Southern New Hampshire University FAS 202 Humanities Module 5

FAS 202: Humanities through the Ages Module 5

© 2015 MindEdge, Inc. Rev. 3/15 1

Postmodernism and the 21st Century

Tulips, 1995-2004, by Jeff Koons

Learning Outcomes

After completing this module, you'll be able to:

1. Understand ways in which digital art has enabled new possibilities for postmodern artists 2. Describe an experience of digital art 3. Discuss the ongoing nature of postmodernism art and mention a few of its notable movements

(Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop Art, and Robert Rauschenberg) 4. Recognize elements of postmodern influence in architectural design 5. Explain the ongoing discussion regarding postmodernism in literature 6. Describe the characteristics of postmodern music compilation



Timeline: Postmodernism and the 21st Century



Postmodernism

As with some other artistic designators, “postmodernism” can refer to both a time period and a style of creating art. The postmodern period is thought to have started in the late 50’s as awareness of the shortcomings of modernist techniques and ideals came to the fore.

They accuse modernist thinkers of desiring to have a unified theory that applies to all people and things, ignoring material differences in location, culture, and other factors.

Pictured: Leonardo DaVinci's “Vitruvian Man,” which illustrates Western philosophy's desire to portray the perfect human.

However, techniques that mark the postmodern style can be traced back much earlier, to the Dada movement or even to Nietzsche's work in the late 1800s.

Pictured: Duchamp's Fountain, 1919. Photograph by Uilton Dutra (CC BY-SA 2.0). Nietzsche. Photograph by F. Hartman.

Regardless of when it started, postmodernism came after modernism and in response to it. Postmodern critics of modernism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard claim that the Enlightenment thinking has led culture to strive toward reason and order too much.

Pictured: Photograph by Bracha L. Ettinger (CC-BY-SA 2.5).



Modernism's one-size-fits all thinking is illustrated best, according to postmodern architects by the clean, neat “glass box” skyscraper that came to signify the culmination of modern technological success. And postmodernism's answer comes, for example, in the form of Michael Graves's Humana Building, the pink building to the left in this image.

Pictured: Photograph by Justin Cozart (CC-BY 2.0)

According to critic Blair Kamin, while the modernist glass box building behind it could be placed anywhere, the postmodern Humana building was created to fit its context in Louisville, Kentucky. The steel trusses that point up to the observation deck mimic the trusses of the bridges over the neighboring Ohio River.

Pictured: Photograph by David Alan Kidd (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

While many buildings of the modern style have a large plaza in front and recede from the street, the Humana building has a loggia—a pedestrian walkway—that extends from the main segment of the building to the street so that the façade lines up with other buildings on the street, and fits in with the general aesthetic for the first eight stories.



Finally, the building is designed to be striking, with pink granite and gold leaf, materials that stand out from the utilitarian glass, steel, and concrete of modernist buildings. While modernist art aims to reassure people that everything is orderly, uniform, and understandable, postmodern art mixes old with new and aims to consider the particulars, even if the totality of what is created seems disjointed at first.

Postmodernist thinkers believe that representations of coherence and uniformity are not only illusory, but also harmful if the uniform principles don't take into account real and important differences. The goal of public education has been to help socialize individuals into a common culture and help them learn to relate to their world. But what if the common culture isn't necessarily the culture you would pick for yourself?

In the writer Jamaica Kincaid's book, Lucy, a girl from the West Indies comes to stay in America to be a live-in nanny with a well-off white family, and comes to terms with what it means to be a postcolonial subject—someone from a country that used to be a territory of another country. In this case, the country that Lucy is from used to be a colony of England.



Even though Lucy has affection for Mariah, her employer, who comes to take on the role of a mother-figure, Lucy finds herself unsettled and annoyed when Mariah brings her to a field of daffodils. Lucy says:

“Mariah, do you realize that at ten years of age I had to learn by heart a long poem about some flowers I would not see in real life until I was nineteen?”

Pictured: Photograph by Flickr user Dark Dwarf (CC-BY-ND 2.0).

Lucy was lamenting her colonial education and expressing a feeling common to postmodern thought: that bodies with power over people—like the government—can't force a unified culture on people. If they do, that culture will be inauthentic, and the people can only feel a false sense of appreciation for it.

Pictured: Photograph by Flickr user audio-luci-store.it (CC-BY 2.0).

The book Lucy also exhibits a technique common in postmodern art: references to other pieces. In Lucy, Kincaid references the cheerful sociability that William Wordsworth associates with Daffodils in his poem “Daffodils” and she shows how this poem, when used as a tool to inculcate colonial subjects into European culture, could create a reaction opposite to the one Wordsworth intended.

Pictured: Photograph by William Shuter



Critics of the changes that postmodernism has brought include Frederic Jameson, who argues that the postmodernist style of referencing, which he calls “pastiche” has led to the mingling of high culture with popular culture, which leads to art that isn't quite as aesthetically rewarding or politically challenging in the ways that art lovers have been accustomed to.

Pictured: Image by Banksy

Others, such as Linda Hutcheon, who calls herself “intellectually promiscuous” because she crosses disciplines in her work, believe that the only way to change a system is from within. She believes that “parody” is a legitimate technique for making an artistic statement. She suggests that artists should take an opportunistic approach by making meaning with whatever tools they can.

Pictured: Image by Banksy.

Critics argue that because postmodernist thinkers abhor unified cultural assumptions, relativism wins out, and what we have held dear in the past becomes meaningless. Postmodernists agree, but argue that these cultural assumptions were not worth saving because they falsely presented a constructed idea as truth and left out the interests of women and minorities.

Pictured: The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar, 1972 Betye Saar (b.1926), The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972, mixed media assemblage, 11 ¾” x 8” x 2 ¾”, signed.

Credit Line: Collection of University of California, Berkeley Art Museum; purchased with the aid of funds from the National Endowment for the Arts (selected by The Committee for the Acquisition of Afro-American Art). Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY.



Postmodern Art

Postmodern art doesn't have a "canon" of important works in the way that Impressionism, Realism, or other movements do. In fact postmodernist artists would most likely argue that identifying a canon of any type of art is useless because it would favor specific representations of reality as more "true" than others.

Below are a few artists and works that have become part of the conversation about postmodern art.

Robert Rauschenberg’s Untitled and Canyon

In his untitled 1963 painting from the "Red Painting" series, Robert Rauschenberg uses a collage technique. He applies paint and other materials such as newspaper to a canvas to create a multilayered piece. He would later create more involved collages, which he called "combines." For these pieces, he would layer different materials, sometimes trash or other found objects on the painting. In his "Canyon," 1959, you can see layers of paint along with a stuffed bird.

Jeff Koons’s Tulips and Rabbit

Jeff Koons's Tulips located outside of the Guggenheim Bilbao and Rabbit, 1986 were sculpted in highly polished stainless steel. The media Koons uses makes his art look like machine-made consumer items, a common feature of postmodern art.

Finally, some argue that postmodernism once had power to make a statement, but it no longer does because it is no longer shocking, just repetitive and cynical.



Chuck Close’s Mark

Chuck Close's Mark uses a laborious airbrushing process to create layers upon layers until the painting as a whole is complete. This process mimics professional printing processes in which one color is applied at a time. This attention to the process of creating establishes Close as a postmodernist artist.

Duane Hanson’s Tourists II

Duane Hanson created his Tourists II, 1988 in a hyperrealist style. He uses polyester resin, fiberglass, polychromed oil paint with clothes and other accessories to make his life-sized portraits look realistic, even up close. This attention to presenting reality and parodying tourists (he lives in South Florida) marks him as a postmodern artist.

Betye Saar’s Liberation of Aunt Jemina

Betye Saar, a collage artist who makes art out of "assemblages" of found objects, attacks cultural, racial, and gender stereotypes in her work. The Liberation of Aunt Jemima uses the image of Aunt Jemima, the namesake of a pancake mix, to make a statement about the portrayal of black womanhood. Her use of this commercial image along with the assemblage of different types of media to make a statement about how black women have been perceived makes this work postmodern.

Claes Oldenburg’s Giant Three-Way Plug (Cube Tap)

Claes Oldenburg is known for his sculptures of everyday objects at large scale. He also creates "soft" versions of everyday objects such as tubs or toilets. He became known for his "happenings" in which he presents conceptual art at a specific time and place in order to create an experience for his viewers. For example, in 1961, he rented a store in New York to show several sculptures designed to represent consumer goods.

Christo and Jean-Claude’s The Gates

The Gates was environmental art placed in New York's Central Park for two weeks in February of 2005. The artists, Christo and Jean-Claude, made the gates of saffron-colored fabric, vinyl, and steel. The sculpture was reminiscent of a Japanese shrine in Kyoto that helps those walking through it meditate on their path. The translation of this concept to a New York path was designed to help Central Park visitors be more mindful of their use of the park.



Mariko Mori’s Pureland and Dream Temple

Mariko Mori uses technology to create images and sculptures designed to promote spiritual enlightenment. Her works generally show her dressed up as a Shinto god with a futuristic twist, and Pureland. She creates elaborate backgrounds that emanate harmony and enlightenment through digital technology and photography. She also creates objects, such as in Dream Temple, a shrine created from fabric, that are both futuristic and beautiful.

Mori says about her work: "I feel that technology has represented people's hope for improvement for much of this century...The imagery I create is sometimes taken to be very utopian. But what I am really trying to do is point out where technology should go in the future, which I think is to coexist with nature."1

The work of Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman blends performance art with set design and photography to create new identities for herself in her art. Like Mariko Mori, she fashions herself into the star of her work. But rather than creating images of enlightenment, Sherman creates images that exude emotion and function as an exploration of the stereotypes we recognize in society.

Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary

Chris Ofili explores his African roots in his controversial Holy Virgin Mary (1996), which has intrigued some audiences and angered others. New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani described the Ofili painting as "sick," and while Hillary Clinton defended its display on grounds of freedom of expression, she called it "deeply offensive."

For this painting, he draws on traditional pieces that feature Mary in blue. He also uses the traditional framing of Mary as a triangle that is raised off the ground to show her saintly nature. But Ofili wanted to juxtapose this concept of beauty with the African association of elephant dung with regeneration. Ofili says of his use of dung in his paintings: "I'm interested in ideas of beauty...And elephant dung in itself is quite a beautiful object. But a different sort of beauty. And I want to bring the kind of beauty and decorativeness of the paintings together with the apparent concept of ugliness of the shit and put them together and try and make them exist."2

1 Nevillle Wakefield, "Momentous Mori," Interview, June 1999, 109. 2 Benjamin Ivry, "'Modern Art is a load of bullshit': Why Can't the Art World Accept Social Satire from a Black Artist?" Salon, 10 February 1999."



Postmodern architecture

Postmodern architecture took issue with modernism's uniformity. Robert Venturi created the Vanna Venturi house for his mother in 1962, in reaction to the clean shapes and what he perceived to be the lifelessness of modern architecture. The design of the pitched roof resists the modernist tradition of having a flat roof, and has as split in the middle, which defies functionality, another precept of modern architecture. The house's design references older Italian structures, and this type of reference to older styles becomes common in postmodern architecture.

Pictured: Vanna Venturi house by Robert Venturi

Postmodern architecture mixed and combined elements from previous architectural styles that had been abandoned by modern architecture. Among these elements was renewed interest in Classical architectural styles such as columns and arches. The Auditorio de Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, designed by Santiago Calatrava Valls is built around a series of arches. The main entrance and its progressive layers are all different types of arches. The overarching curve that extends up into the sky is essentially an unfinished arch, but it evokes the appearance of an ocean wave, which is fitting for this auditorium on the sea. Finally the stairs that lead up to the building form an arch-like shape. The mixture of Classical elements with abstract form is representative of the postmodern style.

Pictured: Auditorio de Tenerife by Santiago Calatrava Valls

Postmodern architecture incorporated colors and shapes in novel ways. The Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart designed by James Stirling (1984) revitalized the old German museum and housed modern art. Gabled roofs, having a triangular design, traditionally served the practical purpose of shedding water and snow from the structure. But despite their practical purpose, gabled roofs were generally absent from most modernist structures, which opted for flat-top roofs instead of gabled roofs. The gabled roof of this structure is common in postmodern buildings.

Pictured: Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart by James Stirling



McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology was designed by Rem Koolhaus in 2003. The slanting slope and oval tube give a sense of ambiguity to the building and abstraction to the building. The slanted slope of the building itself includes the use of high ceilings, a common element in postmodernist architecture. Though the building looks futuristic, the aluminum tube serves the purpose of limiting noise and vibration from passing trains.

Pictured: McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology by Rem Koolhaus

Image Credits

Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph by Carol Highsmith (PD).

Auditorio de Tenerife. Photograph by Wikipedia user Wladyslaw (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Front of the Neue Staatgalerie Stuttgart, 1984. Photograph by Wikipedia user Mussklprozz (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL. Photograph © Jeremy Atherton, 2006 (CC BY-SA 2.5).

MIT Stata Centre by Frank Gehry, 2004. Photograph by Rory Hyde (CC BY-SA 2.0).

San Antonio Public Library. Photograph by Wikipedia user Zereshk (CC BY 3.0).

The lack of a cohesive design theme is what makes the San Antonio Public Library a postmodern structure. Not only do some of its features such as the series of spheres serve no practical or functional purpose, the design and layout of the building is fragmented. The structure is a combination of spherical, triangular, and rectangular shapes which give the building a fragmented appearance that is typical of postmodernist architecture.

Pictured: San Antonio Public Library



Digital Arts

Digital art is a broad term for artworks and techniques centered around the use of digital technologies during the creative process, connected to and sometimes considered a subsection of new media art. New media art is primarily concerned with nontraditional, modern mediums, including computer graphics, Internet art, robotics, video games, and other virtual forms; there is also an emphasis on the interaction between audiences or viewers and the artworks and artists themselves.

While new media art's theoretical roots are indebted in part to postmodern philosophy and the 1960s writings of media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan, the pioneering works of digital art were created during the 1970s. Laurence Gartel, referred to by many as the "father of digital art," began his experimentation with digital imaging while at Media Study/Buffalo in New York, an experimental organization funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Among Gartel and his contemporaries, the long-standing association and overlap between digital images and other digital mediums, such as video and electronically-produced sound, was first established.

During the 1970s and 1980s, advancements in graphics technology encouraged more and more artists—and programmers—to experiment with computer art. Notable computer artists include the German-born Manfred Mohr, who generated visual interpretations of algorithms generated by his own simple programs, as well as Joseph Nechvatal, whose surreal robotic-assisted acrylic paintings are inspired by computer viruses and the "post-human" aesthetic. In 1985, the legendary pop artist Andy Warhol created a portrait of Blondie singer Debbie Harry using a Commodore Amiga for that pioneering PC model's public release at New York's Lincoln Center.

Throughout the 1990s, the growing popularity of the World Wide Web resulted in the emergence of Internet (or net) art, characterized by its easy online availability (circumventing the traditional route of artistic displays at museums and galleries) and, often but not always, its interactivity and use of multiple mediums. Internet art dissects and integrates a range of material and concepts, ranging from search engine results and other forms of data, e-mails, chat room transcripts, and ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters. Serbian-born Vuk Ćosić is known for his ASCII art and "remixes" of other popular experimental artworks. The two-person collective of Internet artists known as Jodi—Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans—focuses on artistic computer game modification. Russian-born Olia Lialina's website includes the original and "remixed" versions of her works, including "My Boyfriend Came Back From The War," a series of pages that tell a story. It has since been transformed into a playable game, a t-shirt, and a PowerPoint presentation, just to name a few alternative media translations.

In the last decade, digital art has been realized in a range of new or repurposed forms, including large-scale public installations, data visualizations, animation, and widespread collaboration with the aid of creative commons licensing and innovations in sharing technologies. Its adoption and popularity can be

Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway (1995). Korean-born artist Nam June Paik created Electronic

Superhighway from neon, metal, and televisions broadcasting recorded video. Nam June Paik was the first to use the term "electronic superhighway" to suggest that

media now gives us the opportunity to connect with distant neighbors. Photograph by Cea.



seen throughout society: in the form of the computer-generated graphics and special effects used in film; in print and video advertisements; in console and computer games. Technological improvements and shrinking price tags not only make it easier for artists to acquire the equipment needed to produce digital works—these developments also provide them with social, promotional, and collaborative tools all at very low costs. The era of digital art has allowed artists and the members of their audiences to impact and interact with one another in a personal, meaningful way that perhaps was never fully realized until modern technology allowed for it.

Digital Art and Postmodernism

Computer technologies have developed alongside art in the late 20th and early 21st century, and artists have taken advantage of a few possibilities that digital tools open up:

Advantage Benefit for postmodern art

Technology facilitates the creation of new realities using computer animation and video and has allowed for realities never expressible as a visual image before to become possible to be seen and shared with an audience.

Since postmodern artists are concerned about how representations of our world come to be taken as reality, the ability to create "virtual reality" allows artists to explore the meaning of reality.

Technology allows designers to create art that is interactive.

Postmodern thinkers believe there is no single reality and that individual experience is worth as much as group identity. Interactive art honors this belief by creating an experience that responds to the specific viewer.

Advances in technology have lowered the price for consumer-grade devices such as still and video cameras, computers, and software to process audiovisual media.

Postmodern thinkers are concerned with the ability of those with power to dominate the reality of people with less power by creating master narratives that others must simply accept. Previously, artistic endeavors could only be undertaken by those who could afford to buy expensive materials or have them paid for by a benefactor. The availability of technology to individuals (whether owned or borrowed from a school or a library) allows "the little guy" to make art even though he or she may not have access to financial resources. This allows for more equality when it comes to creating art.

Digital media allows for the networking of data, data processing, and the artwork itself.

Postmodern thinkers believe that power and information should not be centralized but shared across individuals. Networks allow information to be dispersed across many individuals. The Internet brings artists a wide range of information and experience. In addition, it allows artists to release



their work broadly, which frees artists from the formal and rigid networks of the past that kept innovative art from being displayed and enjoyed. In addition, networks can facilitate the involvement of multiple individuals joining together to create a piece of art.

Digital media allows artists to update and modify their work, creating copies rather than presenting a final version in a fixed form.

Postmodern thinkers believe that ideas are stronger when they are flexible and adaptive to new contexts. A piece of art such as a painting or a sculpture is difficult to change, and value comes from the uniqueness of the object. Digital media can be created on one machine and played on many; artists can update the piece easily.

Postmodern Literature

What is the philosophical and literary movement known as Postmodernism? According to the PBS "Faith and Reason" program, it can be defined in the following way:

Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.

Postmodernism is "post" because it denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody—a characteristic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philosopher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism "cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself."

Many scholars argue that Postmodernism*—an artistic reaction to Modernism—started almost immediately after World War II and lasted until at least the end of the 20th century if not beyond. Some critics believe that the 21st century is still defined by Postmodernism; others argue that it is governed by a new mode of thought such as Metamodernism*.



Postmodernists followed in the Modernist tradition of rejecting authority and experimenting with radically new ways of creating and presenting art, including surrealism and parody*. Postmodernism however differed from Modernism in its characteristic embrace of irony and refusal to accept objective truth or cultural standards (with a strong nod to multiculturalism*).

Postmodern Authors

In the aftermath of World War II, authors and poets began to weave Postmodern themes into their work and Western literature started on its postmodern path. While precise definitions of what is Postmodern literature are hard to come by, there are several literary techniques that have emerged: the use of parody and irony, an experimentation with metafiction, the reuse and refashioning of elements of popular culture, a fascination with technoculture, and a focus on the absurd.

Some of the authors identified with Postmodernism include Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five), Joseph Heller (Catch-22), William Gaddis (The Recognitions), Don DeLillo (White Noise), Jorges Luis Borges (Labyrinths), Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest).

Joseph Heller

Catch-22 (1961)

Catch-22’s protagonist is Captain John Yossarian, a World War II bombardier who believes that his foolish and ambitious commanding officers are more dangerous than the enemy. In order to avoid flying more missions, Yossarian fakes illness and tries, and fails, to get himself declared insane. The phrase “Catch-22” refers to the paradox that seeking to be declared unfit to fly and avoid dangerous missions only confirms one's sanity (“Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.”) The novel has been praised for its comic, satiric world view and for illustrating the dehumanizing effects of war.

From the novel: “The enemy is anybody’s who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”

Jorge Luis Borges

Labyrinths (1962)

A collection of short stories and essays, Labyrinths highlights Borges' postmodern magical realism. Considered Latin America's finest writer of the 20th century, Borges wrote in a densely layered and imagistic style, dealing with themes of the nature of time, the power of language and of dreams, and the way ideas influence reality.

From the short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”: “Ten years ago, any symmetrical system whatsoever which gave the appearance of order —dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism—was enough to fascinate men. Why not fall under the spell of Tlön and submit to the minute and vast evidence of an ordered planet? Useless to reply that reality, too is ordered.”



Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969)

Slaughterhouse-Five is explicitly a postmodern, meta-fictional novel (metafiction refers to fiction that breaks the suspension of disbelief and emphasizes the fact that it's fabricated): the book begins “All this happened, more or less,” and Vonnegut, in the first person, explains how he came to write the novel and why. Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier who is captured by the Germans and lives through the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945. Pilgrim is also kidnapped by an alien race, Tralfamadorians, and travels through time, recounting his life experiences. Vonnegut deals with themes of fate and free will, the destructive absurdity of war, and the nature of literature.

From the novel: “There are no characters in this story and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”

Thomas Pynchon

Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon experiments with the traditional elements of plot and character development, employing some 400 characters and numerous narrative voices. While the novel focuses on the German V-1 rockets of World War II, it ranges across historic, artistic, scientific, and philosophical topics. Pynchon addresses themes of sexuality, free will and predestination, death, paranoia, and search for identity.

From the novel: “You are off on a winding and difficult road, which you conceive to be wide and straight, an Autobahn you can travel at your ease. Is it any use for me to tell you that all you believe real is illusion? I don't know whether you'll listen, or ignore it. You only want to know about your path, your Autobahn.”

Don DeLillo

White Noise (1985)

DeLillo's dense and lyrical novel tells the black humor story of Jack Gladney, a college professor in a small town, who chairs the department of Hitler Studies. DeLillo illuminates the contradictions of modern American life and touches upon themes of consumerism, conspiracy theories, the pervasiveness of modern technology, the absurdity of academic life, and the fear of death.

From the novel: “For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.”



David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest (1985)

Wallace's satiric and lengthy novel takes place in a dystopian North America, where the US, Canada, and Mexico are one political entity and the calendar has been commercialized (the Year of the Whopper, the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment). Relying on a nonlinear narrative, Wallace addresses themes of addiction and denial, national identity, subjectivity versus objectivity, and popular entertainment.

From the novel: “I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I....”

Postmodern Music

As with other aspects of Postmodernism, it isn't clear cut exactly what music should be considered Postmodern and what should not. In some ways it breaks from Modernist music—by moving away from atonality* and harshness—and in other ways it extends it through innovation and experimentation.

One critic, Harvard professor Daniel Albright, argues that Postmodern music can be characterized by: 1) bricolage* (the use of found objects as instruments, such as pots and pans as drums) 2) polystylism* (the use of multiple styles or techniques) and 3) randomness (where elements of the composition or performed work is left to chance).3

Others maintain that any music created in the last decades of the 20th century or in the 21st century should be regarded as Postmodern.

The definition of Postmodern music is fluid, then. Some composers categorized as Postmodern include the Minimalists (Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass), John Adams, John Cage, Gyorgy Ligetzi, John Corigliano, and Tan Dun.

Some critics will also include more popular musical artists, such as David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, and David Byrne.

Indeterminancy and John Cage

The American composer John Cage was a leading proponent of indeterminacy in music—where aspects of the performance are chosen by chance or performers are left to improvise.

Cage noted to the Observer magazine in 1982: "I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' I said, 'Well then, I'll beat my head against that wall.' I quite literally began hitting things, and developed a music of percussion that involved noises."

3 Daniel Albright, Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). pg. 14



Cage's 1952 composition 4'33 had three movements that were performed without a single note being played.

Minimalism

Musical Minimalism relies on stripped-down compositions with the goal of creating the maximum impact with the fewest, and simplest, elements. Minimalism features repetitiveness, iteration, and somewhat of an appeal to emotion. Four American composers— LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass—have led this movement.

Critic Kiran Sande has noted: "The minimalist impulse was American through and through, and Steve Reich, rarely seen without a baseball cap atop his head, was volubly keen to find a new musical language that truthfully reflected, as he put it, 'the real context of tail fins, Chuck Berry, and millions of burgers sold.'"4

Philip Glass's piece Mad Rush reflects the tenets of Minimalism in its sparseness and use of repetition.

Performance Art

Performance art is a special type of art that became popular in the postmodern era.

Originally Performance Art* was an "art event," a theatrical exhibition of several thematically-related art works, conceived in a variety of media, and presented to an audience either simultaneously or sequentially. Performance art is associated with the avant-garde*, experimental theater that is on the vanguard of unconventional forms. More recently, dramatic performance art has become an autobiographical monologue*, written and presented by a solo performer, sometimes incorporating elements of dance, music and the visual arts.

Renowned Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović explains what differentiates performance art from theater and from other visual arts:

"[Performance art] is not theater. Theater you repeat; theater you play someone else...Performance [art] is real...In the theater, you can cut with a knife, and there is blood. The knife is not real and the blood is not real. In performance, the blood and the knife and the body of the performer is real...[In theater], you never change. It's always in the same pattern and everything is happening the same way again and again...Performance is the unique form of art because it is very temporary and comes and goes" (MOMA, 2010).5

4 Sande, K. (2013, February 2). Less Is More: A Brief Survey of Minimalism. Red Bull Music Academy.

5 Museum of Modern Art (2010, March 31). Marina Abramovic: What is performance art? (Video file). Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcyYynulogY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcyYynulogY�



Postmodernism and its Critics

Because central postmodern themes include the denial of any objective and absolute truth, a rejection of the principles of modernism, and (sometimes) the playful use of language and images, it has attracted criticism from those who see it as a challenge to Enlightenment values and what they define as rationality, progress, and modern culture.

Florida International University professor Steven Mizrach has noted: "Critics of postmodernism come mainly from the Marxist camp. They feel that postmodernism is a diversionary tactic, the last ditch of a late capitalism in the process of dying. They dislike fervently the way that postmodern aesthetics rejects socialist realism—and, for that matter, epistemological realism." Mizrach has also argued: "Other critics of postmodernism feel it is trying to have its cake and eat it too. From the modern world, it wants to take McLuhan's electronic technology and the 'global village' it allows while ditching other parts of modernity; without acknowledging that, sans modernity, such communication would not be possible."6

Noam Chomsky, a left-of-center academic and political philosopher has criticized the difficult and often obscure language employed by postmodernism: "If something can be said simply, say it simply, so that the carpenter next door can understand you. Anything that is at all well understood about human affairs is pretty simple."

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Intellectuals on the right have also objected to postmodernism. Charles Murray, a sociologist and author has written: "By contemporary intellectual fashion, I am referring to the constellation of views that come to mind when one hears the words multicultural, gender, deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead White Males. In a broader sense, contemporary intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread disdain in certain circles for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set is hostility to the idea that discriminating judgments are appropriate in assessing art and literature, to the idea that hierarchies of value exist, hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the overarching label that is attached to this perspective."

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There have been aesthetic criticisms of postmodernism as well. Critic Edwin Heathcote has written: "Once a movement is named 'postmodernism' it kills everything that follows it. Even old modernism, pure, white and minimal, after postmodernism becomes just another style, an attitude. Is postmodernism the movement at the end of culture?"

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Professor Donald Kuspit has criticized postmodern art on the grounds that it is too derivative and boring: "...the authentic is turned into the inauthentic by being treated as no more than a linguistic sign of something that does not exist—the authentic self, authentic art—except as a sociolinguistic mirage. It is because of the absence of any belief in let alone idea of the authentic that postmodern art is boring and depressing."

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6 Steven Mizrach,

"Talking pomo: An analysis of the postmodern movement" 7 Noam Chomsky interviewd by an anonymous interviewer, "The Dominion and The Intellectuals," on Chomsky.info, 2003. 8 Charles Murray, "The Idea of Progress: Once Again, with Feeling," in Hoover Digest 2001 no. 3. 9 Edwin Heathcote, "Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990, V&A, London" in the Financial Times, September 21, 2011. 10 Donald Kuspit, "The Semiotic Anti-Subject," third of three Getty lectures delivered at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California on Apr. 4, 6 and 10, 2000.

http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/pomo.html�

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/2003----.htm�



Novelist David Guterson has argued: "Post-modernism is dead because it didn't address human needs. The conventional story endures because it does." 11

Others maintain that while postmodernism has lost much of its allure, it still retains significant cultural importance. Novelist Edward Docx has claimed that "...we are all, and will forever be, children of postmodernism. (This in itself is, of course, a postmodern idea.) All [artistic] movements subtly inform our imaginations and the way we discuss, create, react and interact. But, more and more, postmodernism is becoming "just" another one of the colours we might use. (Lady Gaga uses it, for example; but Adele does not.) Or, to switch metaphor, just another tool in the artist's kit. Why? Because we are all becoming more comfortable with the idea of holding two irreconcilable ideas in our heads: that no system of meaning can have a monopoly on the truth, but that we still have to render the truth through our chosen system of meaning. So the postmodern challenge, while no less radical, somehow feels less powerful to us. We are learning to live with it."

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Module Vocabulary

TERM DEFINITION

Musical Minimalism

The practice of using stripped-down compositions with the goal of creating the maximum impact with the fewest, and simplest, elements.

Metamodernism A theoretical movement that some believe has succeeded postmodernism.

Monologue A theatrical event performed by one person.

Multiculturalism The existence or representation of multiple cultures in a certain society.

Avant-garde An artistic movement (and those artists involved in it) that breaks with tradition and is radically new or original.

Parody A work that mimics the content or style of an existing work for a comic or critical effect.

Performance Art A type of experimental theater that bridges the disciplines of theater and the visual arts.

Atonality A type of experimental theater that bridges the disciplines of theater and the visual arts.

Postmodernism A term for the artistic and literary movement that developed as a reaction against principles and practices of established modernism.

Bricolage The use of found objects as instruments for art, music, or literature.

Polystylism The use of multiple styles or techniques.

11 David Guterson quoted in an interview with Ellen Kanner, "A Wonderful Irony," on BookPage January 1996. 12 Edward Docx, "Postmodernism is dead," in Prospect, July 20, 2011.

http://bookpage.com/interview/a-wonderful-irony�

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Southern New Hampshire University FAS 202 Humanities Module 5