Postmodern Nostalgia, Contemporary & Post-Contemporary Art

Banner Image: Photograph of the Weisman Museum designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry.

Hi, I’m William Gustavo Franklin, contributing writer for MPLSART.COM, and today I’d like to share a short reflection related to our current shifting cultural and historical phase. This reflection is in great part my nostalgia for the past (picking on postmodern architecture for practical purposes here), thrill about the present and future, and my resistance but also willingness (depending on the day) to re-theorize things –all at the same time. 

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I had been debating for quite some time whether or not these art historical “posties” were making sense any longer (Post-Impressionism (1880s) and "post-industrial" (1914-22) were the beginning of the "posties"​). Were they just vague designations or were they distinctively capturing something? There I was one day, wandering on the University of Minnesota campus looking for the newly opened Weisman Museum designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, I had not seen deconstructivist architecture prior to 1994. I had arrived on time to witness postmodern architecture, I said to myself.

But the amusement didn’t last long, a year later, the crumpled-aluminum cubic tower of the Walker Art Center became visible, everyone talked about its contemporary/modern style; truth being, a new sensibility had arrived, metamodern architecture.

 

Image: An exterior view of the Walker Art Center addition designed by Herzog & de Meuron in 2005. Photograph by Flickr user Mark B. Schlemmer, May 3, 2012.

I would experienced Frank Gehry’s deconstructivist architecture again in 1997 when the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in Spain, but my imagination was captured not by visiting the actual museum in Bilbao, but by a song and video released by the Scottish rock band Simple Minds (go arts lending powers to each other!).

Contemporary art

Contemporary art, or art of the present day –roughly speaking art made from the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s to today (depends who you ask)– has been an elastic proposition since its beginning until the present, it declares no single style (‘no single style’ aside, three of the most notable marks of contemporary art in my opinion have been how it has blurred high and low culture lines, challenged society, and elevated Native American voices).

Contemporary artists have also distinctively pressed on issues like globalization, knowledge, identity, and culture, resourcing to conducting research to inform their work. Nowadays, research art is everywhere. Last year's exhibition Ways of Knowing at the Walker Art Center showed a diverse group of artists engaged with information and research around all of these complexities.

 

Image: Installation view of Ways of Knowing, 2025 at the Walker Art Center.

Under the pretext that art changes over time, new forms of digital and machine-made art, including artificial intelligence, have been begging for our attention as ‘candidates of appreciation,’ but the lack of lived experience and intentional creative choices behind some of them continues to be a set back (it’s personally difficult for me to grant the status of art to some of these new media, especially AI stuff. I have all the ‘wonder’ I need already from the natural world, art history, and the many things I haven’t yet had time to experience).

In the spirit of democracy, here’s this for those readers interested in the subject, the world’s first museum dedicated to AI arts. 

Post-contemporary art 

I had not heard, nor imagined, the term post-contemporary art until recently. If I ever did, I did not pay much attention to it out of skepticism. But I am firmly convinced that we are entering a period of having to scratch our heads further. 

The term post-contemporary first appeared in the cultural writings of Italian author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi (1919-1987), and not yet as an aesthetic category. The concept emerged from Levi's reflections on culture and resistance. 

It was not until around 2005 that the concept would be adopted as a forward-looking aesthetic seeking to move past the deconstructive and skeptical approaches of postmodernism. 

Dan Karlholm is a professor of Art History at Södertörn University in Sweden. His article titled "After Contemporary Art: Actualization and Anachrony” came to my attention in 2017 when it was published in the Nordic Journal of Aesthetics. One artist Karlholm discusses is Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), now widely recognized as the pioneer of hundreds of abstract-looking works decades before abstract art became established. In other words, Af Klint was ahead of her time. 

MIAPCR, MUSEUM Musée International d'Art Post-Contemporain en Résistance was added to the roster of Google Arts and Culture’s virtual museums on May 18 2023, specifically on International Museum Day. "The MIAPCR Museum offers the fusion of Art and technology in its collectible digital Post-Contemporary Artworks at the forefront of 21st Century art." MIAPCR is a virtual and traveling museum based in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina. I wonder what MIAPCR and LA’s Dataland will become and contribute in the future. 

I leave us with these questions, and not just as an exercise of alternative opposites:

Are we ready to accept these emerging movements and cultural shifts? Are
they ready to accept us? Is the age of cohesive, singular "isms" and
“posties” alive or dead? Are we exhausting ourselves with
all this naming? Real art does not care about "isms” or “posties”, but art
history certainly does.◼︎ 

See you in two weeks with a new topic. In the meantime, send comments or feedback on this article to: info@mplsart.com.

 

William Gustavo Franklin is an educator and an independent art curator who teaches art history, criticism, and theory. He has curated more than a dozen exhibits and served as a panelist reviewing applications for grants and artist-in-residence programs. He is also a native Spanish speaker who loves his language and culture. Website