Contemporary Art for Dummies

Modern art is intriguing, because it is not easy to understand it at all. We are not talking about how difficult it is to enjoy it, especially for an unprepared viewer. But I still want to figure it out, right?

We have compiled a small cheat sheet on contemporary art, where the illustrations are the works of famous artists and sculptors. May connoisseurs and art critics forgive us, this is rather a joke, and perhaps our own attempt to systematize and remember everything.

If you see colored squiggles and spots, as if the artist was splashing paint with a run and from the heart, then this is abstract expressionism.

This is the most expensive painting in the world, sold for $ 140 million. Usually, instead of the name, abstract paintings have a number or the first words that came to mind, for example, "Car juice No. 689".

Pollock draws. Here, by the way, you can feel like it.

If it's a toilet bowl, a brick, an excavator, garbage and other boring things, but they were put under glass and given an abstruse explanation, then this is conceptualism.

Hearst's work is a human skull made of platinum and encrusted with diamonds, which shows the triumph of the golden calf religion. Joseph Beuys' 1964 installation of melted mutton fat, felt and honey is an attempt to "merge with nature on a mystical-shamanic level."

The same toilet, but without any explanation — ready-made. The artist just took the toilet and put it on a pedestal, and everyone nodded their heads intelligently: yes, yes, they say, we understand. And we understand, but what's not to understand here.

Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal in a store (according to another version, he found it in the trash) and exhibited it under the name "Fountain" and under the pseudonym R. Mutt (fool). By the way, the "Fountain" was sold for $ 1 million with a tail.

If what you see in the picture looks like a bad dream, then it is most likely surrealism. In general, we say "surrealism" — we see the Distance. We say "Far away" — we see surrealism.

When it seems that the artist has brazenly cheated by giving out a picture for a picture, this is hyperrealism. And if everyone is wet or naked, then do not hesitate at all.

Someone took a picture from a glossy magazine and clumsily painted it in Paint, and when he got a little bolder, he redrawn the comic? And all with poisonous flowers? Well, it's definitely pop art.

If you ask yourself the question: "Is this some kind of witchcraft or am I just drunk, burst my eyes?" - be sure that this is op art (another option is that you still waved before meeting with art).

If something tells you that the artist had five in drawing as a child, here is a picture in the style of constructivism.

If an artist plays the piano upside down, dances in a cake costume, wraps himself with a python and lies in the center of a burning star — in general, he does his usual things, but in front of everyone — this is called a performance.

Happening is almost the same as a performance, only with the participation of the audience. And he also doesn't have a script and no one knows where this fun will lead.

You enter a hall where there are chairs with nails, and mannequins with suffering on their faces are sitting on them — do not be alarmed, this is an installation. In short, it is such a work of art that you can enter and touch everything there.