What’s the Difference Between Modern and Contemporary Art?

Artistic styles exist only in retrospect. While many of their defining characteristics are formulated in manifestos by pioneering artists, a style can’t be fully understood until it has become a thing of the past, until it has been replaced by newer, different styles whose own still-evolving identity helps us better understand the movements they succeeded.

For an example of this complicated process, look no further than the elusive relationship between Modern and contemporary art. Although often used interchangeably, they are not the same. Because they share many similarities, they are best understood in opposition to each other—with Modern art being a reaction to classical art, and contemporary art a reaction to Modern art.

Still a little confused? Let’s break it down.

What is Modern art?

Art historians generally agree that Modern art emerged during the late 19th century in response to the social, cultural, economic, and technological changes produced by the Industrial Revolution. In particular, the invention and subsequent commercialization of photography compelled painters to reimagine the purpose of their craft.

What could painting do that a camera could not? Different answers to this question gave rise to various modern art movements. The Impressionists rejected detailed studies in favor of quick snapshots that captured the essence of their subjects. Cubism focused on form, Futurism on movement, and Surrealism on states of consciousness.

To varying degrees, these movements were less interested in physical appearance—cameras could capture that in the fraction of a second—than their own experience and interpretation of that appearance. Paintings were becoming self-referential, commenting not only on their subject, but the nature of art itself, or “art for art’s sake,” as the English painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler surmised.

What is contemporary art?

Art historians struggle to discern when Modern art stops and contemporary art begins. Not only because styles naturally evolve from one another, but also because the break between these two movements is less visually obvious than the precipice separating, say, John Singer Sargent and Pablo Picasso.

Some point to the Second World War, which shook people’s faith in progress and, by extension, the utopian ideals of Modernism and the linear development of art itself. Others place the dawn of contemporary art a little closer to the present day, connecting it to the global economy and consumerist culture that arose during the 1960s and ’70s.

Unlike the clearly defined styles of Modern art, contemporary art, especially contemporary art made today, is nebulous to the point that it’s perhaps best categorized by medium, including sculpture (Jeff Koons), street art (Banksy), and performance art (Yoko Ono). By and large, contemporary art can also be separated into Abstract Expressionism, informed by high-brow, abstract theories of form and perception (Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko), and Pop Art, which expresses the artistic value of “low culture” commodities (Andy Warhol).

Are they kind of the same?

Modern and contemporary art resemble one another insofar as they both share a fascination with perception and experience. Whether you’re looking at a Matisse or a Pollock, the focus isn’t on what the art is supposed to represent but on the art itself: how the painter created the artwork, and how the viewer responds to the artwork.

If classical, representational artists created a representation of reality, Modern and contemporary artists investigate how this representation works. They don’t want you to suspend your disbelief. On the contrary, they encourage the viewer to be skeptical and interrogative. Modern and contemporary art doesn’t lecture, it opens a dialogue.

Last but not least, Modern and contemporary artists have been interested in pushing boundaries, in shocking their contemporaries by upending their expectations about art. The same critiques levelled against Marcel Duchamp’s R. Mutt urinal in 1917 are still being levelled against provocative contemporary artists today, like Marco Evaristti.

How are they different?

The ways that Modern and contemporary art differ from each other are perhaps more important than the ways in which they are alike. One way they differ is in classification. As previously mentioned, contemporary art is much harder to differentiate by style. This is in part because the movement is still alive and evolving, and in part because, like the postmodern philosophy to which it’s connected, it is suspicious of labels.

Another way Modern and contemporary art differ is in their overall tone and attitude toward meaning, authorship, and interpretation—though this distinction is more complex than it might first appear. Modern art, even in its more whimsical moments, often carries an underlying earnestness. Movements such as Cubism, Futurism, and Abstract Expressionism were deeply invested in serious inquiries into perception, form, spirituality, and the social function of art. These artists frequently saw themselves as participating in a progressive, often utopian project. There was a palpable sense of mission, a belief that art could contribute to the betterment of humanity or to a deeper understanding of truth, emotion, or the sublime.

Contemporary art, by contrast, emerged in a climate of philosophical skepticism, postmodern doubt, and cultural pluralism. In response to the traumas of the 20th century, the rise of mass media, and the commodification of culture, many contemporary artists adopt a more ironic, self-reflexive, or satirical tone. Playfulness, parody, and ambiguity are often central to their strategies, not necessarily as an outright dismissal of meaning, but as a way to question the stability and authority of meaning itself. Artists like Maurizio Cattelan, Cindy Sherman, or Damien Hirst, for instance, blur the lines between critique and complicity, between profundity and spectacle.

That said, this tonal shift isn’t absolute. Not all Modern art is solemn, and not all contemporary art is flippant. Dada, an early Modern movement, reveled in absurdity and provocation. Likewise, many contemporary artists address personal and social issues like identity, trauma, climate change, or migration with profound seriousness and emotional depth. What distinguishes contemporary art is perhaps less the presence of playfulness and more its conscious embrace of contradiction—its willingness to oscillate between sincerity and irony, gravitas and humor, critique and complicity, often within the same work.

Which brings us to arguably the most important difference between Modern and contemporary art: where Modern art presumed that progress was linear, that each subsequent art movement got a little closer to the truth than the one that came before, contemporary art throws this kind of grand narrative out of the window. Art isn’t a race to the finish, contemporary art seems to say, but a rejection of the race itself.

For as long as there has been art, revolutionary movements have continually reshaped its creation and perception. Artcore unpacks the trends that have shaken up today’s and yesterday’s art world—from the elegance of 18th-century Neoclassicism to the bold provocations of the 1990s Young British Artists.