Published: June 6, 2019 | Last Updated: June 11, 2025
What is Contemporary art? Definition & Meaning
Contemporary art is art made from the late 1960s onward that reflects current cultural, social, political, or technological themes, often through conceptual approaches and time-bound aesthetics.
When Did Contemporary Art Begin?
The term “contemporary art” typically describes work created from the late 1960s or early 1970s to the present. This period marks the decline of Modernist ideals and the rise of postmodern tendencies, when artists began rejecting medium purity, authorship, and traditional aesthetic boundaries. Key movements like Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Performance Art, and Land Art reshaped what art could be.
While the exact cutoff between modern and contemporary remains debated, many historians agree that the late 20th century introduced a fundamentally different approach. Contemporary art includes painting, sculpture, video, performance, photography, installation, sound, and digital work. What ties it together is not a visual style but its conceptual grounding and response to present-day conditions.
How to Tell If Art Is Contemporary
Not all art made today qualifies as contemporary art. Scholars and curators often refer to four indicators when identifying whether an artwork fits within the category:
1. Timeframe
Most contemporary art is created after the late 1960s. Earlier works from this period, such as those by Eva Hesse or Joseph Beuys, are seen as foundational. Art made today in traditional styles may still fall outside the category if it doesn’t engage current ideas or materials.
2. Artist Intention
The artist must create the work as a contribution to contemporary discourse. A painting of a landscape made in 2024 isn’t automatically contemporary unless the artist intends it as part of a conversation around art today. This distinction becomes especially important with photography, street art, or installations, where everyday objects may only count as art through context and intent.
3. Time-Bound Aesthetics
Contemporary works often look like products of their era. This doesn’t mean they can’t use traditional techniques, but their appearance, format, or material must speak to a specific moment. A hyperreal digital collage made in 2023 has a different time stamp than a 19th-century-style figure drawing, even if both were made today.
4. Contemporary Subject Matter
Most contemporary art addresses present-day concerns, including technology, surveillance, climate change, gender, race, identity, and capitalism. This thematic focus helps place the work within the current cultural moment. It’s one reason why political or conceptual art tends to dominate major exhibitions and biennials.
Key Characteristics of Contemporary Art
While the category is broad, several patterns recur across media and geographies:
- Concept often outweighs technique or beauty
- Use of mixed media, installation, and digital formats
- Direct engagement with real-world issues
- Interdisciplinary forms (combining art, science, activism, or technology)
- Interactive or site-specific environments
Major Artists and Examples
Yayoi Kusama uses mirrors, dots, and immersive repetition to build disorienting environments. Her work merges trauma, selfhood, and spectacle in ways that speak directly to the commodification of identity.
Ai Weiwei critiques censorship, surveillance, and forced migration through conceptual sculptures, documentaries, and public installations. His 2009 piece Remembering, composed of 9,000 backpacks, memorialized schoolchildren killed in China’s Sichuan earthquake due to corrupt construction practices.
Tomás Saraceno creates speculative architecture influenced by climate science and interspecies communication. His floating habitats and spiderweb-based installations imagine alternatives to life on Earth under ecological collapse.
Contemporary Art and Film
Several contemporary artists have crossed into cinema. Steve McQueen, originally a Turner Prize–winning video artist, directed 12 Years a Slave (2013, Fox Searchlight), blending formal precision with historical urgency.
Sam Taylor-Johnson, another gallery-trained artist, directed Nowhere Boy (2009, The Weinstein Company) and Fifty Shades of Grey (2015, Universal).
Contemporary art has also shaped the aesthetic of film. The slow pacing, glowing monochromes, and structural repetition in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017, A24) owe much to minimalist installation art.
Directors like Peter Greenaway and Matthew Barney directly cite gallery practices in their cinematic structure, costume design, and nonlinear narrative.
Summing Up
Contemporary art begins in the late 20th century but remains defined more by how it responds to the present than when it was made. Its emphasis on concept, relevance, and evolving formats makes it harder to classify but more aligned with today’s cultural complexity. Whether displayed in museums, on screens, or on city streets, contemporary art reflects how we live and how we envision the future.
Read Next: Curious how art movements shaped film?
Explore our full Visual Art Timeline to see how styles like Surrealism, Cubism, and Suprematism influenced cinema’s most experimental moments.
Or keep browsing our Film Movements & World Cinema section for more on the histories that shaped screen culture around the globe.
