Gold, Ash, Dirt (mixed media). By Catherine Royer.

Contemporary art confronts our notions of what art “should” be, often based in 19th-century European and American traditions of beauty, craftsmanship, and realism. Although some contemporary artists carry this forward, many challenge it or create work that springs from less-familiar sources.

Big challenges began with the technology, science, and boundless promise of the 20th century. Freed from realistic representation by the camera, whose images were cheap and available, some artists felt speed and industry suggested a streamlined, geometric “vocabulary” for the new age. Others found their new look in the art of exotic times and places. African masks imported from Europe’s colonies influenced Picasso’s early abstraction—he even collected them. They looked fresh, different, and their extreme abstraction was spiritual—masks depicted gods, not humans. Similarly, Stone Age art attracted artists not only with its energetic primitivism, but its ritual, rather than commodity, use. To many artists, abstraction seemed a higher calling.

More challenges to the status quo followed. After scholars suggested ancient societies were matriarchal, their art became a source for female artists during the Women’s Movement. Popular culture surged in post-World War II America’s expanding economy; soon, images from film stills, comics, and advertising became Pop artists’ subjects. And with increasing frequency, artists created with the mass-produced stuff itself, be it bread signs or Barbie dolls.

Bottom line? Art seems strange when it’s based in the unfamiliar or new—whether ideas, culture, or tools. And like many other things, art changes so fast we don’t have time to get comfortable with it. But when boundaries fall, they fall for good. Artists now feel free to use any subject, any material. Furthermore, the boundaries between different kinds of art continue to blur—paint may be included on sculpture, words may be used on paintings (or written on gallery walls, or handed out on street corners), performance art may combine props with sound and movement. In this, visual artists reflect the trends of society as a whole: music videos bridge sound, performance, and visual art, and the internet brings nearly all forms of communication together.

Art is, fundamentally, human communication. Individual messages differ infinitely. Methods of communication change constantly. Just compare today’s English with Shakespeare’s! But most things we find to say echo and repeat through the ages. Keeping that in mind, approaching a challenging work of art with an eye to decoding its universal human message is a great place to start.

-This Know It All was provided by Catherine Royer, associate professor of art and design at Adrian College.