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The New York art world: the 2000s - About JSTOR

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The Larry Qualls Archive of Contemporary Art surveys almost three decades of work exhibited in the New York area from 1988-2012. In this post, we consider

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archaic present tense second-person singular of

Synonyms

Choose the Right Synonym for art

skill stresses technical knowledge and proficiency.

cunning suggests ingenuity and subtlety in devising, inventing, or executing.

artifice suggests technical skill especially in imitating things in nature.

craft may imply expertness in workmanship.

Examples of art in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'art.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Noun

Middle English, "craft, principles of a craft or a field of knowledge, one of the seven fields of study comprising the medieval school curriculum, practical knowledge, code of behavior," borrowed from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, "skill, craft, knowledge, deceit, sorcery," borrowed from Latin art-, ars "acquired skill, craftsmanship, stratagem, behavior (in plural artēs), systematic body of knowledge and techniques, profession, artistic achievement," going back to Indo-European "act of fitting or joining" (whence also, perhaps from an adverbialized locative, Greek árti "just now," arti- "fitting, correct," Armenian ard "just now," Lithuanian artì "close by"), nominal derivative from the verbal base "fit, join" - more at

Note: M. de Vaan ( Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, Brill, 2008) also adduces from Old Avestan ārəiti- "reward" (Young Avestan aṣ̌i-). Compare, also with zero grade ablaut and -t- suffixes, Sanskrit ṛtáḥ "right, true," ṛtúḥ "fixed time, order, rule." See also article entry 1, artiodactyl.

Adjective

from attributive use of

Middle English, from Old English eart; akin to Old Norse est, ert (thou) art, Old English is is

Noun

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Adjective

1853, in the meaning defined above

The first known use of art was in the 14th century

Dictionary Entries Near art

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More from Merriam-Webster on art

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Merriam-Webster unabridged

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The meaning of ART is skill acquired by experience, study, or observation. How to use art in a sentence. Synonym Discussion of Art.

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People use art to show/express their feelings also to show human creative skill and imagination

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Discover what art is as well as its role in society. Find out about its history, the different artistic disciplines, its benefits and the role of artists today. Explore this world!

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Art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it’s about sharing the way we experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality.

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Question of the Month

The following answers to this artful question each win a random book.

Art is something we do, a verb. Art is an expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires, but it is even more personal than that: it's about sharing the way we experience the world, which for many is an extension of personality. It is the communication of intimate concepts that cannot be faithfully portrayed by words alone. And because words alone are not enough, we must find some other vehicle to carry our intent. But the content that we instill on or in our chosen media is not in itself the art. Art is to be found in how the media is used, the way in which the content is expressed.

What then is beauty? Beauty is much more than cosmetic: it is not about prettiness. There are plenty of pretty pictures available at the neighborhood home furnishing store; but these we might not refer to as beautiful; and it is not difficult to find works of artistic expression that we might agree are beautiful that are not necessarily pretty. Beauty is rather a measure of affect, a measure of emotion. In the context of art, beauty is the gauge of successful communication between participants - the conveyance of a concept between the artist and the perceiver. Beautiful art is successful in portraying the artist's most profound intended emotions, the desired concepts, whether they be pretty and bright, or dark and sinister. But neither the artist nor the observer can be certain of successful communication in the end. So beauty in art is eternally subjective.

Wm. Joseph Nieters, Lake Ozark, Missouri

Works of art may elicit a sense of wonder or cynicism, hope or despair, adoration or spite; the work of art may be direct or complex, subtle or explicit, intelligible or obscure; and the subjects and approaches to the creation of art are bounded only by the imagination of the artist. Consequently, I believe that defining art based upon its content is a doomed enterprise.

Now a theme in aesthetics, the study of art, is the claim that there is a detachment or distance between works of art and the flow of everyday life. Thus, works of art rise like islands from a current of more pragmatic concerns. When you step out of a river and onto an island, you've reached your destination. Similarly, the aesthetic attitude requires you to treat artistic experience as an end-in-itself: art asks us to arrive empty of preconceptions and attend to the way in which we experience the work of art. And although a person can have an 'aesthetic experience' of a natural scene, flavor or texture, art is different in that it is produced. Therefore, art is the intentional communication of an experience as an end-in-itself. The content of that experience in its cultural context may determine whether the artwork is popular or ridiculed, significant or trivial, but it is art either way.

One of the initial reactions to this approach may be that it seems overly broad. An older brother who sneaks up behind his younger sibling and shouts "Booo!" can be said to be creating art. But isn't the difference between this and a Freddy Krueger movie just one of degree? On the other hand, my definition would exclude graphics used in advertising or political propaganda, as they are created as a means to an end and not for their own sakes. Furthermore, 'communication' is not the best word for what I have in mind because it implies an unwarranted intention about the content represented. Aesthetic responses are often underdetermined by the artist's intentions.

Mike Mallory, Everett, WA

The fundamental difference between art and beauty is that art is about who has produced it, whereas beauty depends on who's looking.

Of course there are standards of beauty - that which is seen as 'traditionally' beautiful. The game changers - the square pegs, so to speak - are those who saw traditional standards of beauty and decided specifically to go against them, perhaps just to prove a point. Take Picasso, Munch, Schoenberg, to name just three. They have made a stand against these norms in their art. Otherwise their art is like all other art: its only function is to be experienced, appraised, and understood (or not).

Art is a means to state an opinion or a feeling, or else to create a different view of the world, whether it be inspired by the work of other people or something invented that's entirely new. Beauty is whatever aspect of that or anything else that makes an individual feel positive or grateful. Beauty alone is not art, but art can be made of, about or for beautiful things. Beauty can be found in a snowy mountain scene: art is the photograph of it shown to family, the oil interpretation of it hung in a gallery, or the music score recreating the scene in crotchets and quavers.

However, art is not necessarily positive: it can be deliberately hurtful or displeasing: it can make you think about or consider things that you would rather not. But if it evokes an emotion in you, then it is art.

Chiara Leonardi, Reading, Berks

Art is a way of grasping the world. Not merely the physical world, which is what science attempts to do; but the whole world, and specifically, the human world, the world of society and spiritual experience.

Art emerged around 50,000 years ago, long before cities and civilisation, yet in forms to which we can still directly relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which so startled Picasso, have been carbon-dated at around 17,000 years old. Now, following the invention of photography and the devastating attack made by Duchamp on the self-appointed Art Establishment [see Brief Lives this issue], art cannot be simply defined on the basis of concrete tests like 'fidelity of representation' or vague abstract concepts like 'beauty'. So how can we define art in terms applying to both cave-dwellers and modern city sophisticates? To do this we need to ask: What does art do? And the answer is surely that it provokes an emotional, rather than a simply cognitive response. One way of approaching the problem of defining art, then, could be to say: Art consists of shareable ideas that have a shareable emotional impact. Art need not produce beautiful objects or events, since a great piece of art could validly arouse emotions other than those aroused by beauty, such as terror, anxiety, or laughter. Yet to derive an acceptable philosophical theory of art from this understanding means tackling the concept of 'emotion' head on, and philosophers have been notoriously reluctant to do this. But not all of them: Robert Solomon's book The Passions (1993) has made an excellent start, and this seems to me to be the way to go.

It won't be easy. Poor old Richard Rorty was jumped on from a very great height when all he said was that literature, poetry, patriotism, love and stuff like that were philosophically important. Art is vitally important to maintaining broad standards in civilisation. Its pedigree long predates philosophy, which is only 3,000 years old, and science, which is a mere 500 years old. Art deserves much more attention from philosophers.

Alistair MacFarlane, Gwynedd

Some years ago I went looking for art. To begin my journey I went to an art gallery. At that stage art to me was whatever I found in an art gallery. I found paintings, mostly, and because they were in the gallery I recognised them as art. A particular Rothko painting was one colour and large. I observed a further piece that did not have an obvious label. It was also of one colour - white - and gigantically large, occupying one complete wall of the very high and spacious room and standing on small roller wheels. On closer inspection I saw that it was a moveable wall, not a piece of art. Why could one piece of work be considered 'art' and the other not?

The answer to the question could, perhaps, be found in the criteria of Berys Gaut to decide if some artefact is, indeed, art - that art pieces function only as pieces of art, just as their creators intended.

But were they beautiful? Did they evoke an emotional response in me? Beauty is frequently associated with art. There is sometimes an expectation of encountering a 'beautiful' object when going to see a work of art, be it painting, sculpture, book or performance. Of course, that expectation quickly changes as one widens the range of installations encountered. The classic example is Duchamp's Fountain (1917), a rather un-beautiful urinal.

Can we define beauty? Let me try by suggesting that beauty is the capacity of an artefact to evoke a pleasurable emotional response. This might be categorised as the 'like' response.

I definitely did not like Fountain at the initial level of appreciation. There was skill, of course, in its construction. But what was the skill in its presentation as art?

So I began to reach a definition of art. A work of art is that which asks a question which a non-art object such as a wall does not: What am I? What am I communicating? The responses, both of the creator artist and of the recipient audience, vary, but they invariably involve a judgement, a response to the invitation to answer. The answer, too, goes towards deciphering that deeper question - the 'Who am I?' which goes towards defining humanity.

Neil Hallinan, Maynooth, Co. Kildare

'Art' is where we make meaning beyond language. Art consists in the making of meaning through intelligent agency, eliciting an aesthetic response. It's a means of communication where language is not sufficient to explain or describe its content. Art can render visible and known what was previously unspoken. Because what art expresses and evokes is in part ineffable, we find it difficult to define and delineate it. It is known through the experience of the audience as well as the intention and expression of the artist. The meaning is made by all the participants, and so can never be fully known. It is multifarious and on-going. Even a disagreement is a tension which is itself an expression of something.

Art drives the development of a civilisation, both supporting the establishment and also preventing subversive messages from being silenced - art leads, mirrors and reveals change in politics and morality. Art plays a central part in the creation of culture, and is an outpouring of thought and ideas from it, and so it cannot be fully understood in isolation from its context. Paradoxically, however, art can communicate beyond language and time, appealing to our common humanity and linking disparate communities. Perhaps if wider audiences engaged with a greater variety of the world's artistic traditions it could engender increased tolerance and mutual respect.

Another inescapable facet of art is that it is a commodity. This fact feeds the creative process, whether motivating the artist to form an item of monetary value, or to avoid creating one, or to artistically commodify the aesthetic experience. The commodification of art also affects who is considered qualified to create art, comment on it, and even define it, as those who benefit most strive to keep the value of 'art objects' high. These influences must feed into a culture's understanding of what art is at any time, making thoughts about art culturally dependent. However, this commodification and the consequent closely-guarded role of the art critic also gives rise to a counter culture within art culture, often expressed through the creation of art that cannot be sold. The stratification of art by value and the resultant tension also adds to its meaning, and the meaning of art to society.

Catherine Bosley, Monk Soham, Suffolk

First of all we must recognize the obvious. 'Art' is a word, and words and concepts are organic and change their meaning through time. So in the olden days, art meant craft. It was something you could excel at through practise and hard work. You learnt how to paint or sculpt, and you learnt the special symbolism of your era. Through Romanticism and the birth of individualism, art came to mean originality. To do something new and never-heard-of defined the artist. His or her personality became essentially as important as the artwork itself. During the era of Modernism, the search for originality led artists to reevaluate art. What could art do? What could it represent? Could you paint movement (Cubism, Futurism)? Could you paint the non-material (Abstract Expressionism)? Fundamentally: could anything be regarded as art? A way of trying to solve this problem was to look beyond the work itself, and focus on the art world: art was that which the institution of art - artists, critics, art historians, etc - was prepared to regard as art, and which was made public through the institution, e.g. galleries. That's Institutionalism - made famous through Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades.

Institutionalism has been the prevailing notion through the later part of the twentieth century, at least in academia, and I would say it still holds a firm grip on our conceptions. One example is the Swedish artist Anna Odell. Her film sequence Unknown woman 2009-349701, for which she faked psychosis to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, was widely debated, and by many was not regarded as art. But because it was debated by the art world, it succeeded in breaking into the art world, and is today regarded as art, and Odell is regarded an artist.

Of course there are those who try and break out of this hegemony, for example by refusing to play by the art world's unwritten rules. Andy Warhol with his Factory was one, even though he is today totally embraced by the art world. Another example is Damien Hirst, who, much like Warhol, pays people to create the physical manifestations of his ideas. He doesn't use galleries and other art world-approved arenas to advertise, and instead sells his objects directly to private individuals. This liberal approach to capitalism is one way of attacking the hegemony of the art world.

What does all this teach us about art? Probably that art is a fleeting and chimeric concept. We will always have art, but for the most part we will only really learn in retrospect what the art of our era was.

Tommy Törnsten, Linköping, Sweden

Art periods such as Classical, Byzantine, neo-Classical, Romantic, Modern and post-Modern reflect the changing nature of art in social and cultural contexts; and shifting values are evident in varying content, forms and styles. These changes are encompassed, more or less in sequence, by Imitationalist, Emotionalist, Expressivist, Formalist and Institutionalist theories of art. In The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981), Arthur Danto claims a distinctiveness for art that inextricably links its instances with acts of observation, without which all that could exist are 'material counterparts' or 'mere real things' rather than artworks. Notwithstanding the competing theories, works of art can be seen to possess 'family resemblances' or 'strands of resemblance' linking very different instances as art. Identifying instances of art is relatively straightforward, but a definition of art that includes all possible cases is elusive. Consequently, art has been claimed to be an 'open' concept.

According to Raymond Williams' Keywords (1976), capitalised 'Art' appears in general use in the nineteenth century, with 'Fine Art'; whereas 'art' has a history of previous applications, such as in music, poetry, comedy, tragedy and dance; and we should also mention literature, media arts, even gardening, which for David Cooper in A Philosophy of Gardens (2006) can provide "epiphanies of co-dependence". Art, then, is perhaps "anything presented for our aesthetic contemplation" - a phrase coined by John Davies, former tutor at the School of Art Education, Birmingham, in 1971 - although 'anything' may seem too inclusive. Gaining our aesthetic interest is at least a necessary requirement of art. Sufficiency for something to be art requires significance to art appreciators which endures as long as tokens or types of the artwork persist. Paradoxically, such significance is sometimes attributed to objects neither intended as art, nor especially intended to be perceived aesthetically - for instance, votive, devotional, commemorative or utilitarian artefacts. Furthermore, aesthetic interests can be eclipsed by dubious investment practices and social kudos. When combined with celebrity and harmful forms of narcissism, they can egregiously affect artistic authenticity. These interests can be overriding, and spawn products masquerading as art. Then it's up to discerning observers to spot any Fads, Fakes and Fantasies (Sjoerd Hannema, 1970).

Colin Brookes, Loughborough, Leicestershire

For me art is nothing more and nothing less than the creative ability of individuals to express their understanding of some aspect of private or public life, like love, conflict, fear, or pain. As I read a war poem by Edward Thomas, enjoy a Mozart piano concerto, or contemplate a M.C. Escher drawing, I am often emotionally inspired by the moment and intellectually stimulated by the thought-process that follows. At this moment of discovery I humbly realize my views may be those shared by thousands, even millions across the globe. This is due in large part to the mass media's ability to control and exploit our emotions. The commercial success of a performance or production becomes the metric by which art is now almost exclusively gauged: quality in art has been sadly reduced to equating great art with sale of books, number of views, or the downloading of recordings. Too bad if personal sensibilities about a particular piece of art are lost in the greater rush for immediate acceptance.

So where does that leave the subjective notion that beauty can still be found in art? If beauty is the outcome of a process by which art gives pleasure to our senses, then it should remain a matter of personal discernment, even if outside forces clamour to take control of it. In other words, nobody, including the art critic, should be able to tell the individual what is beautiful and what is not. The world of art is one of a constant tension between preserving individual tastes and promoting popular acceptance.

Ian Malcomson, Victoria, British Columbia

What we perceive as beautiful does not offend us on any level. It is a personal judgement, a subjective opinion. A memory from once we gazed upon something beautiful, a sight ever so pleasing to the senses or to the eye, oft time stays with us forever. I shall never forget walking into Balzac's house in France: the scent of lilies was so overwhelming that I had a numinous moment. The intensity of the emotion evoked may not be possible to explain. I don't feel it's important to debate why I think a flower, painting, sunset or how the light streaming through a stained-glass window is beautiful. The power of the sights create an emotional reaction in me. I don't expect or concern myself that others will agree with me or not. Can all agree that an act of kindness is beautiful?

A thing of beauty is a whole; elements coming together making it so. A single brush stroke of a painting does not alone create the impact of beauty, but all together, it becomes beautiful. A perfect flower is beautiful, when all of the petals together form its perfection; a pleasant, intoxicating scent is also part of the beauty.

In thinking about the question, 'What is beauty?', I've simply come away with the idea that I am the beholder whose eye it is in. Suffice it to say, my private assessment of what strikes me as beautiful is all I need to know.

Cheryl Anderson, Kenilworth, Illinois

Stendhal said, "Beauty is the promise of happiness", but this didn't get to the heart of the matter. Whose beauty are we talking about? Whose happiness?

Consider if a snake made art. What would it believe to be beautiful? What would it deign to make? Snakes have poor eyesight and detect the world largely through a chemosensory organ, the Jacobson's organ, or through heat-sensing pits. Would a movie in its human form even make sense to a snake? So their art, their beauty, would be entirely alien to ours: it would not be visual, and even if they had songs they would be foreign; after all, snakes do not have ears, they sense vibrations. So fine art would be sensed, and songs would be felt, if it is even possible to conceive that idea.

From this perspective - a view low to the ground - we can see that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. It may cross our lips to speak of the nature of beauty in billowy language, but we do so entirely with a forked tongue if we do so seriously. The aesthetics of representing beauty ought not to fool us into thinking beauty, as some abstract concept, truly exists. It requires a viewer and a context, and the value we place on certain combinations of colors or sounds over others speaks of nothing more than preference. Our desire for pictures, moving or otherwise, is because our organs developed in such a way. A snake would have no use for the visual world.

I am thankful to have human art over snake art, but I would no doubt be amazed at serpentine art. It would require an intellectual sloughing of many conceptions we take for granted. For that, considering the possibility of this extreme thought is worthwhile: if snakes could write poetry, what would it be?

Derek Halm, Portland, Oregon

[A: Sssibilance and sussssuration - Ed.]

The questions, 'What is art?' and 'What is beauty?' are different types and shouldn't be conflated.

With boring predictability, almost all contemporary discussers of art lapse into a 'relative-off', whereby they go to annoying lengths to demonstrate how open-minded they are and how ineluctably loose the concept of art is. If art is just whatever you want it to be, can we not just end the conversation there? It's a done deal. I'll throw playdough on to a canvas, and we can pretend to display our modern credentials of acceptance and insight. This just doesn't work, and we all know it. If art is to mean anything, there has to be some working definition of what it is. If art can be anything to anybody at anytime, then there ends the discussion. What makes art special - and worth discussing - is that it stands above or outside everyday things, such as everyday food, paintwork, or sounds. Art comprises special or exceptional dishes, paintings, and music.

So what, then, is my definition of art? Briefly, I believe there must be at least two considerations to label something as 'art'. The first is that there must be something recognizable in the way of 'author-to-audience reception'. I mean to say, there must be the recognition that something was made for an audience of some kind to receive, discuss or enjoy. Implicit in this point is the evident recognizability of what the art actually is - in other words, the author doesn't have to tell you it's art when you otherwise wouldn't have any idea. The second point is simply the recognition of skill: some obvious skill has to be involved in making art. This, in my view, would be the minimum requirements - or definition - of art. Even if you disagree with the particulars, some definition is required to make anything at all art. Otherwise, what are we even discussing? I'm breaking the mold and ask for brass tacks.

Brannon McConkey, Tennessee
Author of Student of Life: Why Becoming Engaged in Life, Art, and Philosophy Can Lead to a Happier Existence

Human beings appear to have a compulsion to categorize, to organize and define. We seek to impose order on a welter of sense-impressions and memories, seeing regularities and patterns in repetitions and associations, always on the lookout for correlations, eager to determine cause and effect, so that we might give sense to what might otherwise seem random and inconsequential. However, particularly in the last century, we have also learned to take pleasure in the reflection of unstructured perceptions; our artistic ways of seeing and listening have expanded to encompass disharmony and irregularity. This has meant that culturally, an ever-widening gap has grown between the attitudes and opinions of the majority, who continue to define art in traditional ways, having to do with order, harmony, representation; and the minority, who look for originality, who try to see the world anew, and strive for difference, and whose critical practice is rooted in abstraction. In between there are many who abjure both extremes, and who both find and give pleasure both in defining a personal vision and in practising craftsmanship.

There will always be a challenge to traditional concepts of art from the shock of the new, and tensions around the appropriateness of our understanding. That is how things should be, as innovators push at the boundaries. At the same time, we will continue to take pleasure in the beauty of a mathematical equation, a finely-tuned machine, a successful scientific experiment, the technology of landing a probe on a comet, an accomplished poem, a striking portrait, the sound-world of a symphony. We apportion significance and meaning to what we find of value and wish to share with our fellows. Our art and our definitions of beauty reflect our human nature and the multiplicity of our creative efforts.

In the end, because of our individuality and our varied histories and traditions, our debates will always be inconclusive. If we are wise, we will look and listen with an open spirit, and sometimes with a wry smile, always celebrating the diversity of human imaginings and achievements.

David Howard, Church Stretton, Shropshire

Next Question of the Month

The next question is: What's The More Important: Freedom, Justice, Happiness, Truth? Please give and justify your rankings in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject lines should be marked 'Question of the Month', and must be received by 11th August. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your physical address. Submission is permission to reproduce your answer physically and electronically.

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What is Art? and/or What is Beauty? | Issue 108 | Philosophy Now

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The following answers to this artful question each win a random book.

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Art emerged around 50,000 years ago, long before cities and civilisation, yet in forms to which we can still directly relate. The wall paintings in the Lascaux caves, which so startled Picasso, have been carbon-dated at around 17,000 years old.

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“According to the Royal Spanish Academy of Language (REA), art is the manifestation of human activity whereby a personal and disinterested vision is expressed that interprets what is real or imagined using plastic, linguistic or auditory resources.“

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“Since prehistoric times, art has been the means, form and source of expression through which to creatively represent feelings, emotions and perceptions of the world around us.”

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The main purposes of art today are:

Aesthetic: to deliver pleasure and motivate society.

Expressive: to communicate emotions and feelings in a deeper way.

Communicative: to convey ideas and messages to provoke reactions, going beyond traditional communication.

Educational: to teach values and knowledge through artistic creation.

Therapeutic: to improve people’s mental and emotional health.

Social: to point out and expose social and political issues.

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Everyone's entitled to their own preferences and feelings

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When we hear the word art, some of our minds jump to museums or framed paintings. And in that context, some people think, I'm not really a big fan of art. I just don't get it. Or maybe they think of art as something that's just for intellectuals, or artsy people.

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The main idea is what is the religion of art and what art is

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But really, art is for anyone who wants to experience it, and it's often in more places than we might realize.

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Art describes a diverse range of cultural activity centered around works utilizing creative or imaginative talents,

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Religion and art are, and have always been, intimately intertwined with one another.

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Apart from these considerations and complications, religion and art have both been reported to be in some sort of existential or identity crisis

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This article was created by Frank G. Bosman. It was published in July the year of 2020. The one that published it was also Frank G. Bosman. This article was published because “to explore the complex and often intertwined relationship between art and religion, offering six different perspectives to understand how art can be interpreted as religious and vice versa. “

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Introduction

21st-century art is a burgeoning field of practice, research, and publication, making it an incredibly dynamic field of study. Many important topics have been resonating in the new century and inspiring new thinking and scholarly debate, such as the surge of bio art in response to scientific research in the life sciences, and the critical theory known as relational aesthetics that developed in response to an increase in art that invites viewers' participation and interaction. Other topics that were much-discussed in the late 20th century remain vital for the analysis of 21st-century art and visual culture, including semiotics, post-modernism, and feminism.

Art of the 21st century emerges from a vast variety of materials and means. These include the latest electronic technologies, such as digital imaging and the internet (see, for example, New media art in India); familiar genres with a long history that continue to be practiced with great vigor, such as painting (see, for example, Julie Mehretu and Shahzia Sikander); and materials and processes once associated primarily with handicrafts, re-envisioned to express new concepts (see Craft and contemporary art). Many artists regularly and freely mix media and forms, making the choices that best serve their concepts and purposes. Activities vary from spectacular projects accomplished with huge budgets and extraordinary production values to modest endeavors that emphasize process, ephemeral experiences, and a do-it-yourself approach. The notion of influences has also shifted with changes in communications and technology; every location around the world has artists who respond to local geographies and histories as well as the sway of global visual culture.

Nick Cave: Relic Installation; image: James Prinz Photography, Chicago/courtesy of Nick Cave and the Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

A key feature of the art scene in the 21st century (and of many sectors of 21st-century life) is the impact of globalization - the accelerating interconnectivity of human activity and information across time and space. Aided by the internet and mass media, awareness of the vitality of contemporary art in localities around the globe has grown exponentially. Anyone with access to the internet can follow developments in Shanghai, Sydney, São Paulo, or Nairobi. Simultaneously the increased movement of artists across borders and oceans has added to the intermixing of influences and artistic vocabularies. For example, Wangechi Mutu, originally from Kenya, pursued further education in South Wales and then in the United States. Her collaged images of women are informed by African tribal arts, 20th-century European and American collage artists, and the latest illustrations from fashion, pornography, and medical sources.

The meaning and consequences of globalization are much debated by scholars. Economically and politically, is globalization a force for growth and freedom in societies everywhere, or does it contribute to further exploitation of developing regions by the wealthy? Does globalization work in different ways in different localities?

Regarding globalization and art, do practices in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere challenge the traditional assumptions and value judgments that are the basis of the Western canon? Are Western institutions rethinking that canon or simply adding art from other places to their rosters in a token and uncritical gesture of inclusivity? How do curated exhibitions that address themes of globalization represent artists from various parts of the world? The expanding art market and the proliferation of biennials and art fairs helped a select group of artists from every continent to gain an international presence; but have the underlying structure and values of the art market changed otherwise?

Visual culture

In the 21st century visual culture has grown as a recognized interdisciplinary field of study, taking a multi-faceted approach to understanding how images of all types communicate and participate in the construction of identity, gender, class, power relationships, and other social and political meanings and values. Medicine, science, politics, consumer culture, and religion and spirituality are some of the arenas that visual culture studies examine along with art. Visual culture scholars analyze film, television, graphic novels, fashion design, and other forms of popular culture in addition to established fine art media such as painting, and they draw upon many methodologies and theories, including semiotics, sociology, psychoanalysis, reception theory, feminism, and the concept of the gaze, to name a few.

Just as visual culture scholars are examining images and media of all types so, too, are 21st-century artists drawing inspiration, imagery, materials, and concepts from diverse areas of culture, moving well beyond influences from the history of fine art and design. The world of professional sports and fanatic fans has been a topic for Paul Pfeiffer, while the commercial television industry has informed various video installations by Christian Jankowski.

Most contemporary artists do not draw rigid distinctions between high art and popular culture. For instance, a number of contemporary artists embrace traditional techniques of fiber art but use them to create unorthodox forms or address current social and political issues. Along these lines, Ghada Amer has used thread to embroider on canvas repeated motifs of nude women engaged in sexual acts, then partially obscured the embroidered images with gestural painted brushstrokes. Her themes include the expression and repression of female sexuality and eroticism in both Western and Islamic societies. Another example of intermixing visual cultures is the complex array of interactions between science and contemporary art, with many artists engaging with scientific imagery and ideas in their practice. For example, Wim Delvoye 's ongoing series called Cloaca imagines humans as cyborgs, representing the human digestive system as a kind of biomechanical contraption. Finally, many 21st-century artists are deeply affected by their immersion in global visual culture, which is now made vividly present through online networks. Many artists maintain a personal website, and some create art expressly for dissemination through social media. As always, new technologies provide new opportunities and challenges.

Allora & Calzadilla: Body in Flight (Delta), 2011 (U.S. Pavilion, 54th International Art Exhibition, presented by the Indianapolis Museum of Art); photo © Andrew Bordwin/courtesy of the artists and the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Public and participatory art

Public art was a well-established genre by the late 20th century, attracting both traditional and experimental practitioners. Public art in the 21st century has expanded even more as a field of activity in which creative investigation can take place. In addition to continuing familiar forms such as site-specific monuments, murals, graffiti, and collaborations between artists, engineers, and architects, public art encompasses new purposes, forms, and locations, including pop-up art shops, street parades, and online projects. Public artists in the 21st century might use established approaches such as installation and performance but introduce new variations. For instance, it is now common for artists to hire other people, sometimes with special skills, to undertake performances on their behalf. In this vein, Vanessa Beecroft hired fashion models for performances, and the collaborative artists Allora & Caldazilla directed professional athletes as performers in some of their installations.

A pronounced tendency in the 21st century has been art that is participatory, in which the social interactions prompted by a work become its content. Often called relational art, the work literally engages the public in some way. For instance, Carsten Höller has installed giant slides in museums for visitors to slide down, and Rirkrit Tiravanija has prepared Thai food and served it to gallery goers. Artists attracted by the immediacy and connectivity of globally networked media often create online projects that invite social interaction. Relational aesthetics has developed (and been contested) as a critical theory for analyzing and evaluating such undertakings. Key questions in these debates include: Does it matter if the social interactions prompted by such works promote a better world or are conviviality and entertainment sufficient goals? To what extent should the physical products of relational art (such as Höller's slides) be evaluated aesthetically as well as for their social effects?

The 21st century is just beginning - issues and ideas are evolving rapidly and new artists are constantly gaining attention and influence. This guide will be updated periodically as new and revised thematic articles and biographical entries are added that provide critical context for the art of the present century.

Further reading in Grove
Selected biographies of significant 21st-century artists
Selected additional topics and themes

Aboriginal Australian contemporary art, 1990-2010

Art market in Australia, 1995-2010

Asian contemporary art: an introduction

Asian contemporary art and internationalism

Asian contemporary women artists

Australian biennale and art exhibition space boom, 1995-2010

Australian contemporary art, 1995-2010

Brazil: Art after 1980

Contemporary art

Installation art in America

Korean art after 1970

Transculturalism in Asian diasporic art

Women and transnationalism

Women in art in the 21st century

Internet resources

Find more images and information through these links, selected by the author and Oxford Art Online editors.

Electronic newspapers and journals

Artforum [Online edition of a leading contemporary art journal]

Designboom [Online publication covering design, art, architecture, photography, and graphics]

e-flux [Journal available through the international visual arts network e-flux]

Frieze [Online version of a leading contemporary art magazine]

Multimedia, archives, and databases

Art21 Blog [The blog for the PBS series on 21st-century art, with links to artist information, short videos, and images]

Brooklyn Museum Feminist Art Base [An online archive dedicated to feminist art; profiles of 21st- century artists include images, video and audio clips, short biographies, CVs, and statements]

Rhizome Artbase [An online archive of new media art sponsored by a site dedicated to emerging artistic practices that engage technology, affiliated with the New Museum, NY]

The Tate Museum's Channel [An online archive of video and audio programs]

Back to all Subject Guides

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21st-century art is a burgeoning field of practice, research, and publication, making it an incredibly dynamic field of study. Many important topics have been resonating in the new century and inspiring new thinking and scholarly debate, such as the surge of bio art in response to scientific research in the life sciences, and the critical theory known as relational aesthetics that developed in response to an increase in art that invites viewers' participation and interaction.

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The collector and gallery owner are now artists in their own right, creating works of art, establishing value through their deployment of knowledge, conjuring it magically through the management of discernment, taste, and money.

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21st-century art is a burgeoning field of practice, research, and publication, making it an incredibly dynamic field of study.

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Art of the 21st century emerges from a vast variety of materials and means. These include the latest electronic technologies, such as digital imaging and the internet

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the viewer, gallery goer, participant—identify^ with this process of the correct identification of value, but also with the enjoyment of those who mysteriously know how to assign value, and with the potent combination of desire and knowledge at play that creates value

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This retro animation of gears, saws, cuddly toys, and disparate found objects destroyed credit cards proffered by visitors who in immediate return received a drawing made by the machine, but signed by the artist.

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The beginning of the 21st century was an especially auspicious time for the global arts community.

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In 2011, Will Ryman’s giant “Roses” gave Park Avenue an Alice-in-Wonderland feel

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Leo Tolstoy, David Hume, Denis Dutton, and some others made this article. It was published on May of 2021. This article exists because “to explore the complex and often debated relationship between these two concepts, specifically in the context of art, beauty, and its subjective and objective interpretations”

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This article was created by fundación MAPFRE. It was published on there blog on April 23, 2024. This article exists because “to explore the multifaceted nature and purpose of art, examining its role in human expression, cultural understanding, and societal impact, as well as its potential to evoke emotions and spark critical thinking.” We can tell the author is trying to tell from this article is like his way of art.

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Impressive in a different sense was “WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution,”the first such retrospective of feminism in art when it opened at contemporary art museum

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The confluence of visual arts and TB
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Is it too soon to write the history of the new millennium's first decade? The period feels close at hand. Its eponymous generational cohort is ascendant. The computer systems many feared would malfunction at the stroke of midnight in 2000 have only entangled us further. The wars that began in the decade continue. The effects of the 2008 economic collapse still linger. And yet the aughts are just distant enough to allow us to gain some critical insight, to assess the gap between what captured attention then and what matters now.

In the pages that follow, A.i.A. editors and contributors take stock of fifteen exhibitions that helped define the era. This is not a comprehensive list of the most important shows, but a survey of those projects that embody strains of thought and modes of feeling that are decidedly '00. This not a ranking, but an overview of the exhibitions that laid the groundwork for the art world that we experience today. Finally, this is not a chronology but a selective look at major themes.

The early 2000s can appear larger-than-life. The alignment of major biennials and recurring exhibitions on the Continent in 2007 was referred to as the "Grand Tour," suggesting a twenty-first-century version of an aristocratic coming-of-age ritual. In retrospect, however, even these mammoth festivals were harbingers of subtle shifts. Curators and artists sought out once marginal practices-outsiders of all kinds came into the fold-to redefine what the center could be. The decade fostered a revisionist understanding of the modernist legacy, driven by feminist artists and curators from around the world.

The early 2000s can at the same time look small and parochial. Escapism was rampant: psychedelia, microutopias, and hipsterism. But the art world also saw a global expansion. This was the decade in which Chinese contemporary artists and institutions asserted themselves and artists navigating postcolonial societies came to the foreground. It is crucial to review the history of the aughts now because the most important legacy from that time may be its debates about history itself: who gets to write it, whose voices are heard, and what purposes can it serve.

Greater New York

In February 1999, MoMA and PS1 Contemporary Art Center announced their partnership; a year later, their first joint venture, the survey "Greater New York," opened, beating that year's edition of the establishment Whitney Biennial by a month. With no theme other than "what it means to be in New York at the beginning of a new era," "Greater New York" allowed itself to be charmingly incohesive, brushing off any threat of enforced conservatism from mother MoMA. The only connection between the 140 artists, selected from an open call in addition to research by a team of PS1 and MoMA curators, was that they live in New York City or within commuting distance, and had not had a solo show in the city before 1995. That five-year gap of "emergence" allowed for better-known names showing now-signature works such as Ghada Amer, Cecily Brown, Mark Lombardi, Julie Mehretu, Rob Pruitt, Do Ho Suh, and Lisa Yuskavage, set against artists such as Yael Bartana, Emily Jacir, and Daniel Lefcourt, who were participating in their first major exhibition. Typical of the show's irreverence was Pia Lindman's Public Sauna, which required any participants to strip bare in the museum's courtyard in full view of visitors in order to enjoy a tiny sauna and have a bucket of cold water dumped over their head upon exit.

But the work itself was overshadowed by the celebration of newness-this new institutional model, the new millennium, a New York optimistically emerging from the devastation of AIDS crisis unaware that 9/11 was just around the corner. The lasting legacy of the show was its democratic approach not just to the art, but to the production of knowledge around it in two egalitarian strategies. First, the museum created Hotmail addresses for the show's artists and then displayed them on the wall labels, checklists and website, so that any member of the public (and far more likely, intrepid dealers and curators) could be in contact. Even more generous (though likely unpaid) was the open call format for texts responding to works in the exhibition; those accepted were not published in the unfussy catalogue but collected in an accompanying CD-ROM and on the website. The show was a blockbuster for P.S.1, and a feel-good beginning for the MoMA partnership.

"Greater New York" was not founded as a quinquennial, but the form proved too successful not to continue. It also contributed enormously to the early 2000s MFA market boom. At the opening of the 2005 edition, dealers were scrawling their names on the wall labels to claim artists for their roster. That exhibition continued in the boisterous, heterogenous form of its predecessor, with even more artists (162!), but solidified its talent-scouting authority with a textbook-sized catalogue. By the 2010 edition, after some lessons learned from the 2008 economic crash, the event took a far more restrained form with sixty-eight artists. The installation-particularly the third-floor galleries with streamlined matchings of artists such as Erin Shirreff, Naama Tsabar, and Zak Prekop, or Michele Abeles and Nick Mauss-felt much more in line with a generation of artists expected to be professionalized by the time of their MFA thesis shows. Circling back to 2000 in light of our current biennial fatigue, the exhibition's formlessness unwittingly provided a model for curatorial modesty and collaborative communication.
-Lumi Tan

Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China

Twenty years ago, anyone attending or reading about shows of Chinese contemporary art in the West could be forgiven for thinking that the radical new art in China-which equally eschewed traditional landscape painting, the Socialist Realism long sanctioned by Mao Zedong, and the prettified French Academy-style "naturalism" first learned before China's Cultural Revolution-was primarily of three types. There was the caricature-like figurative painting practiced by artists like Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogong, and Wang Guangyi, often centering on big faces and promoted under catchy rubrics like Cynical Realism and Political Pop. There were massive installations by artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang (stuffed animals and gunpowder explosions), Gu Wenda (human hair), and Xu Bing (fake-language panels and scrolls). And there were nearly maniacal performances, like those of Zhang Huan, hanging in chains from the ceiling of his studio and being bled by doctors; He Yunchang entombing himself in a concrete monolith for twenty-four hours; and Yang Zhichao having his shoulder seared with a hot branding iron-that sort of thing.

Then, in 2004, came the illuminating exhibition "Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China." Co-organized by University of Chicago professor Wu Hung and International Center of Photography curator Christopher Phillips (a former senior editor at A.i.A.), the survey comprised 130 works by sixty Chinese artists. It debuted at the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society, both in New York, and toured to six other museums in the United States and abroad. The vision it delivered was that of a nation utterly transformed both physically and socially. Photographs by Zhang Dali and Sze Tsung Leong showed historic neighborhoods reduced to rubble to make way for soaring modern towers; Rong Rong and Xing Danwen documented the renegade life of their artist friends in the squalor of Beijing's self-styled East Village; Liu Zheng turned his lens on everyone from professional village mourners to convicts to decadent businessmen; Wang Qingsong staged elaborate scenes melding Chinese history and folklore with contemporary life.

Videos in the show ranged from raw exposés to consumerist satires to avant-garde mind games. In Xu Zhen's Rainbow (1998), a male torso progressively reddens from a long series of unseen slaps. Cui Xiuwen's Ladies' Room (2000) secretly records chic "hostesses" primping and gossiping in the bathroom of a high-end Beijing club. Rabid Dogs (2002), by Cao Fei, features Burberry-clad young people, made up to resemble canines, roughhousing on hands and knees in an office strewn with food bowls and luxury-brand handbags. Yang Fudong's Liu Lan (2003) moodily contemplates the impossibility of lasting romance between an urban, white-suited male fashion plate and an equally attractive but traditionally clad woman from the countryside.

In their interview in these pages [ A.i.A., June/July 2004], Wu and Phillips noted that they accomplished their curatorial mission by completely ignoring officialdom in the People's Republic of China. Their show-and the freewheeling method behind it-was a timely triumph of artistic globalism, concurrent with a briefly roaring market for Chinese contemporary art abroad, before the Great Recession of 2008 and the nearly worldwide retreat into so-called populist (actually nativist) enclaves. "Between Past and Future" accurately reflected both the burgeoning world-awareness in China and the increasingly conceptual nature of photography and video there in the early 2000s. The survey traced those developments from their 1970s photojournalist origins to the threshold of the computer- and internet-based art that today most forcefully counters the Great Firewall and the increasingly conservative (which in China means Party-centric) and nationalistic (verging on xenophobic) cultural policies of the current government in Beijing.
-Richard Vine

Ecstasy: In and About Altered States

Visitors to a sprawling 2005 exhibition at MoCA's Geffen Contemporary could never be certain if they were viewing a sober study of the historical role of mind-altering substances in artistic creation, or simply lost in an environment meant to be experienced on actual drugs. A sparkling crystal fountain detailed with intricate Victorian flourishes met museumgoers at the entrance to "Ecstasy: In and About Altered States." Klaus Weber's Public Fountain LSD Hall (2003) was surrounded by a plexiglass barrier and included a label warning visitors that the water trickling through his immaculate structure had been dosed with a certain amount of LSD. Intrepid visitors to LA's Museum of Contemporary Art could, at least in theory, sneak a drink from the fountain to heighten their perceptions of the show. Or, more tantalizingly, all the flowing, churning, splashing water, suggested that perhaps the drug was already in the air.

Curators Paul Schimmel and Gloria Sutton argued in their catalogue essays and exhibition texts for "Ecstasy" that the early 2000s drug culture belonged to a tradition of artists seeking transcendence, as seen in everything from '60s psychedelia to the Baroque splendor of Bernini's St. Teresa in Ecstasy to the poetry of ancient cults of Dionysus.

The brilliance of "Ecstasy" lay in its ambition to create an art historical and intellectual framework for experiences meant to transcend the intellect. Were this tension to dissipate, however, the results would risk becoming, well, stupid.Meow Wolf and the Museum of Ice Cream can be considered the exhibition's anti-intellectual heirs. Like those ecstatic art-entertainment-shopping funhouses, "Ecstasy" was eminently instagrammable five years before the launch of Instagram. In hindsight, the most apparent curatorial oversight was the lack of a Yayoi Kusama "Infinity Room" of the sort that LA museumgoers lined up to see at the Broad in 2019.

"Ecstasy" made drug culture seem like transgressive fun, though it is clear now that a truly conscientious show on the subject might have done more to explore the brutal toll of addiction at a time when an opioid pandemic was under way. Since that time, the dangerous allure of Weber's fountain has somewhat faded. Though experienced psychonauts might have been familiar with the notion of microdosing back in the aughts, the practice of ingesting very small amounts of LSD became a fad for Millennial office workers in the 2010s, the drug harnessed for a more productive and relaxed workday. No longer merely a transgressive kick, a drink of Weber's water might soon be a corporate perk.
-William S. Smith

Part Object Part Sculpture

According to curator Helen Molesworth, the art in her 2005 exhibition "Part Object Part Sculpture" can make "the hairs on the beholder's neck stand on end, summoning unconscious thoughts of the hidden recesses and pleasures of the body." Filled with swarms, accumulations, and abject forms, the exhibition at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, offered a revisionist history of twentieth-century sculpture, casting uncanny sensation in a leading role. The "Duchampian genealogy" that Molesworth aimed to create foregrounded the work of women artists: Louise Bourgeoise, Lee Bontecou, Eva Hesse, Yayoi Kusama, and Rachel Whiteread. Bruce Nauman and Felix Gonzalez-Torres were among the few American men with work in the show, which seemed designed to bring the full strangenessof postwar Italian art into view with pieces by Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, and Alberto Burri.

Notably absent from "Part Object Part Sculpture" were the familiar heroes of Minimalism, Pop, and Conceptualism. The Duchampian readymade, in Molesworth's telling, was not as an invitation to mimic capitalistic production, as Andy Warhol did, nor to replicate the aesthetics of industry, as did Donald Judd, nor to participate in a cerebral game about the nature of art as Joseph Kosuth proposed. Instead, she found in Duchamp's work a tangle of compulsive behavior and erotic content. Kusama's bulbous forms, Hesse's soft surrealist constructions, and Bontecou's voids best embody Duchamp's idiosyncratic, spine-tingling legacy.

As a curator, Molesworth has a knack for locating practices once thought to be marginal and showing how they encapsulate major cultural themes. It's hard to remember now that Kusama was hardly a household name in 2005, much less a global brand. "Part Object Part Sculpture" followed Molesworth's "Work Ethic" (2003) at the Wexner, an exhibition that brought to light overlooked histories of labor. This approach found expression again in the 2019 exhibition "One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art," Molesworth's final effort as chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Los Angeles. The show borrowed its subtitle from Farber's famous term for movies that shrugged off self-serious grandeur in order to burrow into history from the edges.

Looking back at "Part Object Part Sculpture," the animating debates about the legacy of Duchamp in Euro-American art can feel a little parochial within a now fully globalized art world. Writing in Artforum Carrie Lambert-Beatty knocked the exhibition for continuing to assert Duchamp's singular presence and the patrimonial view of art history. But "Part Object Part Sculpture" exemplifies a method that remains influential today: pulling from the margins (wherever they are) to improve understanding of the center-or, more than that, challenge its authority. At the Wexner, Molesworth proved that underdogs can sometimes win.
-William S. Smith

Cady Noland Approximately

After Cady Noland withdrew from the art world in the late1990s, her absence seemed to intensify. Dealers told stories of her refusing permission to show or publish her existing work. Worry that she had abandoned art-making at a moment of tremendous critical and commercial success grew alongside earnest praise from emerging artists like Josephine Meckseper, Wade Guyton, Kelley Walker, and Banks Violette. There was a large, mostly permanent installation in collectors Don and Mera Rubell's private Miami museum. But for the most part, the early 2000s were a bleak time for anyone who wanted actually to see Noland's work.

The 2006 exhibition "Cady Noland Approximately," at Triple Candie in Harlem, was the loudest scream into the Noland void. The nonprofit art space run by Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett commissioned artists to fabricate thirteen "approximations" of Noland's sculptures using only online images and information. The show's checklist contained exhaustive explanations of how these constructions diverged from Noland's originals: changed scale, different models of stanchions or plastic sawhorses, unidentifiable elements in a milk crate sculpture. Any thought that the famously exacting artist might have been involved in the show was dispelled by the awkward installation; everything was crammed into one end of the gallery's cavernous industrial space, and a pile of detritus and Budweiser cases, artfully lit, occupied the gallery's back room.

"Cady Noland Approximately" was one of three Triple Candie exhibitions that year focused, according to Bancroft and Nesbett, on "addressing inaccessible content," each using a different mode of misrepresentation. Billed as the artist's first show in Harlem since 1969, "Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses: Two Scale Models" featured maquettes used to plan the artist's 1998 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. For "David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective," Xeroxed pages of brochures, webpages, and Rousing the Rubble -the lone, out-of-print monograph on Hammons's work-ringed the walls. The show followed five years during which the gallery unsuccessfully invited the Harlem-based artist to do a project. In each of these "inaccessible content" shows, Bancroft and Nesbett said, patently inauthentic objects were deployed to create "an authentic but destabilized viewer experience" in which the gallerists could critique expensively produced museum spectacles, hagiographic retrospectives, and the art world's commercial obsessions.

Critical reaction was generally negative, ranging from concern about misguided admiration to outrage at forgery. Noland didn't see the show, but a friend of the artist came, a curator at a downtown museum who screamed: "This is not what Cady would want!" Nesbett's reply: "Why does it matter what she wants?"

It turns out Noland didn't need anyone's help. The institutions she'd shunned also missed her, and were eagerly accumulating her work. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, for example, acquired forty Nolands between 2004 and 2009, including Tanya as Bandit (1989), a metal-and-fabric panel bearing a silkscreened image of kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst. This was a gift from trustee Kathy Fuld and her husband, Richard, in 2007, right before the investment bank he ran, Lehman Brothers, collapsed and precipitated a global financial meltdown.

Triple Candie's shows were part of a trend for restaging that complicated the artist-curator dynamic. Examples include Marina Abramović's 2005 re-performance of other artists' works at the Guggenheim Museum and the 2013 remake of Harald Szeemann's iconic 1969 group show, "When Attitudes Become Form," which Germano Celant staged at the Prada Foundation in Venice with artist Thomas Demand and architect Rem Koolhaas. Perhaps an approximation of Noland's 2019 retrospective at the MMK in Frankfurt can close the loop.
-Greg Allen

Seven Easy Pieces

Marina Abramović's "Seven Easy Pieces"-a weeklong series of solo performances staged in November 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York-was a central event in the first "Performa" Biennial of Live Performance (organized then and now by director RoseLee Goldberg). While by no means the first large-scale live performance event at a major museum (another was the 2003 "Live Culture" initiative at Tate Modern, London, which offered a conference and live performances by artists and collectives including Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra, Forced Entertainment, and many others), "Seven Easy Pieces" emphatically confirmed the incursion of performance into the space and logic of the "high art" museum, for better or worse. The project was a harbinger of the problems incurred with the wholesale incorporation of performance into the traditional visual arts institution-including the inevitable clash between the spontaneity claimed for live art and the reifying tendencies of the art museum. These contradictions reached their apotheosis with Abramović's "The Artist Is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2010. The capstone of the latter exhibition, which took place in the citadel of high modernism, was the positioning of Abramović herself, immobile in the museum's spectacular, klieg-light-adorned atrium, gazing at a long stream of visitors one by one as they sat facing her. (The process mirrored her earlier piece Nightsea Crossing, produced in partnership with Ulay in the 1980s).

With "Seven Easy Pieces" Abramović contributed substantially to what was then a burgeoning field of performance redos (including Yoko Ono occasionally reenacting her famous 1964 Cut Piece over the years, and the "Re-enact" performance festival in Amsterdam in 2004). She also provided valuable fodder for those exploring histories of performance art from the 1960s and 1970s and examining the conundrum of how to display and historicize live performance. Offering a deep investigation into what it means for one artist to redo the performance of another and for an artist to produce a new version of an older work of her own, for "Seven Easy Pieces" Abramović researched and re-performed five relatively well-known pieces by other artists from the history of Western performance art-artists who at that time were fairly canonical within developing studies of Euro-American performance and body art (Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Valie Export, Gina Pane, and Joseph Beuys)-and reworked her own 1975 Lips of Thomas. A different one of these works was reenacted by Abramović over a seven-hour period (from 5 PM to midnight) on each of six nights, with the seventh night (the seventh "easy piece") featuring her newly commissioned Entering the Other Side (in which she inhabited a gargantuan blue dress, occupying the vortex-like center of Frank Lloyd Wright's famous spiraling Guggenheim atrium).

Abramović's placement front and center with this final "easy piece" asserted her authorship even as she claimed in the catalogue for the show and the Babette Mangolte film documenting the overall event to be scrupulously deferring to the original artists by getting their permission, paying them a copyright fee, and working to re-create the original energy and meaning of each "ephemeral" piece. In so doing she provided a majestic case study of the complex interrelations between performance and art institutions in the twenty-first century.
-Amelia Jones

Artempo

This show's subtitle, "Where Time Becomes Art," could only hint-which is all virtually any tagline could do-at the wonderment viewers felt when seeing the exhibition. Jean-Hubert Martin and Mattijs Visser were credited as curators, but "Artempo" was really the brainchild of Belgian antiques dealer and interior designer Axel Vervoordt. In the elegantly worn rooms of the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, ritual masks, Madonnas, Buddhas, and mannequins used by seventeenth-century artists and anatomists commingled with works by El Anatsui, Anish Kapoor, Cai Guo-Qiang, Antoni Tàpies, and others. Sumptuously patterned textiles, both designed and collected by Mariano Fortuny, the polymath entrepreneur who inhabited the venue a century earlier, offered maximalist backdrops to further stimulate the sense of creative sensibilities proliferating across time. Minimalism cropped up from place to place, sometimes as art and sometimes as exhibition design. But instead of its usual associations-formal exploration, commentary on industrial mass production, the white cube's cerebral austerity-it seemed to convey noble serenity, meditative wisdom. Vervoordt's configurations followed the logic of the wonder cabinet, juxtaposing objects according to visual or semiotic affinities rather than historical or national ones. In the Renaissance this was considered a mode of study, but for audiences in Venice the effect was sensuous rather than erudite, delightfully drowning the biennial-hopper's understanding of recent art in the palpable unfamiliarity of other centuries and cultures.
-Brian Droitcour

Prospect.1

Billed as the largest biennial of international art ever organized in the United States, Prospect.1 opened in November 2008 in New Orleans, a city that just three years prior had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levee failures. The location became as integral to the event as its scope. Led by artistic director and curator Dan Cameron, this first edition distributed the work of eighty-one artists, including eleven from Louisiana, throughout the city's art institutions-among them the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), the Contemporary Arts Center, and the Historic New Orleans Collection. It also commissioned notable site-specific works, such as Wangechi Mutu's Mrs. Sarah's House and Nari Ward's Diamond Gym: Action Network, both installed in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Plagued with destruction not long before, the Ninth Ward was rife with grief, anger, and a dogged perseverance at the time Prospect.1 opened. These sentiments were underscored in Mutu's installation, constructed on a vacant lot that had once held the home of Sarah Lastie. The wife of the late Walter Lastie, a drummer for rock-and-roll pioneer Fats Domino, Sarah had seen her house destroyed by floodwater. Mutu's "ghost house" stood as a reminder of all that had been lost to nature and negligence. Ward's Diamond Gym, a large assemblage of mangled exercise equipment, packed a gut punch in juxtaposition to its surroundings, the former Battleground Baptist Church. Engulfing the viewer in the sounds of Buddhist chants and excerpts from some of the great speeches of the Civil Rights era, the installation made the life-and-death relationship between race and Hurricane Katrina at once visceral and spiritual.

A year prior, the Ninth Ward and Gentilly neighborhoods served as sites for Paul Chan's production of Waiting for Godot. A collaboration between Chan, the Classical Theatre of Harlem, and the New York-based art organization Creative Time, the four performances of Samuel Beckett's 1952 play starred New Orleans-born actor Wendell Pierce. His portrayal of Vladimir brought solemnity to the character who would remain near the same tree for the duration of the play, awaiting that which did not arrive. The play's meditation on the absurdity of the human condition became all the more poignant in light of New Orleans's lost sociocultural ecosystem.

While Prospect.1 had no specific theme, the $3.5-million undertaking was conceived with the express purpose of reinvigorating the city by cultivating a new hub of cultural tourism. Not without its detractors, this approach influenced the way new art spaces would contextualize themselves either within or in opposition to the burgeoning art scene engendered by the biennial (now triennial). In the years following the advent of Prospect.1, artist-run spaces came to exert great influence on museum operations, and notable Louisiana-based artists like Willie Birch, whose large-scale charcoal drawings were shown in the Great Hall of the NOMA during Prospect.1, have garnered larger audiences as a result.

Later iterations of Prospect have not been as explicitly tied to the city's revitalization narrative, but rather have addressed themes key to its historical legacy, such as slavery, colonialism, and environmental resilience-issues that are now current throughout the United States. Prospect's championing of these themes, and of the American South as an artistic center, anticipated larger shifts in the contemporary art world over the last decade. In addition, the curatorial choice to exhibit Louisiana-based artists like Chandra McCormick, Keith Calhoun, Deborah Luster, and Garrett Bradley alongside those with existing global audiences such as Nicole Eisenman, Pope.L, Camille Henrot, John Akomfrah, and Theaster Gates has established an opportunity for experimentation among prominent local and regional voices in this decade.

Fostering a connection between Louisiana and the broader art market, Prospect.1 also initiated a recognizable shift toward the new in institutions such as NOMA and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. The 2008 event laid the groundwork for many exhibitions of contemporary art in the current moment as well as in the coming years. In a city otherwise so defined by its history, much still lies ahead.
-Kristina Kay Robinson

Tim Burton
-William S. Smith

Public Art Revival

Among the significant developments in the art of the aughts was a resurgence of interest in large-scale public artworks. Rather than serving simply as urban decoration, these projects were often destinations in themselves: projects like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates, temporarily installed in Central Park in 2005, generated millions of dollars in tourism revenue for New York, while Chris Burden's Urban Light (2008) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was an early social media hit.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates: Central Park, New York, 1979-2005 (2005)
For sixteen days in February 2005, the pathways of New York's Central Park were lined with orange gates bearing lengths of fluttering fabric. Entirely self-financed, the Gates project was the culmination of a twenty-five-year-long campaign by the artists, who were repeatedly turned down by city officials until they found an advocate in the newly elected Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate, 2006
Unveiled in Chicago's Millennium Park in May 2006, Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate -nicknamed "The Bean" because of its distinctive shape-is a massive curved volume of highly polished stainless steel, seamlessly welded to evoke the appearance of liquid mercury. Considered one of Kapoor's most popular works, its irregular form produces warped reflections of visitors and the surrounding skyline.

Chris Burden, Urban Light, 2008
Comprising 202 antique cast-iron street lamps from the 1920s and '30s arranged in a loose grid, Chris Burden's Urban Light, installed outside the Wilshire Boulevard entrance of LACMA, is visible twenty-four hours a day, with the lights going on at dusk and off at dawn. According to the artist, the work is a "statement about what constitutes a civilized and sophisticated society: safe after dark and beautiful to behold."

Shanghai Biennale 2000

In the Chinese art world-both internally and in terms of its relationship to the global system-the year 2000 was a watershed, marked by two exhibitions that opened in Shanghai within days of each other. The provocatively titled "Fuck Off," organized by artist Ai Weiwei and curator Feng Boyi, was promoted as "uncompromising and uncooperative" in the preface of its catalogue. Taking place in a grimy warehouse, the scrappy do-it-yourself roundup displayed a wide range of hastily assembled experiments, including a performance by artist Yang Zhichao, who endured without anesthesia the surgical implantation of wild grass into the flesh of his back. But "Fuck Off" was a capstone, not a catalyst, harking back-like several edgy satellite shows then on view-to the previous decade of hit-and-run displays of increasingly transgressive works that typified the 1990s.

The comparatively mild-mannered Shanghai Biennale, on the other hand, was a breakthrough in cultural diplomacy. Since the twice closed and reopened "China/Avant-Garde" at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, in 1989, it was the first large-scale exhibition in China to include formerly frowned-upon installation and video art, to be organized in part by overseas curators, and most important, to take place in a centrally located state-run institution. Mounted in the Shanghai Museum of Art, the show ushered in a decade of cooperation and détente between the government and the contemporary art community, exemplified by a welter of copycat biennales in cities all over China and high-profile overseas exhibitions, like "Living in Time" (2001) at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and "Alors, la Chine?" (2003) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, both sponsored by the ministry of culture.

Why the sea change? China's economy was growing at record speed, its application to the World Trade Organization was pending, and so was its bid to host the Olympics. Achieving super-power status was the aim, and under the leadership of then President Jiang Zemin, culture was part of the plan. The Shanghai city government shared these ambitions. The goal was to recuperate the city's past position (in the 1920s and '30s) as the most cosmopolitan commercial center in Asia, if not the world. Consequently, investment in infrastructure was frantic. Futuristic skyscrapers, five-star hotels, and a massive opera house arose overnight, as did an enormous international airport.

For many people in the visual arts community, mainstream and marginal alike, this was the big chance, and they, too, worked furiously behind the scenes. Progressives sought to bring contemporary art above ground, to raise its visibility, and to engage a wider public-in short, to normalize new art practices. As a result, two highly experienced international curators, Hou Hanru (then resident in Paris) and the Tokyo-based Toshio Shimizu, were appointed to join the museum team, bringing their vision of diversity and openness to an Asian-led era of international exchange and advancement. And while concessions were evident, like the inclusion of academic oil and ink painting favored by the conservative wing of China's art establishment, the result was nonetheless revelatory, at least to most local audiences. Indonesian artist Heri Dono's wide-eyed angels flapped overhead in a long corridor hung with Marlene Dumas's ink and acrylic apparitions; William Kentridge's shadowy animations flickered in darkened halls alongside Mariko Mori's glowing body capsules and Zhang Peili's suspended video screens. Another not-so-hidden agenda was also clear: some 80 percent of the artists were Asian, and 60 percent were Chinese. The dominance of the Euro-American canon was in question, and Asia, starting with China, was ready to take the challenge.

Twenty years later, is Asia in the vanguard with China at the helm? The jury is out, but the perspective of a key artist is haunting. Creating one of the most ambitious and prominently displayed works in the Biennale, Huang Yong Ping built a giant sand model of one of Shanghai's most renowned (and still extant) colonial-period buildings. This grand Neo-Classical edifice once housed the headquarters of a major British bank, and after the 1949 revolution, Shanghai's Communist government. More recently, the building had reverted back to a bank, this time the local institution charged with financing the rise of Shanghai's newest business district, Pudong. Throughout the course of the exhibition, Huang's Bank of Sand crumbled.

Today, China has achieved super-power status-yet, as in many other countries, the space of the permissible is shrinking. The Shanghai Biennale, opening its thirteenth edition this month, has become an increasingly exceptional carve-out, a special artistic zone where adventurous programming is supported, at least for the time being.

-Jane DeBevoise

Greater New York

In February 1999, MoMA and PS1 Contemporary Art Center announced their partnership; a year later, their first joint venture, the survey "Greater New York," opened, beating that year's edition of the establishment Whitney Biennial by a month. With no theme other than "what it means to be in New York at the beginning of a new era," "Greater New York" allowed itself to be charmingly incohesive, brushing off any threat of enforced conservatism from mother MoMA. The only connection between the 140 artists, selected from an open call in addition to research by a team of PS1 and MoMA curators, was that they live in New York City or within commuting distance, and had not had a solo show in the city before 1995. That five-year gap of "emergence" allowed for better-known names showing now-signature works such as Ghada Amer, Cecily Brown, Mark Lombardi, Julie Mehretu, Rob Pruitt, Do Ho Suh, and Lisa Yuskavage, set against artists such as Yael Bartana, Emily Jacir, and Daniel Lefcourt, who were participating in their first major exhibition. Typical of the show's irreverence was Pia Lindman's Public Sauna, which required any participants to strip bare in the museum's courtyard in full view of visitors in order to enjoy a tiny sauna and have a bucket of cold water dumped over their head upon exit.

But the work itself was overshadowed by the celebration of newness-this new institutional model, the new millennium, a New York optimistically emerging from the devastation of AIDS crisis unaware that 9/11 was just around the corner. The lasting legacy of the show was its democratic approach not just to the art, but to the production of knowledge around it in two egalitarian strategies. First, the museum created Hotmail addresses for the show's artists and then displayed them on the wall labels, checklists and website, so that any member of the public (and far more likely, intrepid dealers and curators) could be in contact. Even more generous (though likely unpaid) was the open call format for texts responding to works in the exhibition; those accepted were not published in the unfussy catalogue but collected in an accompanying CD-ROM and on the website. The show was a blockbuster for P.S.1, and a feel-good beginning for the MoMA partnership.

"Greater New York" was not founded as a quinquennial, but the form proved too successful not to continue. It also contributed enormously to the early 2000s MFA market boom. At the opening of the 2005 edition, dealers were scrawling their names on the wall labels to claim artists for their roster. That exhibition continued in the boisterous, heterogenous form of its predecessor, with even more artists (162!), but solidified its talent-scouting authority with a textbook-sized catalogue. By the 2010 edition, after some lessons learned from the 2008 economic crash, the event took a far more restrained form with sixty-eight artists. The installation-particularly the third-floor galleries with streamlined matchings of artists such as Erin Shirreff, Naama Tsabar, and Zak Prekop, or Michele Abeles and Nick Mauss-felt much more in line with a generation of artists expected to be professionalized by the time of their MFA thesis shows. Circling back to 2000 in light of our current biennial fatigue, the exhibition's formlessness unwittingly provided a model for curatorial modesty and collaborative communication.
-Lumi Tan

Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China

Twenty years ago, anyone attending or reading about shows of Chinese contemporary art in the West could be forgiven for thinking that the radical new art in China-which equally eschewed traditional landscape painting, the Socialist Realism long sanctioned by Mao Zedong, and the prettified French Academy-style "naturalism" first learned before China's Cultural Revolution-was primarily of three types. There was the caricature-like figurative painting practiced by artists like Fang Lijun, Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhang Xiaogong, and Wang Guangyi, often centering on big faces and promoted under catchy rubrics like Cynical Realism and Political Pop. There were massive installations by artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang (stuffed animals and gunpowder explosions), Gu Wenda (human hair), and Xu Bing (fake-language panels and scrolls). And there were nearly maniacal performances, like those of Zhang Huan, hanging in chains from the ceiling of his studio and being bled by doctors; He Yunchang entombing himself in a concrete monolith for twenty-four hours; and Yang Zhichao having his shoulder seared with a hot branding iron-that sort of thing.

Then, in 2004, came the illuminating exhibition "Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China." Co-organized by University of Chicago professor Wu Hung and International Center of Photography curator Christopher Phillips (a former senior editor at A.i.A.), the survey comprised 130 works by sixty Chinese artists. It debuted at the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society, both in New York, and toured to six other museums in the United States and abroad. The vision it delivered was that of a nation utterly transformed both physically and socially. Photographs by Zhang Dali and Sze Tsung Leong showed historic neighborhoods reduced to rubble to make way for soaring modern towers; Rong Rong and Xing Danwen documented the renegade life of their artist friends in the squalor of Beijing's self-styled East Village; Liu Zheng turned his lens on everyone from professional village mourners to convicts to decadent businessmen; Wang Qingsong staged elaborate scenes melding Chinese history and folklore with contemporary life.

Videos in the show ranged from raw exposés to consumerist satires to avant-garde mind games. In Xu Zhen's Rainbow (1998), a male torso progressively reddens from a long series of unseen slaps. Cui Xiuwen's Ladies' Room (2000) secretly records chic "hostesses" primping and gossiping in the bathroom of a high-end Beijing club. Rabid Dogs (2002), by Cao Fei, features Burberry-clad young people, made up to resemble canines, roughhousing on hands and knees in an office strewn with food bowls and luxury-brand handbags. Yang Fudong's Liu Lan (2003) moodily contemplates the impossibility of lasting romance between an urban, white-suited male fashion plate and an equally attractive but traditionally clad woman from the countryside.

In their interview in these pages [ A.i.A., June/July 2004], Wu and Phillips noted that they accomplished their curatorial mission by completely ignoring officialdom in the People's Republic of China. Their show-and the freewheeling method behind it-was a timely triumph of artistic globalism, concurrent with a briefly roaring market for Chinese contemporary art abroad, before the Great Recession of 2008 and the nearly worldwide retreat into so-called populist (actually nativist) enclaves. "Between Past and Future" accurately reflected both the burgeoning world-awareness in China and the increasingly conceptual nature of photography and video there in the early 2000s. The survey traced those developments from their 1970s photojournalist origins to the threshold of the computer- and internet-based art that today most forcefully counters the Great Firewall and the increasingly conservative (which in China means Party-centric) and nationalistic (verging on xenophobic) cultural policies of the current government in Beijing.
-Richard Vine

Ecstasy: In and About Altered States

Visitors to a sprawling 2005 exhibition at MoCA's Geffen Contemporary could never be certain if they were viewing a sober study of the historical role of mind-altering substances in artistic creation, or simply lost in an environment meant to be experienced on actual drugs. A sparkling crystal fountain detailed with intricate Victorian flourishes met museumgoers at the entrance to "Ecstasy: In and About Altered States." Klaus Weber's Public Fountain LSD Hall (2003) was surrounded by a plexiglass barrier and included a label warning visitors that the water trickling through his immaculate structure had been dosed with a certain amount of LSD. Intrepid visitors to LA's Museum of Contemporary Art could, at least in theory, sneak a drink from the fountain to heighten their perceptions of the show. Or, more tantalizingly, all the flowing, churning, splashing water, suggested that perhaps the drug was already in the air.

Curators Paul Schimmel and Gloria Sutton argued in their catalogue essays and exhibition texts for "Ecstasy" that the early 2000s drug culture belonged to a tradition of artists seeking transcendence, as seen in everything from '60s psychedelia to the Baroque splendor of Bernini's St. Teresa in Ecstasy to the poetry of ancient cults of Dionysus.

The brilliance of "Ecstasy" lay in its ambition to create an art historical and intellectual framework for experiences meant to transcend the intellect. Were this tension to dissipate, however, the results would risk becoming, well, stupid.Meow Wolf and the Museum of Ice Cream can be considered the exhibition's anti-intellectual heirs. Like those ecstatic art-entertainment-shopping funhouses, "Ecstasy" was eminently instagrammable five years before the launch of Instagram. In hindsight, the most apparent curatorial oversight was the lack of a Yayoi Kusama "Infinity Room" of the sort that LA museumgoers lined up to see at the Broad in 2019.

"Ecstasy" made drug culture seem like transgressive fun, though it is clear now that a truly conscientious show on the subject might have done more to explore the brutal toll of addiction at a time when an opioid pandemic was under way. Since that time, the dangerous allure of Weber's fountain has somewhat faded. Though experienced psychonauts might have been familiar with the notion of microdosing back in the aughts, the practice of ingesting very small amounts of LSD became a fad for Millennial office workers in the 2010s, the drug harnessed for a more productive and relaxed workday. No longer merely a transgressive kick, a drink of Weber's water might soon be a corporate perk.
-William S. Smith

Part Object Part Sculpture

According to curator Helen Molesworth, the art in her 2005 exhibition "Part Object Part Sculpture" can make "the hairs on the beholder's neck stand on end, summoning unconscious thoughts of the hidden recesses and pleasures of the body." Filled with swarms, accumulations, and abject forms, the exhibition at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, offered a revisionist history of twentieth-century sculpture, casting uncanny sensation in a leading role. The "Duchampian genealogy" that Molesworth aimed to create foregrounded the work of women artists: Louise Bourgeoise, Lee Bontecou, Eva Hesse, Yayoi Kusama, and Rachel Whiteread. Bruce Nauman and Felix Gonzalez-Torres were among the few American men with work in the show, which seemed designed to bring the full strangenessof postwar Italian art into view with pieces by Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, and Alberto Burri.

Notably absent from "Part Object Part Sculpture" were the familiar heroes of Minimalism, Pop, and Conceptualism. The Duchampian readymade, in Molesworth's telling, was not as an invitation to mimic capitalistic production, as Andy Warhol did, nor to replicate the aesthetics of industry, as did Donald Judd, nor to participate in a cerebral game about the nature of art as Joseph Kosuth proposed. Instead, she found in Duchamp's work a tangle of compulsive behavior and erotic content. Kusama's bulbous forms, Hesse's soft surrealist constructions, and Bontecou's voids best embody Duchamp's idiosyncratic, spine-tingling legacy.

As a curator, Molesworth has a knack for locating practices once thought to be marginal and showing how they encapsulate major cultural themes. It's hard to remember now that Kusama was hardly a household name in 2005, much less a global brand. "Part Object Part Sculpture" followed Molesworth's "Work Ethic" (2003) at the Wexner, an exhibition that brought to light overlooked histories of labor. This approach found expression again in the 2019 exhibition "One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art," Molesworth's final effort as chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Los Angeles. The show borrowed its subtitle from Farber's famous term for movies that shrugged off self-serious grandeur in order to burrow into history from the edges.

Looking back at "Part Object Part Sculpture," the animating debates about the legacy of Duchamp in Euro-American art can feel a little parochial within a now fully globalized art world. Writing in Artforum Carrie Lambert-Beatty knocked the exhibition for continuing to assert Duchamp's singular presence and the patrimonial view of art history. But "Part Object Part Sculpture" exemplifies a method that remains influential today: pulling from the margins (wherever they are) to improve understanding of the center-or, more than that, challenge its authority. At the Wexner, Molesworth proved that underdogs can sometimes win.
-William S. Smith

Cady Noland Approximately

After Cady Noland withdrew from the art world in the late1990s, her absence seemed to intensify. Dealers told stories of her refusing permission to show or publish her existing work. Worry that she had abandoned art-making at a moment of tremendous critical and commercial success grew alongside earnest praise from emerging artists like Josephine Meckseper, Wade Guyton, Kelley Walker, and Banks Violette. There was a large, mostly permanent installation in collectors Don and Mera Rubell's private Miami museum. But for the most part, the early 2000s were a bleak time for anyone who wanted actually to see Noland's work.

The 2006 exhibition "Cady Noland Approximately," at Triple Candie in Harlem, was the loudest scream into the Noland void. The nonprofit art space run by Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett commissioned artists to fabricate thirteen "approximations" of Noland's sculptures using only online images and information. The show's checklist contained exhaustive explanations of how these constructions diverged from Noland's originals: changed scale, different models of stanchions or plastic sawhorses, unidentifiable elements in a milk crate sculpture. Any thought that the famously exacting artist might have been involved in the show was dispelled by the awkward installation; everything was crammed into one end of the gallery's cavernous industrial space, and a pile of detritus and Budweiser cases, artfully lit, occupied the gallery's back room.

"Cady Noland Approximately" was one of three Triple Candie exhibitions that year focused, according to Bancroft and Nesbett, on "addressing inaccessible content," each using a different mode of misrepresentation. Billed as the artist's first show in Harlem since 1969, "Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipses: Two Scale Models" featured maquettes used to plan the artist's 1998 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. For "David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective," Xeroxed pages of brochures, webpages, and Rousing the Rubble -the lone, out-of-print monograph on Hammons's work-ringed the walls. The show followed five years during which the gallery unsuccessfully invited the Harlem-based artist to do a project. In each of these "inaccessible content" shows, Bancroft and Nesbett said, patently inauthentic objects were deployed to create "an authentic but destabilized viewer experience" in which the gallerists could critique expensively produced museum spectacles, hagiographic retrospectives, and the art world's commercial obsessions.

Critical reaction was generally negative, ranging from concern about misguided admiration to outrage at forgery. Noland didn't see the show, but a friend of the artist came, a curator at a downtown museum who screamed: "This is not what Cady would want!" Nesbett's reply: "Why does it matter what she wants?"

It turns out Noland didn't need anyone's help. The institutions she'd shunned also missed her, and were eagerly accumulating her work. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, for example, acquired forty Nolands between 2004 and 2009, including Tanya as Bandit (1989), a metal-and-fabric panel bearing a silkscreened image of kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst. This was a gift from trustee Kathy Fuld and her husband, Richard, in 2007, right before the investment bank he ran, Lehman Brothers, collapsed and precipitated a global financial meltdown.

Triple Candie's shows were part of a trend for restaging that complicated the artist-curator dynamic. Examples include Marina Abramović's 2005 re-performance of other artists' works at the Guggenheim Museum and the 2013 remake of Harald Szeemann's iconic 1969 group show, "When Attitudes Become Form," which Germano Celant staged at the Prada Foundation in Venice with artist Thomas Demand and architect Rem Koolhaas. Perhaps an approximation of Noland's 2019 retrospective at the MMK in Frankfurt can close the loop.
-Greg Allen

Seven Easy Pieces

Marina Abramović's "Seven Easy Pieces"-a weeklong series of solo performances staged in November 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York-was a central event in the first "Performa" Biennial of Live Performance (organized then and now by director RoseLee Goldberg). While by no means the first large-scale live performance event at a major museum (another was the 2003 "Live Culture" initiative at Tate Modern, London, which offered a conference and live performances by artists and collectives including Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra, Forced Entertainment, and many others), "Seven Easy Pieces" emphatically confirmed the incursion of performance into the space and logic of the "high art" museum, for better or worse. The project was a harbinger of the problems incurred with the wholesale incorporation of performance into the traditional visual arts institution-including the inevitable clash between the spontaneity claimed for live art and the reifying tendencies of the art museum. These contradictions reached their apotheosis with Abramović's "The Artist Is Present" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2010. The capstone of the latter exhibition, which took place in the citadel of high modernism, was the positioning of Abramović herself, immobile in the museum's spectacular, klieg-light-adorned atrium, gazing at a long stream of visitors one by one as they sat facing her. (The process mirrored her earlier piece Nightsea Crossing, produced in partnership with Ulay in the 1980s).

With "Seven Easy Pieces" Abramović contributed substantially to what was then a burgeoning field of performance redos (including Yoko Ono occasionally reenacting her famous 1964 Cut Piece over the years, and the "Re-enact" performance festival in Amsterdam in 2004). She also provided valuable fodder for those exploring histories of performance art from the 1960s and 1970s and examining the conundrum of how to display and historicize live performance. Offering a deep investigation into what it means for one artist to redo the performance of another and for an artist to produce a new version of an older work of her own, for "Seven Easy Pieces" Abramović researched and re-performed five relatively well-known pieces by other artists from the history of Western performance art-artists who at that time were fairly canonical within developing studies of Euro-American performance and body art (Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Valie Export, Gina Pane, and Joseph Beuys)-and reworked her own 1975 Lips of Thomas. A different one of these works was reenacted by Abramović over a seven-hour period (from 5 PM to midnight) on each of six nights, with the seventh night (the seventh "easy piece") featuring her newly commissioned Entering the Other Side (in which she inhabited a gargantuan blue dress, occupying the vortex-like center of Frank Lloyd Wright's famous spiraling Guggenheim atrium).

Abramović's placement front and center with this final "easy piece" asserted her authorship even as she claimed in the catalogue for the show and the Babette Mangolte film documenting the overall event to be scrupulously deferring to the original artists by getting their permission, paying them a copyright fee, and working to re-create the original energy and meaning of each "ephemeral" piece. In so doing she provided a majestic case study of the complex interrelations between performance and art institutions in the twenty-first century.
-Amelia Jones

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution

A major correction to the art historical record took place in the first decade of the 2000s. Feminist art entered the canon. As Lucy Lippard argued in a 2007 essay in this magazine, this was no easy undertaking. Feminist art is "hard to pin down, a moving target," she wrote. "It was never an art movement per se, with all the implied similarities in style and esthetic breakthroughs, critical triumphs and post-coital exhaustion." Instead, feminist art was defined by its approach: a broad commitment to social equality. By failing to fit into neat formalist categories, feminist art, according to Lippard, had not received its "art-historical due."

That was the situation until 2007, a watershed year when major arts institutions began to settle this outstanding debt. In March, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened at the Brooklyn Museum. In addition to housing Judy Chicago's monumental 8,300-square-foot The Dinner Party (1974-79), the center includes galleries to devoted to special exhibitions like the inaugural contemporary art survey "Global Feminisms." Earlier that month, in Los Angeles, "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art before traveling to a number of other venues, including MoMA PS1 in New York.

Covering the years 1965-1980, "WACK!" had an ambitious agenda. In the catalogue, curator Connie Butler wrote that she aimed to "make the case that feminism's impact on art of the 1970s constitutes the most influential international 'movement' of any during the postwar period." Yet the inclusion of scare quotes around "movement" signals some of the difficulties of this undertaking. How to define feminist art? Was all art by women inherently feminist? Could any art qualify so long as it was informed by feminist politics?

The show's title evokes the ubiquitous acronyms that denoted the era's activist groups: WAC, WAR, AWC. Militant journals and ephemera associated with such organizations filled vitrines, providing a common social context for galleries most striking for their aesthetic heterogeneity. There were explicitly activist works by the Guerrilla Girls but also abstract paintings by Mary Heilmann and a brightly colored poured latex floor piece by Lynda Benglis. The show, which was international in scope (even if heavily weighted toward European and American artists), featured artists who were little known to US audiences at the time: Sanja Iveković, Marta Minujín, Zarina, Maria Lassnig. Butler also included artists like Marina Abramović who neither claimed nor disavowed the feminist label.

In its pluralistic selections, "WACK!" offered a way to overcome a longstanding binary in feminist art: a supposed conflict between biological essentialism and various critiques of gender as a social construct. Butler's careful curation allowed the body-centric imagery evident in work by artists like Chicago to appeared within the same overarching context as the cerebral post-structuralism of Mary Kelly.

The lasting influence of "WACK!" can be seen in a string of exhibitions in the 2010s that offered long overdue surveys of work by women artists. Zilia Sánchez, Carmen Herrera, and Luchita Hurtado were among those who received late-in-life retrospectives after decades of working in near obscurity. Though late is certainly better than never, the very belatedness of such projects speaks to ongoing structural challenges that the feminist movement seeks to overcome. A 1988 poster by the Guerrilla Girls catalogued "advantages" of being a woman artist. Number four on the acidly ironic list: "knowing your career might pick up after you're eighty."
-William S. Smith

Documenta, Sculpture Project Münster, Venice Biennale

In a rare alignment, the summer of 2007 brought three major international forums into view simultaneously: Documenta in Kassel, Sculpture Project in Münster, and the Venice Biennale. With 9/11 dwindling in the rearview mirror, the second Bush presidency winding down, the rise of autocracy and xenophobia not yet a fully realized crisis, and the world economy in a seemingly unstoppable climb, the best a global exhibition could do, it appears, was acknowledge, as humbly as was credible, an embarrassment of riches.

In Münster, a smaller and less dourly modern city where the outdoor Sculpture Project has been staged every decade since 1977, holdovers from previous iterations-by the likes of Donald Judd, Jorge Pardo, Dan Graham, and Claes Oldenburg-were joined, at the behest of co-founder Kasper König and curators Britta Peters and Marianne Wagner, by thirty-five new works, including Hans-Peter Feldmann's spiffily renovated public restrooms, Pawel Althamer's bucolic path through wheat fields, and Mike Kelley's petting zoo. Bruce Nauman's Square Depression, proposed in 1977 and realized thirty years later, is a big concrete square of downward slanting triangular quadrants that dip 5½ feet deep at the center, from which point the perimeter is approximately at eye level. Nominally melancholic, this clever feat of spatial engineering provided one of the Project's happier perceptual experiences-long since public art's preferred effect.

Although it didn't promise controversy either, the 2007 Venice Biennale, for which Robert Storr was artistic director, wound up mired in acrimony. Criticized, although not skewered, as safe, museum-like, and too American, the exhibition was titled "Think with the Senses-Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense," and like Documenta, abjured tendentiousness. Painters abounded-Robert Ryman, Susan Rothenberg, Sigmar Polka-and artists were mostly dignified with solo exhibition areas. There were stylish videos by Yang Fudong, but also a harrowing one by Paolo Canevari, of a young man footing a skull as if it were a soccer ball in a war-torn lot in Belgrade. Hardly less grim, an exchange in Artforum between Storr and his Biennale's critics began with the curator's 8,000+-word letter to the editor upbraiding Jessica Morgan, Francesco Bonami, and Okwui Enwezor, who had all sharply disparaged his efforts; they replied in kind. Aspiring, maybe, to the importance of Thomas McEvilley's 1984-85 duel with William Rubin in the same magazine, which reshaped thinking about the legacy of colonialism in modern art, the 2008 round of attacks veered instead toward the narrowly personal. Enwezor, who had been the director of Documenta in 2002 and would go on to direct the Venice Biennale in 2015, concluded by likening Storr to Joseph Conrad's Kurtz. Unhelpful, for sure. Still, there was more passion in these letters than in any of the big 2007 exhibitions.

Documenta's curators posed three questions as "leitmotifs"; the second-"What is bare life?"-quotes the influential leftist philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and refers roughly to a state of being that is outside political control. Agamben was lately in the news for denouncing the (conservative) Italian government's response to the coronavirus as "techno-medical despotism," an argument usually heard, in the US and elsewhere, from the right. Social distancing, Agamben believes, is a stalking horse for fascism: in the name of biosecurity, people have grown cravenly fearful, and "the threshold that separates humanity from barbarism has been crossed." Scrambling the pandemic's deeply dug-in politics, Agamben suggests, at the least, an argument for rattling ideological cages. On the evidence, the artworld of 2007 could have used some shaking.
-Nancy Princenthal

Artempo

This show's subtitle, "Where Time Becomes Art," could only hint-which is all virtually any tagline could do-at the wonderment viewers felt when seeing the exhibition. Jean-Hubert Martin and Mattijs Visser were credited as curators, but "Artempo" was really the brainchild of Belgian antiques dealer and interior designer Axel Vervoordt. In the elegantly worn rooms of the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, ritual masks, Madonnas, Buddhas, and mannequins used by seventeenth-century artists and anatomists commingled with works by El Anatsui, Anish Kapoor, Cai Guo-Qiang, Antoni Tàpies, and others. Sumptuously patterned textiles, both designed and collected by Mariano Fortuny, the polymath entrepreneur who inhabited the venue a century earlier, offered maximalist backdrops to further stimulate the sense of creative sensibilities proliferating across time. Minimalism cropped up from place to place, sometimes as art and sometimes as exhibition design. But instead of its usual associations-formal exploration, commentary on industrial mass production, the white cube's cerebral austerity-it seemed to convey noble serenity, meditative wisdom. Vervoordt's configurations followed the logic of the wonder cabinet, juxtaposing objects according to visual or semiotic affinities rather than historical or national ones. In the Renaissance this was considered a mode of study, but for audiences in Venice the effect was sensuous rather than erudite, delightfully drowning the biennial-hopper's understanding of recent art in the palpable unfamiliarity of other centuries and cultures.
-Brian Droitcour

Prospect.1

Billed as the largest biennial of international art ever organized in the United States, Prospect.1 opened in November 2008 in New Orleans, a city that just three years prior had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levee failures. The location became as integral to the event as its scope. Led by artistic director and curator Dan Cameron, this first edition distributed the work of eighty-one artists, including eleven from Louisiana, throughout the city's art institutions-among them the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), the Contemporary Arts Center, and the Historic New Orleans Collection. It also commissioned notable site-specific works, such as Wangechi Mutu's Mrs. Sarah's House and Nari Ward's Diamond Gym: Action Network, both installed in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Plagued with destruction not long before, the Ninth Ward was rife with grief, anger, and a dogged perseverance at the time Prospect.1 opened. These sentiments were underscored in Mutu's installation, constructed on a vacant lot that had once held the home of Sarah Lastie. The wife of the late Walter Lastie, a drummer for rock-and-roll pioneer Fats Domino, Sarah had seen her house destroyed by floodwater. Mutu's "ghost house" stood as a reminder of all that had been lost to nature and negligence. Ward's Diamond Gym, a large assemblage of mangled exercise equipment, packed a gut punch in juxtaposition to its surroundings, the former Battleground Baptist Church. Engulfing the viewer in the sounds of Buddhist chants and excerpts from some of the great speeches of the Civil Rights era, the installation made the life-and-death relationship between race and Hurricane Katrina at once visceral and spiritual.

A year prior, the Ninth Ward and Gentilly neighborhoods served as sites for Paul Chan's production of Waiting for Godot. A collaboration between Chan, the Classical Theatre of Harlem, and the New York-based art organization Creative Time, the four performances of Samuel Beckett's 1952 play starred New Orleans-born actor Wendell Pierce. His portrayal of Vladimir brought solemnity to the character who would remain near the same tree for the duration of the play, awaiting that which did not arrive. The play's meditation on the absurdity of the human condition became all the more poignant in light of New Orleans's lost sociocultural ecosystem.

While Prospect.1 had no specific theme, the $3.5-million undertaking was conceived with the express purpose of reinvigorating the city by cultivating a new hub of cultural tourism. Not without its detractors, this approach influenced the way new art spaces would contextualize themselves either within or in opposition to the burgeoning art scene engendered by the biennial (now triennial). In the years following the advent of Prospect.1, artist-run spaces came to exert great influence on museum operations, and notable Louisiana-based artists like Willie Birch, whose large-scale charcoal drawings were shown in the Great Hall of the NOMA during Prospect.1, have garnered larger audiences as a result.

Later iterations of Prospect have not been as explicitly tied to the city's revitalization narrative, but rather have addressed themes key to its historical legacy, such as slavery, colonialism, and environmental resilience-issues that are now current throughout the United States. Prospect's championing of these themes, and of the American South as an artistic center, anticipated larger shifts in the contemporary art world over the last decade. In addition, the curatorial choice to exhibit Louisiana-based artists like Chandra McCormick, Keith Calhoun, Deborah Luster, and Garrett Bradley alongside those with existing global audiences such as Nicole Eisenman, Pope.L, Camille Henrot, John Akomfrah, and Theaster Gates has established an opportunity for experimentation among prominent local and regional voices in this decade.

Fostering a connection between Louisiana and the broader art market, Prospect.1 also initiated a recognizable shift toward the new in institutions such as NOMA and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. The 2008 event laid the groundwork for many exhibitions of contemporary art in the current moment as well as in the coming years. In a city otherwise so defined by its history, much still lies ahead.
-Kristina Kay Robinson

Tim Burton
-William S. Smith

The Clock

Christian Marclay's twenty-four-hour video installation, The Clock, had its 2010 premiere at White Cube in London and went on to win a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2011. Comprising thousands of clips appropriated from films and television shows ( Safety Last!, Gaslight, Double Indemnity; "Mission Impossible," "ER," "The X-Files") produced over the previous hundred years, the compilation functions as a chronometer in itself, with depicted clocks and verbal references corresponding to the time at the viewer's own location. Marclay's obsessive montage was assembled over some two years in collaboration with six research assistants; Marclay edited this high-low material (Laurence Olivier's Hamlet alongside forgettable commercial films) using a single aspect ratio. Collaborator Quentin Chiappetta provided expert linking of soundtracks, a key to the work's immersive and eerily engaging polyvocal quality. Famously, The Clock holds spectators' attention in a relentless grip through its suspension of resolution, stringing action along between and among various truncated scenes and gestures: a woman walks to a door in one scene and, after a cut, a couple exits a building; a man looks up from his watch and, in a subsequent shot, the camera scans an unrelated landscape.

The Clock has been compared to other works of appropriation-based durational video such as Douglas Gordon's 1993 installation 24 Hour Psycho, a silent projection that extends the Hitchcock film into an all-day affair. However, The Clock's treatment of time is quite different from that embraced by Gordon-or, for that matter, such auteurs of slowed-down cinema as Andy Warhol ( Sleep, Empire) or Wang Bing ( West of the Tracks). Over the course of his daylong video, Marclay does not make his viewer feel the lugubrious infinity of the here-and-now so much as its unbearable brevity and disconcerting ineffability.

An immensely popular yet ambivalent commentary on the legacy of movies and television in the internet age, The Clock illustrates the technological mediation of contemporary life-in all its thoroughness, speed, and hypotactic accumulation of images. The aesthetics of the database take over, and the video's thousands of protagonists each have only seconds to distinguish themselves. As director and critic Chris Petit opined, it's like "YouTube for gallery space."
-Lucy Ives

Okwui Enwezor: Making the Art World Global

When curator Okwui Enwezor died last year of cancer last year at age fifty-five, he was eulogized not only for his wit, gravitas, and charismatic curiosity, but for fundamentally reshaping his field. By wedding formal experimentation to a serious engagement with postcolonial history, he transformed curatorial expectations.

Documenta 11 in 2002 set the tone for the ongoing biennial boom. Enwezor treated the exhibition in Kassel, Germany, as the culmination of a series of conferences in locales from St. Lucia to New Delhi, a gesture of "deterritorialization" that also emphasized his commitment to understanding art as a kind of knowledge production, a means for grappling with the truths of a globalized world dominated by Eurocentrism. He selected far more filmmakers than painters, showing both experimental works and documentaries of life in the Third World. The program comprised more hours of footage than any viewer could reasonably watch, underscoring the exhibition's embrace of pluralism.

"The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994" debuted at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich in 2001 and traveled to MoMA PS1 in New York in 2002. Enwezor's survey didn't present postcolonial Africa as a single story; instead, its attention to multiple perspectives and political realities dovetailed with its inclusion of diverse mediums: poster design and film, architecture, and conceptual art.

As an adjunct curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, Enwezor organized a pair of paradigm-shifting shows. "Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography" (2006) mixed conceptual work with fashion photography, photojournalism, and documentary, providing counternarratives to the images of suffering too often represented Africa in the popular media. "Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art" (2008), explored photography's connection to memory and record-keeping, loss, and imagery-and argued that bureaucratic control would intensify as digital images proliferated. The show typified Enwezor's complex critical position. He staked his career on photography-his breakout exhibition was "In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present," at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1996-but he never stopped questioning the foundations of the medium.

Some curators work as advocates, raising the profiles of underrecognized artists and histories. Others innovate the exhibition as a medium. For Enwezor, these two impulses were inseparable. He demonstrated that the presentation of artwork from outside the Eurocentric canon requires new ways of looking.

Public Art Revival

Among the significant developments in the art of the aughts was a resurgence of interest in large-scale public artworks. Rather than serving simply as urban decoration, these projects were often destinations in themselves: projects like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates, temporarily installed in Central Park in 2005, generated millions of dollars in tourism revenue for New York, while Chris Burden's Urban Light (2008) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was an early social media hit.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates: Central Park, New York, 1979-2005 (2005)
For sixteen days in February 2005, the pathways of New York's Central Park were lined with orange gates bearing lengths of fluttering fabric. Entirely self-financed, the Gates project was the culmination of a twenty-five-year-long campaign by the artists, who were repeatedly turned down by city officials until they found an advocate in the newly elected Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate, 2006
Unveiled in Chicago's Millennium Park in May 2006, Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate -nicknamed "The Bean" because of its distinctive shape-is a massive curved volume of highly polished stainless steel, seamlessly welded to evoke the appearance of liquid mercury. Considered one of Kapoor's most popular works, its irregular form produces warped reflections of visitors and the surrounding skyline.

Chris Burden, Urban Light, 2008
Comprising 202 antique cast-iron street lamps from the 1920s and '30s arranged in a loose grid, Chris Burden's Urban Light, installed outside the Wilshire Boulevard entrance of LACMA, is visible twenty-four hours a day, with the lights going on at dusk and off at dawn. According to the artist, the work is a "statement about what constitutes a civilized and sophisticated society: safe after dark and beautiful to behold."

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15 exhibitions that defined the aughts, including Marina Abramović's "Seven Easy Pieces," Tim Burton's MoMA blockbuster, and more.

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The early 2000s can at the same time look small and parochial. Escapism was rampant: psychedelia, microutopias, and hipsterism. But the art world also saw a global expansion

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For many people in the visual arts community, mainstream and marginal alike, this was the big chance, and they, too, worked furiously behind the scenes

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Its eponymous generational cohort is ascendant. The computer systems many feared would malfunction at the stroke of midnight in 2000 have only entangled us further.

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Changes in Art Practices in the Last 20 Years

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Kehide Wiley, “The Death of Hyacinth (Ndey Buri Mboup” (2022), oil on canvas, Galerie Templon, Paris. Photo: Ugo Carmeni Changes in Art Practices in the Last 20 Years ByCathy Locke and Georgia Modi The past 20 years have seen a significant evolution in artists’ practices, driven by technological advancements and soci

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The past 20 years have seen a significant evolution in artists’ practices, driven by technological advancements and societal attitudes toward art.

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The digitalization of art has been the most significant change in artists’ practices in the last 20 years. Digital technology has revolutionized how artists create, distribute, and exhibit their work, opening up new possibilities and opportunities for creative expression.

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This article was published by Larry Qualls. Larry published this article on December 14, 2016. This article was published to show what art in New York was like in the 2000s