post modernism powerpoint
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Post-Modernism1945-present
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
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?
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?
Picasso
van Gogh
Cézanne (1)
Gauguin (2)
George Seurat (3)
Chagall (4)
Modernism in Art
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.
Pointillism
Technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image
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
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?
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
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.
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
Andy Warhol took photo images and transferred them via silkscreen to a canvas. Fame is the art.
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
Conceptualism TodayDamien Hirst
Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain 2007. Silver
Away from the Flock 1994. Glass, steel, lamb and formaldehyde solution
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
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)
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
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.
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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