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Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since World War II.
A common concern since the early part of the 20th century is the question of what constitutes art. This concern can be seen running through the modern and postmodern periods. Contemporary art can sometimes seem at odds with a public that does not feel that art and its institutions share its values.designation.
The late 1900s saw major socio-economic, cultural, political and also educational changes the world over, which undoubtedly influenced art, amongst many other productive fields. Contemporary artists chose to highlight the idea or impulse behind their work rather than concentrate on the medium or method used.

Unlike earlier artists, they were not deterred by the thought of using various media and techniques in combination, and, open to experimentation, they pioneered the concept of setting their audience thinking about the subject as the most important aim of the artwork. Topics like racism, global warming, cloning and biotechnology, international politics, human rights, spirituality and economics are all reflected in the work of contemporary artists.

The advent of contemporary art marked the breaking of shackles by artists to move from the conventional inclination towards aesthetic beauty and purity to address subjects such as politics, which affect the lay man. This is what brought the common man closer to the artist who didn't seem 'high and mighty' like an untouchable philosopher any more.

Associated Documents

• A Miracle in Sound (PDF, 526.9 KB)

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and artworks feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non-sequitur. Leader Andre Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.
Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities of World War I and the most important centre of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s on, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy and social theory.
Influenced by the theories of the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (German, 1856-1939), the images found in surrealist works are as confusing and startling as those of dreams. Surrealist works can have a realised though irrational style, describing dreamlike fantasties. This is evident in the works of René Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967), Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1988), Yves Tanguy (French, 1900-1955), and Alfred Pellan (Canadian, 1906-1988). Or, it could have a more abstraact style, as in the works of Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983), Max Ernst (German, 1891-1976), and André Masson (French, 1896-1987), who invented spontaneous techniques which were modelled on the psychotherapeutic procedure of "free association" as a means to eliminate conscious control in order to express the workings of the unconscious mind.

Having developed a code in the last year of my degree, my current work continues to cipher various pieces of text, such as concrete poetry and song lyrics.

At present, I am ciphering particular texts from The Dominion Post newspaper and find myself thoroughly engrossed in this system.

My other main interest is the Incan system of accounting, known as Quipu. Quipu was many things to the Inca and their predecessors: not only an accounting system used by the Imperial Accountants, the Quipucamayus; but also a system for census taking, strategic information during times of war, mine outputs and work forces and, it is now thought, this system was also used to record poems and legends. Each year an inventory of the entire Incan Empire was made and each knot, its colour, position and number represented a syllable. For example, a red cord is thought to have indicated fighting men.

Tania Willis 2010