Contemporary Paintings, Modern Art, Abstract Paintings - What's your Difference?

This is one simple question, and a little confusing to answer because the terms "contemporary art, " "modern art, " and "abstract art" may be used interchangeably at times. Shall we start with "modern art work. " Modern Art can be a classification of an art work period that started around 1870 by Impressionists such as Claude Monet. It can be understood that modern artists are those that experimented with new options for seeing, expressing new ideas and methods. But technically the modern day art movement ended for the 1960's and 70's when the term "postmodern" began to be used and pop art became the new thing.

Abstract art is a method of painting a travel from reality and was definitely modern at the time. Abstraction in paintings began to make the scene right around the same time modern art became known because this is the painting style classified inside modern art movement. But full blown subjective paintings really started being early 1900's in Europe by the kind of Pablo Picasso and others inside cubism movement. Abstract art actually was not created in America before 1940's in the subjective expressionism movement with Jackson Pollock in the helm. Because abstract art can be a style of painting not a classification of a skill period, abstract paintings are nevertheless being created today.

And that brings us to today. Right now we operate the term "Contemporary Art" to define artwork as being created in our lifetime or in the current present moment. So any paintings being created today are contemporary paintings no matter what the style. What has happened is that folks generally use "contemporary art" to describe artwork from the 1970's until now. It is hard, if not near impossible to define a period while we are living in it. One may wonder, will we always operate the word "contemporary" to describe the artwork being created in today's moment? Or maybe there is an end to the use of the word "contemporary" signifying an end of another artwork period very similarly to how "modern" was used. I don't know. But in every case, I hope this information has helped and not confused you even more.