1. modernism and post-modernism

PREMODERNISM

MODERNISM

POSTMODERNISM

The End of the 20th Century, 1982-3

Joseph Beuys [German Conceptual Artist, 1921-1986]

Hans Hofmann [German/American Abstract Expressionist, 1880-1966]

CONTEMPORARY ARTFrom 1960 to Now

1. Premodernism: Original meaning is possessed by authority (for example, the Catholic Church). The individual is dominated by tradition.

2. Modernism: The enlightenment-humanist rejection of tradition and authority in favour of reason and natural science. This is founded upon the assumption of the autonomous individual as the sole source of meaning and truth--the Cartesian cogito. Progress and novelty are valorized within a linear conception of history--a history of a "real" world that becomes increasingly real or objectified.

3. Postmodernism: A rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective, anonymous experience. Collage, diversity, the mystically unrepresentable, Dionysian passion are the foci of attention. Most importantly we see the dissolution of distinctions, the merging of subject and object, self and other. This is a sarcastic playful parody of western modernity and the "John Wayne" individual and a radical, anarchist rejection of all attempts to define, reify or re-present the human subject.

Modernism in the Arts(ca 1860s – 1960s)

Courbet: L'Origine du monde,1866Manet: Au Café, 1878

Klimt: The Kiss, 1907

Henri Matisse

Malevich

Picasso

SalvadorDali

Clement Greenberg1909–1994

Edouard Manet

Robert Motherwell

Frank Stella

Franz Kline

Henry Moore

Abstract Expressionism

Jackson Pollock

Mark Rothko

Willem de Kooning

Helen Frankenthaler

Barnett Newman

Hepworth, Barbara Two Figures, 1954-55

Sarah Lucas, Au Naturel, 1994

MODERN

POSTMODERN

Origins art, architecture, literature, science,

social philosophy art, architecture, film, literature, philosophy

Key Writers Hegel, Marx, Freud, Arnold, Habermas, Dewey, Nietzsche

Lyotard, Jameson, Baudrillard, Rorty, Groux, Aronowitz, Grossberg, Simon, Haraway, Nicholson

Key characteristicsand concepts

- Meta/grand/master narratives of Truth, progress, civilization, universality, and order

- rationality, reason, and objectivity; unity, order, and control a premise of freedom

- essential, unified subject

- knowledge as foundational

- challenge to modernism- focus on difference/Other, multiplicity, and partiality; - no foundation for knowledge- focus on culture and representation within late capitalism, hyper-reality, simulacrum- collapse of hierarchies of culture;- parody, pastiche, irony as dominant forms of cultural commentary- fragmented, contradictory subject

Forms/Types traditional/classical; progressive ludic; resistant; shocking; ironic

MODERNISM POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism(ca. 1970s – present)

David Hockney

Robert Rauschenberg

Venturi column

Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A.P.)Sherrie Levine1991

Graves Astrid Park Plaza, Antwerp

Richter, Gerhard Betty, 1988

Claes Oldenburg’s declaration of 1961: ‘I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical … I am for an art that embroils itself with everyday crap and still comes out on top’.

Claes Oldenburg

Barbara Kruger

The Guerilla Girls

Georg Baselitz Nude Elke 2, 1976

Joerg Immendorff, Cafe Deutschland IV, 1978 Francesco Clemente Atlas, 1982

Enzo Cucchi Painting of the Precious Fires, 1983

Julian Schnabel self portrait, 1987

Tansey, Mark Triumph of the New York School, 1984

Cindy Sherman

Troy Brauntuch

Robert Longo

Sherrie Levine

Trends in Postmodern Art

Barbara Kruger

Richard Hamilton

Art and Mass Culture

Andy Warhol

Trends in Postmodern Art Installation

Tracy Emin, 'My Bed', 1998

Trends in Postmodern Art

Video

Trends in Postmodern Art

Performance Art

Gilbert and George

Josef Beuys

Photography

Trends in Postmodern Art

Jo Spence

MultiCulturalism

Australian Aboriginal ArtEmily Kame Kngwarreye 1910 - 1996

Trends in Postmodern Art

Art And Gender

Judy Chicago: The Dinner Party, 1979

Trends in Postmodern Art

Public Art and Controversy

Richard Serra: Tilted Arc, 1981 (now destroyed)

Trends in Postmodern Art