Modernism and Postmodernism

Modernism and modern art refers to art that rejects the realistic depictions sought after by artist for centuries prior to the 20th Century. Instead of seeking greater realism, the modern visual artist experiments with shapes, colors and lines and innovates with materials and techniques to depict their technologically transformed modern society in a revolutionary manner. Modernism seeks to deconstruct the traditional and begin afresh. “Originally oppositional, modernism defied the cultural order of the bourgeoisie and the false normativity (…) of its history.” Indeed, there was a strong undercurrent of Marxism and Socialism that supported Modernism and its rejection of traditional art.. Modernism is tied to the history it rejects and has a strong social context. A modern artist is self-reflective and self-critical. Van Gogh, whose correspondence with others epitomizes both these traits, heralds the arrival of modernism. Describing Van Gogh’s modernity, Orton and Pollock evoke: “a world in constant flux, a totality which demanded a transformation of the role of colour, the movement and meanings of line and the conventions for the depiction of space.’. In his painting of La Berceuse, in late 1888, he strives to paint a portrait that is not a “mere likeness” but a representation of the modern woman, as he explains in a letter to his sister, and even a “painting of humanity”. He further explains to his brother Theo, “I get better results by painting them in their roughness than by giving them a conventional charm”,Contrary to portraits by earlier artists, the model is not beautiful nor is she painted in a realist painterly manner, to make her appear as beautiful as possible as in the case of commissioned portraits of yore. “Ah portraiture, portraiture with the thoughts, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come.”. Van Gogh moves postimpressionist art toward abstraction in an expressionist vein. According to Harold Rosenberg, another well- known art critic in New York and a rival of Greenberg, quoting Picasso who said “What forces our interest, (in the painting) ….is the torments of van Gogh, the actual drama of the man. Add in photo of La Berceuse and describe it. In the “every day act of a mother rocking a cradle” Van Gogh “uses a visual language accessible to anyone” The brush strokes are visible, the paint itself is layered on to add texture. There is a dark contour line that separates the model with the “unmodulated brilliance of the golden face” from the very decorative background, (O&P p. 36), which is” wallpaper, with its red and green pattern and starbursts of white flowers. According to the colour theories held by Van Gogh, “La Berceuse uses colour musically to create the pacifying effect of a lullaby with a calming use of complementary colours”, “the …green skirt…. is balanced by the bright red floor.”. (La Berceuse, Vincent van Gogh, But for the viewer both of then and now, these strongly contrasting colours are not soothing but rather exciting. He has succeeded in painting not a “portrait but an icon, a work of modern religious art for a mass audience”. (ibid). Picasso and his portrait of Dora Clement Greenberg states in Art and Culture, Critical Essays, the seminal book that consolidated his position as the preeminent modernist art critic, that painting, and in particular Cubism was the first art to give a positive definition to modernist style. (Greenberg p 144). Specifically, he states that there is an ‘attempt to overcome the distinctions between foreground and background” and “to reduce all matter to two dimensions- to lines and surfaces that define or enclose space but hardly occupy it”. (Greenberg p 144). He further states that in Cubism’s Synthetic phase, “images are reintegrated by being drawn out of fictive depth and flattened against the surface as silhouettes” … “The picture plane as a whole imitates visual experience as a whole; rather, the picture plane as a total object represents space as a total object. (Greenberg p 173). Picasso’s painting of Dora below does exactly this. Image and description: Dora is presented both profile and full face, giving us a dual perspective. “Picasso was the first painter to show two aspects of a face in this form simultaneously” (Terrain Gallery). It is important to how shocking this dual perspective would have been to a contemporary viewer such as Gertrude Stein. (Art After Philosophy Joseph Kossuth, pg 8). In the painting, one green eye is looking inward, suggesting self- reflection. Looking out from the center of the painting, the other eye with a red pupil observes the viewer serenely, calm within its curved contours. The calm is reinforced by soft red apple of her cheek within which is a lemon. Is Picasso recalling the temptation of Eve as well as the tartness of a woman’s scorn or simply her sweetness tempered by sour? (M. Simon Terrain Gallery Essay). The colours are strong, using green for shadows on the golden face and white for highlights. She is dressed with a scarf of red and purple triangles over a blue and green blouse with a spray of black lines like darts leading to the fullness of her breasts under a black jacket. Her red plaid skirt matches her red pointed finger nails. The arms of the model and the chair meld together dark, flat and of similar shape. The overall effect conveys the model’s composure and ease, her femininity and gentleness. The black jacket gives gravitas and a hint of severity and the sharp red nails a suggestion of danger. The portrait also conveys Picasso’s sense of humor in the apple and lemon, and dual perspective possibly suggests his understanding of humanities need to understand that all of us have many sides and perspectives as well as the need to see the world in an “aesthetic oneness of opposites”(Terrain Gallery). The background is made up of colorful horizontal and vertical lines which frame the model, a perfect example of Greenberg’s description of cubism “to reduce all matter to two dimensions- to lines and surfaces that define or enclose space but hardly occupy it”. (Greenberg p 144). For Greenberg, there were three main suppositions. Modernist art was a “quest for ‘purity’”, “an ongoing process, … a historic progression”. “The role of the art critic was ‘judging quality’, ((he was a king-maker among painters of the time)’”and each when each avant garde style became academic, new styles would emerge from their ruins. This latter idea, developed by Michael Fried would prove true, taking us on to Post-Modernism. Once “Modernism became the official culture” (Foster p.x) it was challenged by Post Modernism. In architecture, Charles Jencks dates the end of Modernism and the beginning of Post Modernism on July 15, 1972 with the destruction of the St Louis Pruitt- Igoe affordable housing estate. (Modernism and Modernity, The Vancouver Conference Papers p.IX). But the visual artists began their attack on Modernism more than 10 years prior. Rosalind Krauss in Perpetual Inventories explains how Jean Francois Lyotard “argues that postmodernism spells the end of what he terms the “master narrative” or the account of a broad sweep of history (such as the industrial revolution) in the light of a consistent worldview (such as utilitarianism) that shapes and interprets its meaning. (Perpetual Inventories, Krauss p. xiii). In his biography of Jean Francois Lyotard, Kiff Bamford writes the most often quoted phrase from The Post-Modern Condition is Lyotard’s sentence “I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. The legitimization of knowledge once endowed by a belief in the so- called grand r©cits (grand narratives or metanarratives) of emancipation in politics or speculative reason in philosophy, and indicative of an all-encompassing world view, has been shaken in the technologically advanced societies.”(Jean Francois Lyotard by Kiff Bamford p 89). Krauss continues her discussion of postmodernism stating the postmodern practice in the 1980’s saw the collapse of traditional mediums such as paintings or sculpture in favour of newly invented mediums. (Krauss, p. xiii) Contrary to the elitist Modernism, which was exclusive and believed in value and quality ( quote power point), Post- modern art is inclusive and populist, it embraces kitsch, low or mass culture and does not take itself too seriously. It is fun and enjoys poking fun at the world around it. Whereas modern art is “unique symbolic, visionary” post-modern works are “allegorical, contingent” and the post-modern artist seeks” to challenge its master narratives with the discourse of others” (Owens, cited by Foster p. Xi). According to Jameson “there will be as many different forms of postmodernism as there were high modernisms in place, since the former are at least initially specific and local reactions against these models.” (Jameson, Postmodernism and the Consumer Society, The Anti- Aesthetic p 128). According to Craig Owens, postmodernism is “a crisis of cultural authority, specifically of the authority vested in Western European culture and its institutions”, and its disregard for everyone other than the white male. (The Discourse of Others, Feminists and Postmodernism, Craig Owens, The Anti –Aesthetic, p 65). Postmodernism is “ahistorical, steals without care and diligence” (power point). Whereas modernism, at its origins, was closely tied to Marxism and socialism, “postmodernism is closely related to …consumer or multinational capitalism”. (Jameson, Postmodernism and Consumer Society p 143). “The two features of postmodernism…. the transformation of reality into images, the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents” (Jameson p. 144) are embodied in pop art. Pop Art, defined by Richard Hamilton as: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low- cost, Mass-produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous (and) Big Business (A Concise History of Modern Painting p.299) emerged from London and New York artists in the early 60’s. These artists were “fascinated by the idea of reprocessing popular imagery” …. “With calculate outrage in their work” … “upsetting prevailing fine art values and providing a radical alternative”(A Concise History of Modern Painting p.298). The Pop artist who most captured the public’s imagination was Andy Warhol. Beginning as a successful commercial artist, he later applied these commercial techniques to his Pop art. “Like Rauschenberg, Warhol used techniques of reproduction such as silkscreen and transfer drawings. “To emphasize his detachment from any emotive content in this images, he silkscreened them on to canvas in batches, implying that they could be repeated ad infinitum”. (A Concise History of Modern Painting, Herbert Read p298). He eliminates the signature of the artist, which is partially replaced with the random variations (a form of arbitrary signature) of the screenprint, with more or less ink/ paint, “depicting the life and the images of our time without comment” (History of Modern Art, H.H. Arnason p 637) “Through reproductive technology, postmodernist art dispenses with the aura.” (The Anti-Aesthetic, On the Museum’s Ruins, by Douglas Crimp, p 61). Warhol’s Campbell’s soup tins and Brillo boxes turned the “commodity into an icon” ( A Sweeper- Up After Artists, Irving Sandler , a memoir p 297). When Marilyn Monroe died, Andy Warhol decided to make a series of Marilyn Monroe portraits. Andy Warhol “steals” the photographic still of Marilyn Monroe from Niagara to make his series of Marilyn Monroe works. He used a screen printing technique called screen mesh using a rubber squeegee which is easy to use. This method allowed Warhol to quickly reproduce the picture on many canvases. He wanted to produce so many he had to hire assistants and move to a bigger facility, The Factory. The big bright colours of the print grab our attention. The turquoise eye shadow, offset against the blond bombshell hair and the bright red lips, all underscored with black outlines. Marilyn Monroe is as soulless as the Campbell soup tins or the Brillo Boxes. He has now turned the icon into a commodity! “His simplified, log-like representation and repetition of glamours stars reflect the consumerist ethos of American capitalism, Sukayna Rajaratnam and the advertising and publicity machinations that underpinned it.” (Andy Warhol’s Moa, Christies auction catalogue, Nov 15, 2006) According to Peter Schjeldahl, Marilyn (as well as Jackie and Liz) were “epiphanies of a new democratic religion in which certain people are mysteriously singled out to soar and suffer for us all.” (Sandler p 298). This makes us look at Marilyn in a new way, the original realistic photograph morphs into a robotic neurotic image which has no warmth but actually captures the culture’s obsession with the movie star icon, and simultaneously suggests that we really do not know the celebrity, she is the screen star onto which males project their wildest sexual fantasy and females possibly wish they resembled. The knowledge of her suicide by the viewer overshadows this image of glamour with death. Conclusion

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