In an article in 1999 in Le Débat, Nathalie Heinich proposed to consider contemporary art as a genre of art, different from modern art as from classic art. It was a question of clearly marking its specificity while welcoming the plurality of definitions of art likely to coexist. More than twenty years later, the "quarrel of contemporary art" is not extinguished, stimulated by the explosion of prices, the spectacularization of proposals and the support of renowned institutions for controversial installations. It is why, more than an artistic "genre", contemporary art functions as a new paradigm, in other words "a general structuring of conceptions accepted at a moment in time", an unconscious model that formats the sense of normality. By moving from modern art to contemporary art, we change all the rules: the way of making art, of seeing it, of thinking about it, but also the way of presenting it and ultimately of selling it.