From fauvism to impressionism to regionalism, a seemingly endless series of “isms” has come to define much of art history, especially in the 20th century.
Scholars have tried to neatly categorize movements and lay out an uninterrupted art continuum, but such mapping was never as clear cut or precise as those constructing it wanted everyone to believe.
Crosscurrents, contradictions and iconoclastic artists always have existed, but they are probably more pervasive now than ever.
In today’s post-post-modernist world, art is strikingly diverse. Able to draw on millions of images and information bits with the simple click of a mouse, artists have more choice and more freedom than at any time in the past.
But whether you visit New York City’s Armory Show, Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station or a Denver art gallery, it is still possible to discern common strands running through contemporary art that can be described with such adjectives as sensuous, pop and retro.
Unlike the past, when a work might epitomize a single style, today’s artists rarely are content with any one thing. They mix and match, breaking once- sacrosanct rules to create lively, unexpected mélanges.
Offering a quintessential example are the 11 hip, multifaceted paintings by Maggie Michael on view through June 18 at the Rule Gallery. The Washington, D.C., artist is the recipient of a prestigious 2004 grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
If one canvas can be said to sum up this new brand of art, it might be Michael’s “Travel” (2003-05). It combines bright, varied colors with blobby textures, references to Japanese woodblock prints with hints of figuration and street-inspired spray paint with ink drawing.
Here is a closer look at five currents in today’s art world:
Sensuousness
Forget muscular abstraction and ascetic minimalism. Like Michael, many of today’s painters have softened the edges, seeking to stimulate the senses with opulent colors, eye-pleasing effects and tantalizing textures.
If many of these pieces are rich and lush, others – such as Udo Nöger’s white-on-white paintings at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver through June 26 – achieve a similar sensorial impact with subtlety.
These shimmering abstractions deal with light and perception, exuding an elusive yet impossible-to-ignore spirituality. The uncomplicated compositions create a push-pull illusion, with certain sections seeming to float above others.
To complete the effect, Nöger covers his canvases with a kind of translucent scrim. It softens the look, much like a filter on a camera lens, and slightly distances the viewer from the imagery behind it.
Plain, flat surfaces are out. Tactile is in, whether it is these scrim-covered canvases or the digital paintings that California artist Patti Heid painstakingly adorns with such materials as feathers, beads and sequins.
Pop art and animé
With his famed exploitation of a Campbell’s soup can, Andy Warhol led a whole generation of artists in the 1960s in inventing what became known as pop art. They drew on mass marketing and mass media for their often manufactured imagery.
Pop art never really went away, but it is enjoying an unprecedented resurgence. This latest incarnation draws heavily on comic books, especially the groundbreaking work of counterculture hero R. Crumb, who has been adopted in recent years by the fine-art world.
Also fueling this latest rise in pop art is the massive worldwide popularity of Japanese animé and the artists who have piggybacked on it, such as Takashi Murakami. His smiling flowers and other signature imagery have achieved extraordinary currency in the broader society.
Closer to home, Denver artist Carlos Frésquez creates imaginative, often mildly sociopolitical paintings by merging the Jetsons and other cartoon characters with bits of mainstream popular culture and iconic elements of Latino history.
Retro
Just as Michael has found inspiration in Japanese woodblock prints, contemporary artists do not hesitate to draw on virtually any aspect of art history. Sometimes the references are explicit, other times more nuanced.
No one is better known for this than Boulder native John Currin, who emerged on the international scene in the 1990s and became an almost instant art superstar. Canvases barely 5 years old are already hot commodities at the big auction houses.
Sometimes subversively, sometimes respectfully, he draws on nearly every artistic source possible, from vintage pinup girls to revered artists of the past. But no matter how lowbrow his imagery might be, Currin always renders his compositions with striking, old-master virtuosity.
A classic example of his nods to the past is “The Pink Tree” (1999), a portrait of two nude women done consciously in the style of Lucas Cranach the Elder, a 16th-century German painter whose works can be found in major museums around the world.
Blatant sexuality and porn
Big breasts, dangling penises and spread legs are everywhere in today’s art world. In some ways, it seems like contemporary artists have just now discovered the human body.
In most of these works, eroticism or sensuality is not the intent. Instead, artists seek blunt, raw and explicit depictions of both sexes in blatantly sexual poses, usually with the obvious desire to shock, engage taboos and gain notoriety.
Just as pornography of all kinds is invading many areas of mainstream society, its influences are becoming increasingly prevalent in the art world, with much of the sexually charged work taking on nothing less than a soft-porn quality.
Working at this nexus of pornography and art is New York photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, who has created a much-publicized series, titled “XXX: 30 Portraits of Porn Stars,” which was shown in April and May at Berman/ Turner Projects in Santa Monica. Calif.
It consists of paired portraits of porn stars – one showing the person clothed, the other unclothed. The concept might seem simplistic, but these images have been published in a book and reviewed by influential magazines such as Artforum.
Narrative
From paintings centuries ago that recounted Bible scenes to epic 19th-century canvases that portrayed Napoleon’s historic battles, storytelling has long held an important place in art.
But with the rise of abstraction in the 20th century, particularly abstract-expressionism, and other non-objective kinds of art, such work all but disappeared from the forefront.
Pop art and the return of figuration announced at the 1968 Venice Biennale helped resurrect the narrative. And artists such as Cindy Sherman, who created elaborate scenarios for her photographic self-portraits, put it right back at center stage.
Popular now are paintings with the subtle, partially disguised and sometimes unsettling narratives that Fairfield Porter espoused in the 1960s. Once largely ignored, he was celebrated in an exhibition earlier this year at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles as a precursor to much of what is happening today.
Providing a good example of these neo-narratives are the paintings of Los Angeles artist Laura Owens, with their storybook, fantastical quality. They were shown in a 2003 survey at the Aspen Art Museum.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
