PoMo in Architecture, etc.
Rick Francis
ly synonymous with Dadaism and conceptual art (with the result that it
becomes an easy target, extremely easy since there is no need to actually
provide a contemporary example), you might consider that PostModernism
actually means something in architecture.
It means a particular quotation or allusion to the past (styles) which
is not dictated solely by function, nostalgia, or parody. It CAN include
whimsy, deference, wit, and (particularly in architecture) a mixture of
styles as pastiche in a single edifice. Thus aspects of Greek, Roman,
medieval etc. are used in columns, cornices, friezes, etc. Most folks
consider the term postmodernism to have the most readily admitted definition
in architecture, and can point to numerous buildings as examples.
There are examples in Portland and Seattle which I am vaguely familiar with,
and perhaps others will be offered here. Personally I find the PoMo trend
in skyscrapers and office buildings to be an absolutely tremendous improve-
ment over the glass boxes which dominated from the mid-60s till recently.
What is it in literature? Most American critics point to writers like John
Barth, Coover, Fowles (remember the movie, The French Lieutenant's Woman?),
and sometimes they go back to Borges.
I like Fisher's little diatribe, but as demonstrated earlier when the subject
was contemporary criticism and theory, it merely suggests that Fisher thinks
this is 1968. It would have been funnier then. A modest proposal: if
mocking the PoMo characteristics of a particular writer (critic or otherwise)
why not actually make it clear who you're talking about? Otherwise you may
simply be attacking a straw man? (er, straw human).
For example, Kathy Acker is anything but typical of contemporary writing,
but could be the target of a vicious satire, I'm sure.
BTW, anyone who thinks that Robert Coover is not strong on character develop-
ment has probably never read _The Public Burning_. If you think he is
anything b ut a master of plot development, you have probably never read
Pricksongs & Descants.
What is PoMo in film? I think I'll try to tackle that in a later post.
I may have lost all readers by now...
____________________________________________________________________________
Rick Francis |
C47805NF@WUVMD | Thy Friendship oft has made my heart to ake
Dep't of Comp. Lit. | Do be my Enemy for Friendships sake.
Box 1107 |
Washington Univ. | --Wm. Blake
St. Louis, MO |
63130 |
FAC_J...@jmuvax.bitnet
verbal blizzards. Almost makes me want to go to the trouble to extract
some comments from among them in this response--but not quite. So this
instead:
1. Apt that you bring up architecture. That was the one "art area" I'm not
normally interested in that I could touch on when talking with students who
know even less than I do. Came across a good quote from architect Robert
Venturi, who is considered perhaps the first, but have managed to misplace
it (i.e., the book I took it from hasn't apparently been returned to the
library shelves yet; it's that time of year). But here's another that provides
some PoMo attitude (from his Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,
...oops, wrong book, it's Contemporary ARchitects): "We promote an architecture
responsive to the complexities and contradictions of modern experience, the
particularities of context, the varieties of the users' taste cultures..."
Learning From Las Vegas pushed the notion of drawing from pop as well as high
culture further. --And I agree, this stuff is better than that antiseptic
sleekness.
2. The Public Burning and Coover (one more time...). It's a good point about
character development in this book; I'd overlooked it in relation to my response
to j-man. In this novel, you'll find the best "portrait" of (then Vice Pres)
Richard Nixon you'd ever hope to see. As critic Geoffrey Wolff pointed out at
the time of the book's release, it goes far beyond (and far deeper) than all
the psycho-biography commentary. And the fascinating thing about it is that--
though Coover invents dialog and situations for Dick, which more often than
not cast him as a clown (but sympathetic!)--he stitches in actual passages
from Nixon's own publications (e.g., Six Crises), in incongruous-yet-appropriate
fictional situations that illuminate the processes behind the real and made-u
p
experiences in his life and his fictional guise. In other words, Coover manages
to demonstrate in the process of "constructing" his "Nixon" how we create
illusions that have meaning for us. But enough of this first-draft clumsy
attempt to get at a point one should marvel at. Suffice it to say, The Public
Burning is one of the watersheds of literature in this half century... and I
guarantee, no film adaptation--PoMo or otherwise--could ever capture half its
achievement in words! JC
Currie Thompson
agree with him that this is where the term "postmodernism" has its clearest
meaning--where it represents a reaction against the purity of design that
modernist architects strove for. As an example of what the postmodernist
architects were reacting against, I cite the following remarks about
modernist architecture from David Harvey (from _The Condition of Post-
modernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change_. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1989: "In architecture [modernism's quest for purity] meant the
eschewing of ornament and personalized design (to the point where public
housing tenants were not allowed to modify their environments to meet per-
sonal needs, and the students living in Le Corbusier's Pavillon Suisse had
to fry every summer because the architect refused, for aesthetic reasons, to
let blinds be installed). It also meant a prevailing passion . . . for
uniformity and the straight line (always superior to the curve, pronounced
Le Corbusier)." (p. 36)
Against this emphasis on purity architects calling themselves post-
modernists proposed what they came to call "double coding"--a mixture of
codes, especially a mixture of elite and popular codes. Rick gives some
examples of what this might mean:
>It means a particular quotation or allusion to the past (styles) which
>is not dictated solely by function, nostalgia, or parody. It CAN include
>whimsy, deference, wit, and (particularly in architecture) a mixture of
>styles as pastiche in a single edifice. Thus aspects of Greek, Roman,
>medieval etc. are used in columns, cornices, friezes, etc.
might be described as the drive for purity versus adaptation. Like Rick,
I tend to prefer an adaptive bricolage to the pure staight lines of
modernism. (There are, however, many examples of modernist architecture
that I like--and I am not sure that the distinction that I have outlined
always applies. I think perhaps the danger of modernism is a tendency to
fall into a kind of rigorous inhuman purity--but I suspect that post-
modernism runs another risk, that of becoming kitch. Both trends can
and have, in my view, produced excellent work as well as trash.)
But so much for architecture. The question becomes how to apply the
term "postmodernism" to literature and, of course, film--and if it is
useful to do so at all. Based on my own reading, I am not entirely happy
with some of the attempts to define postmodernist literature--and I note
that critics are not in agreement, that some critics consider one work or
writer "modernist" while others consider it "postmodernist." Often, in my
view, works that represent modernism taken to an extreme get labeled as
"postmodernist." But I think the term "postmodernist" can be a useful term
to describe works such as Milan Kundera's novels, for example, that consist
of a wild bricolage of history, self-referential fiction, jokes, essay--a
veritable feast of double coding.
With film? Would it be valid to describe movies such as _Miller's
Crossing_ as postmodernist? Is its adaptation of the film noir tradition
as clear an example of double coding as is Eco's adaptation of the detective
novel in _The Name of the Rose_ (or of Borges' in "Death and the Compass")?
I guess I tend to think of the Coen brothers as exemplifying postmodernism
in film--and I think that _Barton Fink_, which I loved, comes as close to
being kitch without actually doing so line as any film I can recall.
Another example of what one might consider a "postmodernist" film would be
_Man Facing Southeast_, by Argentina's Eliseo Subiela, a philosophical film
that makes use of the popular code of the science-fiction film.
But then others might--and do--argue that the modernist-postmodernist
distinction is useless when it is applied to fields other than architecture.
Currie Thompson
S1...@isuvax.bitnet
*Barton Fink* is a superbly pomo film for all sorts of reasons, but let's
just concentrate, for now, on the Goodman-stalking-through-a-flaming-
corridor scene toward the end. If Modernism is usually defined by an
at least initially corelative referencing of tradition, then this scene
takes us quite far from the Modernist scene indeed. In a Modernist work,
the resonance of those oddly burning flames would conjure hellfire in a
quite inescapable fashion, even if the artist proceeded to mock or parody
the allusion. In *BF*, however, the allusion is undermined from the very
beginning, immediately frustrating our sheer Modernist *training* to expect
hellfire, as Goodman's character, leering in standard demonic fashion,
proceeds to experience something more like Joyce's "agenbite of inwit,"
threatening not so much Turturro's character as *himself*. In this fashion,
the allusion to hell and hellbeings is immediately made ironic in a way
that not even the self-mocking Mephistopheles of Goethe and Marlowe can
begin to approach, or adumbrate. I mention Joyce quite deliberately, in
part because I know you as a Joycean, and because I'm one too, and
because I see Joyce as forever oscillating between Modernist and pomo
literary practices, and thus escaping easy period or "movement"
identification in the way that all fine artists must. Take the depiction
of Robert Emmet in the "Cyclops" episode of *Ulysses*. At first, Emmet is
portrayed very much in terms of the historical Emmet, and thus we begin
on safely Modernist ground. As Joyce spins out his own absurd version of
the ever graceful Emmet practically begging to be executed, however, the
reader's initial confidence in historical reference as a sign of historical
verisimilitude is quite worn away, and thus Joyce discomfits the reader's
expectation that historical allusions will be congruent with historical
fact in a manner that I see as profoundly always already postmodernist,
for such gestures demarcate the inevitable consequences of literary
Modernism's attempts to have its congruent historical allusions and
parody them too. In this definition, postmodernism would be little more
than the recognition that the mocking spirit of parody abroad in the modern
era overwhelms modern nostalgia for a past which is simultaneously felt to
be present as a living tradition and hopelessly past as *viable* historical
or philosophical or scientific *practice*. Thus, the flames in the corridors
of the terminal hotel of *Barton Fink* *signify* hellfire, but a hellfire that
merely recalls a philosophical and religious tradition without wielding any
of its force, and thus "demon" John can merely gnash his teeth at his own
inability to enact his demonic role, while the Turturro character is left,
finally, to stare at a woman whose living back is meaninful primarily as
an *echo* of a tarnished postcard, and to cast the unseen, yet present,
Modernist baggage stuffed into his suitcase upon the waters of our too, too
pomo age, the age heralded by Robert Frost as he sang of ocean watchers who
look neither far nor deep, yet continue to stare at the watch they keep.
m mcdonald
S1...@isuvax.bitnet
apparently never made it out . . .)
Thanks to Rick for helpfully reminding of us of postmodernism's relatively
specific meaning in architecture. The problem here, though, is that
Modernist architecture has almost nothing to do with Modernist art. How,
for instance, do you situate Mies van der Rohe's "glass boxes" within the
cultural dynamic established by Cubist painting, the films of Segei
Eisenstein, the writing of Joyce, Woolf, or Eliot, or the music of
Arnold Schoenberg? While Modernist architecture starkly reduces form to
function, eschewing ornamentality for its own sake, other Modernist arts
revel in the simple gesture as never before, elevating the gesture, the
moment to a level where its importance is *commensurate* with that of the
archtitectonics of form, broadly conceived. For van der Rohe, the simple
monumentality of form insists on its own stark harmony, and thus
diminishes the gestures which contribute to that form to the role of
mere subsidiaries on the road to supremely functional form. Thus, van der
Rohe cannot allow for *dissonance* in his work, whereas the other Modernist
arts, precisely inasmuch as they insist upon the coequal status of the
momentary gesture with the overall form, necessarily embrace dissonance,
for dissonance is nothing but an insistence on the autonomy of the
particualar over against the overall form whose harmony *must* insist on the
suppression of that autonomy. (You can see this dynamic superbly acted out
--and problematized--in Yeats's "To the Rose upon the Rood of Time").
While this will undoubtedly sound simplistic in light of the many detailed
and interesting contributions we've already received on this subject, my own
definition of the difference between postmodern and modern art is fairly
simple: While both postmodern and modern art make reference to the
tradtions of the past (traditions which, in our century, are *felt* to be
past for the first time) by way of pastiche and parody, Modernism tends to
express a certain amount of longing for the relevance and vitality of those
traditions, whereas pomo works really don't seem much to care that the time
of those traditions is past, and thus simply *use* the images of those
traditions as grist for the playfully parodic mill. Pomo roots out nostalgia
and longing for the past, whereas Modernism sometimes still indulges itself
in such longing.
Take, for instance, the scene toward the end of that great pomo film *Barton
Fink* where the corridor is burning and the Goodman character, his "demonic"
qualities now on show, comes after the Turturro character. The scens
(scene) strongly suggests hellfire, at first, till we realize that those
flames are strangely powerless to burn, and demon John is no potent devil,
not even a subtle Mephistopheles, but merely gnashes his teeth at his own
inability finally to terrorize. Thus, hellfire is almost simultaneously
evoked and confounded as the guiding image of this scene, and the viewer's
expectation of allusion soon gives way to further confusion. And thus the
final shots of the movie have nothing to do with hell or redemption, as
Turturro's character merely stares at the back of a woman whose living
vitality is lost for him, as her back is merely an echo of a tawdry post
card, and he can only throw his modernist baggage--the suitcase that may
contain not just the signs but the reality of his connection to the past--
upon the unheeding waters of the always already pomo sea, the sea proclaimed
by Robert Frost in describing the watchers who look "neither far nor deep."
We might contrast this with what Joyce does in *Ulysses*, a work that is both
deeply Modernist and profoundly pomo. For instance, in the "Cyclops" episode
Robert Emmet, a late 18th century Irish hero is evoked in what *seems* to be
good Modernist fashion, in a fashion, that is, that pays tribute to Emmet's
actual place in history even as Joyce continues to undermine that Emmet's
place and role has much *to do* with the world and character of his early
20th century Dubliners. However, Joyce doesn't merely reference Emmet, but
retells the story of his execution in such a way--and takes such a long
time doing it--that he does not merely *parody* the historical Emmet, but
*distorts and displaces* the historical Emmet with an Emmet that finally
is quite at odds with anything that might smack of nostalgia, longing, or
even an accurate depiction of the Emmet who once trod Terra's trembling
ground.
So the difference, it seems to me, is that Modernist works *suggest* nostalgia
and longing for the continuum of tradition, only to deprive, finally, the
reader or viewer or listener's *place* in that continuum, whereas pomo works
reference the past without nostalgia or longing, so that the best pomo
builidings that Rich was referring to present a happy pastiche of figures and
building materials used in the past without betraying signs of anxiety about
the *meaning* of those elements for the present, whereas the neo-Classical
(early Modern?) buildings in D.C. absolutely *insist* on their resonance with
the Roman republic (and yes damnit) Empire!
I hope that the distinctions I have tried to offer here prove useful to
at least one person on this list. I realize that this issue is a confusing
one, but that is at least in part because the best Modernist works, such
as *Ulysses*, are always just as much pomo as they *are* Modernist (see
Jean-Francois Lyotard's "What is Postmodernism?" in his *The Postmodern
Condition* for an intriguing discussion of the rather odd-sounding notion
that postmodernism *precedes* modernisms!).
If you haven't yet read it, rush out this very moment and get a copy of
Don DeLillo's *White Noise*, which is pomo at its very best. I also want
to echo the praise for Coover *as a writer*, putting the questions of his
being pomo aside for a moment. The introductory chapter of *A Public
Burning* would be on my short list of the most astounding things ever
written, and poignantly shows how pomo writing can be not mere self-
indulgent wanking but rather gloriously inclusive eclectic pastiche.
m mcdonald
Jeff Beer
always dig this up. It comes from the Internet newgroup alt.postmodern.
If you can get the Internet newsgroups, you might check them out.
The sometimes talk about postmodernism.
Jeff
======================================================================
some definitions from the alt.postmodern newsgroup:
Harvey also quotes a number of other more focused attempts to define
postmodernism. From Terry Eagleton: "There is, perhaps, a degree of
consensus that the typical postmodernist artefact is playful,
self-ironizing, and even schizoid; and that it reacts to the austere
autonomy of high modernism by impudently embracing the language of
commerce and the commodity. Its stance toward cultural tradition is
one of irreverent pastiche, and its contrived depthlessness undermines
all metaphysical solemnities, sometimes by a brutal aesthetics of
squalor and shock."
Also quoted in Harvey, from PRECIS 6, an architectural journal:
"'Generally perceived as positivistic, technocratic, and
rationalistic, universal modernism has been identified with the belief
in linear progress, absolute truths, the rational planning of ideal
social orders, and the standardization of knowledge and production.'
Postmodernism, by way of contrast, privileges 'heterogeneity and
difference as liberative forces in the redefinition of cultural
discourse.'" Grand, stark, high-rises (often with shining, mirrored
surfaces) and centralized housing projects are associated with
modernism; less imposing office buildings and "neighborhoods" that mix
a variety of cultural influences are associated with postmodernism. A
number of critics go to architecture for their examples of
postmodernism, perhaps because it is such a public art, perhaps also
because the break here between modernism and postmodernism is more
abrupt. For instance, Andreas Huyssen writes, "Nowhere does the break
with modernism seem more obvious than in recent American architecture.
Nothing could be further from Mies van der Rohe's functionalist glass
curtain walls than the gesture of random historical citation which
prevails on so many postmodern facades. Take, for example, Philip
Johnson's AT&T highrise [in NYC], which is appropriately broken up
into a neoclassical mid-section, Roman collonades at the street level
and a Chippendale pediment at the top." Jameson explicates the Westin
Bonaventure Hotel in LA as another example of postmodern architecture.
Matei Calinescu sums up some of the impulses here: "the historicism of
postmodern architecture reinterprets the past in a multiplicity of
ways, going from the endearingly playful to the ironically nostalgic,
and including such attitudes or moods as humorous irreverence, oblique
homage, pious recollection, witty quotation, and paradoxical
commentary."
Frederic Jameson has argued that postmodernism is--to quote his essay,
and now book, title--"the cultural logic of late capitalism." He
writes: "It is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an
attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten
how to think historically in the first place. In that case, it either
'expresses' some deeper irrepressible historical impulse (in however
distorted a fashion) or effectively 'represses' and diverts it,
depending on the side of the ambiguity you happen to favor.
Postmodernism, postmodern consciousness, may then amount to not much
more than theorizing its own condition of possibility . . . . So, in
postmodern culture, 'culture' has become a product in its own right;
the market has become a substitute for itself and fully as much a
commodity as any of the items it includes within itself: modernism was
still minimally and tendentially the critique of the commodity and the
effort to make it transcend itself. Postmodernism is the consumption
of sheer commodification as a process."
I have read "Postmodernism defined, at last" by Todd Gitlin, in the
Utne Reader, No.34, Jul/Aug 1989, pp. 52-61, which was excerpted from Dissent,
Winter 1989, and found the article relevant to the points being discussed
here.
In such article, the author tries to define "Postmodernism" in relative to
"Modernism." Here is what he says:
"In Modernism, voices, perspectives, and materials were multiple.
The unity of the work was assembled from fragments and juxpositions.
Art set out to remark life. Audacious individual style threw off the
dead hand of the past. Continuity was disrupted, the individual
subject dislocated. High culture quoted from popular culture...
"Postmodernism, by contrast, is completely indifferent to the questions
of consistency and continuity. It self-consciously splices genres,
attitudes, styles. It relishes the blurring or juxposition of forms
(fiction-non-fiction), stances (straight-ironic), moods (violent-
comic), cultural levels (high-low). It disdains originality and fancies
copies, repetition, the recombinationof hand-me-down scraps. It neither
embraces nor cirticizes, but beholds the world blankly with a
knowingness that dissolves feeling and commitment into irony. It pulls
the rug out from under itself, displaying an acute self-consciousness
about the work's constructed natuare. It takes pleasure in the play
of surfaces, and derides the search for depth as mer nostalgia....
(p.52)
JACK...@vuctrvax.bitnet
>BTW, anyone who thinks that Robert Coover is not strong on character develop-
>ment has probably never read _The Public Burning_. If you think he is
>anything b ut a master of plot development, you have probably never read
>Pricksongs & Descants.
I've read 'em both along with several others by the man.
I stand by my previous assessment. A very clever writer, but
ultimately, devoid of soul. By the way, "The Public Burning" was a
public mess. An exercise in hyperbole.
Gee, Rick, it sounds like kjf won't be getting a Christmas card from
you this year. I guess I'm pretty far down the list, also.
j-man
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