Expanding the Notion of Contemporary

Things change, but art at the borders always provokes interest

Through The Scholar Wife, The Middlebrows have gotten to know New York City art dealers Howard and Amy Rehs who, with their children Lance and Alyssa, sell 19th and early 20th century works alongside contemporary art. They specialize in the catalogue of post-impressionist painter Édouard Cortès, known as the poet-painter of Paris. You may know him, or maybe not. The Middlebrow did not, but has become an admirer.

At the moment in the art world (this is not The Middlebrow’s specialty, natch) contemporary works are in vogue while older works struggle to find audiences and buyers. A problem may be that the 19th and even early 20th century works are being lumped with far older paintings, sculptures and finery. To The Middlebrow’s gaze, the Cortès displayed with this missive seems contemporary in its choice of subject, its coloration and its urbanity. The scene outside of the infamous Paris cabaret might well have been captured later by an artist-about-town like David Hockney. There seems less of a connection between the Cortès and, say, old Dutch masters with their cherub realism.

Perhaps a problem here has been a collective choice to put the modern world on our side of the two World Wars, particularly the second, as if our global perspective was restarted by the Cold War and development of planet-crushing weapons. But this hard line between old and new obscures connections to the past.

Cortès died in 1969, so he’s much more connected to our world than that of the 15th century. But it does seem, if the art world is lumping so much of the pre-contemporary scene together, that a lot’s going to be missed. As usual, I liken it to theater and literature. Most students who study theater history do so chronologically, starting in ancient Greece as a freshman and working towards contemporary scripts in junior and senior years.

The revelation here is that so much of human psychology endures over thousands of years. The passions, flaws and foibles of Aeschylus show up in Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, John Guare, Sarah Kane and Anne Washburn.

But some things do develop and change over time. Human psychology might remain constant (greed is greed in any century) but our storytelling techniques evolve and perspectives shift. Sometimes, when reading chronologically through history, you can see it happening. For me, Georg Büchner’s 1836 play Woyzeck was the first in my studies that seemed contemporary. It has short scenes, curt dialogue (not in verse) and black humor. A rising sun is described, for example, as “God emptying his bedpan on the world.” The play seemed so modern that reading Ibsen, which came after, felt like a step back into antiquity (though Ibsen’s themes are contemporary, his style was not).

Since the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the height of modernism in art, writing and music, none of it is best served when banished to the distant past. This is where the contemporary perspective comes from, after all.

It’s healthy and natural to admire the new but it might be best to keep that category has broad as possible. We are those moments of transition and innovation, from Büchner to Cortès and back again.