Postmodern forms

1. Postmodern forms Martin Ison, Olympia and her pussy, watercolour on paper, 25 x 35cm, 2011. Postmodern forms are often characterised by parody – an imitation of something (in this case, humorously) in order to ridicule.

2. We have been working within the structure of Modernism for the past few months. Modernist art is a product of Modernity, which started with the Enlightenment in 18th century: • Characterised by great changes: – industrialisation; mass production; population increase; change in the way people worked and lived; increasing urbanisation and rise of the machine; World Wars. • Emphasis on reason; knowledge; science and the ability of reason to solve all problems. A time of optimism about this. A search for truth; authenticity. • A move away from the rigid rules and superstitions of medieval times and established religion. Modernity was a time of great change. Shown here is a celebration of the new transport. JMW Turner, Steam, speed and rain, oil on canvas, 1844

3. In Modernist art we have seen some characteristics: • The idea of an avant-garde; • The idea of the artist as individual genius, with a name, a signature, and skill. • The move away from the need for accurate representation, due largely to the advent of photography; • Distortion of the figure; • Rise of the importance of representation of inner states; psychology; emotion…the subjective (Symbolism; Expressionism; Surrealism; Abstract Expressionism - both ‘gestural’ and ‘colour field.’) • Move away from the need to describe an outer reality; • Destruction of linear perspective and illusion; and development of Abstraction – the Cubists; Pollock; Rothko; Minimalist art. • ‘Art for art’s sake’: the creation of a work need not have a political, or religious, or didactic (teaching) role. It can just be what it is, for its own self. This was a move from the traditional idea about art having a moral influence (religious art, then history painting involving religious stories or myths and legends from Classical Greece and Rome.) Rene Magritte, The Lovers, 1928, oil on canvas, 54 x 73cm. Magritte, a Surrealist, used traditional modelled forms and perspective but created puzzling, unsettling images. An inner reality of some kind was being referred to.

4. As early as 1917 we saw Duchamp’s Fountain start to rupture some of these ideas. It wasn’t till the 1960s though that the cracks really started to appear. The rise of social activism; feminism; green issues; equality for non-whites and non-straights. Conceptual art served to emphasise the idea over the object and question authorship; originality, and the artist’s hand. Aesthetic concerns were not seen to be as important as the idea. Joseph Kosuth (US, b. 1945) , One and three chairs, 1965.The panel furthest away has text with the definition of the word ‘chair’ on it. This use of language and investigation of ideas and images is typical of Conceptual Art.

5. Pop art got down and dirty, mixing ‘high art’ of the galleries with ‘low art’ or popular images from advertising, comics, newspapers and TV. (This mixing of elite culture with everyday images is again, not new with Pop Art. We may recall the Dadaists used everyday objects in their assemblages; everyday images from magazines and newspapers in their collages. And before them, the Cubist collages included newspapers; chair caning; wallpaper.) However it gained momentum; gained pace in the 1960s. Postmodern use of Lichtenstein’s art: an image from a graphic design tutorial website. <<<Roy Lichtenstein (US, 1923-1997), Drowning girl, oil and acrylic on canvas, 1963, 171 x 169cm

6. So how do we characterise postmodernism? Barbara Kruger (US, b.1945), Untitled (you invest in the divinity of the masterpiece, photocopy, 1982, 182 X 115cm Scepticism about modernity, rather than a faith and optimism about it. This is not really new. Modernity was never wholeheartedly accepted at all times. (consider the response to WW1 by the Dadaists. The Surrealists, also reacted against society of its time, with the repression and regulation of modern life and its losing touch with the inner reality.) However postmodern art brought a strong sense of scepticism and questioning. Barbara Kruger had a background in graphic design, working with fashion magazines and book covers. Her artworks incorporate found images with her own text overlaid, generally in black and white and red. The statements she inserts have a brief, punchy nature, which appropriates advertising slogans. She has posted them as billboards and in doing so, they gain a certain power, from their size, position and status. She also sells her artwork on products such as coffee mugs, shopping bags etc which causes a continued confusion between advertising and art.

7. Kruger, Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face), 1981. The idea of ‘the male gaze’ arose in the 1970s. Itrefers to the Idea that traditionally, art was created with the (straight) male in mind. Nudes and women generally in artwere often depicted as ‘available’ to a viewer assumed( unconsciously) to be male. This is part of the challenge that Manet’s Olympia threw at us. She may be available (she had to pay the rent!) but it’s not all about you. She was her own person. She was humanised, rather than objectified. Kruger looks at these ideas, with her text on the image.

8. Challenging of all types of structures; traditions and beliefs. We saw the challenging of previous traditions with the avant-garde in Modernism. The new movement always thought it had the better way to get to an authentic expression. With Postmodernism, there is not that sense of ‘we have the answer’. It is more a case of ‘there ARE no definite answers. No one path is correct.’ There is no one, single truth. Rather, there are many stories; many voices. This can be a confronting idea. It can lead to a sense of ‘well, nothing matters then’, which can be empty and meaningless. However it can also be empowering to those whose voices have been ignored in the past. Feminist art practices, of which there are many varieties, are an example of this. Jill Orr, (Aust.), Bleeding trees 1, performance, 1979 Orr’s practice uses the female body (her own) to identify with the natural environment. Her work then is both Feminist and environmental. The idea of women being more connected to the earth, more in tune with it (than men) because of their reproductive cycle was a popular Feminist motif of the 1970s. This era also saw the rise of Goddess practices (where God, or the divine being, is seen as female rather than the more traditional idea of a Father-god.) Performances of all types, often centred around the body, became a part of art practice from the 1960s on. (This kind of work acts to question the art object.)

9. Use of humour; irony or parody: Parody means ‘sending something up’ by imitating it. This could be any existing idea, or art of the past. Again, this is questioning structures or making a point. Ironyis seeming to mean one thing, but actually meaning something else. It is closely linked to parody. Often, too, humour is involved,but not always. This image was produced by the LGBT Support Group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, during the worst of the AIDS crisis in Australia. What is the image parodying and challenging here, and to what purpose? Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Sydney: Pieta, c. 1980s.

10. Appropriation & questioning the notion of originality. We saw evidence of appropriation back with Manet with his use of the compositions of Titian and Giorgione. He, in turn, was actually doing something with a long tradition: looking back to the Masters and imitating them. It wasn’t a mere copy though... he created something new from it. This really took off with postmodern art, for example the work of Imants Tillers in Australia. Eugene von Guerard (Austrian, 1811-1901, Mt Kosciusko, >>> 1863, 66 x 116cm <<<Imants Tillers (Aust. B 1950) Mt Analogue, 1985, oil paint, oil stick and acrylic paint on 165 canvas boards, overall 279 x 571cm.

11. Tillers is one of our best known postmodern artists. He has been concerned, for several decades, with the idea of location, and Australia’s place, not simply geographically, but within the artworld. The traditional centres for art – Paris, New York – are a long way from us. This is not as important now as it has been previously (with the rise of international art fairs like the Biennale of Sydney, and the rise of Asian art centres like Beijing) but we are still a small and far-away place. Much of his work involves appropriating and ‘quoting’ the work of European artists, and the ideas of the original vs. the copy. Up till recently, most of the great artworks could not be seen in hard-copy by Australians, but rather in books – a ‘copy’ of the original. He is also very interested in Aboriginal art and artists and their relation to the land. Giorgio De Chirico, The painters family 1926. >>>>>>> Tillers, Inherited absolute, 1992, oil and oil stick on canvas boards, 231 x 228cm

13. Examining the exam…. Q: Write an account of Joseph Cornell’s practice, taking into account all support material. (Allow about 20 mins. Worth12 marks.)In your answers you will be assessed on how well you: * write in a concise and well-reasoned way *present an informed point of view *use the plates and any other source material provided to inform your response “Joseph Cornell spent most of his life in a . . . house on Utopia Parkway in Queens, New York, with his mother and crippled brother, Robert. From there this reclusive, gray, long-beaked man would sally forth on small voyages of discovery, scavenging for relics of the past in New York junkshops and flea markets. To others these deposits might be refuse*, but to Cornell they were the strata of repressed memory, a jumble of elements waiting to be grafted and mated to one another.” (*refuse means rubbish.) Extract from American Visions by art critic Robert Hughes, 1997

14. Hans Namuth, 1917–1990, USA The Cellar Workshop at 3708 Utopia Parkway, 1969. Hans Namuth was a photographer who specialised in documenting images of artists’ studios for art magazines, journals and other publications. He made this photograph on a visit to Cornell’s house. Joseph Cornell (US, 1903-1972), The hotel Eden, 1945, Assemblage with music box and other found objects. 38.3 × 39.7 × 2.1 cm

15. Resources Allen, Christopher, Art in Australia: from colonisation to postmodernism. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. Jill Orr: http://www.jillorr.com.au/index.html Gordon Bennett: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/gordonbennett/education/themes.html Barbara Kruger: http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=3266 Imants Tillers @ National Gallery of Australia: http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/TILLERS/Default.cfm?MnuID=1