The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is Contemporary Art, although more specifically it might be used to refer to art created within a decade of the current moment. Not all art labeled ‘contemporary’ is modern or postmodern, and the term contemporary encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist or late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject Modernism for Postmodernism or other reasons. Arthur Danto argues explicitly in After the End of Art that contemporaneity is the broader term, and that postmodern objects represent a sub-sector of the contemporary movement which replaced modernity and Modernism.

Radical Movements in Modern Art

Modern art, radical movements in Modernism, and radical trends regarded as influential and potential precursors to late Modernism and Postmodernism emerged around World War I and particularly in its aftermath. With the introduction of the use of industrial artifacts in art came movements such as Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism as well as techniques such as collage and art forms such as cinema and the rise of reproduction as a means of creating artworks. Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and many others created important and influential works from found objects. There was about Modernism also a kind of implicit idea of the forward and inevitable movement of human culture. WWI and especially WWII disrupted this idea and made the Modern moment more problematic.

Late Modernism vs. Postmodernism

The discourse surrounding the terms Late Modernism and Postmodern art is fraught with many differing opinions. There are those who argue against any division into Modern and Post-Modern periods. Some don’t believe that the period called Modernism is over or even near the end, and there certainly is no agreement that all art after Modernism is Post-Modern, nor that Post- Modern art is universally separated from Modernism; many critics see it as merely another phase in Modern art or another form of late Modernism. There is, however, a consensus that a profound change in the perception of works of art, and works of art themselves, has occurred and that a new era has been emerging on the world stage since at least the 1960s.

Late Modernism describes movements which arose from and react against trends in Modernism, rejecting some aspect of Modernism, while fully developing the conceptual potentiality of the modernist enterprise. In some descriptions Postmodernism as a period in art history is completed, whereas in others it is a continuing movement in Contemporary art. In art, the specific traits of Modernism which are cited generally consist of: formal purity, medium specificity, art for art’s sake, the possibility of authenticity in art, the importance or even possibility of universal truth in art, and the importance of an avant-garde and originality. This last point is one of particular controversy in art, where many institutions argue that being visionary, forward-looking, cutting edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and that postmodern art therefore represents a contradiction of the value of art of our times.

One compact definition of Postmodernism is that it rejects Modernism’s grand narratives of artistic direction, eradicates the boundaries between high and low forms of art, disrupts the genre and its conventions with collision, collage, pastiche, and fragmentation. Postmodern art comes from the viewpoint that all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions which cannot be overturned by critique or later events.

Rauschenberg and Johns

Both men fought in WWII and used the Post-War G.I. Bill to study art. They met at the Black Mountain art school in North Carolina being run at that time by Josef and Annie Albers.

Eventually they became a couple and moved to New York City into two lofts in the same downtown building. Rauschenberg was already creating avant-garde art like his “all whites”, or canvases painted in that single color. Many elements of the art might be seen in contrast to the preeminent movement of the day, Abstract Expressionism. The Combines of Rauschenberg which combined paint with found objects and other materials took Duchamp’s Readymades one step further.

Johns used encaustic paint (pigment in hot wax), often over newsprint to mimic the brushwork of the Abstract Expressionists without the actual hand of the artist being involved. This ironic remove suggests the issues addressed by Post-Modern artists in the decades to come.

While their partnership was relatively short-lived, Rauschenberg and Johns inspired each other in a conversation that took Modern art in America to a new and unique place.

Happenings

Alan Kaprow was the major innovator behind the performances called Happenings in the 1950’s and 60’s. He studied at Columbia University with Meyer Shapiro, but also at the New School with John Cage whose experiments in “chance operations” and other ideas coming rom Cage’s interest in Zen Buddhism were influential. Happenings were often a kind of street theater, although not all took place in the street, and involved a sometimes invited, sometimes ad hoc audience who would interact with whatever was going on. These often highly scripted events would become part of the environment that would become true Conceptual art. Both Happenings and Pop Art began to remove art from the rarified elite world of museums and galleries and insist on work that engaged with the contemporary world as it was. This disruptive and revolutionary mind-set was also part of the zeitgeist in America following the country’s entrance into the Vietnam conflict. Revolution was in the air and artists were making work that was very much of the time.