Close Encounters of Art and Physics by Laura Pesce

Author:Laura Pesce
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030227302
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

L. PesceClose Encounters of Art and Physics https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22730-2_10

10. Timeless Time

Laura Pesce1

(1)Campiglia Marittima, Italy

Laura Pesce

Contemporary art, also referred to as postmodern art, is a movement concerned with the way art is made and with the immediate effects it has on its spectators. The word “spectator” is used instead of “viewer of the world”, because postmodern art resembles a theatre.

Contemporary art focusses on developing new ideas and using different formats, such as installations, assemblages of mixed media, and videos, to express them. The handicraft in the work itself is secondary, in contrast to the previous movement of the modernists, for whom craftmanship was a very important aspect. There are other approaches in postmodern art, besides the conceptual ones, including hyper-realism, photo realism, and minimalism. All these contemporary movements originated in the 1960s, starting with pop art by Andy Warhol. Major artists today are Damien Hirst, Ai Wei Wei, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Sol Le Witt, just to name some of the most famous ones.

Take, for example, Jenny Holzer. She is American, famous as a conceptual artist, using videos, installations, and above all, LED technology, which has become her signature and medium of choice. She is the first woman to represent her country, the United States, at the Venice Biennale, the most prestigious contemporary art exhibition in the world, besides being the oldest. What is unique about Jenny Holzer’s work is the magnificent and astonishing light effects she produces in her work. As for most contemporary artists, communication is all-important.

She often includes words in her installations, sometimes with political or philosophical significance, and sometimes with no particular importance at all. Again, communication is the prevalent abstract message, which she seems to express through the use of lights based on the novel LED technology.

Damien Hirst, a British artist, is another good example of the postmodern movement. He believes in the importance of communicating ideas, and in the importance of provoking a reaction of shock in his spectators. The handicraft of the work is secondary, and another relevant aspect of postmodernism is that the traditional concept of time also loses its importance here.

These movements also have been labeled “atemporal” and “timeless”, probably because of the assemblage and the remix of different styles and techniques which artists use in their work. Also attributable to the postmodern artists is the simultaneous use of fragments referring to historical and contemporary culture. Archetypical symbols and contemporary digital effects are often combined in the same artwork. All these symbols are practically dateless, which makes such artwork to some extent atemporal, not associated with any specific period in time. There is one particular work by Hirst, entitled “Treasures of the wreck of the unbelievable”, shown in 2017 in the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, in which he mixes objects supposedly found in an ancient boat coming from a faraway civilization. The objects, the boat, and the civilization are all fictional. He wants to draw attention to the idea of an ancient and irrelevant time in a timeless, non-existent period of history.

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