Part III. Postmodernism‟s Expansions: The Framers, Artists...
Transcript of Part III. Postmodernism‟s Expansions: The Framers, Artists...
Part III. Postmodernism‟s Expansions: The Framers,
Artists, and Architects of Postmodernism
French critical theorists’ primary goal was
decentering- denying everything that implied a center or
hierarchy. All established assumptions could be inverted.
Barthes- death of the author, who originates a work; it is not “how do I
construct the world?” but “how does the world construct me?”; “The
birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”
Derrida- everything is a text and deconstruction is the marking of the
unmarked
Foucault- discourses that produce knowledge are charged from within
by power relations
Baudrillard- put Marxian analysis into a linguistic domain, displacement
of exchange-value from commodities to their representatives, logos;
the displacement is understood by way of the simulacrum, in which
reality is replaced by its representation.
Simulacra are, therefore, copies without originals.
Art theorist-critic-historians in the United States:
Rosalind Krauss, started October with Annette Michelson
Craig Owens
Douglas Crimp
Benjamin Buchloh
Hal Foster
All contributors to October
In place of the modernist-formalist Greenberg,
these postmodernist art theorist-critic-historians
translated and ensconced the French critical theorists.
Art Since 1900 editors are Krauss, Buchloh, Foster, and
Yve-Alain Bois.
Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-
object
Representational art- has a referent, the „real world‟
But for postmodernists, who reflect the postmodern
condition, there is a crisis of the referent, of „reality.‟
“Representations…instead of coming after reality, in an
imitation of it, now precede and construct reality. Our „real‟ emotions
imitate those we see on film and read about in pulp romances; our
„real‟ desires are structured for us by advertising images; the „real‟ of
our politics is prefabricated by television news and Hollywood
scenarios of leadership; our „real‟ selves are congeries and repetition
of all these images, strung together by narratives not of our own
making.”
The work of art was, therefore, treated as a kind of
unstable image-text complex, whose meanings are
endless and relational, versus the singleness and self-
containedness of the art-as-object.
Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-
object
In terms of language, in the vein of Derrida‟s “nothing is
outside-the-text”:
Reality is composed of circulating signifiers, meaning “self
and society become simply constructs of language,”
preceding and constructing that which is signified.
The crisis of the referent assures a multiplicity of readings,
and of realities. There is no “original” reality but a
multiplicity of realities.
Reflects Baudrillard‟s simulacra- reality is replaced by
representations!
Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-
object
So why photography for postmodernists?
Because reality is replaced by representations,
Because a “photograph is a multiple without an original,”
and because photography (film, video, etc) turns the real
into representations of themselves in the documents of
ephemeral postminimal, process, performance, site
specific, and conceptual art -art that challenges art-as-
object-
photography (film, video, etc) is mobilized by
postmodernist artists who understand art as
representation in contrast to art as pure form.
Sherrie Levine, Untitled, After Edward Weston I, 1980,
photography, Postmodernism
“photograph is a multiple without an original” “the „author‟ of this image is,
therefore, dazzlingly multiple”
Eleanor Antin, Representational Painting, 1970s, video,
Postmodernism
“theater of the self”~“readymade selves”
Feminist Performance art whose Video and photography
documentation turns the real into representations of
themselves; happens for all documents of ephemeral
postminimal, process, performance, site specific, and
conceptual art -art that challenges art-as-object-
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #7, 1970s, black and
white photography, Postmodernism
“Readymade selves”- selfhood is built on representation, on appropriating
his or her “self” -movie stars she impersonated, characters she implied,
directors whose styles she pastiched, and film genres she simulated
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #39, 1970s, black and
white photography, Postmodernism
Images are feminine but also Feminist in their dialogue with the “gaze”- the traces
of the male gaze trained on a waiting and defenseless female; the ways the
female reacts to this gaze, entreating it, ignoring it, placating it
under Patriarchy- Men were the speakers, the makers of meaning while women -
the spoken for- were the bearers of meaning, the passive objects and never the
agent of vision
Barbara Kruger, We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture, 1980s,
photography and typeface, Postmodernism
Second Generation Feminism; challenges institutional frame of gender, that both
artist and viewer are male, and binaries inherent to language and thus the structure
of society- that woman is essentially all nature, “marked” and limited, and man is
culture, “unmarked” with more options. Although woman here is the object of the
“gaze,” without vision of her own, referring to the narrative of the woman as object for
male subject, she speaks! Activates discourse, produces knowledge
Richard Prince, Untitled (Couple), 1970s, photography,
Postmodernism
Re-photographs captionless photographs from advertisements
and increases their size to the size of paintings
Richard Prince, Untitled (Four women looking in the
same direction) #1-#4, 1970s, photography,
Postmodernism
May 2003 Christie‟s auction, $175,000
Richard Prince, Untitled (cowboy), 1980s, photography,
Postmodernism
Re-photographed captionless photograph from a Marlboro
cigarette advertisement; he was attracted to social and
cultural stereotypes that doubled as the self‟s secret desires
and dreams
Baldessari uses movie imagery not to comment on mass
culture but to primarily use them as open-ended
signifiers—texts and images as open-ended signifiers—
He mobilizes the idea of the arbitrary nature of signs.
Any number of readings of his photoworks are possible!
John Baldessari, Concerning Diachronic/Synchronic
Time: Above/On/Under (with Mermaid), 1970s,
composite photowork- composed of six film stills
Postmodernism
For Blasted Allegories, “Baldessari photographed
images selected at random from a television screen,
using different color filters, because as he said:
‟The world constructed by the media seems to me a
reasonable surrogate for „real life,‟ whatever that is.‟”
John Baldessari, Blasted Allegories (Black and White
Sentence): Red to What is Red All Over and Black
and White, 1970s, composite photowork
Postmodernism