The Story of Art Without Men

by Katy Hessel

What does art look like today? Well, it’s never looked more varied or, to me, more powerful. Artists of the new millennium are tackling complex themes cleverly, explicitly and on such grand scales. They are rewriting lost pasts and exposing historical truths, decolonising art history, challenging and reinventing what we think of as ‘monuments’, and employing utopian and dystopian themes or returning to figurative painting to make sense of our time. Women and people of colour have achieved senior institutional roles. Technology has shifted the way we consume, educate and physically view and experience art, and there’s no denying that the rise in equality within this creative sphere has been aided by democratic internet-based platforms. Political events have also been a driving force for artistic change: the September 11 attacks and the war on Iraq, the Obama administration and the dark years of Trump in the US, the refugee crisis, the looming climate crisis, and the rise of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements around the world. It is through a vast range of visual forms that artists reflect our ever-developing, contradictory world.