Contemporary Art's Fear of the New: A Critique

Christian Caliandro argues that contemporary art has become conservative, with artists recycling formal languages from the 1960s and 1970s—Arte Povera, Postminimalism, Postconceptualism—stripped of original intent. He attributes this to gatekeepers (artists, curators, museum directors, critics, collectors) from that generation who dominate the art world. Younger artists, often no longer young, conform to this gerontocracy's taste rather than developing autonomous, disturbing languages. Caliandro links this to the difficulty of recognizing novelty in postmodernity and the ambiguity of "contemporary" art, which has become detached from the present and confined to white cubes. He cites Philip K. Dick's idea of time weakening to illustrate art's stasis. The article is part of a series on "arte fighetta" (hipster art) and appears on Artribune.