There is a studio and a set of workshops at Billings Forge on Broad Street, a mixed use re-development in the Frog Hollow neighborhood of Hartford. It includes a Restaurant/Bar and housing units, and it is an attempt to reclaim an old brick mill building. The Studio is open for classes and exhibits, but the workshops are 5 apartments that are available under a grant for three month periods. Joyce, the director of the project, explained that each artist in residence is expected to teach a class to the local children and supply artwork for sale with 25% of the proceeds returning to the Foundation. One of the residents was a long established artist, Rob Hudson, a sculptor and painter with works in museums and corporate offices around the world—the other four residents describe themselves as recent graduates from art schools around the nation, just starting their careers and working as photographers and painters. The grants are for 3 months at a time. Every Wednesday evening is an open studio night where visitors can meet the residents and discuss their particular works and current projects.
I was able to spend some time with Kimberly Gill, a photographer who had moved back to the Hartford area after matriculating from the Pratt Institute in New York. Her work was intensely personal in content, but offered the viewer solid composition and interesting images. Recently from the New York art scene, Kim shared her opinions on the current artistic movement, “Post Modernism” which has left individuals like herself disillusioned with the state of Modern Art, seeking a direction to embrace, or rebel, or study—as she framed it, the post modernist movement can be summed up as a belief that internally focused, personal images are more relevant as modern statements than anything that is based on the past or craft. Kim had unique perspectives on this issue. Is the post modern artistic movement viable? Is it a synthesis of the previous movements, or a fragmentation? Is it a path that can be studied or followed, or is it a fad?
The issue intrigued me, so I turned to the Web:
Wikipedia defined Postmodern art as “a term used to describe an art movement which was thought to be in contradiction to some aspect of Modernism, or to have emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as Intermedia, Installation art, Conceptual Art and Multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern. The traits associated with the use of the term postmodern in art include bricolage, use of words prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation, depiction of consumer or popular culture and Performance art.”
So, according to this definition, my collage work as well as the work by most of my artist friends can be currently classified as “Postmodern.”
The on-line encyclopedia goes on to say that “Postmodern Art is the predominant term for art produced since the 1950s… (also known as) ‘Contemporary art.’ Not all art labeled as contemporary art is postmodern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject postmodernism for other reasons. Some postmodern artists have made a more distinctive break from the ideas of modern art and there is no consensus as to what is ‘late-modern’ and what is ‘post-modern.’”
Now here is an interesting point from the article: “Ideas rejected by the modern aesthetic have been reestablished. In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation. Traditional techniques and subject matter have returned in art.” This definition should encourage my friends and acquaintances working in art today…“It has even been argued that much of what is called postmodern today, the latest avant-gardism, should still be classified as modern art….As well as describing certain tendencies of contemporary art, postmodern has also been used to denote a phase of modern art. Many critics hold that postmodern art emerges out of modern art. Suggested dates for the shift from modern to postmodern include 1914 in Europe, and 1962 or 1968 in America….(While some critics believe we are still in the Postmodern era) the close of the period of postmodern art has been dated (by some critics) to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact of globalization and new media.”
Here is the issue that Kim and her student friends seem to be struggling to adapt or adopt: “Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism. Specific trends of modernism that are generally cited are formal purity, medium specificity, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. However, paradox is probably the most important modernist idea against which postmodernism reacts. Paradox was central to the modernist enterprise, having been introduced by Manet. Manet's various violations of representational art brought to prominence the supposed mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation, design and representation, abstraction and reality, and so on. The incorporation of paradox was highly stimulating from Manet to the conceptualists….The status of the avant-garde is particularly controversial: many institutions argue that being visionary, forward-looking, cutting-edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and therefore postmodern art contradicts the value of "art of our times". Postmodernism rejects the notion of advancement or progress in art per se, and thus aims to overturn the "myth of the avant-garde.”
“One characteristic of postmodern art is its conflation of high and low culture through the use of industrial materials and pop culture imagery (such as Warhol and Lichtenstein)….(Others) suggest that postmodern works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity.” Of course, there are other critics who take the opposite positions and argue forcefully, using Picasso and Manet as examples. Postmodernism rejects modernism's grand artistic narratives, embracing and celebrating both high and low forms of art, and playfully upturning all conventions with collision, collage, and fragmentation. "Diversity" is a fundamental theme of our times, even as it is enforced in an ironic “politically correct” manner. The author of the Wikipedia entry held that “Postmodern art holds that all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions that cannot be overturned by critique or revision.”
So, it is the contradictions in the movement and the critical voices taking so many positions in opposition to each other that provide fodder for on-going debate. The young artist who discussed this issue with me was clearly framing a student’s dilemma, where various voices of authority contradict each other and no clarity can be gained through debate or analysis. The idea of growing beyond or creating a new art movement becomes an impossible quest if the current movement embraces and rejects, celebrates and denies. The idea of working as a Postmodern artist becomes an intellectual conundrum, fueled by well meaning professors and intellectual analysis.
Enough of this! Let’s go paint!
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