PREMODERNISM
POSTMODERNISM
MODERNISM Joseph Beuys [German Conceptual Artist, 1921-1986] The End of the 20th Century, 1982-3
CONTEMPORARY ART From 1960 to Now Hans Hofmann [German/American Abstract Expressionist, 1880-1966]
1. Premodernism: Original meaning is possessed by authority (for example, the Catholic Church). The individual is dominated by tradition. 2. Modernism: The enlightenment-humanist rejection of tradition and authority in favour of reason and natural science. This is founded upon the assumption of the autonomous individual as the sole source of meaning and truth--the Cartesian cogito. Progress and novelty are valorized within a linear conception of history--a history of a "real" world that becomes increasingly real or objectified. 3. Postmodernism: A rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective, anonymous experience. Collage, diversity, the mystically unrepresentable, Dionysian passion are the foci of attention. Most importantly we see the dissolution of distinctions, the merging of subject and object, self and other. This is a sarcastic playful parody of western modernity and the "John Wayne" individual and a radical, anarchist rejection of all attempts to define, reify or re-present the human subject.
Modernism in the Arts (ca 1860s – 1960s)
Manet: Au Café, 1878 Courbet: L'Origine du monde,1866
Klimt: The Kiss, 1907
Henri Matisse
Picasso
Salvador Dali
Malevich
Clement Greenberg 1909–1994
Robert Motherwell Frank Stella
Franz Kline
Edouard Manet
Henry Moore
Abstract Expressionism Helen Frankenthaler Mark Rothko
Willem de Kooning Barnett Newman
Jackson Pollock
MODERN
POSTMODERN
Sarah Lucas, Au Naturel, 1994
Hepworth, Barbara Two Figures, 1954-55
MODERNISM
POSTMODERNISM
Origins
art, architecture, literature, science, social art, architecture, film, literature, philosophy philosophy
Key Writers
Hegel, Marx, Freud, Arnold, Habermas, Dewey, Nietzsche
Lyotard, Jameson, Baudrillard, Rorty, Groux, Aronowitz, Grossberg, Simon, Haraway, Nicholson
Key characteristics and concepts
- Meta/grand/master narratives of Truth, progress, civilization, universality, and order - rationality, reason, and objectivity; unity, order, and control a premise of freedom - essential, unified subject - knowledge as foundational
- challenge to modernism - focus on difference/Other, multiplicity, and partiality; - no foundation for knowledge - focus on culture and representation within late capitalism, hyper-reality, simulacrum - collapse of hierarchies of culture; - parody, pastiche, irony as dominant forms of cultural commentary - fragmented, contradictory subject
Forms/Types
traditional/classical; progressive
ludic; resistant; shocking; ironic
Postmodernism (ca. 1970s – present) Robert Rauschenberg
David Hockney
Graves Astrid Park Plaza, Antwerp
Venturi column Richter, Gerhard Betty, 1988
Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A.P.) Sherrie Levine 1991
Claes Oldenburg’s declaration of 1961: ‘I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical … I am for an art that embroils itself with everyday crap and still comes out on top’.
Claes Oldenburg
The Guerilla Girls
Barbara Kruger
Georg Baselitz Nude Elke 2, 1976
Francesco Clemente Atlas, 1982
Joerg Immendorff, Cafe Deutschland IV, 1978
Enzo Cucchi Painting of the Precious Fires, 1983
Julian Schnabel self portrait, 1987
Tansey, Mark Triumph of the New York School, 1984
Cindy Sherman
Troy Brauntuch Sherrie Levine
Robert Longo
Trends in Postmodern Art Art and Mass Culture
Barbara Kruger
Richard Hamilton
Andy Warhol
Trends in Postmodern Art Installation
Tracy Emin, 'My Bed', 1998
Trends in Postmodern Art Video
Trends in Postmodern Art Performance Art Gilbert and George
Josef Beuys
Trends in Postmodern Art Photography
Jo Spence
Trends in Postmodern Art MultiCulturalism
Australian Aboriginal Art Emily Kame Kngwarreye 1910 - 1996
Trends in Postmodern Art Art And Gender
Judy Chicago: The Dinner Party, 1979
Trends in Postmodern Art Public Art and Controversy
Richard Serra: Tilted Arc, 1981 (now destroyed)