Pirate Contemporary Art

Contemporary Paintings – Who Gets to Say What ‘Contemporary’ Means?

The art establishment is not the sole determiner of what contemporary art is. Just writing about the term “contemporary paintings” makes me cringe because it conjures up a type of art snob with nose in the air as they speak knowingly about what they call fine art. For I admit to being one of those people who loves art, who thinks she can tell the authentic from the nice, and certainly can identify the awful and shallow. But I abhor the official snobbery of the art establishment, those who would declare themselves arbitraters of what is art and what is not. And I know I am not alone.

Believe me I get just as tied up in knots over all those art terms out there as you do. What is bioart, neo Dadism, installation art and so on? If there is a wacky word then it is probably related to an art movement and some would say a lot of it is a real movement if you get my drift.

Even the term contemporary artist seems to conjure up an image of a blank wall which has people standing in front of it, heads to the side contemplating the meaning of this major artistic statement.

But how do the rest of us communicate what we think contemporary art is, or maybe more to the point, should be? The only valid way I can think of is to just say what we think art is and damn the noses of the art elite.

For me art goes beyond pretty, beyond a reasonable representation of whatever is being painted. Certainly it goes beyond shocking and the laziness of the artist who throws together a bit of paint and calls it art. For contemporary art has to be about now, whenever that now might be. Likewise good art is always a statement from the artist that, “This is what I feel, what I think, what I see, who I am – right now”. And as importantly I must be able to see and feel and understand as well.

Essentially if the contemporary painting does not speak for the moment – for the times the artist lives in then it really can’t speak at all. As Edvard Munch, the early 20th century artist said, “In my art I attempt to explain life and it’s meaning to myself”. Artists such as Whistler, Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton were contemporary artists of their respective times and the strength of their artistic statements about what was contemporary in their lives and the necessarily unique way in which they expressed it continues to resonate.

We know this not because someone has told us so but because we can see in their art something authentic about the depiction of their times – their own now. That is why Whistler’s Mother ( Arrangement in Gray and Black), American Gothic, Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Sid Nolan’s Ned Kelly continue to speak to us, impress and thrill us and to open the gates of time to know this is who they were whether it was in 1875, 1935, 1956 or today.

This is also good news for us all because the “great painters” are not only from the past. They emerge everyday as gifted artists continue to define their own contemporary times. Artists such as Garry Duncan – the self taught Australian artist, whose landscapes transcend any previously described art movement, will no doubt be known amongst the likes of Van Gogh, Munch and Nolan. And Garry Duncan will be one of our contemporary artists who will be known for what he should be known for, creating art that is his own and which explains his life and speaks for his times.

What is so interesting is that those who swan through the halls of contemporary art galleries and presume to define art for us may not understand what the rest of us understand. That is, that most of us, those very interested in art and others who just know what they like, are able to see that great art, real contemporary art communicates to each one of us and holds up a window for each of us to see our time not just through the artist’s eyes but through our own.