CREATIVE CULTURES - POSTMODERN THEORY & PRACTICE

It is difficult for 'us' as creative practitioners to define ourselves in terms of type and to define our practice in terms of Modern, Postmodern and Post-Postmodern. Whilst in the current movement 'now', it makes it challenging to define and find our category in terms of creative movements until the 'now'/present has passed. 
In the Modernist movement, creative practitioners were confinded to boundaries and rules, unlike the Postmodern movement where boundaries no longer exsisted. The drive for many Postmodern practioners was/is to break these boundaries set and invent new aproaches in their creative fields. When looking at Modernism as a reaction to Romanticism and Romanticism following the Age of Enlightenment it could be explained that these movements act as reactions to the periods prior to them

When thinking about what a Postmodern practitioner is, I find the best way of explaining the foundations to Postmodern artists/practitioners is that they aim to develop and creative 'different' work, work that steps over and or disregards any remaining boundaries from the Modernism movement. It can often be explained using the 'sense of reality' and how different movements in Art view and portray reality in very different ways.
 

"In contrast, postmodernism champions the value of individual and personal interpretations. Again, while Postmodern Elegy integrates elements of cubism, surrealism, and expressionism, the artwork does not try to elucidate the world at large in terms of an authoritative interpretation. On the contrary, Postmodern Elegy or Love and Art, like other postmodern works, requires that viewers add their own interpretations for the work to be meaningful. Rather than assert absolutes, postmodern works of art elicit individual interpretations, personal stories of responsive consciousness."

Rough Essay Plan: 'What is a Postmodern practitioner?'

1. Introduction

2. History: Modernism movement, brief timeline, where we are now

3. Definition of Postmodernism: Clement Greenberg/ Postmodern Art, Francis Berry

4. Arguing whether we are in the Postmodernism period now

5. Examples of Postmodernist practioners, artists etc

6. Questioning what 'movement' is to come?

7. Evaluating types of Postmodernism practioners

CREATIVE CULTURES - POSTMODERN PHOTOGRAPHY

I believe that we are in the midst of a major movement in photography.  One that began more or less with Cindy Sherman in the seventies and continues today in the work of hundreds of artists using photography. The movement started a revolution in what is considered fine art photography: away from the formalist aesthetic of Harry Callahan,  Brett Weston Ansel Adams etc and to an idea driven use of the medium whose top practitioners today are Jeff Wall, Philip-Lorca Dicorcia, Andreas Gursky Cindy Sherman, Vik Muniz and many more. It can be argued that all these artists are making photographs that are in some way about the sociological nature of photography itself which I believe sounds like a movement. It is this very shift in the use of photography that has resulted in a wide-spread acceptance of the medium along side painting, drawing and sculpture. 

"Further, to say that what has happened in photography is not a movement because of the multitude of approaches is not a valid argument. What is important is the break from tradition, in the same way that the impressionists broke from realism and the abstractionists broke from representation."

What makes the movement in photography unique is its non linear progression.  In contrast, the movements in painting have  for the most part followed one another: impressionism, post impressionism, cubism, abstract expressionism, minimalism etc. with a few offshoots here and there (e.g. surrealism). It is difficult to tell where we are within the postmodernist photographic movement, but I sense that we are approaching the end in that newer artists seem to be combining the modern and postmodern standard.  Its no longer okay to just use photography as a means to illustrate your ideas.  The end result must now adhere to the pristine standards of the modernist ideal as well.

 

 The image above my Gregory Crewdson could be viewed as post modern because it makes the viewer look beyond the surface, questioning who the subject is and why she 'posing' in such a way. Crewdson is famous for his staged image and this style of photography can be described as post modern, often finding inspiration from 19thC paintings and making their vision represent the now.

CREATIVE CULTURES - MODERNISM & POSTMODERNISM

STRUCTURALISM 
- Claud Levi-Strauss
- influential in 1960s-70s
- based on binery oppositions i.e male/female, inside/outside etc
- analysing in opposites/ pairs
Problems with structuralist approaches:
- it reduces things to being defined by what they are not 
- one always becomes more dominant 
- bineries become seperated
POST STRUCTURALISM
 - 1970s 
- finding the grey areas that structuralism doesn't cover
- finds gaps between bineries that can be analysed
Structural = analysing an object, popular in modernism 

DECONSTRUCTION
- no fixed meaning, established modes of thought and bineries are questioned
- attention to the written language and visual characteristics
INTERTEXTUALITY
- post modernist readings, text-to-text connections
- quoting/borrowing from others, historical art etc
BOURDIEU - THEORIST
- CULTURAL CAPITAL : educated, cultural wealth
[Only people with higher cultural capital would recognise the use of intertextuality.]     

PHYSICAL CONTEXT
Photography = mass distribution, the role of the gallery versus the magazine versus the internet.
From which of these perspectives or approaches do you see your own practice?
Physical context: Photobooks - the way the book is viewed, in a bookshop/library/gallery 
- digitalised compared to book form, viewing things through a screen alters the way it is seen.

3 STAGES IN THE PROGRESS OF MODERNISM
1. Crisis in the representation of the reality:
Early 1900s to 20thC, figurative to abstract, realistic representations, surrealism, artists started to experiment with less control/ subconcious art, modernism started.   

[Walter Benjamin (1936): Response to the rise of photography
- Aura presence that you can't feel when you see a reproduction of art. Loose the Aura of the art or object when it is mass produced (2d.)]

2. The rise of abstraction: 1920s     
3. Abandoning the aesthetic process:
Based on the concept, beginning of post modernism, 'high modernism', emphasis on text.
 [It could be argued that over the past century we have been in various phases of modernism; transitional period.]
 BAHAUS - FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION
The art school that is highly significant: geometry/simplicity/repetition

MODERNISM
- form follows function
- repetition, seriality, geometry, formalism
- status and hierachy in art and design practice - 'high art versus low art'
Clement Greenberg:
Metanarrative - there is one main story of art, rather than several stories that are all important. 
MODERNISM VS POST MODERNISM 
Differences between these 2 pieces of work:

Chris Ofili - post modernism

 - low culture : collage, high culture : painting
 - references to porn magazines
 - representing the body, combining references to artists culture
 - layers: emphasis on the surface
 - non western view - black virgin mary
 - erotisising the virgin mary, sexual connotations, yonic shapes
 - subvert the traditional readings
 - subjectivity of the maker - cultural context, nigerian culture :  reference to mass culture.


Yves Klein - modernism

  - paint on canvas
  - painting: specific medium 
  - referring to itself
  - highly formalised/ordered
  - 'pure' colour
  - deep, heavy, intellectual
  - eleviated: cultural capital (viewer)



POST MODERNISM : Blurring the boundaries between disciplines

JIM LAMBIE 
- kitsch: cheap, immitation
- humour, objects found
- immediacy: easily engaging but easily 'thrown away'
- opposite to 'high art'
- mass produced
GUNVAR NERVOLD, TEXTURED ROOMS (2001): embroidery and projection

- interaction

CREATIVE CULTURES - MODES OF ANALYSIS

 CONTENT ANALYSIS

-  Fact ( real scenes/people) or fiction coming from the imagination. Often referred to as 'subject matter' for art and photography.

- What do you miss when analysing content?

• Form Analysis : colour etc
• Audience Analysis : response
• Artist Analysis : how the artist effects the way their work is viewed?
• Content

1. Manifest = 'Denotation', what the thing literally is

2. Latent = 'Connotation', association with what it means and how it can be explained

Meret Oppenheim

- Female association, meat, presentation/decorated/, consume or to be consumed, foot binding, feamle artist roles in the 1970s

- The comments come from people with western views, making this analysis culturally specific. ( Thinking about angles and approaches)

Yonic = reference to female genitalia
Phalic = reference to male genitalia

Content analysis can be used to reveal distortions in media representations. Guerilla Girls 1984 - in museums female artists were under represented but were over represented in subject matter; they used content analysis  as a protest.

David Lachapelle (1993)

 Manifest:

- Photograph, body builder, white children, rocket/missles

Lantent:

- Male orientation, stereotypes, falic, iconic colours, saturated tones, gender expectations, references to power (lifeguard) male protectors, masculine.

- Absence: women. White children = purity, youth culture, american

FORM ANALYSIS

- materials, colours, lines, tonal values, texture, composition, techniques

- form folllows funtion, content determines form

For example Harry Beck's design of the London underground, he designed around the function (easy to read)

Form analysis of image above: saturated, two halfs to the frame, horizontal colouring (cool to warm). Repeated forms, echoes the form of the children.

Chiaroscuro = shady, tonal, shadowy, contrast between light and dark. "an example of chiaroscuro."
Aerial perspective = the idea that cool colours receed. "an example of aerial perspective." 

Repoussoir = the aspect of the image that draws the viewer into the image, often used in advertising. 

STYLE ANALYSIS 

- styles are historical phenomena's and have limited life spans

- subcultures (particularily in fashion)

- style links to genre

Woody Allen & Mia Farrow (1991) - Mary Ellen Mark

  

I chose this image, taken from the guardian because although I liked the image visually I found analyzing it challenging from a photography point of view. The image itself is intriguing, one because the aim of the photographer was to ‘try and photograph the most photographed people’ and two because of the composition. When viewing the image you become aware of the tense relationship between the subjects, having already known that they were married I began to question the choice of body language and how the vacant expression on Farrows face leaves me wondering what emotion the photographer was trying to convey. The general forms of the photograph represent the theme of silence and emotion in the images this is due to the use of flat toned colouring. The lines of the bricks and the pattern on Allens shirt appear to form a connection which is repeated. The horizontal lines vertical lines are also emphasized by the lighting which appears to light more of the background than the foreground which leaves the viewer feeling drawn to the surroundings. The feeling of seperation between the two subjects is reinforced in the tones of the image, the soft grey tones compliment Farrow who acts as a repoussoir, yet seem to distance Allen who is in less direct light. Is this because the focus should be on Allen since she is the one that appears to hold the emotion? The image itself could be viewed as ‘old fashioned’ due to the use of black and white colouring, this is also reinforced by the styling; Farrow’s coat appears dated however this could be argued. Using black and white photography can make an image difficult to date, the photographer may have chosen this to make the image ‘dateless’ which could lead to the image becoming iconic [Related to context]. Finally the way in which the image has been cropped allows the viewer to be able to form a sense of context and surroundings; the right side of this image illustrates the pavement and without this/if the image were to be cropped, it would be difficult for the viewer to gain the correct perspective on where the subjects are standing in the street.