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Art & Art History vocabulary · Contemporary Art

Contemporary art

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

nounCore term

In art & art history, contemporary art means: The art of the present time, usually meaning work made from about the 1960s or 1970s to today, often using new media, ideas and ways of exhibiting.

In Turkish: çağdaş sanat, güncel sanat

How it is used

Common in the names of museums and galleries, at biennials and art fairs. Contemporary art includes painting and sculpture but also installation, video, performance and digital work. Writers discuss its themes, such as identity, memory, technology and the environment.

Example sentences

  1. Istanbul has become an important centre for contemporary art since the first biennial in 1987.

  2. The course covers contemporary art from 1980 to the present.

Common collocations

  • contemporary art scene
  • contemporary art museum
  • contemporary art fair
  • international contemporary art
  • modern artArt made roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, when artists broke with academic traditions and experimented with new styles, subjects and materials.
  • installationAn artwork made for a particular space, often filling a whole room, which visitors walk into or around and experience with more than just their eyes.
  • conceptual artArt in which the idea or concept behind the work matters more than how it looks or how skilfully it is made; it developed mainly in the 1960s and 1970s.
  • biennialA large international exhibition of contemporary art held every two years in the same city, such as those in Venice, São Paulo and Istanbul.
  • performance artArt in which the artist's own actions, carried out live in front of an audience or recorded, are the work itself, rather than an object.

More terms: Contemporary Art

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