(Part 2) Top products from r/ContemporaryArt

This is great advice.

The one thing I would add for OP is to remember this is a marathon not a sprint.

Most "career artists" don't really get there until they are into their 40s. Obviously there are edge cases and outliers, but in general art careers are slow to develop and favor those who are patient.

It seems like you understand the realities and difficulties in making a living off your work. Just remember gallery representation is similar to sales, it's all about who you know and having the right aesthetic at the right place at the right time. Keep pushing your work regardless if it is well received or even not received at all.

If you are looking to break into the gallery scene, the best place to start is with your friends. Find a volunteer/community space and pitch a show with some people whose work you know and get it out there. Work doesn't need to be hung in a commercial space for it to be valid.

Also - I highly recommend checking out Akademie x - lessons in art. I review it once or twice a year and have gotten just as much out of this book as I did my undergrad program.

I recommend finding/purchasing a copy of the book ‘Appropriation’. It is part of a set of books produced by the Whitechapel gallery in London, they are excellent anthologies of sources by artists and writers around key subjects. The excerpts are often short but those of interest to you can lead to further reading.

I believe you’d also find ‘Postproduction’ by Nicolas Bourriaud compelling.

Good luck with your research.

Thinking about what can be defined as art is like trying to clean spilt milk with shoelaces.

Funeral performance. Yes, art.

Secretive Art. Yes. See Henry Darger or Hilma Af Klimt.

Outsider art. See Stephen Kaltenbach's decision to move to become a "Regional Artist."

Unseen art. Sure. It exists as far as you think it. Tons of conceptual artists were working with this idea. Lee Lozono's Dropout piece as well.

Lots of artists creating massive monumental work that alter the earth. Earthwork movement obviously.

Your last question is the one that extends furthest and sort of points to the problems inherent in the question of what is art.

"Is their art in this cycle?" is a very different question than "is this art?" that slides between two very different defintions to the word art.

Artful is adjective. Art is a socially based cultural form that isn't natural, it can be manipulated at will. Social definitions of art have changed dramatically over the centuries. An interesting introduction to this as a thought experiment is Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art by Mary Anne Staniszewski
https://www.amazon.com/Believing-Seeing-Creating-Culture-Art/dp/0140168249
I recommend that if you are new to this.

Otherwise check out cultural theorists. Pierre Borudieu is sort of like the reigning champion of critical takedown of the arts as a cultural form.

It's necessary to be able to differentiate from the kind of abstractions you posted and actual minimalism, so I see no reason to dilute the term. Minimalism is typically more about breaking the medium down into its components, going deeper than breaking surface composition down to visual components like shape and color. There are some artworks that sit on the line, but what you posted just seem like basic abstraction. This book is a pretty good history.

The artist Brian O'Doherty wrote a book about the experience of modern art in the late 1970s that echoes just what you're saying. Just dug it off my shelf..."A gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous for those for building a medieval church. The outside world must not come in...Walls are painted white...The art is free, as the saying used to go, "to take on its own life....Unshadowed, white, clean, artificial - the space is devoted to the technology of esethetics. 'Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space' - There's a download here

There's a chapter in How to Write About Contemporary Art about making an artist's statement. Might be of help: How to Write About Contemporary Art https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0500291578/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_FF0FAb3Z6R3RQ

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Weschler is a great read. It is biography of Robert Irwin, but through Weschler and Irwin's discourse, the reader is walked through the general philosophy and movement from abstract expressionism into minimalism (in the US).

Recommend these books published by Phaidon:

• http://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-P-New-Perspectives-Painting/dp/0714844462
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-P2-New-Perspectives-Painting/dp/071486160X/
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Painting-Today-Tony-Godfrey/dp/0714846317/
  
  EDIT: a few more.
  
  This is what everyone will be talking about for a few weeks:
  
  
• http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/arts/design/the-forever-now-a-survey-of-contemporary-painting-at-moma.html?referrer=&_r=0
  
  And looking back:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Painting-Dialogues-Contemporary-Criticalvoices/dp/0415276292
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Painting-Whitechapel-Documents-Contemporary-Art/dp/0262515679
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Perspectives-Contemporary-Painting-Historicism/dp/0853239584
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Painting-Edge-World-Midori-Matsui/dp/0935640673

This is a classical one: Aesthetic Theory

But, don't miss this one: Art and It's Shadow

I’m afraid you might be disappointed and frustrated with the answers you’re likely to get.

There isn’t a guide to art styles that’s like a guide to species of birds for birdwatchers. Art is more chaotic than that. It’s something people make up as they go along. The groups, styles and schools that are used to explain what’s happened and is happening are made up as we go along, too. There are many arguments about definitions, and not much is settled. That, I think, is a good definition of “Contemporary.”

But when I started off, before the internet, like you, I wanted a guide. Almost 30 years ago, I read the first edition of Artspeak, by Robert Atkins (having trouble linking on mobile: [ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1945 to the Present https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789211513/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_HQebAbCXSD0TC])

But I wouldn’t really recommend a book like this for someone starting out today. Several decades ago, I found Atkins’ groupings misleading and oversimplified. And the art world has gotten even more confusing and fragmented since then.

My recommendation: I would find a website of a museum online, preferably one you can visit, which has a large digital catalogue of its collection. I would wander around the website reading the entries and following the links. Spending a few hours this way will begin to familiarize you with terms and jargon that frequently appear. Good luck.