. In pop music, for example, not all artists are ready to accept the sacrifices made by Celine Dion to become an international star.

To become known, artists are generally represented by galleries in one or more cities in Canada, that organize exhibitions on their premises and in museums, present works in major international art events such as the Foire d’art contemporain (FIAC) in Paris. There are also other events to which artists are invited by curators, such as the Documenta de Kassel in Germany and the Biennale de Venise. Angela Grauerholz was one of nine artists representing Canada at the Documenta de Kassel in the summer of 1992, and Geneviève Cadieux represented Canada in the 1990 Biennale de Venise.

A. The © symbol means that the work is protected by copyright. For a set length of time, depending on the country (in Canada, for the author’s lifetime and 50 years after his death) the works are protected: this means they cannot be reproduced or modified without the author’s consent. Some artists manage their own copyright while others entrust this to management companies. It is important to respect these rights, since using a work without permission is considered theft.

In Canada and in Quebec, there is a law that defines the status of artists in general and protects their intellectual property rights.

A. Prices depend on the rarity of the work, the period it belongs to in an artist’s output and how original it is compared to the art of its era, its symbolic value. The works of a well-known artist increase in value after the artist’s death. With a few notable exceptions, visual artists are rarely as rich during their lifetime as film stars and athletes.

Artists are responsible for the cost of creating their works. As a general rule, galleries keep 50% of the sale price of a work to cover their expenses: publication of catalogues, rent on the gallery, shipping works, promoting the artist at international art shows, etc.