Other Contemporaneites

ANDREA GIUNTA (AUTOR)

Masachussetts

Workshop; Contemporaneity in the History of Art; 2009

The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

This aim of this essay is to analyze the need to study the history of the present closest to us using tools, assuming the evanescence of the deeds analyzed as a possible condition. Occurrences are fragmentary and ephemeral, and they fade away when taken apart or even when they remain anchored in the memory of those who witnessed them. They do exist, nevertheless, and they constitute a moment of historical experience from a position that has been more or less accepted: that of artistic production. This text postulates the need to think of art history aside from requirements of establishing value—value that proposes to be “aesthetic” and that establishes hierarchies (of good art) and that reverts to the market and museography. It proposes the legitimacy of an analysis of contemporary artistic production from the perspective of a critical view of history as a way of comprehending art history. It proposes a history of contemporary art that stands apart from styles and aside from values, a critical-historical analysis of art practices linked to the extended universe of what is considered to be art and what is inscribed as narration, of a first-time story in many cases, that finds meaning in what had previously been merely a group of isolated events.