When I started my degree in Art History, I had already heard a few times the word “contemporary” or “contemporary art”, having actually no idea what it meant. With time I figured it is suppose to mean in popular langage “of his time”, but I am still getting confused when teachers call contemporary a work, either of art or literature, that was done in the 80′s or 90′s. Because what is being done right now is different than what was done in the 90′s, isn't it? Maybe the aesthetic differences are not as relevant as if we would compare actual work of arts (2016) with Renaissance paintings, but there is still a 10 to 20 years gap between now and the 80′s-90′s, and don’t tell me it is not far away enough to rank it outside of contemporary, because we all know that much enough has happened since then, not only in arts and literature but also and specially in geopolitics, socioeconomics and technological matters. So, that being said, what is contemporary? I’ve always had myself the need to detach from the present and analyse what was going on around me to understand the present itself. According to philosophers Nietzsche and Giorgio Agamben, that is truly what being contemporary is: “ One that really belong to his time, the real contemporary, is one that doesn't coincides perfectly with it and doesn't adhere to its submissions either. He/She is thereby define as outdated, archaic, but specifically for this reason, precisely by this gap, this anachronism, he/she is more apt than others to perceive and seize his/her time.” (Agamben, What is contemporary? p. 9-10) This definition speaks to me loudly, but I do find that there is too much of a wide gap between this philosophical definition of the term and what it really means in the everyday dialog. The difficulty is found in the word itself, in the fact that its related to the present, the “present” not being fixed in time. Thereby, the word “contemporary” doesn't determine a specific era, it doesn't belong to a specific time, it is “with” time; it is, just like the “present”, not chronologically fixable. Someone who isn't putting those concepts in question can apply the term “contemporary” about probably anything that he/she identifies as of “his/her time”, and it would be considered as correct. But for one who is interested in the History of the Contemporary, the history of his time, needs to understand the concepts deeper.
In that sens, It needs to be applied and understood in a historical context, like an Art History context. One that needs or want to understand it’s time has to put himself in “a situation of the contemporary”. Let me explain myself here. A contemporary work of art, let’s say a painting, is produced in its present and is expressing something about the present. But by transforming something as ephemeral as a feeling or expression into an art form, a physical form, it is fixing it in time, and thereby it already belongs to a past, it is not “contemporary”, because it is not of this time anymore - since time goes on, it is of “his” time, it is locked in “his” time. In that sens, a contemporary art historian has to detach him/herself from the present because the present itself is never fixed in time, neither is the contemporary; it is not chronologically fixable. And a contemporary work of art, being of “its time”, is anachronistic in the future, because it still exists, but it is not evolving or transforming with time.
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