Roger White, a painter and cofounder of the art journal Paper Monument, is well positioned to tackle the contemporary art world in "all of its exhilarating, self-contradictory sprawl." The six chapters of The Contemporaries "echo, amplify, and argue with one another." As a result, we're given an articulate and smart take on the recent history of art-making and a glimpse at where it might take us.
White notes that around the turn of the millennium, contemporary art was exploding in all kinds of directions, only to fall into hard times a few years later. To learn more, he goes to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; to New York, where he visits studio artists who work hard to produce a "master's" work; and to Milwaukee, Wis., where he investigates the "politics of localism in contemporary art" in an environment far more affordable than the major art cities.
White then focuses on three artists: Dana Schutz's work addresses the question of how painting, the most traditional of artistic media, can "represent current events in the age of digital communication." White calls Mary Walling Blackburn's work "uncategorizable," comprising performance, video, sculpture and dance. White ends with Stephen Kaltenbach, a conceptual artist known for his "time capsules," who left the art world in 1970 to teach.
Love it or not, much of contemporary art is in the eye of the beholder--what you bring to it is what you leave with. White's honest, unflinching portrait of this scene, arguments and all, will help inquiring minds trying to decide if it's for them. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher