1970–present
Contemporary art from 1970 to today, spanning land art, performance, photography, painting, installation and digital media worldwide.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for 1970–present are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Since about 1970, art has spread across nearly every medium and continent, with no single style in charge. The period opened with artists leaving the studio: Robert Smithson built Spiral Jetty (1970) from rock in Utah's Great Salt Lake, and performance, video and installation became standard tools. Feminist artists such as Judy Chicago made women's history their subject, and Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills (1977–80) cast herself in imagined movie roles, showing how images shape identity.
The 1980s brought painting back in force, from Jean-Michel Basquiat's charged mix of words and figures to German Neo-Expressionism, while Jeff Koons turned consumer goods into gleaming sculpture. Since the 1990s the field has become fully global: Xu Bing invented thousands of false Chinese characters for Book from the Sky (1987–91), El Anatsui drapes walls with metal hangings made from bottle tops, and artists move freely between photography, film, textiles, digital media and public space.
