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Comment by brodo | Hacker News Reader

Overall a great point, but I have a nit-pick:

> Modern art, as everyone should know, started in 1860s in Europe

As someone who is active in the German art scene, the understanding is not that clear-cut. Modern art, as I learned it, is "art in the modern period". So everything after the middle ages. Basically when people stopped only drawing religious art and portraits of nobles. What started in the 1860s is "modernism".

The term used more often (at least in Germany) is "contemporary art". Which translates to "everything after WW 2". I've seen a lot of contemporary art museums, but few modern art museums.

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The 1860s as a starting decade is a popular conventional definition in English, in other languages "modern art" may be defined differently. But you are absolutely right, it makes more sense to call post-WW2 art the contemporary art or just postmodernism, because something that happened long before the birth of the half of the population of the planet isn't really "contemporary".

I think this may be a translation issue, as I would always have understood "modern art" to refer to the movement that began in the 1860s, and (English) Wikipedia appears to back this up. Like others have said, "contemporary art" means art of the current time.

> I've seen a lot of contemporary art museums, but few modern art museums.

My experience is the opposite, I have seen plenty of modern art museums, most famously (probably) the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Some modern art museums also feature contemporary art but nevertheless their main focus and brand is modern art (eg, the Tate Modern).

No, Modern or Modernist art (with a capital m) is a specific period of art history. So yes it doesn’t tend to have museums but there are shows dedicated to Modern art.

Contemporary art always refers to art from the specific period the speaker is living in, ie our present moment.

>Basically when people stopped only drawing religious art and portraits of nobles.

We drew vastly more art. The kind you describe was just more likely to be preserved as the institutions they were on about and the buildings they resided in persisted.

Surely people created a lot more art, but you're eliding the dynamic of professionalism. Art is ludicrously labor-intensive and so the vast majority of professional art (i.e. most art worth saving) would have been done for rich people.

I am indeed eliding the dynamic of professionalism. I don't think it has to be "ludicrously" labour intensive and I think "professional art" is overvalued and an absolute minority of all art ever created.

It just so happens that a lot of the modern/contemporary art talked about is mostly the domain of professional art (and examples that say otherwise are often not even thought of as such like hippy tie dye clothing.)

Based on historical books, funny drawings on toiletes (like boxes they used as toilets and then fertilizer) were super popular.

We dont show them in museums tho.

> So everything after the middle ages. Basically when people stopped only drawing religious art and portraits of nobles. What started in the 1860s is "modernism".

Ok, but you are reinforcing parent's point (which I agree with TBH).

Yes, I agree with the parent's point. I just wanted to point out that "modern art" is a little bit of a complicated term.

What kind of art do you think the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), houses?

I've never been there, but the German Wikipedia says it houses "modern and contemporary art". I'd assume that in their vast collection, you might even find stuff that's older than the 1860s.

The oldest works there are from the 1880s.

- contemporary art -

Now I have to nitpick, too too :-)

According to my understanding on the usage of "contemporary art", this is a "time relative term", meaning it describes usually "what was usually/common around a given time/period"?

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