Sculpture 25, by Jen Stark

2010 is upon us! A new decade unfolding before our eyes that will surely bring it's own regrettable trends and revolutionary ideas in the art-world. In the regular-world art is slower, impressionist paintings that were at the time considered to be “not real art” are now revered the world over as true masterpieces. And it seems many people are still coming around to the modern and abstract art of the last mid-century. Art has undergone many metamorphosis in the past century, but one might not know it as the art from a hundred-plus years ago remain the undisputed masterpieces for many people.

Whether or not you thought we'd have flying cars by now, we are living in the 21^st century, onto the second decade—this is the future! We've got cutting edge technology, but in a lot of ways cutting edge aesthetics have not totally caught up. With these thoughts in mind, I'd like to ring in the new year by taking a look at the recent trends in art of the past decade, and where we have really come in the past 100 years.

The past decade has seen it's own trends ans changes in art. With the boom of the internet has come the idea of art as a meme: photos and paintings getting passed around online, the artist gaining internet fame (often without any real recognition from art communities or galleries.) This allows the artist to self-publish and get the potential for a lot of eyes on their work.

Many younger artist were taking on this do-it-yourself attitude with their art and self-publishing and turning their cities into the same type of free space with elaborate street-art, which also has the potential to “go viral.” While there are many artists that went from blogs to world-renowned galleries like, Jen Stark or Melanie Schiff street artist Banksy is the sterotypical epitome of this.

In the meantime, formal art seemed to have married with capitalism. The gang of Young British Artists were cashing in on novel works. The face of this would be Tracy Emin whose most famous works include “My Bed” which is the artist's actual disheveled bed after a bout of serious depression and “Everyone I've Ever Slept With” a tent pasted with names. Tracy seems to be following in the path of another famed British artist, Damien Hirst, who is reported to be the richest living artist to date. What artist other than one of that title could create a diamond skull to sell at $50 million?

100 years ago there were plenty of upstart artists who had largely never been heard of. Salvador Dali was on the scene with his twirled mustache and dream-like canvases, Kandinsky was leading us all into the genius of abstraction and Pablo Picasso was making a name for himself.

Regardless of what contemporary art will become known as classic, or what falls by the way-side I say cheers to the artist-- and cheers to the ushering in of a new decade, a new era for us all!