Modern to Post Modern Art

[cacian]

Modern Art began with enlightenment and depict a political shift in ideas in that the focus is more on the working class rather then gentry/aristocracy.
post modern is as a follow up from modern in that the idea is culturally motivated ie modern living is being the focus.
so my questions are:
is there a difference between Modern and Post modern?
would you say postmodern is more caricaturist and therefore less of it is modern?

[MorpheusSandman]

Er, I think you have both terms completely confused. Modernism started as a reaction to Romanticism, especially Victorian literature. The dominant ideal of Modernism was the invention and promotion of new forms and the destruction of old forms. So, eg, free-verse was emphasized over traditional verse forms. Another major feature of Modernism was the depiction of fractured, fragmented perspectives, styles, and genres, so not only were old forms destroyed, the distinctions between them were blurred, distorted, and synthesized. Perhaps the work that best illustrates this is TS Eliot's The Waste Land, with it's multitude of voices, styles, modes, genres, and literary allusions. Modernism saw this fragmentation as a crisis that needed to be dealt with, that was in need of a solution. TS Eliot, eg, may have thought that the fragmentation of modern life could be resolved through the lens of culture and history, so all of the allusions give an underlying, universal context to everything within the poem. Modernism felt you could create a new, coherent, synthesized "meaning" from all the chaos, while maintaining certain distinctions like, eg, "low" VS "high" art.

Postmodernism employed a lot of the same devices as modernism, but it criticized the notion that fragmentation was a "problem" to be "solved," and, in fact, it sought to show how such a solution was impossible. So while, eg, a PM work might feature the same kind of fragmentation as a M work, the PM would not try to synthesize those fragments into a coherent whole. It would prefer to simply let the fragments exist in all their irreconcilable, paradoxical juxtapositions. In PM there are no ultimate, universal meanings, there are only relative perspectives, and ambiguities within texts and works that disallow for any kind of absolute coherency. PM critical theory sought to show this in several ways. Deconstruction, eg, might take a work and show how certain elements could be read in two mutually exclusive ways, and how this "destabilized" meaning to a point we could not choose between them.

It's not always clear where the line between M and PM is, and it's not always clear when an artist is attempting to synthesize fragments into a greater, coherent, universal whole, and when they're insisting that no greater, coherent, universal whole can be achieved. Eliot said that "these fragments I have shored against my ruins," which sounds M, but Pound (in his Cantos) said "I cannot make it cohere," which sounds PM. We don't always have these clear pointers as a guide, though. Such things tends to be true of artistic movements. It's not entirely clear where the line between Classicism and Romanticism is either, or Romanticism and Modernism. Such things are retrospective, post hoc labels that we assign, even though art tends to evolve artist to artist, generation to generation in increments, rather than clean breaks between movements.

[stlukesguild]

To a great extent you are correct in suggesting that the Modern Era begins with the Enlightenment. We might argue that the real moment of conception coincides with Gutenberg's press. As the center of economic power shifts from the Church and the Aristocracy to the masses of merchants, manufacturers, and tradesmen the arts naturally follow the money.

"Modernism" and "Post-Modernism", however, as distinct artistic movements, are something else altogether. As MorpheusS suggests, these sort of labels (Modernism, Post-Modernism, Neo-Classicism, Renaissance, Baroque, etc...) are largely assigned after the fact... and not so clearly defined. These terms become even more confusing when applied to various art forms. Shakespeare is commonly referred to as part of the English Renaissance, yet the period in the visual arts and music would have fallen under the Baroque. The 18th century in literature becomes the "Late Baroque", the Gallante Style, and Classicism in music and the Rococo, Neo-Classicism, and nascent Romanticism in the visual arts.

As you spoke of Modern "Art" I'll suggest that there are many differences of opinion as to when this began. Some would place its inception with Courbet and the "Realists" who based their art solely upon what the "real" world in which they lived. Others... myself included... place the birth of Modernism in Art with the Impressionists... a period in which the subject matter was drawn from the everyday world... subjects such as nightclubs, cabaret, circuses, brothels, train stations, or the everyday landscapes (as opposed to grandiose Romantic landscapes). The period also saw the impact of new technologies including photography, mass-produced paints sold in tubes, artificial lights, etc... Still others place the birth of Modernism with Picasso... specifically his painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Modernism in art is characterized by less of a focus on subject matter and more upon how it is realized or perceived: fragmented in the eyes of the Cubist, as a means of conveying the inner feelings of the artist in the eyes of the Expressionists, etc... Modernism stresses "new" approaches to painting/sculpture, dismisses the long-held notion that the goal of art was to mimic visual reality and argued instead that painting, for example, was essentially an organization of colors and shapes and lines on a flat surface. Modern Art opened the artist to the appreciation of Art that had been long ignored: the art of children, medieval art, folk art, Non-Western Art (the art of China, Japan, the Middle-East, Africa, etc...). The last Hurrah of Modernism is generally thought of as being found in the work of the American Abstract Expressionists.

Post-Modernism is characterized as rejecting many of the values of Modernism. The Post-Modernist artist feels free to appropriate styles from across the whole of art history as opposed to the need to "make it new". Post-Modernism is a Mannerist period. While Modernism was not devoid of humor and satire, Post-Modernism thrives on it... and irony. Modernism retained Romantic aspirations... a belief that they were heading into a brave new world of ever expanding possibilities. Post Modernists tend to be more cynical... careerists rejecting the possibility that art may have any higher calling... any political/social impact. They tend to be more pessimistic in their world view... struggling to come to terms with (and /or deconstruct) the innovations of Modernism as opposed to being stridently forward thinking.

Again, as has already been suggested, such characteristics offer but a rough guideline. Most contemporary artists employ elements of both Modernism and Post-Modernism... as well as those of earlier traditions (the Renaissance, the Baroque, Classicism, etc...).

[cacian]

thank you both for your posts very informative.
if you do have a particular painting of these two eras that you like please could you post it. If not that is fine too

[stlukesguild]

Early Modernism

Claude Monet:



The subject matter was drawn from the everyday world... subjects such as everyday landscapes... the artist's wife and child. The artist makes use of new modern developments such as oil paint in tubes. Painting is still seen as a mirror of reality... but the paint handling begins to fragment this illusion while the exaggerated colors point to the notion that art is "artificial".

Modernism:

Paul Gauguin:



Vincent Van Gogh:



Edouard Vuillard:



By this time artists had even further removed from the idea that painting was essentially a mirror of visual reality. As the painter, Maurice Denis famously declared, "Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." The paintings are flatter. The brush work draws attention to the art as opposed to rendering the subject. Colors are exaggerated even further. The artists are borrowing stylistic elements from Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, Medieval painting and sculpture, Egyptian art, folk art... and other non-traditional/non-Western art sources.

High Modernism:

Henri Matisse:



Pablo Picasso:



Wassily Kandinsky:



There is little or no concern at this point for adhering to visual reality. When confronted by a critic who proclaimed, "Monsieur Matisse, the arm on that woman is entirely too long;" Matisse would respond, "Oh but Madame, I fear you are mistaken, for that is not a woman, but a painting." Painting was seen as having its own interior logic that need not have anything whatsoever to do with visual reality. Picasso freely fragments and reinvents the still life images and figures he paints, while Matisse hasn't the slightest concern for the true local color of the subjects he paints. What matters is how the colors harmonize within the painting. Kandinsky eliminates any attempt at capturing an illusion of reality... or even an allusion to reality. All of these artists were fully aware of their role as Modernists... audaciously and optimistically stretching the boundaries of art.

Late Modernism:

Jackson Pollock:



Arshille Gorky:



Willem DeKooning:



The "Last Hurrah" of High Modernism was found in the work of the American Abstract Expressionists. These artists built upon idea of allowing the subconscious to take the lead... a concept gleaned from Surrealism and Freud. The idea was to give a permanence of form to the expressive gesture. There was also a love of spontaneity... akin the the jazz music of the age that fueled many of the artists. While Europe dealt with the sense of shock wrought by the war (WWII) America reveled in unrivaled dynamism. The paintings took on a grand or even epic scale concurrent with American aspirations.

Post-Modernism:

Andy Warhol:



Roy Lichtenstein:





David Salle:



Eric Fischl:



Odd Nerdrum:



Jeff Koons:



Takashi Murakami:



Lucian Freud:



Will Cotton:



While Modernism employed a vast array of stylistic elements, Post-Modernism includes such stylistic variety as to be virtually impossible to define. A few common threads include the rejection of the high serious aspirations of Modernism and the willingness to embrace comedy, satire, irony, and imagery drawn from "low culture": Hollywood, Rock Music, comic books, kitsch, and even pornography. Post-Modernism embraces the whole of art history and rather than attempting to "make it new" (which they no longer believe is possible) the Post_Modern artist freely appropriates older styles. Some, such as David Salle or Gerhard Richter freely employ multiple styles.

[JBI]

Visual arts are generally a few decades faster than the rest of the forms when it comes to adapting to a new style. This is followed by music and then by other forms. Literature is generally harder to develop as it has a harder time getting an audience. In truth, the most successful (in terms of sales) English writers and poets tend to be the ones who use existing forms. So, we would say, Shakespeare cashed in more than earlier playwrights, Pope more than Dryden, Byron more than Colerdige, Frost more than Pound, or whatever.

We as an audience take some time to get used to the new forms or movements. The Waste Land would not have been well received published during the First world war, i would wager.

In terms of art this may be true as well, I am not sure, but generally the physical work draws a better history, as art historians look for forerunners. Very few of the mass public will look for forerunner modernist novels or whatever (though they exist). It takes much effort to go through literary works, and people usually just want the most famous. So Henry James' works are regarded more as late realism, despite being very much more like modernism, particularly works like What Maisie Knew.

Still, my understanding of English literature (including the New World) in modernism is one of bitterness and loss, and then Post-Modernism as one of irony about the loss, and generally a cynical lack of meaning. Modernism can be called a great pessimism that starts at the end of the Enlightenment (Schopenhauer) and culminates generally in the displacement, destruction and death of the old world. Post-modernism takes this in an ironic direction, and now post-post-modernism is looking for new "meanings" and cohesion within this chaos.

This is my general understanding of cross world modernism, generally first displacement, then lack of cohesion, cultural trauma, a loss of sincerity, and an anxiety about the world. Someone like Pope could write about the perfection of the world, but I do not think anybody in the modern period could write like that, and certainly in the post-modern period nobody could do so without being totally ironic.

In that sense Rothko seems the perfected embodiment of this negative energy, especially in how eerily his colors meld into each other as a form of visual static. The negativity of experience, and then personal trauma generally carried these painters from destruction through depression, and then into a general cynicism.

Post-modernism tries to find a sort of cohesion through irony and humor. But even then, it is difficult to read such a decadent form. Underworld as a novel is interesting in idea more than in execution. Pynchon is generally hard to get through, and his irony gets tiring very quickly as all irony gets.

I think generally these past 30 years have shown a public desire for sincerity. Certainly authors have already picked up on it. The best example being Chabon, who has done an about face of modernism and returned to a sort of Romanticism. We are heading in a sense, to a rejection of post-modernist pessimism and irony in favor rather of positivity. I guess knowing how awful the world is, and was (and believe me, any historian will tell you the world was god awful even 50 years ago) is rather disheartening, and now people want to know firstly how positive things are, and how good the world either can be, or is. That generally marks our preoccupation with the simple arcs of love stories, or even the current mass fascination with super-heroes. They aren't just eye candy, they are meant to show a sort of sincere heroism on the screen that can tell somebody, I am proud to believe in American ideals, and I am proud to make a difference and belong to a world where good exists.

[MorpheusSandman]

...the most successful (in terms of sales) English writers and poets tend to be the ones who use existing forms. So, we would say... Byron (cashed in more) more than Colerdige...

Byron cashing in more than Coleridge had far more to due with his celebrity than the fact that he used existing forms, since Coleridge used existing forms too. What's more, Byron wrote in so many different forms and genres, some classical and well-established, others more modern/radical, that I think it's impossible to attribute his sales/popularity to that.

Post-modernism tries to find a sort of cohesion through irony and humor.

I don't think PM thinks that irony and humor creates cohesion, but rather I think irony and humor is their reaction to the realization that cohesion is impossible. It's more of a "let's not stress about this fragmentation, let's just play with it." In a way, PM strikes me as a reversion to childlike sensibilities, one in which all of the weighty concerns of M are replaced with a "kids in a sandbox" mentality. Irony and humor are, after all, the effects of putting yourself outside of the concerns of what's being observed, an "I refuse to be bound up in the emotional/philosophic plights of those I'm depicting."

Pynchon is generally hard to get through, and his irony gets tiring very quickly as all irony gets.

I don't think it's the irony itself as it is the way the irony is handled. I don't find, eg, that the irony in Jane Austen, Shakespeare, or, to use a different medium, Hitchcock gets old because they tend to be more subtle about it. So much of PM seems to beat the audience over the head with the irony, like they're scared to death the audience won't get it. It creates the affect of a laughing doofus beside you screaming "isn't it ironic? It's so ironic! Because it's not serious or literal! See how ironic it is?! Please see it!" Austen allows a reader to read her novels as romance novels, and obviously so many do this if adaptations are anything to go by, but her irony becomes apparent as soon as one stops to reflect on it. The problem with PM irony is that it thrusts irony onto the reader/viewer rather than letting the reader/viewer pick up on the irony in retrospect or upon close consideration.

I think generally these past 30 years have shown a public desire for sincerity. Certainly authors have already picked up on it. The best example being Chabon, who has done an about face of modernism and returned to a sort of Romanticism. We are heading in a sense, to a rejection of post-modernist pessimism and irony in favor rather of positivity.

There is a term called Transmodernism that seeks to reconcile M, PM, with preM. I don't know too terribly much about it, but I know that it criticizes PM's nihilism, pessimism, and belief that we cannot find new universal meanings; and it criticizes M's rejection of old forms and traditions. It definitely seems to harken back to the sincerity of Romanticism. From what little I know, I rather like it in general, though I'd have issues with its emphasis on religion/spirituality and rejection of relativism. I think we can create coherent meanings and integrate systems without resorting to magical thinking or ignoring the fact that most things are relative to some degree.

[JBI]

In general we can say for the west, the last major earthshaking crisis was the Vietnam war. There has been nothing so destructive to the establishment in the past 40-odd years than that conflict. For the generation before, you had two world wars back to back. You had the idea of growing up without parents, or with war or death eminent. I get the feeling that the post 80s generations generally did not have this experience. This sort of negative world, dominated by a preoccupation with mutually assured destruction and war simply did not direct our thoughts.

You get something similar in China - the general population did not have the traumatic experience of Maoist era floods, famines and cultural purges. The post 1980 generations have generally lived in the most optimistic country and time perhaps in history, and being the only child in their families, got all the love and opportunities. Most don't even know what happened in the cultural revolution.

So in a sense, I see in the old generation of Chinese authors, exemplified by Mo Yan, who grew up with nothing, and made their careers breaking into taboo subjects and redeeming culture from the clutches of tyranny. Yet the new generation is not capable of understanding. The new generation does not know what happened to them - it's as if they were struck completely from history. To the new generation, we have the typical Asian my country is the best, regardless of the government. You've got the mass chanting and exercises in front of the flag every morning, and the oaths of allegiance that come with it, yet none of the irony behind that.

If we take the united states as a counter example, I don't think you could convince the intellectual base of the country (lets say anyone over 40) anything about how these oaths and anthems are anything but a form of propaganda. And the general younger population has carried on a sort of distrust of government and institutions, and a general fear of having their freedoms violated.

You get the sense that the idea of post-modernism is one of growing up, realizing the big world is richer and more terrible in culture and experience than your own insignificant place within it. Reading history books for me was an experience of utter bitterness, knowing that the death, famine, violence, poverty, disease and cultural madness have been and are in many places accepted as a natural phenomenon. Auden I think gets around this the most in terms of literature, with the idea that Achilles shield is actually an instrument of terror. Owen gets around nationalism well, but doesn't end up reapplying it the way late modernists do (Yeats does it quite well in Leda and the Swan).

We live in a rather terrible world, and in many ways, literature is used as a coping mechanism. The general idea of the novel is one of unifying, and mass reception. It's no surprise that the novel generally killed all local culture in many countries (certainly in China, most of Europe, North America, Japan etc) and created national cultures. Post-modernism in a sense was a rejection of this for nothing, with a deep distrust of the simple fact that nations are murderers, the bigger and powerful more so than others.

As for my comment on using irony to form cohesion, I meant in the sense that when there is no meaning left, irony creates a stand in medium. Lack of cohesion actually takes on a meaning of itself. This is different than something like Jane Austen's irony, in that Austen relies on established norms and attitudes to ironize into - she will ironically mock Mr. Collins, but he in a sense is given a narrative positivity by the fact the book is as much a celebration of people's flaws as it is of marriage and the institutions that govern social norms. The same way a comedy of manners in general does not take it to the level where we say manners are all nonsense. It is generally the biggest sticklers for these manners and norms that like this kind of irony - the rich social elite watching a Wilde play, or the hopeful unmarried women reading an Austen novel.

Irony itself as a coping mechanism didn't hold out long - maybe 30 or 40 years. I suspect that is responsible for the dry spell in literature. In the US you basically have utter shock and revulsion to the First World War, then a second Trauma on its back in the Second world war, then for the next generation you draft them to go die again in an even less meaningless war - the conclusion of which rather than add to their sense of accomplishment of overcoming foes, is generally looked at as a dark and pessimistic experience of murder. We have the soldier reduced to the position of mass-murderer, and the government as not much better. The dignity of the death at war (and there is a dignity of serving for your country, regardless of the lack of dignity of the war) is muffled by the cries of a country, establishment and culture that basically looks down in shame and revulsion of anything relating to Vietnam.

That generation is still around, yet their numbers are dwindling. The new generation lacks this. They grew up on fast food, rap music and the internet. I think it is not so much that life has no meaning, but that the have generation does not like the cynicism of their have not fathers. Readers to seem to share the sentiment - could you even sell Vietnam era works and fiction today? I doubt it. Nobody wants to here it, they think it's ugly.

[stlukesguild]

In terms of art this may be true as well, I am not sure, but generally the physical work draws a better history, as art historians look for forerunners.

To an extent, this may be true. An artist such as Cezanne becomes central to art history because he is central to the narrative of Modernism... the precursor to Cubism. But in reality, Cezanne had nothing whatsoever to do with Cubism and had Cubism never happened he still would have been a marvelous painter. The merits of his paintings don't lie in their establishing the precursor to later innovations.

There is an article by the critic Peter Schjeldahl which relates his experience of happening upon Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII:



This notorious Minimalist work was "constructed" of nothing more than a pile of bricks. Schjeldahl happens upon the work in a gallery and thinks nothing of it... until he has a sudden epiphany. He thinks: "This may just be my moment!" Just as Greenberg has "discovered" Abstract Expressionism, and Lawrence Alloway and Leo Castelli had "discovered" Pop Art, Schjeldahl wonders if he has not been the first to recognize a truly new artistic style. His whole essay is about himself... his delusions of grandeur... and have little to do with any aesthetic merits one way of the other in Andre's work.

Being the forerunner, however, is of limited importance. The fact that Rembrandt, Rubens, Velazquez, and Vermeer build upon earlier innovations in the Baroque in no way undermines their work or keeps them from being recognized as the greatest practitioners of Baroque painting.

Very few of the mass public will look for forerunner modernist novels or whatever (though they exist). It takes much effort to go through literary works, and people usually just want the most famous.

Honestly, how many fans of Impressionism can really identify the precursors of the movement? And if we ask the average person about Pop Art they will likely know Andy Warhol... who was a latecomer and one of the least original figures of the movement. Indeed, most will not recognize that this very American art movement actually began in Britain.


This is my general understanding of cross world modernism, generally first displacement, then lack of cohesion, cultural trauma, a loss of sincerity, and an anxiety about the world... In that sense Rothko seems the perfected embodiment of this negative energy, especially in how eerily his colors meld into each other as a form of visual static. The negativity of experience, and then personal trauma generally carried these painters from destruction through depression, and then into a general cynicism.

There is a great deal of trauma, depression, etc... in Modernist literature. This is surely true if one thinks of Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc... There's the whole "Lost Generation" thing. But I don't see this as having a great of an impact on the visual arts. Rothko is a true latecomer to Modernism... coming of age at the very moment of the shift toward Post-Modernism in the form of Pop Art and the Neo-Duchamp/Neo-Dada work of Johns and Rauschenberg. But Dada was really a minor movement... and along with the Post-WWI German artists of the New Objectivity Movement offered one of the few world views marked by trauma, cynicism, horror, etc... The central Modernists: Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Kandinsky, etc... may have had moments of negativity... but this is not the main feeling one gets from their work which in many ways is very optimistic and forward-looking.

I don't think it's the irony itself as it is the way the irony is handled. I don't find, eg, that the irony in Jane Austen, Shakespeare, or, to use a different medium, Hitchcock gets old because they tend to be more subtle about it. So much of PM seems to beat the audience over the head with the irony, like they're scared to death the audience won't get it. It creates the affect of a laughing doofus beside you screaming "isn't it ironic? It's so ironic! Because it's not serious or literal! See how ironic it is?! Please see it!"

I don't think PM thinks that irony and humor creates cohesion, but rather I think irony and humor is their reaction to the realization that cohesion is impossible. It's more of a "let's not stress about this fragmentation, let's just play with it." In a way, PM strikes me as a reversion to childlike sensibilities, one in which all of the weighty concerns of M are replaced with a "kids in a sandbox" mentality. Irony and humor are, after all, the effects of putting yourself outside of the concerns of what's being observed, an "I refuse to be bound up in the emotional/philosophic plights of those I'm depicting.

Yes... there is a good deal of this to Post-Modernism. In one of the first books on Post-Modernist Art and Architecture there was an essay... I believe it was by Umberto Eco... in which he contrasts the older tradition with Modernism with Post-Modernism. The lover of the older tradition simply says to his loved one, "I love you." The Modernist needs to find a new way to say the same thing. The Post-Modernist says "As the bard once said, 'I love you.' "

In other words, the Post-Modernist wants to say "I love you"... but that would be cliche... even if put into a new Modern form. Thus he has to be ironic... not say what he wants to say directly but rather appropriate the words of another. But even this is not enough. He must let the audience in on the fact that he is appropriating these words... and that the sentiment he is expressing is clearly cliche. Ultimately, the Post-Modernist does indeed come off as a doofus... a well-educated doofus that is overly proud of his knowledge and who thinks entirely too much.

[cacian]

Stlukes I have to say I feel the pile of bricks as anything but art. minimalist expressionism should not be about a shape and its visual. it should be about the interior feelings and how it draws people to realise that less is nothing and not less is more.

[JBI]

Stlukes I have to say I feel the pile of bricks as anything but art. minimalist expressionism should not be about a shape and its visual. it should be about the interior feelings and how it draws people to realise that less is nothing and not less is more.

Says a poster who cannot write a coherent sentence. Oh the irony, quite post modern of you.

[JBI]

St. Lukes, do you think the fact that the US never got hit really, in terms of physical violence (Pearl Harbor being an isolated example) had something to do with the optimism that you claim prevailed within the cultural transition from First through post 2nd world war? I have a gut feeling that in terms of post-modernism as the ironizing of all grand visions, the US has rather held on quite tightly to an inherent cultural sense of identity - in that the country as a whole, and the culture in general seems to still take itself seriously. This confidence in superiority and in a nationalist mythology seems to have really taken a beating elsewhere.

In China for example, the modernist period is incredibly negative, and iconoclastic. Strangely Mao is one of the greatest cultural protectors in comparison, in that he actually gave a new vision to a people beaten by time, war, and famine, and converted it into a cultural sense of purpose comparable to the US after the American Civil War.

Japan's modernist transition basically shifted to a form of intense military fascism in keeping with all the modern demons of imperialism and war that catch onto national emergence. But like the United States they somehow retained their sense of international isolation, and went full circle back to a nationalist mythology of clean superior, modern, advanced, civilized.

I think as a culture in general, the American public actually believes in a sort of significance of the "Shot heard Around the World" and all other images of the American cultural legacy. The tarnishing of the history by violence, racism, and many other horrors seems to have not actually eroded the resolve of the established myth. The criticism we find in the US is not the sort of criticism we see as anti-establishment, or iconoclastic, but rather a covering up, and a shifting of cultural responsibilities. In that sense, the public of the US, from my understanding sees something like the Vietnam war from a "Bring our sons home, they should not be dying there in the jungle for no reason" which is true, but not as post-nationalist (or post-modern) as "get out of Vietnam, we are killing innocent civilians to a toll of 5+million".

The first one, has a sort of redemption for the culture of war, in that it ignores the true victims, and instead makes something heroic and tragic of the means of the perpetration. This enables a sort of self-centered culture to continue, without actually having the sympathy for the rest of the world. This in a sense is the end of a myth of the benevolence of government, perhaps, but not of an American myth of purpose, which is what it should have been.

As a mainstream movement, we are still completely romantic in perspective and understanding of our artistic world. We see art, regardless of age, through a romantic lens, however jaded we are. Post-modernism should probably just be dismissed as a gimmick from the cold-war that didn't really work well. A sort of bad cultural experiment.

Now, that being said, in this post-modern era we totally see the emergence of world literatures that are more or less nationalist in perspective. Marquez, for instance, is very much held as a cultural, or area specific author, rather than a local author. In that sense we could say the cohesion that was supposed to come with globalization did not really relieve borders, but rather allowed us to peak over the fence. Marquez is very much a modernist author, in line with what Faulkner started. His world is very much the same as Faulkner's Mississippi in a different setting and time. Something like Midnight's Children is also very much a modernist continuation of the same form of story. These are all good authors, mind you, but they never "post" modernized.

In that sense, I am waiting for an American novelist who is not an American novelist. The country seems to hover over every book, and every author. The same can be said for Canada, and much of Europe, and surely China as well. We live in a world where ardent nationalism is making a big comeback. The gimmicks of post-modernism essentially evaporated.

I am very curious how somebody now could write as an international author, since all I have seen has indicated the opposite as a trend. Even something like the Nobel prize has become a nationalized contest, with Mo Yan not winning, but China winning, or Turkey, or Sweden, or France, or wherever. All this is rooted in the great nationalist novels of history, the most successful being undoubtedly War and Peace - the Prokofiev Opera, however brilliant, is even more so nationally proud.

So in my estimate, novel post-modernism, or literary post-modernism is very much a rebounding of nationalism, especially as it transpired from the late 70s. It seems the Regan years, or in Canada's case, the Trudeau years, or the Thatcher years, or the Deng Xiaoping years really hit home with the message that the nation is back and heavily present in the background. Post-colonialism could be argued to be doing something very similar in the post-empire world. Surely we as readers seem to be looking for as much.

A somewhat off topic question for American posters, but do American school children actually recite the pledge of allegiance every day?

[MorpheusSandman]

Ultimately, the Post-Modernist does indeed come off as a doofus... a well-educated doofus that is overly proud of his knowledge and who thinks entirely too much.

Do you find any exceptions to this? I can think of a few, yet most of them seem to me now, upon reflection, perhaps more Transmodern than PM. I've often heard James Merrill referred to as PM. Specifically, people point to a relatively early poem (The Butterfly, IIRC) in which he breaks off mid-way to discuss his habit of turning everything into "allegory and symbolism," and what he wouldn't give to be plain-spoken. So people often say that "that fractured self-awareness is very PM." Yet I found the tone of it distinctly different to most PM. In Merrill it felt quite organic, as if he was using this awareness to seriously analyze himself and his art. There's a wonderful study on Merrill called Knowing Innocence that suggests something along the lines of finding a balance between the "knowing" world of PM and the "innocent" world of, say, romantic sincerity. Maybe that's why I find myself drawn to him more than most PMists.


I think I find something similar in the PM of Godard. Godard may have been the exemplar of PM techniques and tones, but he also clearly cared very deeply about cinema and politics, so when he's using cinema to critique cinema, it feels, strangely, both sincere and ironic, or perhaps one could say it's sincere and ironic on different levels; ironic in what's being depicted, but sincere in what's being said through that irony. Yet even in Godard there is often too much of that "well-educated doofus... who thinks too much." He hated, eg, allowing the audience to indulge in any emotional catharsis and wanted them constantly aware that they were watching a work of fiction that had "designs" on them.

One thing that occurred to me is that perhaps this PMist attitude towards irony is intended to shield them from criticisms of unoriginality? A way to say "see, I know where all this comes from, so you can't call me unoriginal!"? Call it a kind of proleptic artistry.

[cacian]

Says a poster who cannot write a coherent sentence. Oh the irony, quite post modern of you.

what is it you do not like about what I said?
I may not write a coherent sentence but I do initiate coherent threads such as this one for you to get the opportunity to criticise me.
I may not be an artist but I have an opinion when it comes to a pile of bricks. from where I am standing it looks like someone has come to the end of a road or shall I say the pavement. art is not a formality it is a statement.
concrete does not have a statement. it has hard labour written on it.
minimalism according to my understanding is something that indulges in minimalist ideas to encourage creativity and not halt it. this pile of bricks sends the idea that art is a visual manuscript upon which weight is thrown upon.
minimalism should initiate small overtures/steps that lead to a different level of artistic thinking. for example use a single colour to portray a single idea. minimalist is a miniaturist.
a single stroke of brush to convey a single thought. that is minimalism for me.
in other word small but precise or small but intensive.

[mortalterror]

A somewhat off topic question for American posters, but do American school children actually recite the pledge of allegiance every day?

They did when I was in school. It's a nice little ritual that reinforces principles and binds a community together. Reminds me a lot of how we used to say the Lord's Prayer in Sunday school. Just replace the cross with a flag, and forgiveness with liberty and they might as well be the same thing. The Muslim thrice daily call to prayer must create a rock hard sense of cultural identity. Singing a national anthem at the occassional ball game probably can't begin to compare.