Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century

Artists Ai Weiwei, El Anatsui and Catherine Opie bear witness, through their work, to transformation — cultural, material and aesthetic — and actively engage communities as collaborators and subjects.

The artists in this episode, David Altmejd, Tabaimo and Lynda Benglis, synthesize disparate aesthetic traditions, present taboo subject matter, discover innovative uses of media and explore the shape-shifting potential of the human figure.

In this episode, artists Glenn Ligon, Mary Reid Kelley and Marina Abramovic play with historical events, explore and expose commonly held assumptions about historic "truth" and create narratives based on personal experiences.

The artists in this episode, Rackstraw Downes, Robert Mangold and Sarah Sze, create ordered and precise works that explore the gap between art and existence, challenge the distinction between seeing and knowing and demonstrate that the pursuit of harmony can be a radical proposition.