Your Art Escort's response to Dott. Rosa Maria Letts of London commentary on Sgarbi

First is the attempt to understand the definition of the CONTEMPORARY ART MOVEMENT and all that may be included in this concept. 

Second is the discussion of SGARBAGING, excuse me, I meant say, an understanding of some of the unfair trade practice or art poaching techniques of VITTORIO SGARBI.

Third is that the MAXXI National Museum of 21^st Arts in Rome is for the art of the 21^st century, not “20^th century”.  

Fourth is the concept of “Can we agree to disagree?”, which is not permitted in the “world according to Sgarbi”.

Since we are limited to 1000 words here, only half of one point will arrive here and that is where I shall start. The other 3 points will need to be reviewed at a different time.

For now I will address the 1^st point hyperlinking my footnotes to support my social discussion and art commentary/critique.

Contemporary Art, (which I am NOT a huge fan of, so let’s get that out on the table) can be defined as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since WorldWar II. Examples of international contemporary museums and international contemporary artists in this movement are numerous and well established outside of Italy.

To use the term, “ephemeral” may sound trendy, chic, cutting edge or “to look smart” but is without merit when applied too loosely to one movement as a mutually exclusive event.  To apply this word to any one specific art movement alone is not accurate, unless you are willing to look back over the entire history of art and see that. THIS WORD is part of what art movement is all about.  

That where the idea of “movement” comes from. It is either too narrow to apply to one movement, or possibly is better applied to any of all of the past art movements, as there are so many!

Ten different art movements have been identified to 19^th century 

and 37 different styles have been identified for the

20^th century. Even a child’s basic attempt at the simple law of averages would have to conclude 100/10 = 10 for the average length of a movement in the 19^th century and 100/37 = 2.7 years to the average length of an art movement in the 20^th century. But since these periods are NOT mutually exclusive this point of view doesn’t work either.

So the contemporary art movement has been around since World War II, 2011- 1945= 66 years, for example only. To call the works of the contemporary art movement “ephemeral” seems lacking a full grasp of what anything past the modern art movement is about, maybe “transient” movements might be more appropriate.

A sixty-six (66) year history and holding makes a statement, that even for those of us that may not be fans of the contemporary art movement.

Contemporary art is here and has been here and until the next brave group of controversial genius artist arrive pushing and dragging us along, here we lie.

In support of Francesco Bonami statements I agree whole heartily with his professional educated and well-rounded assessments of this clear analogy “Contemp­orary art is to Sgarbi what America is to Bin Laden.”

I also recommend any of you wanting to expand your art education watch this interesting PBS video, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE for a larger global perspective.