What Is Contemporary Art?

Historians have been debating for years what "contemporary art," which implies timelessness, actually means. For now, it seems there's a consensus that "contemporary art" is a concept that signals the end of modern art. Everyone also agrees that this concept refers to an era rather than an event happening in the present, and that this era is global. In the contemporary period, art evolves into communication and finance, putting an end to modernism and the avant-garde; even to postmodernism, which is defined as a pastiche of modernism. There is a truth that art reveals in our time, and that is the market. So, in a sense, "contemporary art" is the art of the end of art. But it might also be the art of a completely different beginning, one that will express new truths and prophecies to us. This possibility, in discussions about contemporary art, saves it from being seen merely as an environment of hegemonic surrender, transforming it into a search for a contemporary criticality and politics. As Giorgio Agamben states, perhaps "contemporaneity" means criticality.
What is Contemporary Art? is an introduction to the ongoing debates on both contemporary art and "contemporaneity." Therefore, it focuses on texts that examine these topics in an ontological and semantic context, rather than with specific problems and examples.