Art as a professional and academic discipline

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Art as a professional and academic discipline

By: Frank Bennett

Art as a professional and academic discipline has a long history spanning several generations. Through this long history it has also undergone a series of interesting and somewhat confusing transformations representing what is often termed the various movements and schools of thought. Therefore contemporary art as it is today is in many ways an outcome of all that took place during the centuries past. A very likely question to be asked would be, in the light of all these developments what then is contemporary art? Simply put, contemporary art is an ongoing development of artistic work building on the foundation of what has been created already. It is against this background that this essay will critically examine the contribution of legendary artists in the 1960s to 1970s in shaping what can be said to be contemporary art within the framework of the definition provided above.

It should also be noted that contemporary art cannot be treated in isolation of the 1960-1970 period apparently due to the fact that this period alone excited much interest than any other art historical period. It was an era characterized by uncompromising critical artistic practices with leading figures like August Rodin, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso featuring very prominently. The period between 1960 to 1970 serves a significant purpose within the context of the discussion here fundamentally for a couple of reasons; it was within this period that the advent of the terms “postmodernism” and “modernism” made their debut imprint on the industry. Thus on this premise it can be said that this period served as the birth place of what we have today. In other words, the whole story began right there leading to what we have today. In addition, this period also provides a comprehensive timescale to facilitate the process of classifying the various artistic movements with particular relevance to their significance to our contemporary art.
The usage of the term “concept” is said to have begun in the early 1960s, however the impact of it was heavily felt in the latter period of that decade with the advent of the works of people like Joseph Kossuth that opened the door for it to receive a concretized recognition as a movement. It is not widely now agreed that conceptual art is the precursor of conceptualism in contemporary art.

In a number of respects conceptualism shares a number of similarities with minimalism. Fundamentally, it is seen to be providing a forceful confrontation of the known structures for making, viewing and propagation of art work. Minimalism and conceptualism have also being at the forefront of criticizing the lost glamour and pageantry of the inherently useful components in art work to an external aggressor. Not surprisingly, the advent of this movement has sparked off so much debate within the field of contemporary art.
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