Postmodern Art Referencing Postmodern Theory

Postmodern Art Referencing Postmodern Theory

Rationality, the grid, and functionality were just a few

universal truths developed by Modernism in order to create the

one and only metanarrative that would transcend time and place

(Bernard 1998, 15). Art, architecture and literature could be

understood and embraced worldwide and in centuries to come.

Postmodern analytical theorists played a vital role in

disempowering Modernism’s authority and authorship in the art

world. This new way of thinking led artists, particularly in

the 1980’s to create works that rejected many of modernity’s

key mannerisms.

As new technologies and value-systems arose post WW2,

widespread cynicism began to question and resist the Modern

European authority over knowledge, expertise and the grand

narrative. As a result Modernity’s successor developed with

every expectation of undermining and resisting it. Every

action in modernism had a direct reaction in postmodernism

(Docker 1994, 13). With the emergence of new technologies and

consumerist values, postmodern art focused on instant

gratification and aesthetic populism while treating history as

its very own flea market; rebelling against the sacredness of

POSTMODERN THEORY | POSTMODERN ART

originality. Globalisation, capitalism, and technology became

the new gods of postmodernism- resulting in the death of

functionality and rationality. Art became excessive, eclectic

and a commodity that could be bought and sold (Heartney 2001,

19).

This essay will examine the ways postmodern art has been

directly influenced by postmodern analytical theorists to

consciously and systematically rejected modernism. Postmodern

theorists Roland Barthes, Andreas Huyssen, Charles Jenks, and

Fredrick Jameson will provide a rationalisation on postmodern

artist’s Barbra Kruger, Haim Steinbach and Imants Tillers.

These particular artworks all aim to undermine originality,

functionality and abolish the hierarchy between high and low

art. By drawing comparisons between postmodern theory and

postmodern art it will be proven that postmodernism directly

aims to correspond and devalue modernism.

French postmodern intellect, Roland Barthes was the first of

many to announce the problematic value systems society equates

to originality. Barthes’ 1967 essay ‘The Death of the Author’

exposed modernity’s superiority over authorship. Barthes


argues that the audience is more accountable for the

destination of art rather than the author (Barthes 1977, 146).

In saying this he is exclaiming that the readership is

pluralistic- that no matter what meaning the author has

attached to their creation, the audience will have their own

smaller narratives to connect to the work, and therefore

meaning is not linear, rather it is heterogeneous. As Barthes

(1977, 148) states, “The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death

of the Author”.

Barbra Kruger’s work ‘Untitled, I Shop Therefore I Am’ (1987) (fig.1)

gestures to Barthes theories of originality through the use of

appropriation and anti-authorship. Kruger’s large scale text

works react to technology and consumerist culture by using

expansive black and white photographs with red Helvetica font

to state ambiguous quotes. These works have the ability to be

mass produced and are displayed on Billboards with no

reference to the artist herself. Kruger removes herself from

the work leaving the vagueness of the work up to the audience.

This calls on the audience to interpret meaning-whether they

merely relate it to an advertisement or an artwork relies on


their own narratives as an individual, which consciously

echo’s Barthes philosophies.

‘Untitled, I Shop Therefore I Am’ (Kruger 1987) borrows the image from

the very place the work aims to devalue- consumerist

magazines. The hand holding the text references a hand

advertising something society would deem valuable. The

economic narrative in her work examines capitalism as a way in

which things are esteemed. She is advertising an idea that is

not ‘fashionable’ but by using consumerist values of

promotion, an idea can become fashionable and marketable.

These visual cues of appropriation, mass production and the

economic narrative predominant in Kruger’s work admit to the

novelty of originality; that art is never autonomous and in

doing so subverts modernity’s belief in the individual genius.

Along with the abolishment of originality postmodern theorists

examined modernity’s value on high culture over low culture.

In his essay ‘After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture,

Postmodernism’ postmodern academic Andreas Huyssen (1988, 11)

claims that modernism’s bourgeois culture-

“…had lived off the separation of the


cultural from industrial and economic reality, which of course was the primary

sphere of technology…technological expansion and profit maximisation were held to

be diametrically opposed to the dominant in the sphere of high culture”.

Through Modernity’s successor postmodernity, Huyssen

recognised an attempt to validate popular culture against

modernist tradition of high art by replacing it with imagery

of everyday life and mass consumerist culture.

This aesthetic populism is particularly evident in

architecture. Postmodern architect theorist Charles Jenks

noted the breakdown of hierarchy though the comparison of

modern architecture and postmodern architecture.

In his book ‘The Language of Post-modern Architecture’ Jenks (1987, 70)

argues that in postmodern design-

“The architect must over-code his buildings, using a

redundancy of popular signs and metaphors, if his work is to communicate as

intended and survive the transformation of fast changing codes”.

In saying this Jenks refuses the grand transcendental beauty

of modern architecture and instead describes the postmodern


age as “A time of incessant choosing” (Jenks 1987, 33). This

pick‘n’mix approach to design sees the development of

buildings that appreciate excessive ornamental motifs over

rationality and functionality. This aesthetic populism evident

in architecture has since fed its way into the visual arts.

John Nixon’s 1980 ‘Manifesto for a Renewed Art Practice’ (Nixon, 1982)

concreted the transition from traditional painterly and

sculptural modernist aesthetic to cultural ‘amateurism’ by

stating;

“The real art of the 1980’s is advertising, TV, magazines, film, records, clothes,

muzak, supermarkets, newspapers, jets, sports, discos”.

Haim Steinbach’s 1980’s series follows this transition. His

work forms a dialogue between trivial objects and high art.

Steinbach’s Objects are organised with the delicacy and

precision of an obsessive compulsive. Consumerist objects such

as shoes, dog toys, cereal boxes and kitsch ceramics are given

equal value by exhibiting them on handmade display shelving

units.


Steinbach’s work ‘Related but Different’(1985) (fig.2) featuring a

pair of renowned 1980’s Air Jordan’s became his most popular

work by incorporating an item everyone at the time was

familiar with; encompassing Jenks theory that architects

should include popular culture in order to “…Survive fast changing

codes’. ‘Related but Different” (Steinbach 1985) eliminates hierarchy

between high and low cultural aesthetic. The work’s formal

elements rely on a single pair of Air Jordan’s and a set of

five gold plated chalices. The work is ambiguous and semiotic,

providing the viewer with small cues to decipher meaning.

Much like Kruger’s work meaning is created through the silence

of the work. The title implies they are related but different;

the similarity is that they are both deemed valuable by their

respective cultures. The Air Jordan’s share an affinity with

low culture, equating to consumerist and popular culture.

While the chalices share an affinity with high culture:

bourgeois culture. The shoes are displayed on a modest wide

wooden geometric shelf which is juxtaposed against the golden

chalices that are displayed on a narrow polished dark marble

shelf. The objects, however different are both elegant and


highly esteemed when viewed in a gallery setting. Steinbach’s

purposefully mundane objects are stripped of functionality and

in turn, enhances their ornamental value. The utility of the

cups and the shoes become irrelevant and instead the beauty of

their formal elements are enlightened allowing their

differences to complement one another.

Pricing of objects also becomes an aspect of obliterating high

a low culture- art is now profitable rather than untouchable.

Steinbach even developed his own pricing system for his work-

an alien concept to modernity.

“I devised a formula by which there would be a price for the work-plus

the price of the objects. Let's say a shelf has three cornflakes boxes and six ceramic

ghosts on it. If the ceramic ghosts are $10 apiece, that's $60; the boxes, at $2 each,

would make $6, bringing the total of the objects to $66. So if the price of a given

work is $12,000, that's $12,066” (Burton 2011, 1).

Steinbach’s deliberate emphasis on the readymade creates a

fully digestible dialogue on past and present, old and new as

well as economy, technology and mass production. All of which

directly reject Modernisms hierarchy on aesthetic culture.


As seen previously through comparing postmodern theories to

postmodern artworks; appropriation, eclecticism and pluralism

become vital tools in extinguishing modernity’s rules on

tradition and history.

Modernism’s rejection of tradition was perhaps most

aggressively emphasised in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s

Futurist Manifesto in which he compares museums to cemeteries.

History is summed up in the manifesto by stating-

“Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living

in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed”

(Appollonio, Humphreys 2001, 19).

This way of thinking albeit, over the top was shared

throughout the modern era. History and tradition were replaced

with the ‘now’, relating to the transcendent, autonomous

individual.

Postmodernism reacts against the ‘now’ by not just looking

back at one past but multiple. Fredrick Jameson (1991, 9)

characterises this postmodern pastiche as ‘cultural cannibalism’.

In his book ‘Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’


Jameson (1991, 23) states that modernist styles are being

appropriated as postmodern ‘codes’. This style of

appropriation allows postmodernists to exploit multiple

histories and traditions in order to reflect rather than to

parody. The intention is not to state something new, but to

reference to something that has already been said. Producing

an “empty parody” (Jameson 1991, 24).

Australian artist, Imants Tillers is renowned for

appropriating other cultures and genres in order to reflect on

the present and past. Imants Tillers’ ‘The Nine Shots’ (1985) (fig.

3) is made up of 91 individual painted canvas boards. The work

displays traditional aboriginal motifs and an earthly colour

palette while appropriating modernist German expressionism.

The painting is riddled with symbolism from the 9 targets that

are split between canvases to the snakes and tree roots that

make up the half man half tree character. The image is

disconnected and fractured by the small canvases that have

been painted separately by Tillers and then bought together to

form a grid; a pattern seen throughout modernity in Kazimir


Malevich and Piet Mondrian works (Coulter-Smith, Tillers 2002,

34).

The 91 canvas bored are not permanently fixed, this approach

suggests that the sections are able to be re-stacked,

emphasising an ambiguity, as though the work is a Rubik’s cube

calling to be solved. This work is deemed postmodern because

it adopts different styles of work with a figurative modern

approach. The figure in modernist work aimed to portray the

autonomous superior individual. While Tillers’ figure shows

obvious gestures to the self as a product rather than

independent of the past and present; nurture over nature.

‘The Nine Shots’ (Tillers, 1985) combines western art with

indigenous art. Tillers’ appropriates the target motifs from

Michael Nelson Tjakamarra’s aboriginal painting ‘Five Dreaming

Stories’ (1975) while the snakes reference the dreamtime story,

‘The Rainbow Serpent’. These traditional aboriginal symbols are

combined with the figure whose stance references Leonardo Da

Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’. The expressiveness of the figure also

appropriates German artist Georg Baselitz 1960 portrait works;

‘Rebel’ (1965) (fig. 5) & ‘Der Hirte’. ‘The Nine shots’ (Tillers,


1985) deliberately aims to reference the past in a respectful

manner; appropriating without parody or guilt while

acknowledging the heterogeneous self rather than the modernist

autonomous self.

Ultimately postmodern art closely references postmodern theory

and in doing so undermines and rejects modernism. By examining

Roland Barthes theories on authorship together with Barbra

Kruger’s work 'Untitled, I Shop Therefore I Am' (1987) demonstrates a

dismissal against modernist views on originality. While Andrea

Huyssen and Charles Jenks critique on high and low culture

examined against Haim Steinbach's 'Related but Different' (1985)

subverts modernist bourgeois culture by embracing consumerist

popular culture. And finally Fredrick Jameson theories on

history and tradition when teamed with Imants Tillers’ 'The Nine

Shots' (1985) embraces the heterogeneity of history over

individual realities of modernity. By drawing comparisons

between postmodern theory and postmodern art; modernity’s one

eyed perceptions on tradition, functionality and the

metanarrative have been met and overruled.


References

Appollonio, Umbro, Richard Humphreys. 2001. Futurist

Manifestos. 1st ed. Boston: MFA Publications.


Barthes, Roland. 1977. The Death of the Author. Image - Music

- Text. 5th ed. New York: Hill and Wang.

Bernard, Smith. 1998. Modernism's History. Sydney: UNSW Press.

Burton, Johanna. 2011. "Haim Steinbach". Artforum

International 50 (4): 1-252.

Coulter-Smith, Graham, Imants Tillers. 2002. The Postmodern

Art of Imants Tillers: Appropriation en Abyme, 1971-2001.

Southampton: Fine Art Research Centre, Southampton Institue.

Docker, John. 1994. Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A

Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heartney, Eleanor. 2001. Postmodernism (Movements in Modern

Art). London: Tate Publishing.

Huyssen, Andreas. 1988. After the Great Divide: Modernism,

Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic

of the Late Capitalism. 2nd ed. Durham: Duke University

Press.


Jencks, Charles. 1987. The Language of Post-modern

Architecture. 5th ed. London: Academy Ed.

Kruger, Barbara. 1987. “Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am)”.

Image. Accessed October 7, 2013.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/images/Ba

rbaraKruger-I- Shop-Therefore-I-Am-I-1987.jpg

Nixon, John. 1982. “Manifesto For a Renewed Art Practice,

1980”. Insert in Art + Text No 2, Melbourne, July 12.

Steinbach, Haim. 1985. “Related but Different”. Image.

Accessed October 27, 2013.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3335/2001/1600/HAIMIT.jpg

Tillers, Imants. 1985. "The Nine Shots". Accessed September

27, 2013. http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Tillers/Detail.cfm?

IRN=143654

http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Tillers/Detail.cfm?IRN=143654

http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Tillers/Detail.cfm?IRN=143654

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/images/BarbaraKruger-I-

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/images/BarbaraKruger-I-


Appendix

Fig. 1 Barbara Kruger ‘Untitled (I Shop Therefore I am)’ 1987


Fig. 2 Haim Steinbach ‘Related but Different’ 1985

Fig. 3 Imants Tillers’ 'The Nine Shots' (1985)


Fig. 4 Michael Nelson Tjakamarra ‘Five Dreaming Stories’ 1975

Fig. 5 Georg Baselitz ‘Rebel’1965


Fig. 6 Georg Baselitz 1966 ‘Der Hirte’

Documents

Postmodern Art Referencing Postmodern Theory