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Writer's pictureAhmed Kheder

Contemporary Art... A Term By Roger Fry

Updated: Nov 21, 2023


In the second half of the 20th century, globalization, diversity, and the technologically advancing world evoked the rise of Contemporary art, the term contemporary refers to creating art in the current circumstances of today. Contemporary artwork is characterized by the diversity of material, form, and subject matter.


Contemporary art utilizes materials, techniques, subjects, and tools available today to deliver its message to the viewers and to represent a cultural dialogue that concerns larger contextual frameworks such as personal identity, family, community, and nationality.


Furthermore, contemporary art continues to challenge the boundaries of the art world today. contemporary art as a whole is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform ideology or organizing principles.


The definition of contemporary Art... Naturally always on the move.


The definition of what is contemporary is naturally always on the move. In London, the Contemporary Art Society was founded in 1910 by the critic Roger Fry and others, of course, the works the Contemporary Art Society bought in 1910 could no longer be described as contemporary today.


The Institute of Contemporary Art changed their perception of art, the new wide art spectra to be named "contemporary" instead of "Modern art", Modernism became defined as a historical art movement.


Contemporary art is aging, that's why contemporary art is not intended for permanent collections. definitions of what constitutes "contemporary art" in the 2010s vary and are mostly imprecise. Nowadays, some art critics perhaps restrict the "contemporary" to work from 2000 onwards.


Contemporary art is trying to expand the boundaries of what could be defined as art.


For Artists who are still productive after a long career, critics are often reluctant to divide their work between the contemporary and non-contemporary. As modern art challenged the traditional representation of art, contemporary art is trying to expand the boundaries of what could be defined as art.


During the 19th century, Impressionism repelled the attempt to reflect stark reality in Realism. Impressionism looked at our perception of a moment through light and color. On the other hand, contemporary art repelled our perception of art.


Contemporary art arguments around the meaning of art could be open-ended. Artists, art critics, and galleries have no regulating outlines of what could be considered contemporary art. It looks that the only single rule about contemporary art is to continuously challenge the perspectives on what constitutes an art piece.


Roger Fry joined the Bloomsbury group in 1910.


During the period of 1905-1912, a group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists closely associated with the University of Cambridge established what was called The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set, the Bloomsbury set members were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts.


Their works deeply discussed literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics and debated feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. The Bloomsbury group included ten core members, Clive Bell, art critic, Vanessa Bell, post-impressionist painter, E. M. Forster, fiction writer, Roger Fry (art critic and post-impressionist painter), Duncan Grant (post-impressionist painter), John Maynard Keynes (economist), Desmond MacCarthy (literary journalist), Lytton Strachey (biographer), Leonard Woolf (essayist and non-fiction writer), Virginia Woolf (fiction writer, and essayist) most of the group's members were educated at the University of Cambridge.


Roger Fry, self portrait 1928
Roger Fry, self-portrait 1928

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bloomsbury group members were influenced by philosopher G. E. Moore's revolutionary ideology, for both Moore and Bloomsbury, the greatest ethical goods were "the importance of personal relationships and the private life", as well as an aesthetic appreciation for "art for art's sake".



Bloomsbury repelled the social rituals. they also adopted personal relations over patriotism. The Bloomsbury group's focus was on the idea of enjoyment and informal personal relationships and individual pleasure. The Group believed in pleasure... They tried to get the maximum pleasure out of their personal relations within a sophisticated, civilized, and highly articulated ideology.


Roger Fry joined the group in 1910. Fry and other Bloomsbury artists rejected the traditional distinction between fine and decorative art. Fry's post-impressionist exhibitions involved Bloomsbury in a second artistic revolution following the Cambridge philosophical one. In the late1930s, The Bloomsbury group was hardly any longer a focus.



Contemporary Art... A Term by Roger Eliot Fry.


Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 London – 9 September 1934 London) was an English painter and one of the most important art critics in history, Roger Fry, actually, was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain. In the 1900s, Fry started to teach art history at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.


In 1910, after his mentally ill wife was committed to a mental institution, Fry met the artists Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell, and it was through them that he was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group.


Fry did not consider himself a great artist.


Fry did not consider himself a great artist and though he did not pretend to be a professional portrait painter his best pictures were straightforward naturalistic portraits. In 1903 Fry was involved in the foundation of The Burlington Magazine, the first scholarly periodical dedicated to art history in Britain.


Fry wrote for The Burlington from 1903 until his death, he published over two hundred pieces on eclectic subjects. Fry gave the name Post-Impressionism to painting developments at his time around the early 20th century.


In November 1910, at the Grafton Galleries, in London, Fry organized an exhibition for the Post-Impressionists Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse, and Van Gogh to show their case to the public. Fry smashed for a long time his reputation as an art critic by introducing such works to the public who called him mad, as his wife, Fry should be in an asylum.


In 1903, Roger Fry along with six prominent individuals established The Contemporary Art Society. It was not until 18 May 1910 that the name of the Contemporary Art Society was settled upon.


Fry believed that the emotional effect of art comes from the form of the artwork, including the use of line, mass, color, and overall design. Fry's greatest gift was the ability to perceive the elements that give an artist his significance.


Fry conveys his belief that art appreciation should begin with a sensibility to form as opposed to an inclination to praise the art of high culture. Fry also argues that African or Chinese art is just as deserving of study as Greek art.


The well-known art critic died unexpectedly after a fall at his home in London. His death caused great sorrow among the avant-garde artists. Fry is remembered for being one of the greatest influencers on taste, if the public taste can be changed by one man, it would be changed by Roger Fry.


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