by Jon Lackman | 2 February 2009 | Books, Modern, Teaching
Victoria Laurie of The Australian writes about Art & Today, a new survey by Eleanor Heartney of contemporary art from the last three decades, which is organized not by chronology, country, medium, style, or “ism”:
“One of the big changes I would say in the past 25 years is that art is much less about a kind of dialogue with itself and its past and more about a dialogue with the outside world,” she says. Hence the titles of the 16 chapters in her book: Art and Popular Culture, Art and Politics, Art and Time, Art and Technology, Art and Propaganda, and so on … Heartney’s insights are thought-provoking, even if they provoke disagreement. A shorthand summary of a few points goes thus: contemporary artists are more like novelists whose narratives tend not to lead anywhere. Art is no longer reassuring. The feminist art movement is important and does tend to have a narrative, and women artists brought the body back into art …
One might venture to ask why so few South American artists (fewer than a dozen) found their way into the book. Or Germans (fewer than 50), or British (about 45) or Chinese artists (5). Almost half of the 400 featured artists are Americans, while four Australians are listed: Ron Mueck, Patricia Piccinini, Natalie Jeremijenko and Tracey Moffatt. I suggest to Heartney that the Western art world is yet to overcome its egocentricity, treating other cultural spheres as fertile hunting grounds rather than places where contemporary art with distinctively Islamic, Oriental, Latin American or even Eastern European roots is being produced. “I think American culture has been hugely impacted by the rise of China, of India, of Asia generally,” responds Heartney, perhaps inadvertently proving my point.
