Postmodernity?
Paul Fox
is Postmodernity, and when did it begin?
Alison A Raimes
p...@yahoo.com> writes
> I feel I may be making a big mistake by asking this question, but what
>is Postmodernity, and when did it begin?
>
One of the youngsters asked me this at art school a couple of years ago.
I said: Kid, you *are* postmodernism.
Hope this helps !
Alison A Raimes
ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
http://raimes.homestead.com (work in progress site)
JPCeja
>I said: Kid, you *are* postmodernism.
That's witty.
Pablo Secca
Paul Fox
JPCeja <jpc...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20000317123219...@ng-cn1.aol.com...
> >One of the youngsters asked me this at art school a couple of years ago.
> >I said: Kid, you *are* postmodernism.
>
> That's witty.
>
But it doesn't come close to telling what it is.
>
> Pablo Secca
Alison A Raimes
<fo...@yahoo.com> writes
Do you have to do a paper for school or something ? Then you obviously
need to do a lot of homework. Before you can even start to look at
Postmodernism you need to understand what Modernism was all about. Look
at all the movements from the late nineteenth century until at least the
mid sixties and work it onto a greater social picture. After that you
need to read Lyotard's *The Postmodern Condition*. Then you may be, but
only may be, ready to decipher what maybe Postmodernism. Then you will
understand why my last post explained it so precisely.
But to help you a little more: The kid who asked me had been at art
school for four years. In the studios he had smoked a lot of dope and
played a lot of loud music. Mostly he just grinned a lot. Cute guy, I
loved him. He was painting nasty pink, household gloss paintings with
*chicken* written on them. I had to tell him he had spelt chicken
wrong...... he grinned and said oh yeah, and crossed it out and rewrote
it above. The paint looked as though it had been applied with a trowel
and was sure to drop off as fast as he had applied it because there was
no size or ground. He had to pay the technician to make his stretchers
because he hadn't the faintest idea how to do so himself. He got a first
class honours degree for those paintings.
John Haber
John
Erik A. Mattila
practicing postmodality.
Erik
lake
contemporary, but they don't know why, and they doubt the validity of
any particular historical interpretation of it.
Admittedly it's a rather vague definition, and I'm no expert on it. I
only offer it because no one else has offered anything better.
-Lake
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br...@wralaw.com
"Paul Fox" <fo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I feel I may be making a big mistake by asking this question, but what
> is Postmodernity, and when did it begin?
Historically it will begin in the future in the past, since 98% of
us still think we are modern or are not... So right now it is
80% modern, 15% notmodern and 5% postmodern.
But it began when some french art-philosophy types started rausching
in the 1950's=60's. Ironically people have been rausching for
thousands of years.
By the way there is a new still unamed historical era planned
to start in about 2012! See you there!
Bryn
A true postmodernist denies that postmodernity is even possible...
"A paranoic knows a little of whats really going on" W.S. Burroughs
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Tomi Holmberg
"Paul Fox" <fo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I feel I may be making a big mistake by asking this question, but what
> is Postmodernity, and when did it begin?
paul, don't take the people too seriously here. mostly, they cannot
think straight and only parrot what they are told usually.
there is "the postmodernism"- which is general misunderstanding- and
postmodern art, but the latter is not recognizable because there is not
yet any strong evidence or references seen in the field.
you'll see the "knowledge" of movements are used as a way to boost the
hungry ego here, but mostly those guys are the same ones who keep
kandinsky's illustrations as great abstraktions but they can't see any
greater innovators behinds the scene like hilma af klint because they
only parrot what they have been told to take important.
-tomi
--
jiv jago, jiv jago.
Wake up sleeping souls. Wake up sleeping souls.
Tomi Holmberg
lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> wrote:
> Perhaps Post-modern art is art made by people who know their work is
> contemporary, but they don't know why, and they doubt the validity of
> any particular historical interpretation of it.
all contemporary art (which consist of new mediums like computer art,
video-art, media-art etc) is pomo?
the problem i have with pomo is that it's considered as "sublime"-, or
very high form of art (some ignorant persons even claim it's the final
step). personally i can't see any significant differences between it
and modern art (except huge bunch of written words ofcourse). i believe
the real post-modernism will consist of some new, radical ways and
concepts of visualizing things. painting isn't contemporary art, it's
modern and it will be back with true postmodernism.
if pomo would simply be "the art after 1920's" with it's new styles
that would be ok, but does all the new styles become merged in it?. no.
i don't know what is the responsibility to interpret concepts but what
many people call "postmodern" doubts the validity of their historical
interpretation of it as you said it.
Luke
> I feel I may be making a big mistake by asking this question, but what
> is Postmodernity, and when did it begin?
The past fifty years have seen, some suggest, the erosion of modernist
narratives, and the subsequent ascension and possible decline of
"Post-Modernism." With this, the notions of style and language in Art
have become highly problematic. The last several decades have been
increasingly marked by the ideas (by now familiar terms) of contingency,
locality, play, personal voice, and finally, tribal hostilities.
Certainly it is the case that the demise of a number of previously
dominant artistic movements‹modernist architecture, serialism, abstraction
in painting‹has created space in many art institutions for styles and
discourses that had been previously excluded; various groups and peoples
that had been marginalized have found room for themselves in the
landscapes of the different artistic media. Technology, combined with
this increasingly diverse array of cultural perspectives, has made it
possible for a greater number of voices to be heard. Indeed, access to
artistic variety, a pluralism, has never been more possible.
This pluralism has raised a number of thorny issues: cultural
authenticity is under siege by market-place dilutions; manner, in art, has
at times taken on the tone of value-free caprice. Contingency and
locality has elicited a widespread renunciation of the burden of
collective consensus and agreement. As empowerment of marginalized
populations has taken place, the rifts in artistic society have not been
erased‹rather at times they seem to have become more clearly delineated.
The issues all lie at the core of the Modern/Post-Modern debate.
Arguments postulating effects of the impending millennial shift are
omnipresent‹we seem, however, to be increasingly at a loss to describe how
our current historical place has created our sensibility of
self-awareness. Indeed, the notion of "we" has become, for good reason,
suspect. Our contemporary cultural discourse in academe and surrounding
contexts has in the past roughly dozen years focused on the topics of
Post-modernity and its trappings, definitions, and issues, in its attempt
to locate itself in the strands of history. While these definitions and
commentaries are plentiful, the ways in which the predominant cultural
sensibility is problematized and configured by the issues that arise from
the different artistic media within the sphere of Post-Modern contexts are
largely unelucidated. I will suggest, through my own admittedly
personalized (and contingent) view, that Post-Modern thinking is not,
finally, the apocalyptic end-point it appeared; further, that it generated
a host of bizarre and malignant issues in the process of dealing with the
remains of what it dubbed Modernism, and that our conception of "language"
in the arts, has been rendered almost totally useless.
The media in which I have perceived tangible traces of Post-Modern aspects
most conspicuously have been Architecture, Visual Art, and Music. Though
the massive body of Literary Criticism poses as perhaps one of the most
imposing edifices of Post-Modern work, I will limit my discussions largely
to examples of Post-Modern "ART," as opposed to commentary, criticism, and
the like.
Architecture, it seems to me, has been the most facile art form in which
to peruse the outward manifestations of Post-Modern topics. While the
principles of Modernism had largely eschewed references to past models,
Post-Modernism heartily embraced surface nods to history. Modernity in
architecture, through what James Holston has called "an aesthetic of
erasure," smoothed the surface, and removed overt decoration. This move
was anticipated in sentiments early in the century by the Viennese
architect Adolph Loos in his famous 1908 essay "Ornament and Crime." While
the International Style that arose from the Bauhaus at Weimar, Germany, is
the most extreme and visible demonstration of this aesthetic, a host of
architects (Le Corbusier among them) participated in their own way in this
reductive sensibility, without necessarily advancing the rectilinear
model. What unifies these local divergences is the emphasis on a removal
of surface decoration (especially that derived from previously extant
modes of expression), and a focus on the abstract concept of geometric
space.
Post-Modernism by contrast, is conspicuously characterized by a return to
the very icons of historicity that Modernism had done away with. Often
these motifs are disconnected, distorted, and used in ways in which they
are set into rhetorical relief. The classical pediment which graces the
top of Philip Johnsonąs AT&T Corporate Headquarters in New York will serve
as a fine example: This pediment, which in its original source context,
would have acted in concert with columns and the like, simply sits here on
top of an otherwise relatively un-adorned building. In other examples by
the major Post-Modern architects (John Burgee, Michael Graves) similar,
seemingly random, and often whimsical references abound. Indeed,
Post-Modern architecture is often rich in humor in a way that high
Modernism would never permit (Mies Van Der Rohe isnąt exactly "fun").
The underlying shift here that has taken place, it seems to me, is that
Modernism in architecture, as we will note in other media, views itself as
a historical necessity just as it erases the past. It streamlines and
abstracts the past, but it acknowledges history as the set of events that
has created the present. Modernism seeks, logically, consensus and a
degree of homogeneity to affirm the rationality and weight of its own
existence. This Totality of narrative is one aspect of Modernism that
Post-Modernism challenges so dramatically. With the Post-Modern
sentiment, the homogeneity and streamlined sense of history, function,
design, and ultimately citizenry which later generations view, with some
justification as Fascist (Le Corbusier did seek to control the daily lives
of the residents in his apartment complexes), is undone. The Un-doers
were hardly unaware of their enterprise, as Charles Jencks highlights in
his piece "The Death of Modern Architecture:"
"Happily, we can date the death of modern architecture to a precise moment
in time. Unlike the legal death of a person, which is becoming a complex
affair of brain waves versus heartbeats, modern architecture went out with
a bang.
...Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972, at
3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather
several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by
dynamite. Previously it had been vandalized, mutilated, and defaced by
its Black inhabitants, and although millions of dollars were pumped back,
trying to keep it alive (fixing the broken elevators, repairing smashed
windows, repainting), it was finally put out of its misery. Boom, boom,
boom.
Jencks goes on to describe the building complex:
...it had a separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, the provision
of play space, and local amenities such as laundries, crčches and gossip
centers‹all rational substitutes for traditional patterns. Moreover its
Purist style, its clean salubrious hospital metaphor, was meant to
instill, by good example, corresponding virtues in its inhabitants. Good
form was to lead to good content, or at least good conduct; the
intelligent planning of abstract space was to promote healthy behavior.
Jencks goes on to list a series of by-now-typical (and warranted)
indictments against the attempt to design into the daily energies of
residents in the name of rationality, and describes how this outlook, as
history has, in some sense, shown, is doomed to failure.
It is this against which Post-Modern architecture responds socially, as
well as formally. The integration which the Modernists sought is hardly
ever a topics of Post-Modern architecture, and even later, in what is
called Deconstructivist architecture, the entire notion of human movement
within a space is called into question via hallways that lead nowhere,
unfunctional division of interior spaces, and a host of other attributes
that undo the concept of finished, functional, human building design.
Painting, while not as cooperative in the rambling narrative of Modern to
Post-Modern evolution, is not entirely free from it. Just as the
aesthetic of "erasure" typified modernist architecture, modernist painting
showed, for a time, the same dissection of its components into form, line,
hue, and the other basic formal components of painting.
While a return to historical reference was a benchmark of Post-modernity
in architecture, painting exhibits a somewhat different tendency, or
tendencies: first, a movement away from movement-mentality. That is,
throughout the century, major artistic innovations took place within
schools of thought. Dadaism, Surrealism, even Abstract Expressionism,
were movements carried out by large groups. This was replaced in some
sense in the 1970ąs with what can be termed the "cult of the individual,"
a scenario in which among other things, an individual connects him/herself
with a dealer or critic and launches a career thus. This is altogether
too simple a description, but the critic-championed artist is an entity
that had not been seen in such numbers prior to this time. Major figures
include Basquiat, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring. Moreover, as in
architecture, contingency and personality find their way into the art work
in a way they had not prior to this time. Even Abstract Expressionism,
which might appear as a Post-Modern sort of approach, through the use of
the canvas as a site for explosive personal exploration, was both a)
homogenized and consistent from member to member, and b) connected itself
so assiduously with its ancestors (chief among these being Surrealism)
that it must be understood as being part of the Modernist sentiment. In
contrast, the painting of the last twenty years has shown a retreat from
the heroic abstraction common to many art movements of the century, as
well as the introduction of personal and contingent views of reality.
Thus, gender issues, race (and ethnicity), locality, and play have
characterized modern painting since the seventies. This, combined with
the mechanization and commercialization of the artist/critic/dealer
relationship has pluralized the landscape considerably. Moreover, as
the art industry has become grossly commodified with respect to "ethnic"
and "outsider" art, we have become familiar with the appearance of such
things as Australian Dream art in the lobbies of banks and movie houses,
and the entire poster phenomenon. We have, as I suggested at the outset,
immediate access to art styles from all periods and countries. This seems
highly typical of the Post-Modern scene.
Music, finally, is perhaps the most difficult to describe in this regard.
Music is, to begin with, inherently abstract. Meaning is almost always
suggested via metaphorical inference. That is, the representality one can
ascribe to an image, or a word, is absent in (instrumental) musical
discourse. One can, however, see in the apparent imagined musical
"progress" through the century in Europe, with the ascent of serial music
and in academe, the domination of the landscape by this language,
something akin to the modernism in architecture. That is, a removal of
narrative elements, an abstraction, a stripping down of musical discourse
to formal components: pitch, register, volume (this happens all the more
extremely in electronic music), can be seen to mirror these developments
in both architecture and painting. Just as the Le Corbusier misunderstood
the powerful function that decoration has in narrating urban landscapes,
formalist composers seemed to exhibit something of a disinterest in how
these works might actually speak, or transmit meaning. Of course it needs
to be mentioned that serialism is hardly the predominant discourse it is
suggested to be. This century has been, since the outset, characterized
my multiple styles and voices. Further, in all the media, "Modernism" is
a tricky thing to define‹my own definitions are admittedly simplified for
convenience sake‹and there are other figures, such as Stravinsky, Partch,
Nancarrow, that might just as well be given a modernist label (or no label
at all). However, if only for convenience, the type of aggressive
self-assuredness, and emphasis on a totalized landscape (and subsequent
demise of that idea) that one sees so easily in architecture is perhaps
best mirrored in the rise and subsequent erosion of the serialist impulse.
Certainly, the almost immediate retreat into academe of serial music in
America following the mid-century exodus of artists into the United
States, seems to suggest the same faltering of confidence that was to
later typify architecture. In similar ways, rigorous and systematized
modernity in music is enjoying a highly problematic relationship with the
art-loving public. Indeed, it is much easier for a reasonably sensitive
citizen to feel at ease with a Miesian building than it is for them to sit
though a piece by Boulez, Xenakis, or Ferneyhough. And in ways that
connect to the return of representation in painting, and decoration in
architecture, composers have adopted any number of "Neo" strategies in
order to make music more accessible, and it is these musics I would call
"Post-Modern." I would NOT call such musics as Jazz and world music
Post-Modern, since it would be difficult to suggest that they were part of
the Modernist conversation in the first place.
Technology has played no small part in this scenario. The television,
first, has brought an image conscious-ness to most people by the time they
are very young. We have long substituted artificial presence for
reality‹indeed we seem to prefer it. We are allowed to participate in and
access aspects of society we would never encounter, and we are robbed of
the content those encounters would lend us, as we watch police (real
police) kick in the doors of Watts Drug dealers from the comfort of our
living rooms. The internet has furthered this access, as we can literally
download culture from around the globe. Likewise, recorded music gives us
the ability to interact with musics from different periods, cultures, and
styles, most of it completely equalized in content via the apparatus of
its transmission, the stereo.
The social ramifications of these developments can be argued over. That
is, there are a number of important aspects to Post-Modern change‹powerful
benefits among them. Most importantly, it seems to me, is the erosion of
European-centered thinking. While Europe still dominates our collective
thinking (certainly it does in academe), institutions have begun to be
more open to cultural difference, personal perspective, gender, and
similar considerations. Further, popular culture, which had been almost
totally excluded from institutional practices, is now taken seriously as
having relevance to our lives, sensibility, and artistic work. The
intellectual and aesthetic market, perhaps, has become more equitably
competitive, and students, especially, are afforded access to a much wider
variety of perspectives in the materials they encounter.
Yet, I would suggest that with the pluralization of the cultural
landscape, and the in some sense new visibility of cultural stances, there
has been something of a backlash, as older, previously dominant groups
exhibit hostility and fear of the new. Certainly this can be seen in the
recent xenophobia in border policies, and the quasi-nazistic political
movements against gay culture (same sex marriages, protection under the
law). The very real task of negotiating difference has not proved to be
easy for contemporary society.
Cultural authenticity is at issue in this as well. As representations of
difference filter into the marketplace, we find increasing numbers of
dilutions and colonial cooptions of personalities and cultures. There
are, of course, obvious examples, as Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, and the
Didgeridu are used to sell Saturn Automobiles, but there are more subtle
and perhaps more poisonous examples as well. Representations of culture
have taken on a supermarket aspect. Itąs all there, and we may use it and
refer to it at will. Though those who manipulate representations of
culture are in most cases those who have wielded the power in our society
since the beginning.
The Arts as well as society have their own difficulties. With the
plurality that has characterized contemporary art-doing, the ability of
many institutions to probe into individual enterprise for context,
content, and detail, has suffered. Criticism occurs increasingly on a
surface level. We have an "ism"-oriented mentality, and often things are
dismissed or lauded not according to how each work inhabits the boundaries
particular to it, but according to what "Kind" of a work it is. It
becomes very difficult for us to ascribe qualitative value within a work,
often because the discourse is unfamiliar. The analogy might best be one,
finally, of language: If one is in a room full of languages one doesnąt
speak, one is left simply with
"French...Swahili....German...Spanish...etc." The details and shadings
of meaning are often lost in the multitude of activities. It is in this
realm in which style and language become equivalent. To distinguish
between two given styles within one language in our current artistic
scene is largely impossible. Value, Meaning, and ultimately, the most
important personal messages are in danger of being unavailable to us, as
we lose our apparatus for extracting the details from the work.
Alison A Raimes
Postmodernism is a social condition - just as Modernism was. Anything in
the arts is subsidiary and should be treated as such.
Alison
Alison A Raimes
In article <lschulze-210...@music234-99.ucsd.edu>, Luke
<lsch...@ucsd.edu> writes a dissertation
lake
In the last few paragraphs you suggested an increasing difficulty in
making important distinctions within any particular "language". Like
Babel? Everybody talking, nobody listening?
I wonder what Hegel would have thought of all this. Can anyone
descry synthesis on the horizon?
Mark Patro
http://members.tripod.com/~mpatro/
Warm Regards,
Mark Patro
www.artthought.com
"Paul Fox" <fo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:kDdA4.7140$511.1...@tw11.nn.bcandid.com...
Erik A. Mattila
I agree, that's a pretty clear exposition. The one thing I disagree with,
however, is "By the end of the 1960’s these philosophical ideas and social
criticisms began to affect the visual arts." But it's almost a "Chicken or
Egg" argument. The alternative to this statement that I would offer is that
the same social forces which these philosophers and critics observed and
recorded also caused artists to shift their priorities. But it all has to do
with how ideas circulate in culture. My position is that critics, philosophers
and artists all had their nets in the same waters.
I don't know either why the authors chose 1969 as the 'year of postmodernism'
since most authors point to 1968 as the culmination of pressures which changed
society. But it's almost a silly argument, since the kinds of social forces
which were acting on culture were long ranged and complex, and often
contradictory. But 1968, the Year of the Barricades, certainly stands out as a
rupture in the way we looked at the world. Perhaps 1969 was chosen because
artists were rather slow - took them a year of anguish to abandon their
previous agendas. I'm joking.
But the best explanation I have come across that would cause anyone to think
postmodernism represented a major change in culture is the argument about the
collapse of the totalizing ideology. During the course of modernism, Western
culture was heavily invested into ideas that represented the 'solution' to the
ails and shortcomings of humanity. Communists believe in the International,
National Socialists believe that there agenda would create Utopia, Christian
Scientists believe their's would, and so on. Subsequently art production
during this period always had an affix that the particular 'ism' represented
something new, original, and utopian - and ideologically it was tied tightly to
an idea of human 'progress' standard. As we go throught the steps in the
evloutionary scheme of things, things have to get better, since long haul from
savagery to civilization has demonstrated this. Social Darwinism, in fact,
just another of the ling shopping lists of totalizing ideologies of late
Modernism.
But the belief in a system that would provide all answers and solutions
(Utopia?) simply collapsed- and generally people no longer believe that such a
thing was true, or rather, more accurately, people generally stopped thinking
about it. This is where the significance of 1968 comes to play. It was a year
of massive social upheavals world wide, and the the causes of these upheavels
were extremely diverse. But the one sngular element that all shared was that
the various 'movements' addressed a local, limited issue rather than an issue
that was thought to arc over all of society in its significance. Danny the Red
and the students at the Sorbonne were attacking local, university political
issues, while their counterparts at Berkely attacked local issues, such as the
"People's Park" and the students at Kent State attacked the Vietnam War and the
Chicago Seven attacked the 'good old boys' network in the Democratic Party.
And so on down the line. So some intelledtuals in Paris branded this 'new'
phonemena 'Situationism" and even attempted to formalize a movement - The
Situationists International.
I think the counterpart of a "totalizing ideology' in the arts is 'art
authority.' By that, it is whatever process that is active in culture to
legitimize art, and deligimize art, took on thee ideological nature of a
totalizing ideiolgy. "Authority" in art is an issue in its own right, but I
think for the purpose of defining postmodernism it should be identified as that
which was attacked and dethroned. "Authority" itself is complex, because it is
the net effect of the museum, the market place, the critical discourse etc.
which all combine to give us an idea of what is and what is not 'art.' So one
of the earliest manifestations of a challenge to what was socially authorized
as 'art' was Pop Art. What a slap in the face of the entire culture industry
of fine art! Bring the most mundane and prosaic statement posssible into the
gallery and museum.
Erik Mattila