The art world is a messy, varied, and brilliant beast.

For every dainty watercolorist there’s an explosive abstract expressionist. For every Tchaikovsky ballet there’s an experimental opera involving human fluids and live piercing. It’s a mixed bag, and it’s not possible to categorize it neatly. However, in some years certain themes do seem to dominate.

We’ve taken stock of 2024, and have highlighted the art world trends that stood out among the whirlwind of biennale protests, a flurry of Banksy works, and seriously expensive bananas.

Florals Surrounded Us with Painterly Blooms

Kate Bickmore, Hypnotic Transference of Luminous Life (2024). Courtesy the Artist and CHART. Photo: Sebastian Bach.

If you’re searching for paintings of flowers in a museum, you’re likely to find a truckload of them in galleries devoted to Dutch 17th-century painting, as well as an Impressionist vase or two, and maybe a set of watercolors done by a nice Victorian lady. Their history as a formal, sentimental subject matter has not given florals a particularly rock-and-roll reputation, making it surprising for some to find that they’re back in the spotlight, including at major fairs like Frieze.

So what is it about paintings of flowers that is so appealing to ultra-contemporary artists? For some, it seems to be a drive to reconnect with nature, while for others it is an experiment in repackaging a subject matter dismissed as fundamentally feminine. For British-American artist Kate Bickmore, her large-scale exotic blooms are a vehicle for gender expression: “In terms of my queer identity, I love what happens when I paint flowers larger than me… I’m fully immersed and present within the flower—it contains me.”

The Neo-Rococo Invited Us to Indulgence

Flora Yukhnovich, A Taste of a Poison Paradise (2023). Courtesy of Hauser and Wirth.

If you’re after art that screams “hedonistic indulgence” while cranking up texture, a sense of luxury, and sensuousness to the max, you need look no further than the Rococo. A lighter, more frivolous counterpart to the Baroque, Rococo emerged in 1720s France, and its artworks can be generally categorized as paintings of the upper classes lounging about, flirting, and gawping up each other’s skirts on swings.

Rococo ultimately fell out of favor, though, given that it represented all the things the French revolutionaries hated, and many of its artists and patrons were forced to flee the country—or their heads were forced to flee their bodies. So why is it back in, given that we live in a time of ever-increasing wealth inequality? Well, for many, the sumptuous colors, hazy figures, and ethereal motifs of Neo-Rococo offer an escape from the real world.

Intimism Brought It All Home

Alec Egan, Miro’s Corner (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York.

After 2020, more of us have had periods stuck inside our homes than ever before, and the work-from-home phenomenon sees many of us kept indoors for the majority of our day. So it’s no wonder that artists are turning their gaze to their immediate surroundings, and that collectors are looking to spruce up their interiors with homely themes.

Intimism developed in the late 19th century, pioneered by French painters Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. It demonstrated a shift away from a conviction that artists’ subjects must be noble, grounded in narrative, or moralistic; artists began to paint family members and domestic scenes from an intimate distance. Contemporary Intimism isn’t necessarily all about domestic peace and quiet, though, and artists are jazzing up their domestic scenes and still lifes with vibrant shades and fantastical twists.

Multi-Sensory Exhibitions Reigned

John Frederick Lewis, Lilium Auratum (1871). Photo: Barber Institute of Fine Arts.

Just looking at art just isn’t enough these days, and museums and galleries alike are injecting their shows with multi-sensory elements to bring in the crowds. And just throwing some atmospheric music won’t cut it, either: we want to smell and touch our art, too.

In October at Birmingham’s Barber Institute, art historian Christina Bradstreet staged an exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite paintings with custom-made perfumes diffused through AirParfum technology, and in May the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art brought out 250 rarely displayed costumes from its collection and showcased them in a gallery with walls embossed with a recreation of 17th-century embroidery for visitors to run their hands over. This lean towards the multi-sensory is just one way in which exhibitions and galleries are attempting to stand out from the crowd and bring in new audiences, with other approaches including the incorporation of VR elements and even gimmicks to track visitors’ brainwaves.

Art Historical Heroines Got Their Due

Ruth Asawa, 1957. Courtesy Imogen Cunningham, © 2017 Imogen Cunningham Trust. Artwork © Estate of Ruth Asawa.

A wider trend of this century has been readdressing the historical imbalance between male and female artists, and 2024 has been no exception. Major female retrospectives have included Art Deco icon Tamara de Lempicka at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, sculptor Ruth Asawa in San Francisco and New York, and feminist icon Judy Chicago at London’s Serpentine North.

Art books centered on female narratives have also flown off the shelves this year, including Hettie Judah’s “Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood”; Isabelle Bonnet, Sophie Hackett, and Susan Stryker’s book tracing “Casa Susanna,” an underground network of transgender women, gender nonconforming people, and men who dressed as women; and Kim Hyesoon’s volume on Korean feminist artists.

Pop-Cultural Phenomena Dominated Museums

A display case featuring items from the era’s popular bands. Courtesy Andrew Buckingham.

This year has seen a flood of shows focused on pop-cultural phenomena, from “I’m Not Okay,” an exhibition of emo memorabilia at London’s Barbican, which had us giving ourselves a heavy side part, to “Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail,” at London’s V&A, which saw young fans weeping at the feet of the billionaire’s stage outfits. Following the stratospheric success of Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie (2023) and the record-shattering popularity of Swift’s just-concluded Eras Tour, it seems fan culture is stronger than ever.

It’s no wonder, then, that museums and galleries are targeting fans to hike up their ticket sales. London’s Design Museum chose two major cultural names to lead its exhibitions since the summer, with one major show celebrating the 65th anniversary of Barbie, and the other seeing out 2024 by exploring the creations of the Tim Burton cinematic universe.