Art & Design in Context

Postmodernism

Today’s session

• Introduction to Postmodernism

• Review: gallery visit

• Group work: Time Travel research

Barbara Kruger, Money Can Buy You Love

POSTMODERNITY (ca 1960s - now?)

Post-modern – literally meaning ‘after the modern’

Postmodernity is a condition or a state of being associated with changes to institutions and conditions (Giddens, 1990) and with social and political results and innovations, globallybut especially in the West since the 1960s

Andy Warhol, 100 cans, 1962

Karl Marx + Frederick EngelsThe Communist Manifesto

Marshall BermanAll that is solid melts into air

David HarveyThe Condition of Postmodernity

MODERNITY Key readings:

Modernity as grand narrative

‘grand narrative’ (or meta-narrative): a grand narrative is a narrative form which seeks to provide a definite account of reality

(Edgar / Sedgwick 2004 163)

the grand narrative of modernity: the story of progress through universal human reason (Enlightenment ideals). Modernity was "a progressive force promising to liberate humankind from ignorance and irrationality"

(Rosenau 1992, 5)

Francis Galton, Composite portraits by superimposition of photos seeking a generic portrait of a criminal, 1883

creative destruction = progress!

“ (...) to the degree that it also lauded human creativity, scientific discovery and the pursuit of individual excellencein the name of human progress, Enlightenment thinkers welcomed the maelstrom of change and saw the transitoriness, the fleeting, and the fragmentary as a necessary condition through which the modernizing project could be achieved.”

David Harvey (1990) The postmodern condition.

Marxism as grand narrative:

the analysis of history as a sequence of developments; Capitalism is the last stage in a long history of class struggles, culminating in a liberating workers’ revolution

Capitalism vs. Marxism

Colonialism/European Imperialism legitimized by the grand narrative of progress

“We are modernizing, and thus liberating you”

Human shock in the face of the unimaginable (pollution, Holocaust, the two World Wars, the atomic bomb) results in a loss of fixed points of reference. Neither the world nor the self any longer possesses a fixed sense of unity, coherence, meaning.

They are radically 'decentred‘...

Modernism vs. Postmodernism

• Master narrative of progress through science and technology.

• Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.

• Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family.

• Skepticism of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions

• Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities.

• Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising.

Modernism vs. Postmodernism

• Hierarchy, order, centralized control.

• Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).

• Faith in the "real" beyond media and representations; authenticity of "originals"

• Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.

• Trust and investment in micro-politics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.

• Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.

How does Postmodernism appear?• Pastiche (tongue-in-cheek homage, imitation or tribute used

in art, music, TV, cinema, etc)

• Kitsch

• Parody, irony and visual humour

• Bricolage

• Appropriation & visual/textual references to the works of others

• Hyperreality (as a symptom of postmodern culture hyperreality is a state in which one loses the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy

• Dystopia

• Conceptual art

• The multiple over the singular

• Death of the Author

Mies van der Rohe (1954)Seagram Building, NYC

Thomas Chippendale(18th century)bookcase

Philip Johnson (1984)AT+T Headquarters, NYC

+= Postmodernism!

Keith Arnatt, Self-burial, 1969

Bruce Nauman, Corner piece, 1970

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott; 1982)Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, set in an imagined, dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, can be seen as a good example of a postmodern film. This setting is a blend of Asian and Western styles, evoking the street markets of Hong Kong, the neon of Tokyo or Las Vegas, and the Art Deco skyscrapers of Manhattan and Chicago. The fashion styling is alternately 1940s and futuristic. Set designer SydMead summed it up: ‘One of the principles behind designing this film is that it should be both forty years in the future and forty years in the past.’ The storyline features Harrison Ford as a detective who hunts down wayward ‘replicants,’ androids with superhuman abilities. Some of these artificial humans do not know that they are synthetic – and are horrified to discover that their memories and personalities are implanted. The film uses this as a metaphor for the postmodern condition in general. The suggestion is that we are all ‘manufactured’ by the advertisements we see, the space of the cities we live in, the television shows we watch. Our very identities have become artificial...

Blade Runner

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhJOQFjlWrg&feature=related

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTzA_xesrL8

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ule_plKQ6_w&feature=related

For next week:• Bring in a book relating to the Wish You Were Here assignment

• Write a brief description, in your own words, of Postmodernism and upload to your blog

• Take a look at each other’s blogs and leave comments on at least 5 other blogs (these will need to be ‘approved’ by the administrator of the blog before they appear). Make sure you respond to feedback from others!

• Update your own blog and add content – research, notes, images, links, etc.