Postmodernism -- further thoughts
Bruce Attah
Andrew Werby is quite correct when he observes:
It's really very simple. As "modernism" approached the hundred years mark,
it didn't seem all that modern any more.
...offering this as a reason for the new pursuit of so-called
"post-modernism" in art practice.
He goes on to add:
Less than a reaction to modernism, it [post-modernism] is modernism in a
decadent phase; modernism minus the old fire and rigor.
This I think is close to the right answer, but not quite there.
Christopher Egon accurately characterises post-modern style thus:
...a tongue-in-cheek borrowing of historical styles, without any real
conviction about substantial ideas.
As to its value, his remarks hit the nail on the head:
The deeper idea that modernism made a mistake in throwing out history is
a solid idea; unfortunately, too much of the work built as "Post-Modern"
never gets past a cheap and uneducated gloss of superficial style...
This is as true for all the arts where post-modernism has made its mark as
it is for architecture, which is the focus of Christopher Egon's article.
My own comments focused on post-modern criticism, but one remark made in
response to Emily's question "Is it simply a reaction to modernisim?" was
that it is a silly reaction to modernism. This was oversimple.
My current thoughts are that post-modernism is, in part, a reaction
against modernism and in part a straightforward continuation of it. Part
of the reason why it can be these seemingly contradictory things
simultaneously is that people who use the word to describe art practises
have rarely paused to think properly about what they mean by it. The rest
of the reason for its contradictory nature lies mostly in the confusedness
of the artists who practice it.
The blunderbuss or catch-all use of the word "post-modern" to describe
pretty much any art practice that emerged since modernism began to lose
its sheen has meant that much art that continues in the spirit of
modernism is called post-modern simply because of superficial novelty.
This helps explain this remark from Lorri Barman:
>While it is true that Post Modern art was a reaction to the
>modernism of the Avante Guarde, It was truly more. For
>example greater technological advancements were included
>such as video art, performance art and hi tech kinetich
>installations.
Making art with the latest technology (with the stress on the technology)
is pure modernism. The only reason it is not called such is that to do so
would suggest that the work was somehow passe.
So, the other kind of post-modernism is the kind that reacts against
certain central tenets of modernist faith. These include that there must
be a trend away from figuration, representation, elaboration and
decoration and towards form-as-function, object-as-itself, purity and
abstraction. It would not be sufficient for art simply to ignore
modernism in order to be called post-modern. It must look as if it has
accepted part of the modernist aesthetic, while rejecting some.
Post-modern art, as post modern, is ideologically better than art that is
untouched by modernism, because it implies that there was at least
something worthwhile to be salvaged from the modernist program. Without
this implication, critics who have assiduously towed the modernist line in
the past will tend to look somewhat silly.
The striking thing about this second kind of post-modern art is that art
that looks post-modern has been around for a long time. In the years
between the first and second world wars, many artists who had been leading
lights of the modernist movement began to question the direction in which
they seemed to be going. There was a strong need for a greater sense of
order than the apparent chaos of modernist experimentation offered, and
one means by which this need was filled was by a return to classicism.
The most striking and total rejection of modernism was made by DeChirico,
but most did not go quite as far as he did. The movement found wide
support among practitioners, and even Picasso, ever alert to fashion,
joined in (his "Classical Period"). The critics, however, were not so
unambiguously in favour. The ink was not yet dry on the paeans to
modernism as the way of the future that were their PhD theses, and they
were hardly go backward now. The proto-post-modern movement was
disparaged almost relentlessly, its followers characterised as
renegades---Picasso himself was not immune---and eventually the movement
died. DeChirico, whose metaphysical painting had possibly been the most
influential new style of the early twentieth century, bar cubism, was left
in the wilderness. He could not sell his new work, and had to resort to
"forging" pictures in his own earlier style to make a living.
The most distinctly post-modern looking paintings produced before
post-modernism emerged with a stamp of critical approval were those of
Salvador Dali after his expulsion from Breton's Surrealist group, and that
of Rene Magritte when he changed from his customary drab facture to an
"Impressionist" one that parodied the style of Renoir. Dali's
"Surrealist" society portraits can be read as cheerfully ironic parodies
making fun of his sitters' aspiration to fashionable modernity. His
classicism is very clearly a critical comment on modernist ideologies, and
he mocked these ideologies frequently, both in his work and in his words,
as well as showing deep (but always amused) contempt for the workings of
the art economy. As a result, he earned the implacable enmity of more
than a few modernist critics.
So, the new post-modernism, we realize, is not so new after all. How,
then, do we commend it, if at all? In my view, we don't. Post-modernist
art practice is, in large part, cowardly. For fear of falling foul of the
critics, it makes too many compromises with modernism, to the extent that
it appears like "modernism minus the old fire and rigor" (Werby's
phrase). Post-modernist artists are clearly not committed to modernism,
but many seem to lack the courage to commit to any real alternative.
Instead, they hide their affection for older forms in a cloak or spurious
irony, while disguising their inability to compete on equal footing with
that older work by adopting superficially modernist manners. Such artists
are going nowhere. What is needed is direct attachment to life. There,
genuinely new and refreshing art can be found.