by Jon Lackman | 14 April 2010 | Career, Contemporary
In a recent issue of American Art (23:3), Joshua Shannon writes that the field of contemporary art history is now producing more job openings than “Nineteenth-Century Art and the Art of the United States combined – the two boom fields of a generation ago,” but that it is also changing rapidly. For starters, its center of gravity is shifting away from the postwar period to eras closer to the present, and whereas it once focused heavily on American artists,
Art from around the world is now justly the subject of the discipline [of contemporary art history], with Latin American topics perhaps taking the lead. To date, we have no good textbook to help us reform our courses, but Terry Smith of the University of Pittsburgh is at work on one … [T]he research methods and writing styles in contemporary art history are diversifying, too … [Approaches pioneered in October] clustered around an attention to the unusual forms and structures of artworks and to the radical potential (either for politics or for collective patterns of thought) of those innovations … [Lately there] has been a turn toward more detailed historicization of recent art …
Shannon argues that it is so difficult to define the field – chronologically, geographically and methodologically – that it may not survive as a useful category. He also suggests that it’s impossible for one individual to amass enough regional knowledge to adequately treat each part of the world. Perhaps the subject should be team taught instead, even if this requires historians of earlier periods to brush up on the contemporary scenes in the countries they study.
Shannon discusses his new book, The Disappearance of Objects, at Rorotoko:
http://www.rorotoko.com/index.php/article/joshua_shannon_book_interview_disappearance_objects_new_york_art_postmodern/