Essays and Articles on Contemporary Art

I would like to mention that I have recently seen some good essays and articles written on contemporary art at the Contemporary Art Gallery Magazine. “Principles and Elements of Design Challenged” by Allan Swinson makes a reasonable argument that art must constantly take new ground in challenging the elements of design and principles of design if it is to succeed its precursors esthetically. Allan goes on to provide a few examples of how recent and future artists are in fact pushing the limits of design. He cites the revolutionary approaches to this challenge by several of the major schools – Impressionism, Expressionism, Op Art, etc.

I am also contributing a series of articles – “Art – Past, Present and Future – Parts 1-6“. The first four installments of that series is completed. The first three are published and Part 4 follows shortly. Two of the these of the series is that cutting edge art is a product of two major trends: 1) evaluation in retrospect by the dominant art culture of a later time 2) escape from the cultural ordinary that new technologies create

Arthur Browning has several good articles there. Two of Arthur’s articles are directed to the new collector of contemporary art. “Investing in Contemporary Art” and “Choosing Original Art for Your Collection” .

Tia Marks has also written a series “Why Do Artists Create?” Parts 1-3. This series gives a good basic understanding of the creative drive and creative processes of the artist working in any medium. Tia explains some of the emotional and intellectual reasons for art creation and the working processes of artmakers.

If you know of some good reading on contemporary art, let me know.

Daniel Ferris