Past Post Modernism- a lengthy and slightly incoherent essay.
T Det
The Myth of PoMo:
How do we encapsulate a generation of movements under one umbrella?
Well, thats what ascribing to the myth of Post-Modernism does. It
squeezes every art movement in the West between 1945 and 1980 or so into
a box called Modernism, and then steps outside of that box, carefuly
avoiding any detritus or fall-out and says it's 'post' modernism. It's
past modernism. It's somehow 'beyond' modernism.
What IS PoMo:
First off, what is Modernism? How does it aply to the arts? Is the
arrival of Brecht and Beckett modernism in theatre? Is James Joyce or
Joseph Conrad modernism in literature? Is Marcel Duchamp's Urinal
modernism in art? In music, is the invention of the Phongraph modernism
in music? Or the invention of the 45? Or the birth of Rock and Roll?
Lets take a trip down Modernities historical tributaries...
The Modern Age began either in 1750 with the Industrial Revolution in
England's Midlands, or with the French and American Revolutions. Or for
the artists unconcerned with reality- with Blake, Constable and Turner
and the invention of the Camera...
Pre-Modernism
1750-1880- Neo Classicist (Poussin, David, Ingres)
1800-80- Romantics (Blake, Constable, Delacroix, Goya, Turner)
1830-70- Realist (Courbet, Daumier, Millet)
1848-54- Pre-Raphaelites (Millais, Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones)
1870-90- Impressionist (Cassatt, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir)
Post Impressionism- (1880-1920's)
1880-1920- Post Impressionists (Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Van Gogh, Klimt)
1890-1920- Expressionist (Beckmann, Munch, Schiele)
1903- 07- Fauvist
05-39- Cubist (Braque, Leger, Picasso)
16-22- Dadaist (Arp, Duchamp) and 1924-39- Surrealist (Magritte, Dali)
20-40- Bauhaus (Gropius)
20-40- Harlem Renaissance
1930-Now- Folk Art, Naiive Art, Outsider Art, Hobo Art, Primitivism...
(Grandma Moses)
http://folkart.about.com/arts/folkart/mbody.htm?PM=553_21
http://www.folkart.org/
Modernism and its idiot children -or the little FauxPoMo's:
1945-Now- Abstract Expressionism (de Kooning, Pollock)
60's- Op Art. Brigette Riley's amazing one-trick pony.
50's-Now- Pop Art (Christo, Lichtenstein, Warhol.)
60's-Now- Minimalism (Stella)
60's-Now- Conceptual (See: Dada + Surrealism)
60's-Now- Graphic/ Word (Holzer, Kruger) (See: Dada + Situationism)
60's-Now- Performance. (See: Mime + Situationism + a doctor)
70's-Now- Graffiti (Futura 2000)
80's-Now- Modern Art- Current breed of Salon Bruitistes. (Emin, Hurst,
Offili et al.)
So, seemingly Modernism is 1945 to present day, and Post Modernism is an
airy-fairy construct used by poseurs and ponces to attempt to detach
themselves from the crude vaguaries of the Modern Art world. Like Art
Teachers, Lecturers, Dealers and Critics- to whit- Non Artists who 'are'
the Art World but who are so filled with self-loathing they convince
themselves that they are not what they are paid to be.
So sorry about that. (polite grin, slight pant).
The Modern Age is from 1750 to now, the last quarter of the 20th
Century. The Art movement called Mdernism is 1945 to now. So what will
end this juggernaut of Modernism? When will we stop inventing, and
re-inventing the way that we percieve ourselves, our culture and our
art? Or are we now condemned to be trapped in this seeming creschendo of
noise, waiting for the next movement of 'A Day in the Life'?
Some theories point to a doubling of the total sum of human knowledge
that increases at an expoential rate resulting in some kind of
information overload/ breakthrough on 23rd December 2012, or maybe some
smart-arse will come up with a better term than Modernism for us to be
Post- of. Part of this whole problem of what to call ourselves is the
nebulous patterns of the latter-half of the 20th Century. We want to be
beyond the first half, yet Hurst's Shark in Formaldehyde is
Situationism, Dada, Surrealism, and Conceptual all at once. It hasn't
recontextualised itself for what it was, just crossed a few small boundaries.
We are in an age of uncertainty, of crossing boundaries. While we have
defined art so thrououghly in the 20th Century, and been so complete in
explorinbg the globe, we are left with three courses of action-
1: Like some bunch of squabbling Communists, split up into 3,000
sub-headings of say-
"Surreal Conceptual Folk Art Movement" (or SoCoHoBo)
"Performance Romantic Graffiti Movement" (or PeRoGraMo)
"Duchampesque Modern Folk"(or DumbAssMo'Fo)
"Modern Post Fake Bohemian Slow-Motion Perfomance Folk Art with Chrome
Alloy Light Sticks and Fake Blood"
(or MoPoFauxBoHoSloMoPoMoHoBoChroMoGloBoFauxHaemoglobin)
2: Re-explore previous avenues-
The New Folk Artists
Neo Neo Classicists
Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
3: Just accept the crossover appeal. It's the way of the future.
"I'm a graphc designer who draws comics and illustrates gay porn whilst
also designing websites and making music inbetween working in the theatre."
In Summation-
Anyway- why are we so worried and concerned about what to call
ourselves? Post- this and Pre- that... did Van Gogh call himself a Post
Impressionist for instance? No, he just cut his ear off and got on with
it. A very Brutish attitude, maybe, but one that gets results.
Although the way that the internet and modern society is heading, maybe
we should be looking to call ourselves "Post Content"...
Its funny how we've so readily adapted our careers into net-speak-
Content Provider- Writer
Internet Artist- Bad Animator constrained to 3Mb or less...
Website Designer- Paid for doing what a trained ape with Dreamweaver 3
could do...
Internet Investor- Gambling Man.
Tim.
dym...@ripco.com
>
> I'm surprised no-one really leapt on this little train of thought...
>
> The Myth of PoMo:
> How do we encapsulate a generation of movements under one umbrella?
> Well, thats what ascribing to the myth of Post-Modernism does. It
> squeezes every art movement in the West between 1945 and 1980 or so into
> a box called Modernism, and then steps outside of that box, carefuly
> avoiding any detritus or fall-out and says it's 'post' modernism. It's
> past modernism. It's somehow 'beyond' modernism.
Hmmm. Actually art historians tend to place the beginning
of modernism (in the visual arts) at the end of the nineteenth
century - starting with the Impressionists, or even Manet.
Getting away from the Salons was a major, major turning point.
It's always been my impression that, according to those
who make and subscribe to these labels, "modernism" actually
ended somewhere in the sixties, and that "postmodernism" was
well under way by 1980. I must admit that when I hear the
word "modern", I don't think of anything past the fifties.
If a word is used in a certain sense long enough and widely
enough, no one is really immune, and people will look increasingly
silly trying to use it in the old sense. In my milieu, I *can't*
use the word "modern" to mean contemporary. I don't think there's
anything wrong with accepting the compromise that language often
demands.
I think those terms are useful to work with, even if you
ultimately reject them. The cubists didn't call themselves
"post-post-Impressionists", so if history means anything,
we don't have much to worry about. I think that the "modernism" /
"postmodernism" construct is useful in some ways because, to
me, the term "modernism" connotes idealism, formalism, abstraction.
It has a very clear set of associations, and "postmodernism" is
often a constellation of anti-modernist values.
--
Kerry
Nick Currie
> I'm surprised no-one really leapt on this little train of thought...
I agree, I find it all very interesting. Your essay was slightly
incoherent, but it raised lots of questions.
> The Myth of PoMo:
> How do we encapsulate a generation of movements under one umbrella?
> Well, thats what ascribing to the myth of Post-Modernism does. It
> squeezes every art movement in the West between 1945 and 1980 or so into
> a box called Modernism
I like to see Modernism starting 'on or about November 1910', which is
where Virginia Woolf rather jokingly said 'human nature changed'. In
that general timezone you also get Picasso painting 'Les Demoiselles
D'Avignon', T.S. Eliot composing 'The Wasteland', Stravinsky composing
'The Rite Of Spring' and Schoenberg inventing serialism. Radical splits
with the Romanticism of the 19th Century, and yet also continuations of
it.
> First off, what is Modernism? How does it aply to the arts? Is the
> arrival of Brecht and Beckett modernism in theatre?
I'd call the two Bs second wave Modernists. You can see the germs of
PoMo forming. Beckett, in Waiting For Godot, is drawing on vaudeville
and Buston Keaton as well as Dante, Joyce and modernist painting. Brecht
and Weill are doing a rather PoMo take on the American pop songs of the
day in 'Threepenny Opera'. That collapse of high and low anticipates
Superflat.
> Is Marcel Duchamp's Urinal
> modernism in art?
Yes, but again, I think of Duchamp as the first PostModernist.
Incredibly ahead of his time.
>In music, is the invention of the Phongraph modernism
> in music? Or the invention of the 45? Or the birth of Rock and Roll?
PoMo is a lot to do with the electronic biosphere which has become, now,
our primary reality. So for me PoMo begins with rock and roll, in which
you see artists emerging who are populist and commercial, and wouldn't
exist without electronic media.
> So, seemingly Modernism is 1945 to present day
No, I'd say Modernism is about 1910 to 1960. Warhol and people like that
are PoMo, they're superflat.
>and Post Modernism is an
> airy-fairy construct used by poseurs and ponces to attempt to detach
> themselves from the crude vaguaries of the Modern Art world.
Here I lose you, I'm afraid. PoMo is simply the historical cultural
period we're in now, and it's characterised by:
-A collapse of any distinction between high and low culture.
-A tendency to self-referentiality ('pop will eat itself'), parody, play
and plurality of modes of representation.
-Irony is the new sincerity.
-The historical products of our culture and others are available on a
supermarket shelf, there to be plundered and recontextualised.
-The individual artist is not so important as in Modernism. There are no
Picassos of PoMo. Everything is intertextual, communal, open source. The
reader profits from the 'death of the author'. Folk art and oral art are
back (and Napster lives on!)
-The age of ideology is also over. There are no big -isms any more for
people to believe in. Could an art movement figure like Andre Breton
exist now, arguing over the limits of Surrealism? Is there a
philosopher with the moral authority of Sartre? These people, though
great and inspiring, were also bullies and gatekeepers. And for
gatekeepers the game is over.
> When will we stop inventing, and
> re-inventing the way that we percieve ourselves, our culture and our
> art? Or are we now condemned to be trapped in this seeming creschendo of
> noise, waiting for the next movement of 'A Day in the Life'?
I have no idea how we get out of PoMo (should we even want to -- I'm
quite happy here) except by a flight into discipline, sincerity,
dogmatism. So roll on the worldwide Islamic revolution, and death to all
ironists!
> 2: Re-explore previous avenues-
That's still totally PoMo.
> 3: Just accept the crossover appeal. It's the way of the future.
Yup.
> Anyway- why are we so worried and concerned about what to call
> ourselves? Post- this and Pre- that... did Van Gogh call himself a Post
> Impressionist for instance? No, he just cut his ear off and got on with
> it. A very Brutish attitude, maybe, but one that gets results.
Actually, violence is somewhat unPoMo. Herman Nitsche (blood rituals),
Ron Athey (HIV blood rituals) and Chris Burden (nail me to my car and
I'll tell you who you are) seem to be seeking a return to Romanticism as
a way out of PoMo's less attractive side (a trivial adjunct to the
global consumer culture of plastic food courts).
> Although the way that the internet and modern society is heading, maybe
> we should be looking to call ourselves "Post Content"...
Content is alive and well, matey. Do you think there's no content in a
Jeff Koons vacuum cleaner? One of the PoMo ironies is that the denial of
transcendence becomes a new form of transcendence. 'A vacuum cleaner
stands amongst the stars'.
> Its funny how we've so readily adapted our careers into net-speak-
> Content Provider- Writer
> Internet Artist- Bad Animator constrained to 3Mb or less...
> Website Designer- Paid for doing what a trained ape with Dreamweaver 3
> could do...
> Internet Investor- Gambling Man.
Honestly, I think it's the best thing that could have happened to us.
PoMo could well turn out to be the most exciting thing since the
Renaissance, and someone using Dreamweaver or Flash is probably the next
Leonardo Da Vinci.
Nick
Layna Andersen
T Det <detac...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3982C304...@hotmail.com...
>
> Some theories point to a doubling of the total sum of human knowledge
> that increases at an expoential rate resulting in some kind of
> information overload/ breakthrough on 23rd December 2012
My 51st birthday! Well, THERE's something to look forward to! :-)
THANKS, Tim, for this nifty and entertaining attempt to explain...
L.
james...@my-deja.com
detac...@hotmail.com wrote:
>
I'm surprised no-one really leapt on this little train of thought...
The Myth of PoMo:
How do we encapsulate a generation of movements under one umbrella?
Well, thats what ascribing
to the myth of Post-Modernism does. It squeezes every art movement in
the West between 1945 and
1980 or so into a box called Modernism, and then steps outside of that
box, carefuly avoiding any
detritus or fall-out and says it's 'post' modernism. It's past
modernism. It's somehow 'beyond'
modernism.
...It’s so past modernism that it morphed into an American Indian Tribe
http://cimcc.indian.com/maps.htm
The POMO who are the spiritual occupants of the very land I live in...
What IS PoMo:
...seriously I think your above paragraph finally defined it to me, and I
thank you,
First off, what is Modernism? How does it aply to the arts? Is the
arrival of Brecht and Beckett
modernism in theatre? Is James Joyce or Joseph Conrad modernism in
literature? Is Marcel
Duchamp's Urinal modernism in art? In music, is the invention of the
Phongraph modernism in
music? Or the invention of the 45? Or the birth of Rock and Roll?
...in terms of furniture, I’d say 1960 Herman Miller, the first design
team to combine the colorful curves in a cubic framework (IMO)
James
http://www.mp3.com/castlerobertson
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Mr. Kite
or any of those other eras probably were. And I have to agree with
Nick on the below point, although I think the main problem is that
PoMo's levelling of the fields is going to make it harder for people
to find that Leonardo....
Mr. Kite
Adam Bruneau
CountV/John T
for all the world to see, the following:
> "I'm a graphc designer who draws comics and illustrates gay porn whilst
> also designing websites and making music inbetween working in the theatre."
I don't illustrate gay porn.
Not because I wouldn't want to, but because I'm not a good illustrator.
And, my stage period is passed.
--
CountV/John T
"Entropy and irony live together in perfect harmony." - The Brunching
Shuttlecocks
Unreal Conspiracy - the Squire/Sherwood computer game link;
http://www.m-ideas.com/yes/consp.htm
Jay
"Nick Currie" <ni...@momus.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> I have no idea how we get out of PoMo (should we even want to -- I'm
> quite happy here) except by a flight into discipline, sincerity,
> dogmatism. So roll on the worldwide Islamic revolution, and death to all
> ironists!
Before he died, Michel Foucault publically expressed great admiration for
and interest in the Islamic revolution in Iran. I don't have the cite
handy, but I'm certain that on at least one occasion he stated something to
the effect that the revolution, led by hardline students and mullahs,
represented a complete negation of the modern concept of "state" and was in
line with some of his own political thinking in that respect. I could be
wrong on the specifics, but I think that was the gist of it.
Just fanning the flames . . .
-J
Jay
"Jay" <McC...@rocketmail.com> wrote
> I don't have the cite
> handy, but I'm certain that on at least one occasion he stated something
to
> the effect that the revolution, led by hardline students and mullahs,
> represented a complete negation of the modern concept of "state" and was
in
> line with some of his own political thinking in that respect.
Correcting myself (although I'm not *that* far off):
"Writing in the issue of Corrier della Sera published on November 26
[1978], [Fourault] wondered if Iran might not be 'the first great
insurrection against the planetary system, the most mad and most modern form
of revolt.'" He also described the Iranians as rebelling against not only
the Shah, but also against "'global hegemony.'" See Miller, The Passion of
Michel Foucault at 309.
J