One

the fall and rise of representation:

modernity and art

History (abridged version)

Everything you take for granted is unbelievably new Technology produces profound shifts in society

Agriculture increased efficiency free time art Agriculture centralization population density disease Agriculture centralization cities governments

-800KProtohumanssettle Europe

-500KFire

-300KHomo Sapiens,

shelter

-130KAnatomically

modern humans

Now

-10KAgriculture

-8KUrbanizationSocial class

Plagues

0 CE

Our modern age

The west has changed radically in the last 200 years Shift of work from people to machines Shift of people from rural areas to cities Shift of wealth and power from Church, State, and Aristocracy

to capitalist and corporation

1776-1792Democracy revivedSteam engine invented¼ million die in French revolution5% of US population in cities

1843 Dickens writesA Christmas Carol

1914-191810M die in WWI

20M die of fluNative American population falls below ¼ million

Russian revolutions

1945ENIAC

200412-13hr workday (including children)

Nostalgia for StalinPATRIOT II

75% of US population in cities

1993The web

1974 Watergate1975 End of Vietnam war Start of Microsoft Khmer Rouge kill 20% of the Cambodian population

1967-1969Student riotsWoodstockMoon landingFreedom Of Information Act

1925-1933Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler take power

Worldwide depression1867-1895Marx writes Das Kapital

183312-13hr workday

(including children)

1938-194555M die in WWII20M in USSR aloneChild labor laws enacted

The industrial revolution

Agriculture allowed more efficient production But most of farming was still near subsistence levels

The steam engine allowed still more efficient production of food of manufactured goods

Increased efficiency surplus wealth Luxury goods Free time

For art For research into making machines

More machines for production

Capitalism

Making the machines requires investment of resources or capital

In capitalist systems, the machines are private property Only get built when someone spends their own money to build

them The surplus wealth enabled by the machines is then owned by

the owners of the machines

Capitalism rewards people who defer gratification in favor of investment (Mill’s abstinence theory) It also aligned with the Enlightenment tradition of liberalism,

which emphasized personal freedom

Urbanization

Machine production reduced the number of people needed to grow food

At the same time, industrial manufacture requires centralizing machines in a single location (a factory)

So throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, there was a massive move to cities

Restructuring of social classes

In feudal society, people were roughly divided into peasants and nobles

As society urbanizied, city dwellers formed an intermediate class called the bourgeoisie (roughly: people from the boroughs)

Traders, shopkeepers Professionals (blacksmiths, bakers, etc)

As capitalism grew, the bourgeoisie became more powerful than the aristocracy

As urbanization grew, the bourgeoisie became larger than the peasant class, restructuring itself into

The petit bourgeoisie, or middle class The capitalists (those who lived off of investment income alone)

Structural problems with capitalism

Capitalism was extremely successful at promoting investment and economic growth

But it’s also fundamentally unstable, leading to serious social problems Production lags demand, leading to oscillation, or the business

cycle Unemployment, the enforced idleness of workers

Structural vs. cyclic unemployment Trades off with inflation

Positive feedback allows small leads to be used to unfair advantage (monopolies, inherited wealth)

Marxism

Marx argued the abstinence theory didn’t hold in practice The rich get richer even without abstaining

Marx saw capitalism as a form of exploitation Anything you produce over and above your needs is surplus value Mechanized means of production allow greater surplus value Capitalists, then

Own the means of production (capital) Pay workers (the proletariat) subsistence wages And thereby extract the surplus value

Marx also gave an alternative definition for commodity Any good or service produced solely for the purpose of trade For the purpose of extracting surplus value

Modernity

Western society underwent massive changes Deterioration of monarchies Loss of secular power of the church Depletion of agrarian life Urbanization Rise of industrial capitalism Revolution

The sense of unprecedentedness and uncertainty about the future became known as modernity

Political reaction to modernity

Modernity produced both fear and hope Fear

ReactionariesChange was bad, let’s return to the good old days

ConservativesChange is bad, let’s keep things as they are

Hope Progressives

Change is good, let’s keep going Revolutionaries

We don’t have enough change

And in some quarters Despair

The world is an awful place, let’s retreat into domains of pleasure(Art, liquor, opium…)

It’s all bullshit, including Art

Modernity and representation

Modernity involved a loss of authority Of the state

Monarchy no longer seen as inherent Democracy not really trusted either

Of the Church

This lead to a search for new sources of truth Science Art Return to the good old days Will to power

In both science and art, this lead to a reexamination of representation and meaning

Realism

Much Western visual art focuses on realistically representing the world Linear perspective for

portraying depth Chiaroscuro Use of color

And much art was funded by The Church The State Nobility wanting portraits

The GleanersJean Francois Millet, 1857

Romanticism and symbolism In the early 19th century, the romantic

movement emphasized Freedom and self-expression Imagination and originality Subjective experience and emotional

intensity Feeling over reason Nature over urban society Pleasure over utility

Shift from portraying the world as it was to the world as the artists thought it

should be

Romantics often choose subjects that pissed people off

Criticism of the government Libertarianism, free love

Lord Byron: Mad, bad, and dangerous

Impressionism and postimpressionism

Within painting, the shiftof focus from realismto subjective experiencecontinued with Impressionism Postimpressionism, and expressionism

The impressionists also developed the private gallery system as an alternative to State funding

Crows in the WheatfieldsVincent van Gogh, 1890

Analytic cubism

Cubism further retreated from realism by (re?)introducing techniques that violated perspective itself

Houses on the Hill: Horta de EbroPablo Picasso, 1909

Synthetic cubism

Eventually cubism even challenged the notion of what a painting was by introducing the technique of collage (gluing)

Still Life With Chair CaningPablo Picasso, 1912

Futurism

The romanticists were skeptical about modernity

The futurists embraced it

The futurists emphasized Speed and motion Geometric form (after

cubism)

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Abstraction

As Western art drifted from realism

(representing things as they are)

toward subjectivity (representing things as they’re experienced)

it also drifted toward abstraction(not representing at all)

Abstraction is another common theme in modern art Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue

Piet Mondrian, 1937-1942

WW I

A turf war between rival empires, world war I was deeply traumatic for the west

Justified in part as a war to protect culture 10 million dead Trench warfare Bold new progress in death (tanks, machine guns, chemical warfare)

After leading hundreds of 19 year olds to their deaths, as an officer in WWI, Raymond Chandler gave up his ambition to be a lyric poet, becoming (successively):

An oil executive A drunk A pulp detective novelist

(The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye) A Hollywood screenwriter

Dada

After WWI, the dadas believed Science kills Culture is uncouth Rationality is insane Romanticism is a cruel joke Art is just another commodity Dada means nothing

They were kind of pissed …

But they died the same death as punk – they became hip

FountainMarcel Duchamp, 1917

Surrealism

Some dadas went on to helpfound surrealism

The surrealists were deeplyinfluenced by Freud’stheories of psychoanalysis:

The id brings forth our desires But the ego and superego repress them Leading to psychological illness Health requires bringing desires to consciousness

The surrealists believed art should help unlock the unconscious

Treachery of ImagesRene Magritte, 1929

Conceptual Art

Artists who wanted to critique modern culture became frustrated

How do you critique Bourgeois culture

When the bourgeois keep trying to emulate you?

Consumerism and commodity culture When people keep buying your art?

If the real contribution of your art is the idea

Why does your art need to be an object? No object, no commodity

Conceptual art tends to be reflexive (commenting on art itself or the piece itself)

$9468/4Ian Horswill, 2004, all rights reserved