Terry Smith: What is world contemporary art now?

A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Művészettörténeti Kutatóintézete
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Terry Smith
What is world contemporary art now?
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2005. május 4-én 18 órakor kezdõdõ elõadására

a Magyar Képzõművészeti Egyetem elõadótermébe.
(Budapest, VI. ker. Andrássy út 69-71.)

What is world contemporary art now?

Now that it is at least a generation old, contemporary art has become official Contemporary Art in many contexts. Yet many questions remain about the nature of this development. How complete is the institutionalization of art in the metropolitan centres of art production and dissemination? Is official Contemporary Art anything more than the New Modern? Is some kind of modernism poised to make a comeback: if so, will it come or will it remain forever poised? What of the visual arts created outside and against the official framework: are they not more closely attuned to the new world disorder? Does a world perspective give us a different view of art in the conditions of contemporaneity? How have these debates shaped recent megaexhibitions, such as Documenta and the ubiquitous Biennales? Above all, to what extent are artists and other artworld transformers seeking appropriate ways to live individually and collectively in the conditions of contemporaneity? How suggestive are their explorations as models other aspects of contemporary life? This lecture will examine these questions in the framework of competing periodizations of Modernity, Postmodernity and contemporaneity, and with reference to the etymology of the "modern" and the "contemporary."

TERRY SMITH, Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. He was a member of the Art & Language group (New York) and a founder of Union Media Services (Sydney). He is the author of a number of books, notably Making the Modern: Industry, Art and Design in America (University of Chicago Press, 1993). A foundation Board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, he is currently a Board member of the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.