Postmodernism in Photography

Well, I think we are concerned about that question, Thomas. We would just like what follows not to be another ism about which philosophers might spout with ever increasing vacuity. Apart from anything else, it's a perversion of philosophy - philo lover sophos wisdom - it all comes across much more like the work of a lover of perverting the normal course of language in the interests of sounding clever. Jeremiah at the top made a very good point by posting a lot of gibberish and then claiming he had meant the opposite of what he originally said. Nobody really thought that was odd in a thread about postmodernism.

I would hope that if those here are lovers of wisdom, then they'll take the time to read what the notables have to say on the subject matter of Postmodern photographic art, learn what the benefit of Postmodern photographic art is and then incorporate this think into their photographic efforts.

 

Why?

 

If photographic art students don't learn how to infuse intellectual content into their photographic efforts, then photography will be stuck forever with pictorialism on one hand and postmodern on the other and nothing new will come of people's photographic effort.

 

A blending needs to take place of the two isms, so as to get this boat moving forward again:)

Blend the isms and get the boat moving. I like your imagery. Will you post a photo of that? It would have to be a pictopostmodernist photograph, of course.

"I'm beginning to believe that many here don't want to know, or don't want to accept what Postmodern photographic think is all about..."

 

==================================

 

So, is self-congratulatory ennui postmodern and cynicism merely modern?

 

Like Thomas I'm wondering whether anyone actually responded to Sophie's question (other than my lame effort). Perhaps someone did but I spent so much time in this thread with my head down scraping off my hip waders I might have missed it.

An image of that would be nice too.

 

Maybe don't look for the answers in postmodernist terms and the answers are there.

There are so many great images in this thread : Lex Perpendicular in his waders, Thomas pushing out his boat with two isms, Thomas floating lazily down the Mississipi (I think you have a thing about boats, Thomas), not to mention John in his post communist lecture theatre with his spotty friend.

 

But to state the case again for anybody who missed it: postmodernist theory about art is an over intellectualised response to the subject which does nothing constructive apart from serving to inflate the ego of the person doing it. We hope that the next thing is different and more concerned with the spirit of play, adventure, fascination, exploration, desire, hope, despair, expression etc which are the root things which give rise to the artistic response. In playing (or wading in s**t as some notable once wisely called it) we are trying to give expression to this idea and avoid falling into the trap of talking interminably about isms and vacuous abstractions with little artistic value.

"Postmodernism" is one of those words used by people outside the art industry to describe anything contemporary which they don't like. Whilst those within the art-history world tend to use it to describe anything which doesn't fit well into any other category.

 

For me, another really interesting artist for comparing/contrasting with Helen Chadwick is Sophie Calle - she deals with some similar themes but in a very different way.

 

In terms of good reading material, I don't think one can get any better than Roland Barthes' 1968 essay "Death of the Author" - maybe a bit heavier going than his "Camera Lucida" but very relevant to all forms of art. His argument that the "text" (in the broadest sense) is created by the audience rather than by the artist, is central to an understanding of modern cultural theory.

 

What is next for art? Hard to say and if one could predict it one could be as rich as Charles Saatchi. Art history is not a one-way teleological process despite what writers since Vasari have suggested and as with politics, extremes in art usually alternate. So my money's on a reactionary shift towards figurative art as part of the backlash against the YBA's. Should keep the tabloids happy.

 

What comes after post-modernism? More post-modernism.

As an interpretive framework I expect it will last for some time to come. It's ideally suited to understanding cultural production within advanced consumer societies like ours, where the image has become so ingrained as a tool for advertising that even non-advertising imagery tends to be read by the viewing public as if it were.

 

 

Incidentally, have you been to see the big Helen Chadwick retrospective at the Barbican? If not, you've got until Sunday - but it's on tour in Manchester from sept 25th until mid-November, which might be a little easier for you to get to.

incidentally, just to follow up the tagger theme, Michel de Certeau saw them as being the ultimate postmodern artists for their ability to subvert the social control mechanisms built into modern urban architecture. But personally, being a pompous Brit and a Londoner with a warped sense of humour, I prefer

<a href=http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/index.html>Banksy</a>, especially for his "This is not a photo-opportunity" series.

Ah, insiders and outsiders. Interesting categories : 'people outside the art industry' : who are they? People are very close to their cultural artefacts and any person engaged in painting, drawing, photography is 'inside the art industry'. On what basis do you include or exclude a person? Do you include or exclude the four year old child who paints, or the monkey whose animal daubs are considered fine examples of modern art by blind critics?

 

Another ism for Thomas' boat : elitism. Blend it with obscuritanism and pedanticism and you've probably got postmodernism.

I think the arguments pro/con/troller/rumpelstiltskin would be more dynamic if EACH party would submit an image or a reference to an image not neccessarily their own...

Thanks to Mr. Whatling for the illuminating and informed post. All of your comments are spot on.

 

I tracked done some of the links from the Bansky site and was particularly taken with the material at the GIANT OBEY site. When I talked about complexity in an earlier post, this is what I meant. The whole OBEY thing became a complex adaptive system with nearly (if not completely) a life of its own, nudges from Mr. Fairey and his friends notwithstanding. It has its own ecology with sustained reproduction, adaptations, mutations, etc. like any CAS.

 

I hadn't thought about it before but advertising and mass media has this CAS quality and it is obviously exploited with intention by the more saavy folks in the business. Experts of the hive mind. I think there is more coming in the art world. Work that was previously fringe and underground just keeps reaching further into the mainstream.

 

Among the keys for these evolving works to thrive is a willingness of its creator to get out of the way and surrender to the process. As Bansky observed, doing it for fame will most likely spoil the brew.

 

Thanks again.

Dunno if this will satisfy John's demand for examples but let's try this on for size:<p>

<p>

Iconography killed God and substituted images for the real thing.<p>

<p>

Oil painting killed iconography and made gods of the painters.<p>

<p>

Photography killed painting.<p>

<p>

And stuff like <a href=http://www.photo.net/photo/2295274><b><u>this</u></b></a> killed my appetite.

 

Now anyone with a computer and a decent snapshot can hit the "watercolor" or "oil" filter in Photoshop and transfer the results to a t-shirt or coffee mug.<p>

<p>

So, what's post-postmodernism?<p>

<p>

Something you can sweat on. Or drink out of.

as an art historian who drinks far too much beer, I have to agree with Peter.

 

Incidentally Paul, I don't mean any value judgement by "inside/outside the art industry". I tend to think of all the baggage like art historians, curators, dealers, critics etc as being the "industry". Many of us inside the industry are not artists and many outside are!

I think the Raphaelites should emerge. It would be a relief to the

Pre-Raphaelites.

 

Sophie, you can no more predict what you will dream tonight then you

can predict how art will change. Art history and criticism are only

after thoughts and have no predictive tools.

 

I hate to throw a dampener on your idea, but where does the

assumption come from that you can predict what people will do

tomorrow? It is just dreaming, but it is also fruitless dreaming. Try

this experiment - think of an idea that no one has had before. Think

of something entirely new and original.

 

The rational mind can only rearrange known variables. Art is driven

by inspiration. It jumps what we know and delivers something that has

never been known. Modernism did not know postmodernism was coming.

The historian just arranges past events - 20/20 hindsight.

 

I don't think the question is what is next, but why will

postmodernism fail. We can't know what will follow, but we may be

able to see why the empire will collapse.

 

I think postmodernism will fail because its natural tendance is

toward absurdity. I offers nothing to anyone wanting to live a human

life. It is just intellectual mind games. And very shallow and silly

games at that. Art by an elite for an elite has had very little

staying power. Most of what is postmodernism will be forgotten.

 

Also, why do we need art? The human race has had a need to create art

for most of its exsistance. I doubt it has anything to do with most

of the cliche answers - to make us think, to become aware of

ourselves, to challenge the status quo. I think the answer is more

primary than that. Aethetics was originally to do with the senses

rather than the intellect. Art is a device that moves us through our

senses. It delivers something that cannot be passed on by anyother

method - or could we descibe Van Gogh's sunflowers in a few short

paragraphs and throw away the original? It must be seen. Now, we may

start having associated thoughts after seeing it, but the thoughts

are not an aesthetic response, it is an intellectual one.

 

I'm not sure it matters what the next new art will be. Postmodernism

didn't hurt nor affect many people. It will however reflect the

society it is fostered in. Right now I see a movement toward art for

artists. Art produced in a discipline for others working in that

discipline. Photographers making photographs for other photographers.

We seem to be heading for triviality.

Nah, Will, artists and art critics/historians have demonstrated prescience often enough to disprove any notion that they operate in a vacuum, knowing not what comes next.

 

However there are occasionally miscues in timing.

I'm not sure if art will go anywhere until it escapes the notion that art is not art unless it is controversial, shocking, and breaking into new ground. Novelty has become the fetish that tradition once was, even though novelty aimed to destroy fetishism. But tradition cannot return, because then it would be novel....I have a headache.

 

Art, I was delighted to see someone quote the great Chesterton. But really, your "correcting" his pronouns is insufferable--especially because "he" and its cousins have long served as not only male but also as male-or-female reference. To insist that "he" can only indicate maleness is simply perverse.

 

And who are you to tamper with the writings of someone like Chesterton? Yes, we know, Chesterton wrote before feminism's frantic hunt for reasons to take offense--and before the feminist strategy of ignoring etymoloy to achieve the yearned-for and delicious feeling of aggrievement. And therefore you must ride forth on your white charger to correct old benighted Chesterton, etc., etc.

 

My friend, there are churches that have rewritten the lyrics of hymns to get rid of smelly male references, and have in the process turned stern poetry into greeting-card verse. And you want to do this to Chesterton?

 

Let me suggest a radical action for you and the feministi to take. Write your own material! Write new hymns, write new philosophy. Tie your pronouns into unintelligible and ungrammatical knots of his/her/their. Drag in all the PC formulas you want. Then put your stuff out there in the marketplace to compete. If people choose to read your stuff over Chesterton's, if worshipers choose to sing your new hymns instead of the old ones, fair enough. But to go back with your little blue pencils and scribble over the writings of geniuses--please! That has all the integrity of painting big breasts on the male nudes of Michaelangelo--to make them more "inclusive."

 

Gee, I was in such a good mood when I started reading this thread.

Of interest: <A HREF="http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/decon.html">Engineer Deconstructs Postmodernism.</A>

My definition of postmodernism is the field of academia for people with vocabularies larger than their brains. They know of a lot of big words; they just don't know how or why to use them.<br><br>

 

Here's something fun: <a href="http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/">The Postmodernism Generator</a><br><br>

 

Also, you'll learn all you ever need to know about social theory if you read <a href="http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html">this paper</a> followed by <a href="http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html">this one</a>, in order.<br><br>

 

The "Engineer deconstructs postmodernism" link above is also very instructive. <br><br>

 

I've taken a couple classes along these lines, and the whole field of postmodern thought is completely and utterly full of crap. It's for people who aren't smart enough to be scientists or talented enough to be artists, but want to make a living playing make-believe professor. They get grants and offices and everything, even desks. It's sad. My tuition would be much lower if the university would just fire all the faculty in farcical fields.

Jason, you're a model of negativity. Your tuition would be much lower if you dropped out also.

just adjust your cultural antennae and it will come up with "Personalism"

 

evidence...reality programs on TV, Blogs on the internet. the age of Heroes is over. and it was the theme of individual Heroes that dominated Modernism and Postmodernism. the cell phone camera, buzznet etc mean that everyone's "personal vision" is what is playing now. "Personalism." locate your voice, your eye and flaunt it.

I don't know a damn thing about postmodernism in photography but I agree 100% with Claudia. This is the decade of "me" and it's already culturally bankrupt.

 

As soon my head clears I'm going back to "Bystander" it's almost light reading compared this.