Education

“We must not hesitate to bewilder sensation.” – André Breton

Post-War American Art

America emerged from World War II relatively unscathed, with an economy on the rise and an artist population inspired by the European avant-garde, many of whom had relocated to the U.S. While Europe began the process of dealing with immeasurable trauma, New York emerged as a center of artistic activity, challenging Paris as the center of the international art world. Abstract Expressionism would emerge in the 1950s, followed by the rise of Neo-Dada, Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art, among many other movements over the next decade. Rather than a style or set of ideas, Post-war American Art merely defines a time period, and is most often by auction houses to refer to art created between 1945 and 1970 (differentiating from Modern and Impressionist before and Contemporary after.)

Contemporary Art

Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that continue the challenging of boundaries that was already well underway in the 20th century. Diverse and eclectic, contemporary art as a whole is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform, organising principle, ideology, or "-ism". Contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger contextual frameworks such as personal and cultural identity, family, community, and nationality. In vernacular English, modern and contemporary are synonyms, resulting in some conflation and confusion of the terms modern art and contemporary art by non-specialists.