post modernism powerpoint

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Post-Modernism 1945-present

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Page 1: Post modernism powerpoint

Post-Modernism1945-present

Page 2: Post modernism powerpoint

Shift in paradigm

Change in art because of mass production and

use of photography:

– Mirror images require little skill or different skills

– Creating a copy of a copy creates a loss or blurring

of originality

– Based on instant expression

– Art is no longer unreproducible

Nature Art Massproduction

Replication

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First, let’s consider the WORD

What does the word postmodernism mean? • The confusion is advertised by the “post”

prefixed to “modern.” Postmodernism identifies itself by something it isn’t. “It isn’t modern anymore.” In what sense is it “post”?– As a result of modernism?– The aftermath of modernism?– The afterbirth of modernism?– The development of modernism?– The denial of modernism?– The rejection of modernism?

Page 4: Post modernism powerpoint

Paradox

*Modo: “just now” in Latin

Modernism refers to what is new (avant-garde) or in the “now” so naturally Postmodernism would mean beyond the new or beyond “now”.

So if something is created using postmodernistic ideals then the act of creation solidifies it in the modernistic realm. How can something defined in one manner when its tangible existence defines it as something else?

Page 5: Post modernism powerpoint

Picasso

van Gogh

Cézanne (1)

Gauguin (2)

George Seurat (3)

Chagall (4)

Modernism in Art

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CubismPicasso’s Les Demoisells d’Avignon (1907)

*Many viewpoints shown at once: amalgamous combination of 3D turned into a 2D image in order to appear 3D, simplified to simple geometric figures.

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Pointillism

Technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image

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Abstract Expressionism

1946: post WWII, defragmentation of society and societal norms. Women in the work-place?!?

Jackson Pollock: Num

ber 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)

*American and European A.E. ends during Cold War and McCarthyism: A.E. is taking place in Soviet Union so therefore it is communist and UNAMERICAN

Page 9: Post modernism powerpoint

Representation of the Sublime

In 1915 Russian artist Kasimir Malevich presented the unrepresentable sublime by

painting a white square on a white background

Where’s the art?

Page 10: Post modernism powerpoint

The AuraWhat makes something ART?

Mimetic: how well does something represent that which it is representing? Expressive: how well does the artist express himself?Affective: how does the reader or viewer respond?Objective: does the piece radiate within itself; thus defining within itself that it is art?

Each form of criticism is discussing the same principle: the Aura

Page 11: Post modernism powerpoint

PoMo, the photograph, and the death of the Aura

In 1936 Walter Benjamin theorized that the artistic aura, that which encapsulates the force behind art, died when art could be reproduced and then mass produced.

However, throughout Postmodern theorists and artists have striven to show that the artistic aura isn’t dead but transferred.

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TransferenceYves Klein—Directed two naked women, smeared in blue paint, to roll

around on a canvas while a single-note symphony played in the background: the artistic aura is transferred to The Event

Josef Beuys—fabricated installations or environmental pieces. Shifts aura from object to place

Marcel Duchamp—placed “ready-made” non-art objects on display in order to show that disassociation from its original context, use, and meaning the object could harness the aura into the space that the “ready-made” was on display

Gilbert and George—displayed themselves as “living sculptures”: used their own fame as a way to harness the aura

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Andy Warhol took photo images and transferred them via silkscreen to a canvas. Fame is the art.

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Conceptualism

The aesthetic process is thrown out all together**Break from Dadaism by eliminating all elements of expressiveness

Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last W

eimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in G

ermany

Example of Dadaism by

Hannah Höch

…the intermediate philosophy that is between nominalism and realism that says universals exist only within the mind and have no external or substantial reality

Example of Conceptualism by

John Baldessari

Page 15: Post modernism powerpoint

Conceptualism TodayDamien Hirst

Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain 2007. Silver

Away from the Flock 1994. Glass, steel, lamb and formaldehyde solution

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3 stages of Modern Art1. Crisis in the representation of reality– Cézanne– Cubism– Dadaism (concentrated anti-war politics through a rejection of

the prevailing standards in art: punk music)– Surrealism (features the element of surprise, unexpected

juxtapositions and non-sequitur: Salvador Dalí)

2. Presentation of the unpresentable– Suprematism (focused on fundamental geometric forms)– Constructivism (art as a practice for social purposes)– Abstract Expressionism– Minimalism

3. Non-presentation (abandoning of the aesthetic process)– Conceptualism

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The Postmodern Condition and Jean-Franḉois Lyotard

“Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent

state, and this state is constant.”

*Modernism existed in order to represent the conceivable which is not representable, and the only way to present this is through Abstraction. *Postmodernism exists in order to represent that which is not conceivable and/or cannot be conceivable and thus cannot be represented. (Art that is aware this it is art)

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The Genealogy of Postmodern Art

Begin by visiting an installation by the Conceptual artist Daniel Buren entitled On two levels with two colours (1976), which features a vertically striped band at the floor levels of two adjoining gallery rooms. Empty rooms, nothing else…

Buren is not necessarily representative of Postmodern art but it is a place to start, in the sense of where modernism itself has arrived at

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Death in the Post-ModernWalter Benjamin prophesized that with

mass production and producability art would be dead (1936)

*With the rise of Capitalism the aura of art had again shifted. The more something is reproduced the more draw there is to own the original.

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Hyper-RealityIn the consumerist era there is a drive to recreate the past.

Now living in an era where items that have been mass produced are now being reproduced to give the illusion of living in an era that has already taken place: faux antiques

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Postmodern Literature

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Where does thinking come from?

“Mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve…we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or at least in the process of formation” –Karl Marx

Do humans create art to express what they see in nature or is nature expressed and understood through art? Is nature art?

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5 stages in Literary Criticism• Mimetic: reflects nature – Judeo-Christian, Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon to

Renaissance

• Expressive: reflects the author– Restoration to Romantic

• Affective: reflects the reader– Romantic to Victorian

• Objective: reflects itself (Modern and Postmodern)– Victorian to present

• Contemporary (Cultural): reflects society and culture– Present

Page 25: Post modernism powerpoint

What permits meaningful thinking?

PoMo theory rooted in Structuralism founded by Ferdinand Saussure (1857-1913)–Analyze social and collective dimension of language rather than individual speech–Find infrastructure of language common to all speakers on an unconscious level–Sounds of language: small sets of possible sounds or phonemes (phone-eem) C/A/T=3 phonemes. Together creates a significant 3 phoneme unit but individually they are of no “value”

The structure of language

Page 26: Post modernism powerpoint

The BreakdownLanguage can be divided into three parts:• Signified=what is being talked about; the thing• Signifier=what it is named or classified as• Sign=end result of combination

Cow Limiting because it places false importance on either the signified or the signifier

Power in naming things: “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God..and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” John 1: 1-14

“He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” Genesis 2: 19-20

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The Binary ModelSignified language is divided into two subsets:

Syntagmatic: Linear combinations

He shut the doorParadigmatic: Substitution combinations

He shut the doorShe closed the windowThey opened the roof

Paradigmatic lends itself to various figures of speech: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche

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SemiologyCulture can be analyzed as a system of signsC.S. Peirce (1839-1914) proposed that semiology can be broken into three categories:1. Icon: signifies the object through similarity:

(cartoon, sound effect, realistic painting)2. Index: signifies the object through physical connection:

(smoke, footprint, sonic boom)3. Symbol: signifies the object through arbitrary rule:

(alphabet, stop sign, punctuation)

Menu

(Semiology)

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Structural Anthropology• Claude Leví-Strauss (1908-2009): influenced by

digitalized aspect of information– Thinking is the “system output” that occurs in the

interaction between human aspects and the environment– Language allows us to:

• Form social relationships• Categorize our environment

–Tribal societies apply substitutions and combinations to think about non-human nature (totems):

Gods then animals then vegetables•Mind functions on binary sets: noise/silence, raw/cooked•Human mind logically duplicates nature unconsciously.Traffic-light system: Green=Go, Yellow=Yield, Red=Stop

Green=short wavelength, Red=long wavelength, Yellow=middle wavelength

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Jacques Derrida (1930-2004): French philosopher

Defined Deconstructionalism – Understanding is based on the known which limits

logicBricolage: small bits put together

Bricoleur: person that creates bricolage

–Even with metalanguage, a technical language used to describe language, there is still a limitation of logic because it is grounded in language–Reason has been shaped by a dishonest pursuit diagnosed as logocentricsm “the word made flesh” (coined by Ludwig Klages in 1920s)–How can we evaluate language and reason when we are limited by our own humanity–True objective criticism and reason cannot exist

Page 31: Post modernism powerpoint

Language and the Mind• Sigmund Freud devised his theoretical trinity

of the mind: Id, Ego, and Superego• Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) replaced Freud’s

trinity with structures of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real– The psyche is structured like a language –Without language the unconscious mind does not

exist–Marginalized women stating that women are

unable to escape from the imaginary into the symbolic like men

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Social Orders or Contemporary Cultural Criticism

•Break from ordered and fixed reality of Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida

1990s-present: focus on how cultures interact with each other

Deconstruction peeled away the layers of constructed meanings in order to create a “zero degree” of sense. Contemporary criticism embraces the layers and attempts to add more.

Page 33: Post modernism powerpoint

Postmodern Feminism

Female models exist through metonymy:

Women are put into the schizoid position of being both IN history and NOT in history: written out by male theory (only representative)

•Justice•Liberty •Peace•Grace•Sexual Desire

PoMo Feminism left with two options:1. Coexist WITH men on route to

egalitarianism (soft compromise)2. Come out AGAINST men on a radical

separatist route

Page 34: Post modernism powerpoint

Contemporary “non”-EugenicsEugenics: the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population by qualification and quantification and then abolishing non-wanted traits.

Nazi Germany used anthropometrics (the measurement of the human individual for the purposes of understanding human physical variation) in order to classify what perfection would look like and to eliminate any asymmetrical groups. Golden Ratio of Beauty:Uses Pi 3.14… and Fibonacci sequence1,1,2,3,5,8…

Contemporary “non”-Eugenics: studies how groups relate to one another. Focused less on symmetry vs. asymmetry.-applied to Literature through study of culture rather than classification and stereotyping

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The Post Modern Poem*Can’t classify everything in the same manner*The Post Modern period is a time of experimentation*Classical and non-classic poetry exist side by side*There is no good and bad just original and non-original and “better”*Post Modernism puts the Lit. timeline into flux