Part III. Postmodernism‟s Expansions: The Framers, Artists, and Architects of Postmodernism French critical theorists’ primary goal was decentering- denying everything that implied a center or hierarchy. All established assumptions could be inverted. Barthes- death of the author, who originates a work; it is not “how do I construct the world?” but “how does the world construct me?”; “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” Derrida- everything is a text and deconstruction is the marking of the unmarked Foucault- discourses that produce knowledge are charged from within by power relations Baudrillard- put Marxian analysis into a linguistic domain, displacement of exchange-value from commodities to their representatives, logos; the displacement is understood by way of the simulacrum, in which reality is replaced by its representation. Simulacra are, therefore, copies without originals.
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Part III. Postmodernism‟s Expansions: The Framers,
Artists, and Architects of Postmodernism
French critical theorists’ primary goal was
decentering- denying everything that implied a center or
hierarchy. All established assumptions could be inverted.
Barthes- death of the author, who originates a work; it is not “how do I
construct the world?” but “how does the world construct me?”; “The
birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”
Derrida- everything is a text and deconstruction is the marking of the
unmarked
Foucault- discourses that produce knowledge are charged from within
by power relations
Baudrillard- put Marxian analysis into a linguistic domain, displacement
of exchange-value from commodities to their representatives, logos;
the displacement is understood by way of the simulacrum, in which
reality is replaced by its representation.
Simulacra are, therefore, copies without originals.
Art theorist-critic-historians in the United States:
Rosalind Krauss, started October with Annette Michelson
Craig Owens
Douglas Crimp
Benjamin Buchloh
Hal Foster
All contributors to October
In place of the modernist-formalist Greenberg,
these postmodernist art theorist-critic-historians
translated and ensconced the French critical theorists.
Art Since 1900 editors are Krauss, Buchloh, Foster, and
Yve-Alain Bois.
Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-
object
Representational art- has a referent, the „real world‟
But for postmodernists, who reflect the postmodern
condition, there is a crisis of the referent, of „reality.‟
“Representations…instead of coming after reality, in an
imitation of it, now precede and construct reality. Our „real‟ emotions
imitate those we see on film and read about in pulp romances; our
„real‟ desires are structured for us by advertising images; the „real‟ of
our politics is prefabricated by television news and Hollywood
scenarios of leadership; our „real‟ selves are congeries and repetition
of all these images, strung together by narratives not of our own
making.”
The work of art was, therefore, treated as a kind of
unstable image-text complex, whose meanings are
endless and relational, versus the singleness and self-
containedness of the art-as-object.
Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-
object
In terms of language, in the vein of Derrida‟s “nothing is
outside-the-text”:
Reality is composed of circulating signifiers, meaning “self
and society become simply constructs of language,”
preceding and constructing that which is signified.
The crisis of the referent assures a multiplicity of readings,
and of realities. There is no “original” reality but a
multiplicity of realities.
Reflects Baudrillard‟s simulacra- reality is replaced by
representations!
Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-
object
So why photography for postmodernists?
Because reality is replaced by representations,
Because a “photograph is a multiple without an original,”
and because photography (film, video, etc) turns the real
into representations of themselves in the documents of
ephemeral postminimal, process, performance, site
specific, and conceptual art -art that challenges art-as-
object-
photography (film, video, etc) is mobilized by
postmodernist artists who understand art as
representation in contrast to art as pure form.
Sherrie Levine, Untitled, After Edward Weston I, 1980,
photography, Postmodernism
“photograph is a multiple without an original” “the „author‟ of this image is,