5 Contemporary Artists

Contemporary art refers to art produced today. Whether that is paintings, sculptures, photography, installation, performance, or video art. The definition may seem simple, but its open to interpretation. Different individuals look at contemporary art in a range of ways. Because of that, the exact starting point of the genre is still up for debate. Many art historians say that contemporary art started in the late 1960s or early 1970s, which was the end of modern art. Contemporary art as a whole is distinguished by the lack of a uniform, organizing principle, ideology, or "ism". Its diversity makes it a popular genre amongst people today. I have chosen these following five artists because they experiment with art further than just making a painting. They use installations, live exhibitions with themselves included, and photography. They should be recognized more than just female artists who have created groundbreaking artworks as women, they are simply badass artists.

The Dinner Party created by contemporary artist Judy Chicago between 1974 and 1979 is located at the Brooklyn Museum. It is known as the first most regarded feminist artwork ever made. It symbolizes the history of women in civilization, Chicago picked 39 mythical and historical women to be at her table. The triangular table sits 39 elaborate place settings, each attributed to the women she picked. Some women sitting at the table would be Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Virginia Woolf. Each place setting has a hand painted china plate, ceramic cutlery, chalice, and a napkin with an embroidered gold edge. Underneath the table is The Heritage Floor made up of more than 2,000 tiles, each with inscriptions of 998 women and only one man. But this one man named Kresilas was only included because he was mistaken to be a women named Cresilla.

Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1974-1979

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation. She is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Kusama's work is based on conceptual art and attributes feminism, pop art, abstract expressionism mixed with psychological and sexual content. She is acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan. She is still alive and well today at the age of 90, still creating art and having exhibitions around the world. Her most recent exhibition, Every Day I Pray for Love, I had the pleasure of viewing in person at the David Zwirner Gallery in NYC. The exhibition is all new work made by Kusama including sculptures, paintings, and a new Infinity Mirror Room.

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirror Room, 2019

Ana Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba in the year 1948. Mendieta was born into a wealthy family, but was sent away to the United States because of her father's work against Fidel Castro. In the United States, she was raised in orphanages and foster homes until in 1966 her mother and brother arrived from Cuba. Her start in the art world was when she studied at the University of Iowa and met many New York artists. Mendieta later moved to New York after she finished her education in Iowa. Her work became conceptual and performance based, the staged events were documented by photographs and that too became her artwork. In a gallery named AIR, opened by all women artists, she held her first solo show in 1978. Mendieta's most famous work is her Silueta series, where she would lay down, have her body outlined in the ground, then putting flowers, stones, or sticks around it. Her work is very postmodern because it goes against the traditional way of making art. It pushes the boundaries to what art is and can be, to the way the audience takes it in and interprets the message behind the art. Even though Mendieta isn't alive, I hold her dear to my heart. My mom too was robbed from the opportunity of living in Cuba's beauty just as she was. You can see her sadness present in every one of her artworks and her longing of figuring out where she belongs.

Ana Mendieta, Body Tracks, 1970s

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist who is part of the Pictures Generation of art. Her work is widely known around the world and her work consists of monochrome photographs with slogans that deal with cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality. She initially started her career as a designer, than later became a picture editor for several publications. Using the same techniques she used in advertising and mass communication, Kruger addresses issues of language and signs to explore the subjects of gender and identity. Much of Kruger's work places a message in a white font with bold letters in a red box, usually with an image in the background. When Supreme came along in 1994, the creator James Jebbia stole the logo format for the brand from Kruger. Even the name "supreme" was taken from Kruger's main influences of Russian style Suprematism, created by artist Kazimar Malevich.

Barbara Kruger vs Supreme

Nancy Nan Goldin is an American photographer who is internationally acclaimed as an American contemporary artist from New York. Since her first gallery exhibition in 1973, Goldin has been gaining attention for her intensely personal and sexualized photographs that are spontaneous. Goldin graduated from Boston/Tufts University in the late 1970s then moved to NYC where she started documenting the new music scene that took over. Another subject that she loved to record was the city's vibrant gay and transsexual scene. She has made provocative series that depict drug use and violent couples. Her photographs since the 1990s have shifted subjects to NYC's skylines, landscapes, and intimate photographs of her private life.

Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1981

Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1981

Work Cited:

“Nan Goldin.” Artnet, http://www.artnet.com/artists/nan-goldin/.

Guerrilla Girls (1998). The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York, NY: Penguin Books

“Home - Barbara Kruger - Photograph Collage, Advertising, Slogans, Art.” Home - Barbara Kruger - Photograph Collage, Advertising, Slogans, Art, www.barbarakruger.com/.

“Ana Mendieta Art, Bio, Ideas.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist/mendieta-ana/.

“Information: Yayoi Kusama.” Information | Yayoi Kusama, yayoi-kusama.jp/e/information/index.html.

Judy Chicago, www.judychicago.com/.