above: Yayoi Kusama in front of her artwork 'Pumpkin'
What is Contemporary Art?
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that continue the challenging of boundaries that was already well underway in the 20th century.
Yayoi Kusama 1929 - present
Yayoi Kusama (草間 彌生, Kusama Yayoi, born 22 March, 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan.
Helen Frankenthaler
1928- 2011
Helen Frankenthaler's photos, with her large scale abstract expressionist paintings published in Life Magazine, catapulted her into the everyday American's discussion of "What is Art?" and brought woman into the forefront of the male dominated art scene in America.
The image of the young artist in her studio with her large scale paintings graced the cover of Life Magazine, in 1956.
Damien Hirst
1965 - present
Damien Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at $384 million in the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List. Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved, sometimes having been dissected, in formaldehyde.