Here’s a random and short observation I wanted to share with you. I have been subscribed to the e-flux newsletter for a long time now to stay informed about what’s happening in the art world, and being a man of music first and of art after, I cannot help but notice how self-aware protagonists of art can be. Not a week goes by without another exhibition opening or another book being published that tries to reboot our understanding of what art is or should be.
It could be my ageing eyes, but I don’t see such extensive (yet eloquent) self-gazing in other threads of the arts. This made me go to Google and see if my observation could be supported by data. Here are the results of my lazy, intuitive, non-scientific research:
1. “What is contemporary art?” – 73,100 results
2. “What is contemporary music?” – 15,800 results
3. “What is contemporary dance?” – 11,400 results
4. “What is contemporary literature?” – 6,950 results
5. “What is contemporary architecture?” – 5,650 results
6. “What is contemporary theatre?” – 1,470 results
Not bad, eh? What to make of this? Are people desperate to know what contemporary art really is? Are they clueless? Or does art change its appearance as much as Lady Gaga does in one video?
Let’s have a look at how other contemporaries fare:
- “What is contemporary opera?” – 3 results (perhaps the answer to this question is so simple it is not worth writing about)
- “What is contemporary design?” – 28,300 results (between music and art: the proof that designers are half artist, half rockstar)
And last but not least:
- “What is contemporary?” – 508,000 results (and a very good question indeed: I mean, what really is contemporary, man?)
Having given this a longer thought, one hypothesis for the Google difference (besides perhaps the innate critical attitude of art) could be the differences in economic ecosystems of art and music. Whereas contemporary art is sold by bundles at fairs, auctions and in galleries, contemporary music is struggling to find an audience for its concerts and recordings. It would be interesting to compare the economics of it all. My feeling is that a) there is more money flowing around in avantgarde art than in avantgarde music, and b) that this creates a (supply of and a demand for a) peripheral infrastructure for symposia, books and special interest groups. If this is true, is avantgarde art then in better condition than avantgarde music? Following this thought, and looking at other domains in the economy, I would say there is more R&D involved in contemporary art than in contemporary music, creating a widening gap between the two in terms of vitality and adoption.
But this is just ungrounded speculation, without any clear definitions of all the terms or sets of data to wade through. I wish someone smarter and more experienced would help me organise my thoughts and give me some directions. I think there is something valuable to learned from the comparison between contemporary art and music.
Therefore I decided to post this anyway.
Related posts: Contemporary Art: Who Cares? | Laying a new foundation for arts funding | New project: opening up an ancient castle | Non-fiction in 2009 (and we’ve only just begun..) | New column in Metropolis M: Museum Manager 2011 |
9 Comments
Non-fiction > What is contemporary? http://twurl.nl/2ft78h
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
RT @juhavantzelfde: Non-fiction > What is contemporary? http://twurl.nl/2ft78h
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
“What is contemporary?” 508,000 results. Anyone from Google, Tate or IRCAM here to help me out? http://bit.ly/bemnuk
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Interesting observation. I think much can be said about the inflation of the term ‘contemporary’ in, erm, contemporary discourse, but it’s not exactly clear to me what you mean by ‘contemporary music’. What does this term in- and exclude?
Still, one of the things you touch upon in your post (‘the art market vs other markets’) is very relevant in this regard. Contemporary art is a highly commodified product that is traded in a large global market, in infinitely more physical variations than contemporary music (which is distributed, broadly speaking, in two different guises: as live music and as recorded music – there are no other ‘things’ to buy here. While in art, it’s all about object pluriformity, and is therefore subject to a kind of object fetishism that is more or less unknown to the field of contemporary music (apart from special record editions, etc.). This makes for a fundamentally different relationship between consumer and product). The attraction of the volatile speculative market value of art – the auction records, the hypes – is a force not to be underestimated: it lends it an aura of sexiness that consists of a unique blend of intellectual-critical superstructure and market capitalism substructure, to put it in Marxist terms. Everybody wants to have a piece of that! Or to at least sit next to the guy that gets a piece of that!
To go back to the numbers: there have always been much more art students than music students. That should account for the difference, too.
Вот это пост!
Thanks for your thoughtful answer Xander. In the non-monetary blogosphere attention and commitment are our currency, and this is a generous amount you just donated. I like your fetishism, and it might invite the ever present question ‘is this art?’ along to justify the transactions.
More food for thought, much obliged!
@juhavantzelfde is wondering what is more vital, contemporary art or music? @_nonfiction http://bit.ly/bemnuk I’d say, sound art.
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
RT @michielviersel: @juhavantzelfde is wondering what is more vital, contemporary art or music? @_nonfiction http://bit.ly/bemnuk I’d say, sound art.
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“self-aware protagonists of art”
you realise how soaked in irony that is?
(apart from the personal irony, being a champion “extensive (yet eloquent) self-gazer ” yourself…)
- out of the 8 comments on this thread, 7 of them are yourselves, rereretweeting/gazing at yourselves…
come on … pull up, refocus…