Baudrillard’s Theories and Post-Modernist Art

Contents

Question…………………………………………………………………….2

Introduction : Baudrillard’s Hyper-real and the New Virtual World………2

Of the Annunciation………………………………………………………..4

Anthony Caro and his Duccio Variations…………………………………..8

Frank Auerbach on Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’………………………………9

In Conclusion……………………………………………………………...10

References…………………………………………………………………11

Bibliography……………………………………………………………….12

1

Question

Since the Renaissance, art has, at least in part, been concerned with the creation of what

might now be called virtual worlds. However, according to some of the theories of

postmodernism as set out by Jean Baudrillard, society as a whole is now dominated by an

interest in signs, simulacra and the hyper-real. Taking Baudrillard’s theories as a starting

point, discuss the approach to representation in postmodern art, with reference to relevant

ideas such as the ‘real’, ‘truth’, ‘appropriation’, ‘simulacra’ or the ‘hyper-real’. Are these new

concepts indicative of a ‘postmodern’ sensibility, or are they old modes of conceptualisation

disguised by new terminology? Critically discuss specific examples of contemporary art, with

reference to relevant ‘pre-postmodern’ works and concepts, in your answer.

Introduction : Baudrillard’s Hyper-real and the New Virtual World

In ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ (1), Baudrillard writes -

‘Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the

generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyper-real.’ (pp 1)

With this statement he effectively encapsulates the paradox of the Post-Modernist age,

especially the early 21st Century. We spend increasing number of hours ‘online’, immersed in

a virtual environment which is a figment of our collective imaginations. In the ‘real world’

there is no such reality. But young adults spend time on ‘Farmville’ a virtual portal where

they engage in farming activities with clicks of their mouse. There exists also ‘Second-Life’,

where virtual land can be bought and sold, marriages conducted and families created, travel

booked and undertaken to the far ends of the galaxy, in the comfort of one’s armchair. This is

even more alarmingly ‘real’ than the advent of television, because while television was

passive and only one way communication, the internet is both engaging and immersive. At

2

the scale of the city too, ideas like augmented reality and virtual worlds are making their

presence felt. This is best illustrated by a recent Samsung commercial shot all over London

(2) seen in figure 01.

Figure 01 : Augmented Reality / Immersive Environment – Samsung 3D LED TV promotional campaign in London (Source : PopSop) (See the full advertisement on Youtube : search keywords – Samsung 3D LED TV campaign, London)

In this advert developed by the CHI agency, the creators “invaded London with 1,256 giant

Samsung 3D LED digital television screens”, and installed them all over the city to let people

see three storey high cats, South America’s Iguazu Falls right in the heart of a busy London

street junction, butterflies in a flower shop, huge whale tails in the pond of the Hyde park and

other mind-boggling creations. It was truly an augmented reality urban art project that blurred

the boundaries of reality and made the viewers ponder about what is real in the city and what

is not. It seems, that now, the hyper-real is more real than the real itself. Baudrillard seemed

to be pre-empting these phenomena when he wrote in the ‘Hyper-realism of Simulation’ (3)

that – the digital universe soaks up the worlds of metonymy and metaphor, and simulation is

victorious over both pleasure and reality. (pp 1020)

In the field of Art, the virtual, and the simulation have existed for many hundreds of years.

The development of one point, two point and three point perspectives during the Renaissance,

can in themselves be termed as an early attempt at creating a facsimile of the real world on

canvas or paper.

3

Of the Annunciation

Seen above (figures 02, 03, 04) are three Pre-Renaissance/Early Renaissance portrayals of the

Annunciation by eminent artists of that period. The images have been culled from the Great

Artists series (4)(5). In each work, the Annunciation has been depicted in a setting (although

abstract) but clearly elucidating the time, place and local architectural context within which

the particular artist was working. Duccio’s setting is reminiscent of early 14 th Century Sienna,

Van der Weyden’s of middle 15th Century Flemish domestic interiors, and Verrochio/da

4

Figure 02: The Annunciation, Duccio de Buoninsegna (1311); The National Gallery, London(Source : Artnet)

Figure 03: The Annunciation, Rogier Van der Weyden (1440); Musée du Louvre, Paris(Source : Marshall Cavendish Great Artists Series)

Figure 04: The Annunciation, Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci (1472-1475); the Uffizi Palace Museo, Florence (Source : Marshall Cavendish Great Artists Series)

Vinci’s work of late 15th Century Florentine garden setting. The place where to set the work

in, may have been individual idiosyncratic decisions of these artists, but once the decision

was taken, they seem to have been faithful to the representation of that existing reality. Even

the representation of Mary and the Archangel Gabriel remain as faithful as possible to the

Biblical canon. In that sense – the setting and the characters that people it – i.e., the virtual,

tries to be identified as far as possible with the ‘truth’.

In contrast, the artistic interpretations of the Annunciation in recent times (post 1995) by two

artists settled in the US (figures 05 and 06) seek to create an almost context-less work,

thereby ascribing a new timelessness and placelessness to the Annunciation. The event no

longer belongs to any place or time. It floats in solid blocks of colour, the only truth being its

own existence. The Simulacra is the only thing that is real. There is no other reality. This can

be best summed up by this quote attributed to Ecclesiates, that Baudrillard quotes in his work

(1) –

‘The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.

The simulacrum is true.’ (pp 1)

5

Figure 05: The Annunciation, He Qi (2001); The He Qi Arts Gallery, Roseville, Minnesota (Source : He Qi Gallery webpage)

Figure 06: The AnnunciationSeries (Duccio Diptych), (1996) Basilios Poulos, Deaprtment of Visual & Dramatic Arts, Rice University, Houston, Texas (Source : Rice University online art gallery page)

In a sense, Ecclesiates seems to be saying that the works of Duccio, Van der Weyden,

Verrocchio and da Vinci create an elaborate stage set for their works, in other words – a

hoax, and that is something that we all know is merely fiction. And therefore, He Qi

(pronounced Ho Chee) and Basilios Poulos of our post-modernist times, are closer to the

truth, when they say through their art - only that which is absolutely certain, can be depicted.

The rest is of no consequence. And that is how it should be.

Arthur C. Danto has said that photography (more than new forms of painting) proved to be

the most important ‘rupture to traditional ways of representation’, and therefore was the

torchbearer of postmodernism in the visual arts. (6)

In the photographic work of celebrated British contemporary artist Richard Hamilton, (figure

07), this idea is taken further. Although the setting is clearly contemporary, the girl wears

6

Figure 07: An Annunciation, Richard Hamilton (2005-2006; 2008); Photograph – Inkjet printed on canvas, VG Bild Kunst, Bonn (Source : Richard Hamilton online gallery pages)

nothing, thereby eliminating clothing as a giveaway of place and time. The walls are pristine

white, shorn of all articulation. The windows and the furniture are somewhat of a giveaway,

but it is the mobile phone/cordless phone in the girl’s hand that establishes some idea of place

and time. There is no angel and the Annunciation is taking place via a virtual mode of

communication. In one fell swoop, the artist is saying a number of really significant things –

the immediate context is unimportant, the communicator is unimportant, the person receiving

the communication has a strong presence but is anonymous and therefore barely important.

The only thing that IS important is that a piece of information is being communicated. Even

there, the artist calls his work – ‘An Annunciation’, not ‘The Annunciation’, therefore

making the announcement one of many possible communications. And we don’t even know

what is being announced. And all else is dispensable anyway. So what is the truth then? Only

that a girl somewhere is receiving some communication. All the rest is fallacy.

Baudrillard seems to be strongly re-affirming Hamilton’s approach in the ‘The Hyper-realism

of Simulation’ (3) while also establishing that through Hamilton’s hyper-realistic work, some

sort of new truth emerges. He writes –

‘Reality itself founders in hyper-realism, the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably

through another reproductive medium, such as photography.’ (pp 1018)

He also goes on to say – ‘To escape the crisis of representation, reality loops around itself in

pure repetition…to extirpate all psychology and subjectivity in order to render a pristine

objectivity’ (pp 1020). This idea becomes all too clear in the work of the knighted British

sculptor Anthony Caro.

Anthony Caro and his Duccio Variations

7

Caro explores spatiality in a lot of his work. In a series called the ‘Duccio Variations’, Caro

produces different versions of the space as seen in Duccio de Buoninsegna’s Annunciation

(figure 08 above). For Caro, the event is not as important as the space within which it

unfolds. It is an enclosure, as though a box, to be entered, explored, experienced and

assimilated. Caro seeks to explore the interplay between container and contained. (7)

The pieces also divorce the subjective truth of events to some extent from the space and

concentrate instead on the objective truth – the materiality and structures of the construction.

Caro ‘meticulously reduplicates the space’ (as Baudrillard puts it) of Duccio’s art piece - in

different materials, in an attempt to understand the ultimate truth. These repetitions in walnut

wood, fibreboard, Lucite/Perspex, glass painted white, sandstone and steel – establish a novel

truth about the space – that geometry, scale, proportion, structure and material are eternal –

and therefore more real than events, which are acts dependent on memory and therefore

8

Figure 08: The Duccio Variations 1-7 (Clockwise from top left), Anthony Caro, 14 June-17 September, The National Gallery, London (Source : Encounters – National Gallery Catalogue, June-Sept 2000)

ephemeral. As an extension of this argument – Baudrillard’s thesis, that everyday social,

economic, political and historical reality…is in fact an elaborate hallucination, that we live

out every day, rings quite true.(3) (pp 1019) Only representations that focus on reality beyond

reality, can ever aspire to the holy grail of truth.

Frank Auerbach on Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’

Figure 09 : The Hay Wain, John Constable (1821), The National Gallery, London(Source : Marshall Cavendish Great Artists Series)

Shown above (figure 09) is The Hay Wain, one of the most famous and most recognized

paintings by Constable. In it he painstakingly recreates the landscape of the Suffolk

countryside as he saw it – a hay wain being pulled by a pair of black horses and Willy Lott's

Cottage on his left. The Flatford Mill, a building seen in another painting by Constable, is just

outside the frame to the right in this particular composition. The shimmering stream, the

cloud laden sky, the tile work on the roof of the cottage, all attest to Constable’s earnest

9

attempt at landscape realism and we also know for a fact that he made many studies of this

scene before finalizing the painting. (8)

Fig 10 : Drawings after Constable’s The Hay Wain, Frank Auerbach (1989), private collection(Source : Encounters – National Gallery Catalogue, June-Sept 2000)

Frank Auerbach lives in Camden Town, in North London and he has redrawn/sketched

Constable’s Hay Wain in his own style (figure 10). In one glance, it becomes clear that

Auerbach has no interest in reality in the conventional sense (9).

But he is interested in what Baudrillard would call the ‘hyper-real’ – the energy that emanates

the scene, the juxtaposition of the forms as they are, the feelings the scene generates in the

viewer. Auerbach then, in a sense, is trying to transcend the local and contextual nature of the

painting and make it more universal. He is saying that Suffolk and that particular type of

sloping roofed cottage don’t really matter. What matters is the bucolic setting, the slightest

tinge of sadness and slow calmness that the work generates, and yet, the hint of rain and

wind, as a grey cloud peeks in and the trees sway in the wind. He seems to be asking - What

is more real – the Suffolk countryside, or the emotions it evokes?

In Conclusion

Representing reality in art has always been a significant challenge for artists, because the

definition of reality is always up for scrutiny and examination. What reality does Surrealism

10

represent? In answer – of course, a kind of deep inner dream world that is absolutely real to

anyone who has ever dreamt a single dream in his life and can remember it vividly. Therefore

to put things in perspective, Baudrillard’s idea that society is interested in signs, simulacra

and the hyper-real is as old as the pyramids in Egypt and Mexico. Humankind has always

been fascinated with the virtual. There were always acceptable modes of abstraction at

different times such as the Hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, or the drawings of the Meso-

Americans. Preceding and during the Renaissance however, the simulacra being a faithful

facsimile of mass perceived reality became an important benchmark for ‘good art’. But this

realism shackled the art of that period to its time, taking away some of its quality – where

human imagination is able to draw a bigger picture based on what it sees. Starting with

Pointillism, Expressionism, de Stijl and through late Modernism and the Post-Modernist age

(in which we find ourselves now), many artists are continuing to attempt to make art larger

than what it represents directly, to try to capture a reality that is much bigger than immediate

reality, and a truth that is not historical, but a truth that will transcend all time, and place and

be universal – the truly Hyper-real.

References

(1) Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation (transl. Sheila Faria Glaser),Ann Arbor

MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994

(2) PopSop, Samsung Creates Parallel Universe in London [Online] Available at

http://popsop.com/34101 [Accessed 14th March 2011]

(3) Baudrillard, Jean, ‘The Hyper-realism of simulation’, 1976, in Art in Theory 1900-

2000, ed. by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, from

Chapter VIII, ‘Ideas of the Postmodern’, pp 1018-1020

11

(4) The Marshall Cavendish Series, Great Artists (35) – Van der Weyden, Marshall

Cavendish Ltd., 1994

(5) The Marshall Cavendish Series, Great Artists (21) – Leonardo da Vinci, Marshall

Cavendish Ltd., 1994

(6) Danto, Arthur C., The State of the Art, Prentice Hall, London, 1997

(7) Morphet Richard, ‘Duccio-Anthony Caro’, 2000, in Encounters – New Art from Old,

National Gallery Company Limited, pp 68-79

(8) The Marshall Cavendish Series, Great Artists (2) – Constable, Marshall Cavendish

Ltd., 1994

(9) Morphet Richard, ‘Constable-Frank Auerbach’, 2000, in Encounters – New Art from

Old, National Gallery Company Limited, pp 32-43

Bibliography

Foster, Hal, ed., Postmodern Culture, London: Pluto Press, 1985

Sandler, Irving, Art of the Postmodern Era: from the Late Sixties to the Early 1990s, New York: Icon Editions, 1996

Wheale, Nigel, ed., The Postmodern Arts: An Introductory Reader, London: Routledge, 1995

Wood, Paul, Conceptual Art, London: Tate Publishing, 2002

Woods, Tim, Beginning Postmodernism, Manchester and New York : Manchester University Press, 2007

12