Contemporary Art: World Currents argues that, in recent decades, a worldwide shift from modern to contemporary art has occurred. This has not, however, been a uniform change from one phase or style in the history of art to another. Rather, artists everywhere have embraced the contemporary worlds diversity and complexity. The book is a genuinely worldwide survey of art from the 1960s to the present, which emphasizes its relationships to all aspects of contemporary experiencewhat the author calls arts contemporaneity. Examining the changes as they occurred, Terry Smith offers the first historical account of the developments that constitute the key currents in world contemporary art. Artists well known in the cultural centres of Europe and the US, and those prominent on the biennale circuit, are placed within the art scenes from which they came. The work of artists whose reputations are primarily local is fully acknowledged. Ranging across Asia, East and Central Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean, Oceania and Africa, and drawing upon local histories and research, this book breaks new ground in tracing how modern, traditional and indigenous art became contemporary in each cultural region of the world. Taking a comparative perspective, it relates these developments to worldwide changes in art and culture, highlighting the main concerns of contemporary artists today. Diversitythe contemporaneity of differencenot a convergence towards sameness, Smith argues, is what makes todays art contemporary.
