"Contemporary art," says Robert Storr, "is simply the most recent of modern art and modern art is an ongoing phenomenon." That line from a recent lecture on museums and collecting modern and contemporary art delivered by Storr, the artist, critic, curator, and instructor, caught my attention. Though it was given in a fairly matter-of-fact way, that line struck me as not so obviously true.
Storr mentioned a 60 Minutes program Morley Safer once wrote, in which he decried contemporary artists (contemporary for the time) like Robert Ryman while he heaped praise on Miró. Miró, of course, was a pivotal member of the band of surrealists who were considered at one point to be a threat to the national order so plausible that Congress held sessions discussing the option of banning art-world "-isms." Storr's point is that controversial contemporary artists soon become our familiar standby favorites. Exposure makes ideas more accessible over time: in that regard, contemporary art becomes modern art.
A side note for clarity's sake: contemporary art never becomes Modernist art. That period in art, which roughly covers the late nineteenth century through mid-twentieth century, concluded when Postmodern artists, critics, and theorists began responding to and summarizing the radical discoveries from the Modernist era. Because Postmodernism introduced new difficulties in moving forward with a linear, progressive understanding of schools and styles in art, the work that has been made roughly since 1970 has been called "contemporary" whereas work that preceded that time is called "modern." These broader categories have no bearing on the more advanced critical/academic notions of Modern and Postmodern; when Storr says that all art made since late nineteenth century realist painting is modern art, he does not mean that all the art is Modernist.
Going back to Storr's broad distinction, I don't think that we should accept that modern or contemporary art loses its power over time, even if reactionary responses fade away or new ideas become more accessible. Marcel Duchamp's provocative work—his readymades; The Fountain; his appropriation of Leonardo's Mona Lisa for his own L.H.O.O.Q.—is still worth grappling with, for artists, critics, and viewers in this day and time.
In other respects, there are useful distinctions to make between "modern" and "contemporary" art—and it depends in no small part on who is making the distinctions. Critics once held painting to be a "higher" medium, up to and including the Modernist era. But today, critics would take a dim view of that opinion (or any hierarchy of genres). Conservators and curators might note the great expansion of techniques that new media have introduced: video and installation—and their applications in contemporary art—have expanded art's potential beyond the plastic arts. Museums have had to cope: collecting contemporary art means adjusting to work that may by design flout the restrictions of an art museum. (Like what? The examples are too many to count. From earth rooms to hotel rooms, new venues and formats for art reveal that one of the first-order functions of contemporary art is the critique of contemporary art. That couldn't be said necessarily of Modernist art.)
As art has moved beyond the canvas—into the realms of concept, critique, and more—it has changed the entire industry associated with visual art. The shift from modern to contemporary seems like more than an arbitrary division in time. In broad terms, it describes a watershed expansion in art's possibilities and roles, from one set of broad rules to another. Pinpointing that divide, however, is trickier. Up close—that is, describing art on a case-by-case level—the division between "modern" and "contemporary" is ambiguous. Is it best to use a crude cut-off (say, that all works made from 1970 to the present fall under "contemporary")? Or is there a work or group of works that crystallizes the moment between modern and contemporary?
