Main Body
12. At the Millennium: Art and Music in the 1990s
Clayton Funk
Lines between art and culture blurred even more in the 1990s. A car decorated in this way was conceived by a designer and could be recognized as an artistic visual form.
Like other decades, the 1990s were a time of continual shifts in social and cultural affairs. DIY (“Do It Yourself” or “alternative”) visual and musical forms continued. The lines blurred between the corporate promotion of these forms and the uniqueness of communities who produced them. The 1997 car crash that took the life of a much-beloved Princess Diana cast a shadow over the decade and other important international political developments also changed the cultural landscape for the long term. In 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, which brought forth both economic change and some violent conflict in the Balkans and other areas. The first attack on the World Trade Center occurred in 1993, bringing terrorism to the forefront of international affairs in the U.S. The Cold War between the USSR and the West was over, only to be replaced by new unrest between radical factions at home and abroad.
Visual Arts
Cultural shifts during these times of change also influenced the visual arts in the U.S. and around the world. The strict division between Fine Arts (painting, sculpture, drawing, etc.) and commercial art (creative work applied to advertising graphics, fashion design, and retail display and more) had overlapped by the end of the twentieth century, and Pop Art forms infused many other genres. In fact, the Neoexpressionism that peaked in the 1980s moved aside as new artists emerged among women, people of color, and other groups, adding diversity in Visual Arts. These artists used new media, conceptualized new purposes for art, and introduced new modes of performance.
Neo Conceptual Art
Neo-Conceptual art, like Conceptual art before it, is rooted in the idea-based works of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the Conceptualists of the 1960s and 1970s, the Minimalists, and to a degree, the works of the performance artists. The Prefix “Neo,” of course, means “new,” and that is exactly what Neo-Conceptual art is a new form of conceptual art that has dominated much of the art of the last decade of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first centuries, as Neo-Expressionism faded after the 1990s.
Let’s review for a moment what we learned about Conceptual Art earlier in Chapter 7. “Conceptual art is based on the idea an object or act represents, rather than the appearance of the art object itself. The purpose of the artwork is to engage the viewer’s mind rather than their eyes. Conceptual art is a non-object, non-object-making, and non-art aesthetic modality. Exhibits, installations, and events often deal with re-definitions of art, language, and ideas.”
However, Neo-Conceptualism is distinguished from the earlier form by some rather subtle differences. Although language is still important, these artists feel free