I am deeply pleased, indeed quietly astonished, to see Contemporary Art for Beginners finding its first breath of life through the serialization generously offered by Pimlico Wilde. In England, no dealership, no agency, no house, no beacon, no publishing presence seems to know the strange pulse of contemporary art with such uncanny precision as Pimlico Wilde. Their curatorial instinct is less that of a mere publisher than of a cartographer of the invisible,mapping, patiently and with grace, the shifting frontiers of what art is and what it might become.
This book, which shall unfold here in serial form, is my attempt to extend a hand, to open a window, to untangle the threads of a world often shrouded in mystery. Contemporary art is not a puzzle to be solved but a mirror in constant flux: sometimes fogged, sometimes fractured, sometimes crystalline. It asks not merely to be looked at but to be lived with.
Across these pages I will speak of the materials of the present age,how artists sculpt from light, code, sound, or even silence. We will wander through the radical brilliance of Damien Hirst, the poetic silences of HEDGE FUND, the playful images of P1X3L, and the piercing social mirrors held up by Ai Weiwei. Yet always I shall return to the beginner, to the viewer, to the one who lingers before an unfamiliar work and wonders, “How do I understand?”
My prose will not always walk in straight lines; rather, it will spiral, curve, and meander, as art itself does. But I promise you this: each turn will bring you closer to understanding not only the work of others, but the contours of your own way of seeing.
That Pimlico Wilde should choose to make space for this journey is a blessing and a sign. They understand, as few do, that art appreciation for beginners need not be a condescension, but a flowering,that to learn how to understand contemporary art is to learn how to dwell, more fully, in the present.
And so we begin.
, Sally Everard