POWERPOINT NOTES FROM POSTMODERN POWERPOINT
POSTMODERNISM - CHALLENGE TO ORIGINALITY
For some, understanding Postmodernism can be difficult. It challenges what we think and know
about art.
Postmodernism is about contemporary art practice and originated around the 1970’s. . When you
look at an artwork and think to yourself “What on earth is that??” or “How is THAT art??”, it’s
usually Postmodern. In many cases, the importance of the artwork lays more with the concept
(or idea), than the end product.
Post Modernism – meaning ‘after Modernism’, is based on a loss of faith in the technical progress.
Using trends such as Pop and Conceptual Art, Post – Modernism also revived genres, subject
matter and techniques that had largely been put aside.
So Where did it all Begin?
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Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zürich, Switzerland, during
World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. According to its proponents, Dada was not art—
it was "anti-art" in the sense that Dadaists protested against the contemporary academic and
cultured values of art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite.
Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to
appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. They wanted to reject traditional culture.
Dada is often seen as the birth of Postmodernism.
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Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist.
He was a very influencial artist and created the first "readymades" — found objects he chose
and presented as art.
Readymades are everyday manufactured goods that are
considered to be art just because the artist decides that they are.
They were invented by Marcel Duchamp who wanted to test the limits of what qualifies as a work of
art.
The belief being challenged in ‘Bicycle Wheel’ is that artworks need to be original and unique.He
also invited the audience to spin the wheel while it was being exhibited. Audience interaction
was something unheard of before! This is a Postmodern concept.
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The readymades are experiments in provocation, the products of a conscious effort to break
every rule of the artistic tradition, in order to create a new kind of art — one that engages the
mind instead of the eye, in ways that provoke the observer to participate and think. If you want
to break all the rules of the artistic tradition, Duchamp reasoned, why not begin by discarding
its most fundamental values: beauty and artisanship. The readymades were Duchamp’s
answer to the question, How can one make works of art that are not “of art”?
In 1917, as a practical joke, Duchamp exhibited a urinal which he called ‘Fountain’. He exhibited it
under a fake name of R.Mutt. It so enraged the shows organisers that it ‘mysteriously’ went
missing. To defend the charge that Fountain was mere plagiarism, “a plain piece of plumbing,”
he replied “Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance.
He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance
disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object.”
This is called recontextualisation - it is a Postmodern concept
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While the original ‘Fountain’ has never been recovered, many replica’s have been made,
some by Duchamp himself. This action again challenges the idea that art needs to be ‘a oneoff original and unique’. This is a Postmodern concept.
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What is it then that distinguishes the offer of art 'Fountain' from the functional product urinal?
Visible changes that were carried out by Duchamp and appear as material language, are the
signature (R. Mutt 1917), the presentation - atop a pedestal and the place of presentation not a bathroom shop-window, not a washroom - but an exhibition, museum.
Andy Warhol and his Soup Cans
Andy Warhol was a ‘Pop Artist’ from the Modernist movement. Although he was not officially
considered a ‘Postmodern Artist’, his artworks possess some postmodern characteristics. His
works radically challenged high modernist ideas associated with the concept of originality and
the role of the artist as individual. Through this and through his obsession with money, fame,
commercialism and mass culture he challenged high art, blurring the distinction between it
and popular culture.
By taking his images directly from such pre-existing sources as advertisements and everyday life
and replicating them in seemingly unaltered silk-screen paintings, Andy Warhol effectively critiqued
the concept of originality that was so firmly held to by the mandarins of high art. The majority of his
images, often direct copies of two-dimensional advertisements, were chosen for their status as
mass culture icons. His Campbells soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles for example, were so similar
to their original sources that they raised questions regarding their true nature- were they paintings
of soup cans and bottles or paintings of advertisements for these products? Critics of the time
ferociously attacked Warhols art for this untransformed and non-symbolic subject matter.
Warhol also challenged the emphasis placed on originality by high art through his use of repetition,
(made possible by the mass production technique of silk-screen printing).
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By 1966, Warhol had transformed his studio into 'the Factory'- a place of mass production
where he created both art and films. Here he replicated brand images such as coca-cola
bottles and portraits of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe (He produced many series of silkscreen paintings from single photographs and also repeated these images on single
canvases. Offering an explanation for his excessive use of exact repetition, Warhol famously
said:
"Somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me...The reason I'm painting this way is that I
want to be a machine." (Haskell, B. 'Pop Art' Pg.81)
Repetition and replication, whilst challenging the notion of originality, also denied individuality
through impersonality (they lacked personal touch). In so doing, they called into question wellestablished notions of the artists role as individual.
APPROPRIATION : APPROPRIATION is part of Postmodernist practice.
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To appropriate something involves taking possession of it. In the visual arts, the term
appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of new work. The
borrowed elements may include images, forms or styles from art history or from popular
culture, or materials and techniques from non-art contexts. Since the 1980s the term has also
referred more specifically to quoting the work of another artist to create a new work. The new
work may or may not alter the original. _en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriation_(art) The purpose
of appropriation could be a political statement, an ironic gesture, a straight-up homage, or the
desire to strengthen the power and impact of a particular image through reinterpretation of it.
Many artists have practiced appropriation of some type, including Gretchen Bender, Barbara
Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Arnold Mesches, David Salle, and others.