What Is Contemporary Art? A Guide for Kids

by Jacky Klein (Contributor), Suzy Klein (Contributor)

Contemporary art for kids in lively categories like Games, Outer Space and Bizarre Beasts What Is Contemporary Art? opens up the exciting, dynamic and sometimes bewildering world of contemporary art for a young audience, inviting readers to explore, enjoy and question a variety of artworks drawn from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Organized thematically by subjects of interest to children--from games and unusual materials to outer space and bizarre beasts--the book features nearly 70 works made over the past 50 years by a range of international artists, from modern icons of the early 1960s such as Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans” and Yves Klein’s “ Princess Helena” to recent pieces by contemporary artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky and Jeff Koons. Designed to encourage children to explore their own imaginative responses to art across all media--including painting and sculpture, film, photography, performance and installation--the book is packed with special features, including pull-out information and idea boxes, quotes from the artists, and “How did they do it?” prompts. What Is Contemporary Art? is an invaluable guide to The Museum of Modern Art’s contemporary collection for family visitors, and a captivating read for children (ages eight and up) and parents at home.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

64 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[صان · Rating 4 out of 5]

نمونه جالبی از کارهارو جمع آوری کرده بود و خوندنش جذاب بود.
کم‌حجم بود.
تخصصی نیست، اما مثال‌هاش، مثال‌های کمتر آشنا و کمتر دیده شده بود!

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

We picked up a copy of this at the Turner Contemporary in Margate after we’d been to the Turner Prize 2019 exhibition. I partially picked it up to learn more, and partially because I wanted the children we were with to see me buying a book exploring the subject so that they felt at ease with not necessarily understanding the works we’d just seen.

The book covers some artists I know and have seen exhibitions of before (Andy Warhol, Olafur Eilasson, and Rachel Whiteread) as well as many I haven’t encountered before.

Artists who I’d like to see more of in the future include Janine Antoni, Donald Judd, Anna Maria Maiolino, Francis Alys, Dieter Roth, Piero Manzoni, Richard Long, and Dan Flavin. So at the very least I have some names to look out for.

Am I any closer to being able to answer the question “What is contemporary art?” Possibly not, but I’m less apprehensive about answering that what matters the most to me is whether I have an emotional reaction to something, or have my curiosity stimulated rather than it being a head nodding, chin stroking, standing back and intellectually appreciation exercise.

This would make a good companion to the Tate’s “Art in a box” set which gives questions and prompts about specific artworks along with guidance on how to make something like it at home. More at https://shop.tate.org.uk/art-in-a-box...

[Daisy May Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know much about contemporary art for a long time. I didn't know that it even existed, in a way. I tought art and I thought about the traditional images of art; the oil paintings on the wall, the statues in the gallery, the black and white photographs hung in a row.

But then I went to university and accidentally started to specialise in the subject and my mind exploded. Cindy Sherman. Tracey Emin. Barbara Kruger. Jenny Holzer. Richard Serra. Rineke Dijkstra. Douglas Gordon. Shirin Neshat. All of them doing things with text and image that I longed to do, that I hadn't known it was okay for me to do, that I hadn't known that I wanted to do, and now that I did know this, I knew that I would never let it go. That this way of writing, of seeing, of thinking, was something that I liked, something that I subscribed wholly too and something that made my writing better.

It changed my life. Can you tell? It's because of that that I have a strong interest in art books for children because, in a way, I want them to have the opportunity to have that feeling. I want their mind to be blown. I want them to realise that the creative boundaries that may have been imposed on them ("every story has a beginning, a middle and an end, and you need to know this before you begin") can, could and maybe should be broken.

'What is Contemporary Art?' is a challenging book for me to review in that I felt there were certain areas of it that worked really well. I love that it exists, firstly. I love that it's selected and discussed some bold and challenging work ("Adjustable Wall Bra" by Vito Acconci, for one, and "Untitled (bed)" by Rachel Whiteread, for another). I love that it's not afraid of asking children to look at Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol. The curation of pieces for this book is really, really strong.

And yet, in another way, it's a little bit frustrating. The endpapers seem a wasted space, an apparent abstract design on the front, which we come to realise is "Butterfly Kisses" by Janine Antoni and then get to see again when we come to finish the book. I'd have welcomed some sense of experimentation with these pages rather than what feels like a slight redundancy in using the same image twice.

I also had some difficulty with the descriptions. There's a little bit of 'artspeak' in there which, I suspect, could lead to a prerequisite of 'why' questions (both a positive and a negative, but one that I suspect would frustrate a cynical mindset). Sentences such as "his chessboard is no longer a battlefield, but a landscape of the imagination" beg to be challenged and discussed (which is again both a positive and a negative, come to think of it.)

One final thing to note though is that it has a really good and useful glossary covering such terms as 'assemblage', 'found media' and 'urban intervention'. This is great, though the highlighting of these words in the body of the book has suffered due to the advent of internet speak. They appear in the text *like this* which gives an odd emphasis to terms and phrases. I'd hope that this maybe gets reviewed in a newer edition.

So where do we sit with this book? It's good, it does have some very good points, but I found it frustrating and a little confusing with the voice. In a way, I'd have liked it pitched younger and a little 'freer' with some descriptions in order to both loosen up the stiffer parts of the book and to also broaden the appeal of the book and the artwork within.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful

[Ira Bril · Rating 5 out of 5]

Классная книга-путеводитель по важным темам и авторам современного искусства.

[Jürgen Peeters · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mijn recensie van 'Wat is moderne kunst? Een kindergids' verscheen op 'Cutting Edge'

http://www.cuttingedge.be/boekenstrip...