Contemporary Art: World Currents argues that, in recent decades, a worldwide shift from modern to contemporary art has occurred. Artists everywhere have embraced the contemporary world’s teeming multiplicity, its proliferating differences and its challenging complexities.

This book shows how contemporary art achieved definitive force in the markets and museums of the major art centres during the 1980s. It then became a global phenomenon as artworlds everywhere began to connect more closely, to become contemporaneous with each other. New communicative technologies and expanding social media are now shaping the future of art. Terry Smith offers the first account of these changes, from their historical beginnings to the present day.

Acknowledgments

General.Introduction: Contemporary Art in Transition: From Late Modern Art to Now

I BECOMING CONTEMPORARY

IN EUROAMERICA

1.LATE MODERN ART BECOMES CONTEMPORARY

Transformations in Late Modern Art:Its Contemporary Aspects

Situationism, Gutai, Happenings: Art into Life/Life into Art

Pop: The Social.Mirror, Refracted

The Object MateriaLized: MinimaLism

Earthworks: Extending ScuLpture's FieLd

ConceptuaLism: Reconceiving Art

PoLiticaL Interventions: Direct Democracy, Body, Solf, SexuaLity

2.THE CONTEMPORARY ART BOOM

The Postmodern Return to Figuration

The Two Germanys

Trauma of the Victimized

The ItaLian Transavantgarde

The American Scene Again

British SchooLs

Critical Postmodernism

Ret ro-Sensational.ist Art

Remodernism in Sculpture and Photography

Big Photography

Spectacle Architecture as Contemporary Art

Contemporary Art Becomes a StyLe

II THE TRANSNATIONAL TRANSITION

Introduction

3.RUSSIA AND {EAST OF] EUROPE

Russia

Art under Late SociaLism

Russian Art Becomes Contemporary

Late Col.d War Modern Art Elsewhere(East of) Europe

Parodies of Official Imagery

Performance Art Tests the Limits

CzechosLova kia

Hungary

The BaLtic Nations

After the Fall: Post-Communist Art?

Romania

The Breakup of YugosLavia

Beyond "Eastern" and "Central" versus

"Western" Europe

Transl,ating the European Ideal.

4.SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA, THE CARIBBEAN

South America

Argentina

Brazil

CoLombia

ChiLe

Mexico

Cuba

Elsewhere in the Caribbean

Seeing the WorLd's Currents

5.CHINA AND EAST ASIA

China

Modern Chinese Art

Contemporary Chinese Art

Taiwan

Japan

ExperimentatArt in the 1950s to 1970s

Contemporary Art

Korea

6.INDIA, SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

India

Pakistan

Thail.and

Indonesia

The Philippines

7.OCEANIA

Papua New Guinea

Aotearoa/New Zealand

Australia

8.AFRICA

Modern Art in Africa

South Africa under Apartheid

Popular Painting and Sculpture in Central.Africa

Commercial.to Art Photography

South Africa After Apartheid

African Art Enters the International.Circuit

9.WEST ASIA

Iraq

Jordan

Iran

Palestine

Israel.

From Hurufiyah to Contemporary Cosmopol.itanism

IIICONTEMPORARYCONCERNS

Introduction

10.WORLD PICTURES: MAKING ART POLITICALLY

One World

GI.obal.Networks

Intervening Critically

Profil.es in Shadowl.and

Bare Labor

11.CLIMATE CHANGE: ART AND ECOLOGY

Art and Environmentalism

Crisis and Catastrophe

Col.l.ective Actions, Sustainabl.e Solutions

Designs for Living

Experimental.Geography

Imaging the Future Dystopia

Eco-Chic, Greenwashing, Spectacl.e

12.SOCIAL MEDIA: AFFECTS OF TIME

Mediation, Immersion, Intervention, Agency

To Be with Time Is AI.I.We Ask

13.CODA: PERMANENT TRANSITION

Notes

Select Bibliography

Selected Contemporary Art Websites

Index

Picture Credits

Note of Thanks