Essays on Contemporary Art

Transcending Time and Place: Baroque and Contemporary Art If not to convey the author’s way of seeing, then what is art? Some artists leave a meaningful impression with their viewpoints on certain themes. Two such artists who have left their mark through their artwork are...

Escapism is a common theme in art history in which artists depict events or activities that offer an escape from the woes of life. Artists have always found it useful to represent joyful activities in their works of art. The depictions created, avail momentary amusement...

Designed in 1825 by William Burn, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was originally known as the John Watson School. It was intended to function as an institution for fatherless children. However it was opened as the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in...

In this essay, I would like to discuss how African art has changed and inspire European art. African art is a beautiful and deeply interesting kind of art, full of traditions and spirituality. During the time this art has influenced a lot of artists to...

In the current era, more and more people pay attention to design and aesthetics. Design is a process of continuous improvement, and it is obvious that design is influenced by previous designs. “Every revolutionary movement that I‘ve known of has some type of revolutionary art.”...

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a serious disorder which even the mildest form occurs in 40-85% of new mothers following birth. Nowadays many resources are available in order to help treat it- however in the 1950’s, this disorder was not yet recognised. Sarah Anne Johnson first...

Cartoons are often used in politics to make a statement that one may not be willing (or daring enough) to make. It is used to reach a wide audience as cartoons tend to be short and eye-catching, and thus easier to read. The selected cartoon...

Coco Fusco and Guillermo G?mez-Pe?a’s Two Undiscovered Amerindians is a bold experiment of a performance whose successes and failures stem from the same aspect of the show: its tendency to blur the lines between the audience and the performers. When Two Undiscovered Amerindians succeeds, its...

My contemporary art that I going to talk is “The Son of a Migrant from Syria” a famous mural painted by Banksy in 2015. Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist, vandal, political activist, and film director. He has been active since the 1990s. Banksy...

A political cartoon, a type of editorial cartoons, is a graphic with characters of public figures, expressing the artist’s opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine artistic skill, hyperbole and satire in order to...

Barbara Kruger. That is a name that many people recognize in today’s society. Kruger is a contemporary artist who focuses mainly around feminism. She specializes in techniques of production, visual formats, and verbal style. Kruger creates photographs and puts a sentence over the top of...

Contemporary artists have appropriate past artwork to repurpose so it more relevant for the future society. Postmodernism was a broad movement that developed in the mid to late 20th century as a reaction against Modernism. It can be said that modernism has paved the way...

For many years very specific creations were considered art. There was a strict rulebook on what an artwork could consist of, including rules on medium, theme and technique. This idea was completely reconstructed with the Contemporary Art Movement in the 1950s. Contemporary Art is a...

Present day move was made as a rebel against expressive dance. Martha Graham was one of the most acclaimed artists and makers of move, called choreographers. She carried present day move to another degree of prevalence in American culture. She made another dialect of development...

Seen by most as just splotches on a paper, art has showed beyond doubt that its use is as magnificent as its grandeur. Art is used in many different ways all around the globe and now appears in various forms because of it. Art can...

A high school dropout, a panhandler, not a real person, but a legend. From sleeping on park benches, to becoming a featured artist of renowned art galleries, Jean Michel Basquiat managed to achieve more in his short, 8-year long career, than most artists do in...

One cannot refute nor ignore the importance of post-postmodern discourse in the context of the contemporary exhibition. While Modernism and Postmodernism prove possible to define and identify, what comes afterwards – what is happening now – is near impossible by its very nature to pigeon-hole...

Thesis Throughout the 1980s there was one particular artist that had the gift of translation. He was able to take art from the street and translate it into beautiful pieces in which could be understood in galleries. This artist was Jean-Michel Basquiat. He is most...

Futurism in design isn’t constrained to the masterful development alone. The unavoidable calculated and visual impact of futurist craftsmanship toward the start of the twentieth century represents the way that the expression “futurism” keeps on being connected — on account of mold to plans that...

Freedom is to self-govern. Freedom is about being on your own to not have anyone looking over you consistently making sure you do the right thing and not the wrong concept, but does freedom exist? Freedom is a broad statement that we hold close to...

The artwork “Glenn” (1984) By Jean-Michel Basquiat is an acrylic, oilstick painting with a collage on canvas. In this painting, Basquiat coveys his exploration of the self-identity through experience of black human beings. The drawing is busy with many different pieces to unpack and analyze,...

Summary This report gives a brief analysis into which factors have built up contemporary art today. Looking closer at the abstract expressionism movement I want to investigate leading attributes through artists’ works and techniques in relation to my own thought process when creating work. Introduction...

The current cultural affairs commissioner of New York City, Tom Finkelpearl, not only has an extensive background in museum administration, but also has training in art and sculpture. In his introductory essay, Finkelpearl summarizes the ever-changing attitudes towards public art as well as the role...

‘Abstract Expressionism’ is a term which describes a general movement of largely non-representative painting. Initially it started in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Lead by a generation of American artists – strongly influenced by European settlers who had grown up during the...

Epic Poem of Malaya is painted during the decolonisation period whereby the “Malayan culture” was developing to gain independence from the colonial rule. To my understanding of Chua, his conviction as an artist to paint realistically is because he believes that art should reflect life...

Death has always been influential to cultures since the beginning of time, it has always been this shadow that transcends every belief or culture. it is a factor of humanity and it is one of the constants that defines the entirety of human existence. Christian...

Introduction Looking at Thanos in a deeper sense will help us comprehend his reason for eliminating half the universe. Aside from this, we get to analyze his behavior during the course of the movie. Many factors contribute to the development of intelligent beings, such as...

Through the artmaking of various artists, materials, symbols and visual codes are used to communicate meaning for an audience. They are able to represent meaning through conceptual, theoretical and materialistic ways, where their choices of material, symbols and visual codes, help the audience to draw...

Horace, a roman poet during the time of Augustus, once noted that ‘a picture is a poem without words.’ Regarding that notion of thought, pictures do indeed have stories to tell, so when interpreting many pictures or works of art simultaneously, the story becomes increasingly...