AP Art History - Content Area 10 - Global Contemporary Art

1. Content Area 10: Global
Contemporary
1980 CE-Present
APAH
26 works

2. 26 Works in Content Area 10
• 224. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates
[cf. 31-38]
• 225. Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial
[31-39]
• 226. Basquiat, Horn Players [31-3]
• 227. Song Su-nam, Summer Trees [31-25A]
• 228. Abakanowicz, Androgyne/Back [30-39]
• 229. Xu Bing, Book from the Sky [31-20]
• 230. Koons, Pink Panther [31-23]
• 231. Sherman, Untitled #228 [cf. 30-37]
• 232. Ringgold, Dancing at the Louvre [cf. 31-
4]
• 233. Quick-to-See Smith, Trade [31-1]
• 234. Kngwarreye, Earth’s Creation [No]
• 235. Neshat, Rebellious Silence [cf. 31-11]
• 236. Osorio, No Crying Allowed [No]
• 237. Tuffery, Corned Beef [No]
• 238. Nam June Paik, Electronic
Superhighway [cf. 30-57]
• 239. Viola, The Crossing [31-35]
• 240. Gehry, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
[31-48, 31-49]
• 241. Mariko Mori, Pure Land [No]
• 242. Kiki Smith, Lying with the Wolf [cf. 31-
22]
• 243. Walker, Darkytown Rebellion [No]
• 244. Shonibare, The Swing [No]
• 245. El Anatsui, Old Man’s Cloth [cf. 31-32]
• 246. Mehretu, Stadia II [No]
• 247. Mutu, Preying Mantra [No]
• 248. Salcedo, Shibboleth [No]
• 249. Hadid, MAXXI Museum [cf. 31-50]
• 250. Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds [No]

3. • ENDURING UNDERSTANDING 10-1. Global contemporary art is characterized by a transcendence
of traditional conceptions of art and is supported by technological developments and global
awareness. Digital technology in particular provides increased access to imagery and contextual
information about diverse artists and artworks throughout history and across the globe.
• Essential Knowledge 10-1a. Hierarchies of materials, tools, function, artistic training, style, and
presentation are challenged. Questions about how art is defined, valued, and presented are
provoked by ephemeral digital works, video-captured performances, graffiti artists, online
museums and galleries, declines in (but preservation of) natural materials and traditional skills,
predominance of disposable material cultures, and the digital divide — access or lack of access to
digital technology.
• Essential Knowledge 10-1b. Diverse art forms are considered according to perceived similarities
in form, content, and artistic intent over broad themes, which include existential investigations,
sociopolitical critiques, as well as reflections on the natural world, art’s history, popular and
traditional cultures, and technological innovation.
• Essential Knowledge 10-1c. Artists frequently use appropriation and “mashups” to devalue or
revalue culturally sacred objects, and to negate or support expectations of artworks based on
regional, cultural, and chronological associations. Intended meanings are often open-ended and
subject to multiple interpretations.
• Essential Knowledge 10-1d. The iconic building becomes a sought-after trademark for cities.
Computer-aided design impacts the diversity of innovative architectural forms, which tend toward
the aspirational and the visionary.

4. • ENDURING UNDERSTANDING 10-2. In the scholarly realm as well as mainstream media,
contemporary art is now a major phenomenon experienced and understood in a global context.
• Essential Knowledge 10-2a. Art history surveys have traditionally offered less attention to art
made from 1980 to the present. While such surveys often presented contemporary art as largely
a European and American phenomenon, today, contemporary art produced by artists of Africa,
Asia, Oceania, and the First Nations is receiving the same, if not more, attention than work
produced in Europe and the Americas.
• Essential Knowledge 10-2b. The waning of colonialism, inaugurated by independence
movements, shifts in the balance of power with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
and the rise of China, and the development of widespread communication networks such as the
Internet have all contributed to representations of the world that are global and interconnected
rather than Eurocentric
• Essential Knowledge 10-2c. The art world has expanded and become more inclusive since the
1960s, as artists of all nationalities, ethnicities, and sexual preferences, as well as female artists,
have challenged the traditional privileged place of white, heterosexual men in art history. This
activism has been supported by theories (e.g., deconstructionist, feminist, poststructuralist, and
queer) that critique perspectives on history and culture that claim universality but are in fact
• exclusionary.
• Essential Knowledge 10-2d. The worldwide proliferation of contemporary art museums, galleries,
biennials and triennials, exhibitions, and print and digital publications has created numerous,
diverse venues for the presentation and evaluation of art in today’s world.

5. Vocabulary
- Action Painting: an abstract painting in which the artist drips or splatters paint onto a surface like a canvas in order to
create his or her work
- Assemblage: a 3D work made of various materials such as wood, cloth, paper, and miscellaneous objects
- abstract: works of art that may have form, but have little or no attempt at pictorial representation
- Biomorphism: a movement stressing organic shapes that hint at natural forms
- Cantilever: a projecting beam that is attached to a building at one end, but suspended in the air at the other
- Benday Dots: named for inventor Benjamin Day. The printing process uses the pointillist technique of colored dots from a
limited palette placed closely together to achieve more colors and subtle shadings
- color field: a style of abstract painting characterized by simple shapes and monochromatic color
- Installation: a temporary work of art made up of assemblages created for a particular space, like an art gallery or museum
- collage: a composition made by pasting together different items onto a flat surface
- Expressionism:a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th
century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional
effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.
- Postmodernism: articulates that the world is in a state of perpetual incompleteness and permanent unresolve.
- Surrealism: a movement in art and literature that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for
example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.
- Collage: a composition made by pasting together different items onto a flat surface
- Documentary Photography: a type of photography that seeks social and political redress for current issues by using
photographs as a way of exposing society’s faults
- ferroconcrete: steel reinforced concrete the two materials act together to resist building stresses.
- Harlem Renaissance: a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanned the
1920s.
- Ready- made: everyday object selected and designated as art; the name was coined by the French artist
Marcel Duchamp.

23. Pisupo Lua Afe

26. Bill Viola: The Crossing
Video

28. Mariko Mori

34. El Anatsui

40. MAXXI Museum