A comprehensive look at the subject of photographic postmodernism would probably require lengthy discussion, but in this video I will attempt to condense the presentation to about 10-15 minutes. Postmodernism could be described as a philosophy, an ideology, as well as an art movement, and its impact has permeated all levels of present-day Western society. In order to delve into postmodernism, one first has to establish what defines modernism. Although many different styles are encompassed by the term, there are certain underlying principles that define modernist art. These are innovation, experimentation and a rejection of history and the values that were held by the previous art world.
Modernism arose at a time during which broad transformations in Western society were occurring. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were great changes going on including the devastating First World War. These events challenged the foundations of established cultural belief systems, which led to the exploration by artists of morality as they attempted to define what exactly art should be and what it should do for the culture. A number of modernistic styles fought to find their places in this new world.
These included post-impressionism, represented by artists like Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh. Surrealism. Salvador Dali was the big cheese in this movement. Pablo Picasso dominated the Cubist movement. At the same time within the photography world there were a few photographers that really stood out.
Edward Weston pioneered a modernistic style characterized by the use of a large format camera to create sharply focused and richly detailed black and white photographs. His subject matter included vegetables, shells and human shapes, but his main aim was for abstracted simplicity. Man Ray was another pioneer of modernist photography.
He experimented with Dadaism as well as Surrealism. As with modernism, postmodernism emerged out of a time of turmoil. The second part of last century saw the emancipation of women because of the invention of the pill, as well as civil rights protests in the US and the military failure in Vietnam.
Postmodern art replaced modernism and led the way to contemporary art. As with every period in art history, it's not easy to give a precise definition. It cannot be limited to a single style or theory.
The movement rejected modernism's unshakable belief in progress. It involved doubt about the existence of an objective, comprehensive reality. It emphasized criticism, skepticism and irony.
Andy Warhol was one of the first stars of the movement. Here he plays with an aesthetic that was typical of the advertising industry as well as in the printing of newspapers. Warhol is challenging the classical form of representation that was known from modern art. The repetition of the portrait within the diptych can be read as an ironic commentary on the increase in mass production, as well as on authenticity generally within art. Andy Warhol often questioned the traditional idea of high art in his paintings and prints.
Roy Lichtenstein's work dissolves the boundaries between high culture and pop culture. Modernism was characterized by a rejection of previous art trends. while postmodernism took this further by questioning standard definitions of art itself. As the work became more academic, the general public became less able to understand or relate to the art pieces.
The response from postmodernists to the public's confusion and displeasure was that these doubts actually validated their approach. Traditional photography focused on subjects that were interesting, unusual or beautiful. While the choice of commonplace subject matter was the primary choice of postmodern photography, the idea was to challenge rather than entertain.
In the viewer, the word banal is often used in relation to postmodern photography. Postmodern photographers are particularly interested in the selective constructed nature of the photograph. In the 1960s, photography became the movement's preferred medium.
Unlike painting, photography did not have to grapple with overcoming a high art past. In addition, by the 1970s, the vernacular photography of Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Gary Winogrand and Lee Freelander had also seemed to have played itself out. Postmodern photography was focused on making art in a world where everything had already been done.
Photography became photography about photography. Basically it became a conceptual exercise. This would often involve the appropriation of an existing image from common culture, advertising or photojournalism and represent it or the idea behind it in some way. So the idea is that if we recognise the reference in the original image, we can read the significance of the artist's input within the adjusted image. The impression that postmodernism had on photography has been substantial.
and the photographic aesthetics that developed around postmodernism have been adapted and blended into what we call straight photography. The deadpan, uncomposed look has become a visual language that can be seen as separate from the ideology. Jeff Wall has enacted significant monuments of modernistic art through the postmodern method of manipulating photography.
He is less a photographer and more of a director. Wall's typical content involves references to art history and to mass media. He was trained as a painter and art historian and became known in the 1970s alongside artists like Cindy Sherman.
They turned to photography as a way of challenging our expectations about images and their meanings and our assumption that the camera never lies. This photograph called Picture for Woman Explores a feminist concept of the gaze. Images have overwhelmingly depicted men looking at women being looked at.
Wall is having a dialogue with art history. This photograph alludes to this impressionist portrait by the artist Edouard Monet. Wall is inviting viewers to consider the complex dynamics of the gaze from the perspective of the female model, the male photographer as well as from the camera.
Cindy Sherman's photographs deal with the fragmented postmodern female identity. She represents this by photographing herself as a myriad of different characters. She is referred to as a post-feminist, an artist who takes up feminist concerns not from a political or activist perspective, but from a theoretical stance. Postmodernism is very self-conscious and Sherman would be better described as a performance artist who restages fictitious images from mass media. Her central message is that gender is constructed by the culture and by mass media and that there's actually no such thing as a woman, only an image that is created by society.
Richard Prince is an example of a post-modernist photographer who appropriates other photographers work. He first achieved fame in the 1990s with his Untitled Cowboy series for which he re-photographed advertisements for Marlborough cigarettes. Prince claims authorship of the works by re-photographing, cropping and recontextualizing the ads in order to expose and emphasize the exploitative nature of the original marketing campaign.
Self-representation which started with Cindy Sherman has now become the go-to style in order to make statements about topical issues. Yassi Moussa, Mori Miura. I'm sure I've got that way wrong. Anyway, he either disguises himself as ironic figures from popular western culture, or uses digital tools to superimpose his own likeness into art historical images. I'm really not sure for how much longer this kind of thing is going to be considered interesting.
William Eggleston has been described as the ultimate post-modern photographer, but I really don't think that that's the case. He did photograph He took photographs of the ordinary in an unconstructed manner and he chose colour film when it was still considered to be amateurish. But his work shows very few signs of criticism or ideology.
He just seems to enjoy taking photographs of everyday things and he does it in a sophisticated and sometimes decadent way. The photographs that one sees in galleries and museums frequently require a page or two of art speak text in order to explain their significance. They have become art exclusively for the artistic inner circle. Ironically, postmodern artworks that reflect rebellion against tradition are now considered to be high art, the very idea of status that the movement set out to discredit.
Postmodern theories have dramatically impacted society in recent years. There's an understanding that academia is upstream of culture, which in turn is upstream of society. To illustrate what I mean by this idea, I'll use the example of how communism mutated into postmodernism and how it directly affects the art world today. Karl Marx inhabited the academic disciplines of philosophy, history and the social sciences. His ideas led to huge societal changes in the USSR, China and other countries.
In brief, the working class were considered to be victims of an oppressive system of exploitation devised by the ruling class, the bourgeois. The Marxist ideas were marketed with the appealing message that everyone should be equal. What wasn't mentioned was that a small cohort, a new elite, would determine how this process would play out and that force was necessary to achieve this proposed nirvana.
The implementation of this ideology led to over 100 million deaths last century. After this hiccup in the process of converting the theory into practice, the academics went back to the drawing board, mainly the French academics like Derrida and Foucault. as well as the Frankfurt School in Germany. They transformed the original Marxist ideas into a philosophy that determined that all values are relative and that there's no such thing as a universal truth. Postmodernism relies on critical theory, which criticizes ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language and social progress.
So what this leads to is that instead of the working class being the victims, different groupings based on race, gender, etc. now compete for victimhood. These ideas have led to what we now seeing emerging in the West. It plays out in society as a form of tribalism in which each group has to compete for exclusive rights.
The art world has responded to this transformation within society by embracing equity. which implies that all groups need to be represented equally. This translates into what subject matter and which artists are shown within institutions, as well as the proportional allocation of key decision-making roles, such as curatorial staff, competition judges, etc. This process has resulted in an unending headache for staff as they scramble to be seen to be representative.
It's a bit like unwrapping a never-ending Matryoshka doll. A relevant example right now is the discourse on gender. At present, in 2023, 105 genders have been identified, and true equity demands that all of these groupings should have their presence felt. True inclusivity and diversity seems ultimately to be unachievable, because new combinations of oppressed categories are continually being recognized.
So postmodernism within the photographic art world is reflected in what work is shown in the institutions, which artists are marketed, as well as there being a coercion of artists to integrate the dictates of critical theory into their work. Nobody knows how this process will eventually play itself out, but for the moment it's having an overwhelming impact on all areas of creativity. This has obviously been an abbreviated examination of post-modernist photography, but I hope that the video has provided you with some insights into the subject, and thanks and I'll see you again next time. Cheers! Is it over yet?
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