Aziz Art
June 2019
Postmodern art
Ricky Swallow
Abdulnasser Gharem
1- Postmodern 20- Ricky Swallow 21- Abdulnasser Gharem
Director: Aziz Anzabi Editor : Nafiseh Yaghoubi Translator : Asra Yaghoubi Research: Zohreh Nazari Iranian art department: Mohadese Yaghoubi
http://www.aziz-anzabi.com
Postmodern art is a body of art reasons. Arthur Danto argues "contemporary" is the broader movements that sought to term, and postmodern objects contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that represent a "subsector" of the contemporary movement. Some emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements postmodern artists have made such as intermedia, installation art, more distinctive breaks from the ideas of modern art and there is no conceptual art and multimedia, consensus as to what is "lateparticularly involving video are modern" and what is "postdescribed as postmodern. modern." Ideas rejected by the There are several characteristics modern aesthetic have been rewhich lend art to being established. In painting, postmodern; these include postmodernism reintroduced bricolage, the use of text prominently as the central artistic representation.Some critics argue much of the current "postmodern" element, collage, simplification, art, the latest avant-gardism, appropriation, performance art, should still classify as modern art. the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture. As well as describing certain Use of the term tendencies of contemporary art, The predominant term for art postmodern has also been used to produced since the 1950s is denote a phase of modern art. "contemporary art". Not all art Defenders of modernism, such as labeled as contemporary art is Clement Greenberg,as well as postmodern, and the broader radical opponents of modernism, term encompasses both artists such as FĂŠlix Guattari, who calls it who continue to work in modernism's "last gasp," have modernist and late modernist adopted this position. traditions, as well as artists who 1 reject postmodernism for other
The neo-conservative Hilton Kramer describes postmodernism as "a creation of modernism at the end of its tether."Jean-Franรงois Lyotard, in Fredric Jameson's analysis, does not hold there is a postmodern stage radically different from the period of high modernism; instead, postmodern discontent with this or that high modernist style is part of the experimentation of high modernism, giving birth to new modernisms. In the context of aesthetics and art, Jean-Franรงois Lyotard is a major philosopher of postmodernism.
in the century. He makes the point these debates go on all the time with respect to art movements and periods, which is not to say they are not important.The close of the period of postmodern art has been dated to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact of globalization and new media.
Jean Baudrillard has had a significant influence on postmodern-inspired art and emphasised the possibilities of new forms of creativity.The artist Peter Many critics hold postmodern art Halley describes his day-glo colours emerges from modern art. as "hyperrealization of real color", Suggested dates for the shift from and acknowledges Baudrillard as an modern to postmodern include influence.Baudrillard himself, since 1914 in Europe, and 1962or 1984, was fairly consistent in his 1968 in America. James Elkins, view contemporary art, and commenting on discussions about postmodern art in particular, was the exact date of the transition inferior to the modernist art of the from modernism to post World War II period,while postmodernism, compares it to Jean-Franรงois Lyotard praised the discussion in the 1960s about Contemporary painting and the exact span of Mannerism and remarked on its evolution from whether it should begin directly Modern art after the High Renaissance or later
Major Women artists in the universality, originality and Twentieth Century are associated revolutionary or reactionary with postmodern art since much tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. theoretical articulation of their However, paradox is probably the work emerged from French most important modernist idea psychoanalysis and Feminist Theory against which postmodernism that is strongly related to post reacts. Paradox was central to the modern philosophy. modernist enterprise, which Manet As with all uses of the term introduced. Manet's various postmodern there are critics of its violations of representational art application. Kirk Varnedoe, for brought to prominence the instance, stated that there is no supposed mutual exclusiveness of such thing as postmodernism, and reality and representation, design that the possibilities of modernism and representation, abstraction and have not yet been exhausted. reality, and so on. The Though the usage of the term as a incorporation of paradox was highly kind of shorthand to designate the stimulating from Manet to the work of certain Post-war "schools" conceptualists. employing relatively specific material and generic techniques The status of the avant-garde is has become conventional since the controversial: many institutions mid-1980s, the theoretical argue being visionary, forwardunderpinnings of Postmodernism looking, cutting-edge, and as an epochal or epistemic division progressive are crucial to the are still very much in controversy. mission of art in the present, and Defining postmodern art therefore postmodern art Postmodernism describes contradicts the value of "art of our movements which both arise from, times". Postmodernism rejects the and react against or reject, trends notion of advancement or progress in modernism.General citations for in art per se, and thus aims to specific trends of modernism are overturn the "myth of the avantformal purity, medium specificity, garde". art for art's sake, authenticity,
Rosalind Krauss was one of the important enunciators of the view that avant-gardism was over, and the new artistic era is post-liberal and post-progress.Griselda Pollock studied and confronted the avantgarde and modern art in a series of groundbreaking books, reviewing modern art at the same time as redefining postmodern art.
what is generally seen as low or kitsch art.While this concept of "blurring" or "fusing" high art with low art had been experimented during modernism, it only ever became fully endorsed after the advent of the postmodern era.Postmodernism introduced elements of commercialism, kitsch and a general camp aesthetic within its artistic context; One characteristic of postmodern postmodernism takes styles from art is its conflation of high and low past periods, such as Gothicism, the culture through the use of Renaissance and the Baroque, and industrial materials and mixes them so as to ignore their pop culture imagery. The use of original use in their corresponding low forms of art were a part of artistic movement. Such elements modernist experimentation as well, are common characteristics of what as documented in Kirk Varnedoe defines postmodern art. and Adam Gopnik's 1990–91 show High and Low: Popular Culture Fredric Jameson suggests and Modern Art at New York's postmodern works abjure any claim Museum of Modern Art,an to spontaneity and directness of exhibition that was universally expression, making use instead of panned at the time as the only pastiche and discontinuity. Against event that could bring Douglas this definition, Art and Language's Crimp and Hilton Kramer together Charles Harrison and Paul Wood in a chorus of scorn. maintained pastiche and discontinuity are endemic to Postmodern art is noted for the modernist art, and are deployed way in which it blurs the effectively by modern artists such distinctions between what is as Manet and Picasso. perceived as fine or high art and
One compact definition is definition of modernism, Clement postmodernism rejects Greenberg's essay, Avant-Garde modernism's grand narratives of and Kitsch, first published in artistic direction, eradicating the Partisan Review in 1939, defends boundaries between high and low the avant-garde in the face of forms of art, and disrupting genre's popular culture.Later, Peter BĂźrger conventions with collision, collage, would make a distinction between and fragmentation. Postmodern art the historical avant-garde and holds all stances are unstable and modernism, and critics such as insincere, and therefore irony, Krauss, Huyssen, and Douglas parody, and humor are the only Crimp, following BĂźrger, identified positions critique or revision the historical avant-garde as a cannot overturn. "Pluralism and precursor to postmodernism. diversity" are other defining Krauss, for example, describes features. Pablo Picasso's use of collage as an avant-garde practice anticipating Avant-garde precursors postmodern art with its emphasis Radical movements and trends on language at the expense of regarded as influential and autobiography.Another point of potentially as precursors to view is avant-garde and modernist postmodernism emerged around artists used similar strategies and World War I and particularly in its postmodernism repudiates both. aftermath. With the introduction of the use of industrial artifacts in Dada art and techniques such as collage, In the early 20th century Marcel avant-garde movements such as Duchamp exhibited a urinal as a Cubism, Dada and Surrealism sculpture. His point was to have questioned the nature and value people look at the urinal as if it of art. New artforms, such as were a work of art just because he cinema and the rise of said it was a work of art. He reproduction, influenced these referred to his work as movements as a means of creating "Readymades". artworks. The ignition point for the
The Fountain was a urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, which shocked the art world in 1917. This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled as Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor to conceptual art. Some critics question calling Duchamp—whose obsession with paradox is well known— postmodernist on the grounds he eschews any specific medium, since paradox is not mediumspecific, although it arose first in Manet's paintings. Dadaism can be viewed as part of the modernist propensity to challenge established styles and forms, along with Surrealism, Futurism and Abstract Expressionism.From a chronological point of view, Dada is located solidly within modernism, however a number of critics hold it anticipates postmodernism, while others, such as Ihab Hassan and Steven Connor, consider it a possible changeover point between modernism and postmodernism.For example, according to McEvilly, postmodernism begins with
realizing one no longer believes in the myth of progress, and Duchamp sensed this in 1914 when he changed from a modernist practice to a postmodernist one, "abjuring aesthetic delectation, transcendent ambition, and tour de force demonstrations of formal agility in favor of aesthetic indifference, acknowledgement of the ordinary world, and the found object or readymade. Radical movements in modern art In general, Pop Art and Minimalism began as modernist movements: a paradigm shift and philosophical split between formalism and antiformalism in the early 1970s caused those movements to be viewed by some as precursors or transitional postmodern art. Other modern movements cited as influential to postmodern art are conceptual art and the use of techniques such as assemblage, montage, bricolage, and appropriation. Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism Main articles: Jackson Pollock, Abstract expressionism, and Western painting
During the late 1940s and early Jackson Pollock, Willem de 1950s, Pollock's radical approach to Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, painting revolutionized the Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, potential for all Contemporary art Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Ad following him. Pollock realized the Reinhardt and others, opened the journey toward making a work of floodgates to the diversity and art was as important as the work scope of following artworks. of art itself. Like Pablo Picasso's innovative reinventions of After abstract expressionism painting and sculpture near the Main articles: Post-painterly turn of the century via Cubism abstraction, Color Field painting, and constructed sculpture, Lyrical Abstraction, Arte Povera, Pollock redefined artmaking Process Art, and Western painting during the mid-century. Pollock's In abstract painting during the move from easel painting and 1950s and 1960s several new conventionality liberated his directions like Hard-edge painting contemporaneous artists and and other forms of Geometric following artists. They realized abstraction like the work of Frank Pollock's process — working on Stella popped up, as a reaction the floor, against the subjectivism of Abstract unstretched raw canvas, from all expressionism began to appear in four sides, using artist materials, artist studios and in radical avantindustrial materials, imagery, non- garde circles. Clement Greenberg imagery, throwing linear skeins of became the voice of Post-painterly paint, dripping, drawing, staining, abstraction; by curating an brushing - blasted artmaking influential exhibition of new beyond prior boundaries. Abstract painting touring important art expressionism expanded and museums throughout the United developed the definitions and States in 1964. Color field painting, possibilities artists had available Hard-edge painting and Lyrical for the creation of new works of Abstraction emerged as radical new art. In a sense, the innovations of directions.
By the late 1960s, Postminimalism, celebrating consumerism of the Process Art and Arte Povera also post World War II era. This emerged as revolutionary movement rejected Abstract concepts and movements expressionism and its focus on the encompassing painting and hermeneutic and psychological sculpture, via Lyrical Abstraction interior, in favor of art which and the Postminimalist movement, depicted, and often celebrated, and in early Conceptual material consumer culture, Art.Process art as inspired by advertising, and iconography of the Pollock enabled artists to mass production age. The early experiment with and make use works of David Hockney and the of a diverse encyclopedia of style, works of Richard Hamilton, John content, material, placement, McHale, and Eduardo Paolozzi were sense of time, and plastic and real considered seminal examples in the space. Nancy Graves, Ronald Davis, movement. While later American Howard Hodgkin, Larry Poons, examples include the bulk of the Jannis Kounellis, Brice Marden, careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Lichtenstein and his use of Benday Alan Saret, Walter Darby Bannard, dots, a technique used in Lynda Benglis, Dan Christensen, commercial reproduction. Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Eva There is a clear connection Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, between the radical works of Sam Gilliam, Mario Merz, Peter Duchamp, the rebellious Dadaist — Reginato, Lee Lozano, were some of with a sense of humor; and Pop the younger artists emerging during Artists like Claes Oldenburg, Andy the era of late modernism Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the spawning the heyday of the art of others. the late 1960s. Thomas McEvilly, agreeing with Dave Hickey, says U.S Pop Art postmodernism in the visual arts Lawrence Alloway used the term began with the first exhibitions of "Pop art" to describe paintings Pop art in 1962,.
"though it took about twenty years before postmodernism became a dominant attitude in the visual arts."Fredric Jameson, too, considers pop art to be postmodern
Higgins. In 1962 in Germany Fluxus started with the: FLUXUS Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik in Wiesbaden with, George Maciunas, Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik and others. And in 1963 with the: Festum Fluxorum Fluxus in DĂźsseldorf with George Maciunas, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Ben Patterson, Emmett Williams and others.
One way Pop art is postmodern is it breaks down what Andreas Huyssen calls the "Great Divide" between high art and popular culture.Postmodernism emerges from a "generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high Fluxus encouraged a do it yourself modernism. aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada before it, Fluxus included a strong current Fluxus of anti-commercialism and an antiFluxus was named and loosely art sensibility, disparaging the organized in 1962 by George conventional market-driven art Maciunas (1931–78), a Lithuanian- world in favor of an artist-centered born American artist. creative practice. Fluxus artists Fluxus traces its beginnings to preferred to work with whatever John Cage's 1957 to 1959 materials were at hand, and either Experimental Composition classes created their own work or at the New School for Social collaborated in the creation process Research in New York City. with their colleagues. Many of his students were artists working in other media with little Fluxus can be viewed as part of the or no background in music. Cage's first phase of postmodernism, students included Fluxus founding along with Rauschenberg, Johns, members Jackson Mac Low, Al Warhol and the Situationist Hansen, George Brecht and Dick International
Fluxus can be viewed as part of the subjective painting, the complexity first phase of postmodernism, of Abstract expressionist surfaces, along with Rauschenberg, Johns, and the emotional zeitgeist and Warhol and the Situationist polemics present in the arena of International.Andreas Huyssen Action painting. Minimalism argued criticises attempts to claim Fluxus extreme simplicity could capture for postmodernism as, "either the the sublime representation art master-code of postmodernism or requires. Associated with painters the ultimately unrepresentable art such as Frank Stella, minimalism in movement – as it were, painting, as opposed to other postmodernism's sublime." Instead areas, is a modernist movement he sees Fluxus as a major Neoand depending on the context can Dadaist phenomena within the be construed as a precursor to the avant-garde tradition. It did not postmodern movement. represent a major advance in the Hal Foster, in his essay The Crux of development of artistic strategies, Minimalism, examines the extent to though it did express a rebellion which Donald Judd and Robert against, "the administered culture Morris both acknowledge and of the 1950s, in which a moderate, exceed Greenbergian modernism in domesticated modernism served their published definitions of as ideological prop to the Cold minimalism. He argues minimalism War." is not a "dead end" of modernism, but a "paradigm shift toward Minimalism postmodern practices that continue By the early 1960s Minimalism to be elaborated today. emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots in geometric abstraction via Malevich, the Bauhaus and Mondrian) which rejected the idea of relational, and
Postminimalism Robert Pincus-Witten coined the term Post-minimalism in 1977 to describe minimalist derived art which had content and contextual overtones minimalism rejected. His use of the term covered the period 1966 – 1976 and applied to the work of Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra and new work by former minimalists Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt, and Barry Le Va, and others Process art and anti-form art are other terms describing this work, which the space it occupies and the process by which it is made determines. Rosalind Krauss argues by 1968 artists such as Morris, LeWitt, Smithson and Serra had "entered a situation the logical conditions of which can no longer be described as modernist."The expansion of the category of sculpture to include land art and architecture, "brought about the shift into postmodernism." Minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Agnes Martin, John McCracken and others continued to produce their late
modernist paintings and sculpture for the remainder of their careers. Movements in postmodern art Conceptual art Conceptual art is sometimes labelled as postmodern because it is expressly involved in deconstruction of what makes a work of art, "art". Conceptual art, because it is often designed to confront, offend or attack notions held by many of the people who view it, is regarded with particular controversy.[citation needed] Precursors to conceptual art include the work of Duchamp, John Cage's 4' 33", in which the music is said to be "the sounds of the environment that the listeners' hear while it is performed," and Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning Drawing. Many conceptual works take the position that art is created by the viewer viewing an object or act as art, not from the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. Thus, because Fountain was exhibited, it was a sculpture.
Installation art An important series of movements in art which have consistently been described as postmodern involved installation art and creation of artifacts that are conceptual in nature. One example being the signs of Jenny Holzer which use the devices of art to convey specific messages, such as "Protect Me From What I Want". Installation Art has been important in determining the spaces selected for museums of contemporary art in order to be able to hold the large works which are composed of vast collages of manufactured and found objects. These installations and collages are often electrified, with moving parts and lights. They are often designed to create environmental effects, as Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Iron Curtain, Wall of 240 Oil Barrels, Blocking Rue Visconti, Paris, June 1962 which was a poetic response to the Berlin Wall built in 1961. Lowbrow art Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and
other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art highlights a central theme in postmodernism in that the distinction between "high" and "low" art are no longer recognized.
Digital art Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process. The impact of digital technology has transformed activities such as painting, drawing, sculpture and music/sound art, while new forms, such as net art, digital installation art, and virtual reality, have become recognized artistic practices. Leading art theorists and historians in this field include Christiane Paul, Frank Popper, Christine BuciGlucksmann, Dominique Moulon, Robert C. Morgan, Roy Ascott, Catherine Perret, Margot Lovejoy, Edmond Couchot, Fred Forest and Edward A. Shanken.
Intermedia and multi-media Another trend in art which has been associated with the term postmodern is the use of a number of different media together. Intermedia, a term coined by Dick Higgins and meant to convey new artforms along the lines of Fluxus, Concrete Poetry, Found objects, Performance art, and Computer art. Higgins was the publisher of the Something Else Press, a Concrete poet, married to artist Alison Knowles and an admirer of Marcel Duchamp. Ihab Hassan includes, "Intermedia, the fusion of forms, the confusion of realms," in his list of the characteristics of postmodern art.One of the most common forms of "multi-media art" is the use of video-tape and CRT monitors, termed Video art. While the theory of combining multiple arts into one art is quite old, and has been revived periodically, the postmodern manifestation is often in combination with performance art, where the dramatic subtext is removed, and what is left is the specific statements of the artist in question or the conceptual statement of their action.Higgin's
conception of Intermedia is connected to the growth of multimedia digital practice such as immersive virtual reality, digital art and computer art. Telematic Art Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic encounters. Roy Ascott sees the telematic art form as the transformation of the viewer into an active participator of creating the artwork which remains in process throughout its duration. Ascott has been at the forefront of the theory and practice of telematic art since 1978 when he went online for the first time, organizing different collaborative online projects. Appropriation art and neoconceptual art In his 1980 essay The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism,
Craig Owens identifies the rethe conservative cultural politics of emergence of an allegorical the Reagan-Bush era in the U.S.FÊlix impulse as characteristic of Guattari disregards the "large postmodern art. This impulse can promotional operations dubbed be seen in the appropriation art of 'neo-expressionism' in Germany," artists such as Sherrie Levine and as a too easy way for him "to Robert Longo because, "Allegorical demonstrate that postmodernism is imagery is appropriated imagery." nothing but the last gasp of Appropriation art debunks modernism."These critiques of neomodernist notions of artistic expressionism reveal that money genius and originality and is more and public relations really sustained ambivalent and contradictory than contemporary art world credibility modern art, simultaneously in America during the same period installing and subverting ideologies, that conceptual artists, and "being both critical and complicit." practices of women artists Neo-expressionism and painting including painters and feminist The return to the traditional art theorists like forms of sculpture and painting in the late 1970s and early 1980s Griselda Pollock,were seen in the work of Neosystematically reevaluating modern expressionist artists such as Georg art. Brian Massumi claims that Baselitz and Julian Schnabel has Deleuze and Guattari open the been described as a postmodern horizon of new definitions of tendency, and one of the first Beauty in postmodern art. For Jeancoherent movements to emerge François Lyotard, it was painting of in the postmodern era. Its strong the artists Valerio Adami, Daniel links with the commercial art Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Bracha market has raised questions, Ettinger, and Barnett Newman that, however, both about its status as after the avant-garde's time and a postmodern movement and the the painting of Paul CÊzanne and definition of postmodernism itself. Wassily Kandinsky, was the vehicle Hal Foster states that neofor new ideas of the sublime in expressionism was complicit with contemporary art.
Institutional critique Critiques on the institutions of art (principally museums and galleries) are made in the work of Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren and Hans Haacke
Ricky Swallow is an Australian sculptor (born in San Remo, Victoria in 1974), who lives and works in Los Angeles.He creates detailed pieces and installations in a variety of media, often utilising objects of everyday life as well as the body (bones etc.). He studied at the Victorian College of the Arts.He won the Contempora 5 Prize in Melbourne at the age of 25 in 1999. He was later selected to be the Australian representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale with This Time Another Year.
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Abdulnasser Gharem (born 4 June 1973) is a Saudi Arabian artist and also a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian army. In April 2011, his installation Message/Messenger sold for a world record price at auction in Dubai. Gharem's work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture and Information, His artwork is characterized by innovative use of materials,including rubber stamps, a collapsed bridge, and an invasive tree.
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