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25 yearsof European art: how we abandoned simple forms and found depth instead
Those whorecall the 2000s as the era of bold performances, radical gestures and art-fairglitz often forget: beneath that surface, another epoch was already takingshape. An art that doesn’t scream but watches. That doesn’t seduce but workswith trauma, silence and shadow. The 2000s, 2010s and even 2020s — they’re notthree decades, but three layers of one long excavation: an archaeology of theEuropean soul.
Once theroar of postmodern freedom faded, new voices emerged. Instead of shock —intimacy. Instead of irony — structure. Instead of slogans — inquiry. Over thepast 25 years, Europe became not just the home of artists, but the subject oftheir observation.
Art as refusal: why we stopped being “loud”
In the’90s, artists acted like rockstars. They shocked, pierced, disrupted. But bythe early 2000s, something shifted.
Fromspectacle — to experience. From provocation — to presence.
Damien Hirst: from glitter to gravity
In the 1990s, Hirst reigned supreme as the prince of shock.
The Physical Impossibility of Death inthe Mind of Someone Living — a tigershark suspended in formaldehyde — was less about death than about market power.His diamond-encrusted skull For the Love of God became a meme of luxury-as-message.
But sincethe mid-2010s, Hirst has quietly stepped away from sensation. In The Veil Paintings and Cherry Blossoms, he trades spectacle forsurface, working with thick, tactile paint and monumental canvases.
Noslogans, no glitter. Just matter. A return to painting as meditation — as ifseeking forgiveness from art itself.
Steve McQueen: from form to collectivegrief
His early video work, like Deadpan (1997), wasformalist: a Buster Keaton stunt restaged with surgical precision.
ButMcQueen evolved. His two-channel film Ashes (2014) shows a joyful Caribbean boy on one screen, while the other reveals histragic fate. No commentary — just time, loss, beauty.
Then came Year 3 (2019), a portrait of 76,000London schoolchildren — a living archive of the future.
McQueenbecame not just an artist, but a keeperof memory. He doesn’t provoke; he bears witness.
Europe as stage — and as subject
Artists nolonger “reflect” reality. They enter it — barehanded.
Florence Lazar creates with, not about, hersubjects. In Les Paysans (2000), shefilms rural communities in France’s former colonies, allowing their unfilteredvoices, accents and
silencesto shape the work.
This is ethical minimalism — the art of listening,not explaining.
Elmgreen & Dragset, once known for mockinginstitutional absurdity, made a strange pivot with Prada Marfa (2005) — a fake luxury store in the middle of the Texasdesert. You can't go in. You can't shop. You just watch.
A ghost of Western desire, sealed behind glass.
And Olafur Eliasson, often remembered forimmersive light works, began with almost scientific precision. In Beauty (1993), a stream of mist andlight creates a rainbow — delicate, fleeting, nearly invisible.
Then, in2003, he transformed Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall into The Weather Project — an artificial sun, low fog, and mirroredceilings. Visitors lay beneath it like pilgrims. Later works like Ice Watch (2014), which placed meltingglacial blocks in city squares, made the climate emergency literal andvisceral.
Nature no longer lives outside — it’sbecome a museum artifact.Something disappearing. Something mourned.
From form to fieldwork: the artist asresearcher
Today’sartist is not a maker of objects, but a conductorof inquiries.
Camille Henrot merges anthropology with dreamlogic. Her Grosse Fatigue (2013)plays like a digital fever dream — a chorus of open windows, whispered mythsand museum archives.
Shedoesn’t explain the world — she disorientsit, lovingly.
From form to fieldwork: the artist asresearcher
Today’sartist is not a maker of objects, but a conductorof inquiries.
Camille Henrot merges anthropology with dreamlogic. Her Grosse Fatigue (2013)plays like a digital fever dream — a chorus of open windows, whispered mythsand museum archives.
Shedoesn’t explain the world — she disorientsit, lovingly.
Tino Sehgal, meanwhile, abandoned objects entirely.His exhibitions consist of gestures, voices, eye contact. No documentation. Nosales. Only memory.
Art asencounter. As atmosphere. As something you must step into to understand.
What really changed in 25 years?
Yes,technology, politics, globalization all matter. But the core transformationsrun deeper:
Pain became structural
Art nolonger screams “I hurt.” It shows howsystems hurt us — how trauma becomes architecture.
Time became a material
Contemporaryart doesn’t just comment on the now — it excavates. The archive, the trace, theghost of presence have become essential tools.
We live inthe age of retrospective art — artthat already misses what it depicts.
The viewer became a co-author
Today, artdoesn’t exist without interaction. You don’t just look. You complete it.
This isn’tplay — it’s responsibility.
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Instead of closure — an open stage
Europeancontemporary art over the last 25 years hasn’t become easier. It’s become more honest.
It doesn’texplain — it invites. It doesn’tresolve — it holds space.
While someask “Where are the new Picassos?”, others are building aslow, quiet, difficult civilization of visual thought. And perhaps, it’s thiswork — not loud, not branded, but urgent and tender — that will remain.
Art, here,is no longer spectacle. It’s a structure for thinking. And that — maybe morethan anything — is what we need now.
