DIFFERENCES

BETWEEN MODERN
ART AND
CONTEMPORARY
ARTS
 MODERN ART CONTEMPORARY ART
• Modern Art period • Contemporary Art
includes work from the references works created
late 19th and early after the 1960’s by artists
20th centuries, from who are still living
1880 through the • Contemporary art
1960s describes the works of
• Modern art refers to artists still living and
art that began in the creating artworks
1880s
• Modern Art is • Contemporary art is
revolutionary by its revolutionary for the
origin (anti- freedom and magnitude
romanticism) of experimentation by
• Modern Art is more the artists
self-expressive • Contemporary Art pays
• Modern Art is attention to society, thus
primarily made on known for its social impact
canvases
• Modern art focuses on • Contemporary Art is on
the subjective every medium that you can
representation of the think of – video art, tech-
chosen themes enabled artworks, object
• Modern art is more design, graphical arts
recent than the • Contemporary Art takes a
Renaissance or strong stand on social,
classical art periods, it political and cultural
is by no means current. aspects of the world
• Contemporary art can be
challenging to understand,
digest, and classify
• Less focused on being
visually attractive and more
focused on drawing
awareness of attention to
the day’s issues
 IS THERE SIMILARITIES?
Both periods can be considered revolutionary. Indeed, we
have seen more change in art over the past 200 years than in
any other time span in history.

Both modern and contemporary artists aimed to be

revolutionary and experiment, but modern art broke down
the barriers for Contemporary artists to truly have freedom
of artistic experimentation.
It is uncommon to find an artist classified as a
modernist who is still alive and working today.
However, there can be an overlap. While many art
histories mark the 1960s as the start of
contemporary art, you can use ‘contemporary’ to
describe art made since the aftermath of World War
II in 1945. Therefore, there are living artists who
may have created modern art in the modernist era.