Thursday, February 7

Chapter 7 Reading Notes

-For French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, simulation is the new image paradigm that replaces representation.
-Simulacra stand on their own without requiring recourse to real objects or worlds elsewhere. Within Baudrillard’s terms, the hyperreal overtakes the real and simulacra rise, partly through new media forms, as the new forms of postmodern existence.

*hyperreal-a term coined by French theorist Jean Baudrillard that refers to a world in which codes of reality are used to simulate reality in cases where there is no referent in the real world. Hyperreality is thus a simulation of reality in which various elements function to emphasize their “realness”.

-Postmodernism dispels the idea that surface does not contain meaning in itself, or that structures lie beneath the mask of surface appearances.

*surface-the idea in postmodernism that objects have no depth or profound meaning, but instead exist only at the level of surface. This is in contrast to the idea in modernism that the real meaning or something is below the surface and can be found through acts of interpretation.

-It is hard to identify a precise origin for postmodernism, though most critics associate it with the period after 1968.
-Some theorists have used the term “postmodern” to describe the postwar “cultural logic of late capitalism”, a phrase famously used by cultural critic Fredric Jameson as the subtitle of his 1991 book on postmodernism.

*globalization-a term used increasingly toward the end of the 20th century to describe a set of conditions escalating since the postwar period. These conditions include increased rates of migration, the rise of multinational corporations, the development of global communications and transportation systems, and the decline of the sovereign nation-state, and the shrinking of the world through commerce and communication.

-It is widely agreed that there is no precise moment of rupture between the modern and the postmodern.
-It is important to remember that aspects of postmodernism and modernism have coexisted throughout and since the last decades of the 20th century.

~Modernism~
-German scholar Jurgen Habermas explains that the concept of the modern has been used over and over again by societies since as long ago as the late 5th century. In these uses, the term expresses the self-consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to a past in antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition from old to new or to model itself on a classical past.
-Modernity reached its height in the 19th century and into the early 20th century, with the increased movement of populations from rural communities into cities and the escalation of industrial capitalism.

-The feeling that life was undergoing a revolutionary change also produced a general cultural anxiety. The breaking down of traditions allowed for people to have a sense of infinite possibilities, yet also generated fears about the loss of the security of those traditions.
-Modernism was based on the traditional idea of the human subject. The subject is understood in this context as self-knowing, unified, and whole.
-This concept of the subject was revised by a broad array of contemporary thinkers during the period of modernity. (Freud wrote about the subject as an entity governed by the forces of the unconscious. Marx emphasized that human beings were collectively the products of and in the control of the forces of labor and capital. Foucault saw the subject as an entity produced within and through the discourses and institutional practices of the Enlightenment)

*discourses-in general, the socially organized process of talking about a particular subject matter. According to Michel Foucault, discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something.

*repression-a term in psychoanalytic theory that refers to the process by which the individual relegates to and keeps within the unconscious those particular thoughts, feelings, memories, or desires that are too difficult to deal with. Freud postulated that we repress that which produces fear, anxiety, shame, or other negative emotions within us, an that this repression is active and ongoing.

-Foucault took Freud’s idea that we repress emotions, desires, and anxieties unconsciously in order to keep them in check, and proposed instead that repression does not result in leaving things unsaid or in inaction. Instead, repression is productive of activities, meanings, and sexualities.

*pastiche-a style of plagiarizing, quoting, and borrowing from previous styles with no reference to history or a sense of rules. In architecture, a pastiche would be a mixing of classical motifs with modern elements in an aesthetic that does not reference the historical meanings of those styles. Pastiche is an aspect of postmodern style.

-In art, modernism was characterized by radical styles that questioned traditions of representational painting.

*Abstract expressionism-a style of abstract art, which prevailed in the post-World War II era until the mid-1950s in the U.S. and Europe, that was characterized by an emphasis on abstraction as expressive of contemporary anxiety.

-Concept, process, and performance were essential aspects of many modern artists’ practices, and were the source of categories designating subtypes of modern art.

*conceptual art- a style of art that emerged in the 1960s that focused on the idea of concept over material object. An attempt to counter the increased commercialism of the art world, conceptual art presented ideas rather than art works that could be bought and sold , and thus worked to shift the focus to the creative process and away from the art market.

*sublime-a term in aesthetic theory, specifically in the work of 18th century theorist Edmund Burke, that sets out to evoke experiences so momentous that they inspire intense venerations in the viewer or listener.

-an emphasis on form in modernism was also expressed as a kind of reflexivity in which the artwork comments on itself and its own process of production.

*reflexivity-the practice of making viewers aware of the material and technical means of production by featuring those aspects as the “content” of a cultural production. Reflexivity is both a part of the tradition of modernism, with its emphasis on form, and of postmodernism with its array of intertextual references and ironic marking of the frame of the image and its status as a cultural product.

*cinema verite-a movement of documentary cinema in the 1960s, in some contexts referred to as direct cinema, that promoted a naturalistic, supposedly unmediated recording of reality through the use of long takes with minimal editing, hand-held cameras, and the rejection of voice-over narration and scripts.

*direct cinema-closely related to cinema verite, direct cinema involved recording synchronized sound and footage of real-life action spontaneously, as it unfolded before the camera and crew.

~Postmodernism~
-postmodernism describes a set of conditions and practices occurring in late modernity.
-Modernism and postmodernism are not concepts that are strictly period-specific.
-The term “postmodernity” refers to the experience of living in a postmodern culture, and the upheaval of modernist principles and frameworks that involves.

-Postmodernism is often described as a questioning of the master narratives of society.

*Master narratives-a framework that aims to comprehensively explain all aspects of a society or world. Examples include religion, science, Marxism, etc. that intend to explain all facets of life.

-French theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard characterized postmodern theory as profoundly skeptical of these metanarratives, their universalism, and the premise that they could define the human condition.
-One could say that postmodernism’s central goal is to put all assumptions under scrutiny in order to reveal the values that underlie all systems of thought, and thus to question the ideologies within them that are seem as natural. This means that the idea of authenticity is always in question in postmodernism.

*presence-the quality of immediate experience that has been traditionally contrasted with representation and with those aspects of world that are the product of human mediation. The quality of being “present” has thus been understood historically to mean that one can be in the world in a way that is direct and experienced through the senses, and unmediated by human belief, ideologies, language systems, or forms of representation.

-Postmodernism asserts that there is no such thing as a pure, unmediated experience.

*polysemy-the quality of having many potential meanings. A work of art whose meaning is ambiguous is polysemic because it can have many different meanings to different viewers

-postmodernism emphasizes irony and a sense of one’s own involvement in low or popular culture.

*parody-cultural productions that make fun of more serious works through humor and satire while maintaining some of their elements such as plot or character.

~Reflexivity~
-self-awareness of one’s inevitable immersion in everyday and popular culture has led some postmodern artists to produce works which reflexivity examine their own position in relation to the artwork.
-The early work of photographer Cindy Sherman is a good example of this approach. Sherman produced a series of photographs in which she struck poses evoking actresses in film stills.
-Rather than taking a critical stance from outside the image and its mode of production, Sherman inserts herself not only into the image but into the process of its production.
-Her double position as both producer of the scene and object of the gaze, introduces an edge of irony and reflexivity that sets her work apart from its more popular counterparts.

*referent-In semiotics, a terms that refers to the object itself, as opposed to its representation.

-Postmodern theory sees the surface as the primary element of social life, as opposed to the idea that the true meaning is hidden underneath.
-Bertolt Brecht, a well known German Marxist playwright and critic of the 1920s and 30s, proposed the concept of distanciation as a technique for getting viewers to extract themselves from the narrative in order to see the means through which it gets us to buy into ideology.

~The Copy, pastiche, and institutional critique~
*replicas- a copy of an art work that was produced by the original artist or under his/her supervision. A replica of a painting therefore would be another painting that had been made to be as close to it as possible. A replica is not an exact copy or a reproduction.

-One of the foundational texts of postmodernism is Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas, a 1977 book that takes readers through a tour of the architectural appropriations that line the glitzy, sordid, consumer-oriented streets of Las Vegas at the low end of popular architectural culture.

-Postmodern architecture can be seen as a kind of plagiarizing, quoting, and borrowing of previous and current styles.
-In modernism, style follows a linear course. In postmodernism, styles can be mixed with no sense that we are moving toward something better.
-The notion that perhaps nothing new can be made, which implies to a certain degree that the idea of something completely new is a fallacy, is a fundamental aspect of postmodern art. Here, then, not only does the copy have the same value as the original, it often functions to completely undermine the idea of original value and authenticity.

-Much postmodern art is not concerned with representing reality but with rethinking the function of art and emphasizing the role of institutional context in producing meaning.

~Popular culture: parody and reflexivity~
*intertextuality-the referencing of one text within another. In popular culture, intertextuality refers to the incorporation of meanings of one text within another in a reflexive fashion.

-in advertising, intertextuality means to tap into consumers’ memories of other ads, and to speak to consumers as savvy viewers.

~Addressing the postmodern consumer~
*metacommunication-a discussion or exchange in which the topic is the exchange taking place itself. In pop culture, this refers to ads or television shows in which the topic is the viewer’s act of viewing the cultural product.

-metacommunication can be thought of as a postmodern strategy of addressing viewers/consumers, in that it appears to address viewers as more sophisticated and knowing.

*commodity sign- a term that refers to the semiotic meaning of a commodity that is constructed in an advertisement. The representation of a commodity, or the product itself, and its meaning together form the commodity sign.

*hyperrealism-a term coined by French theorist Jean Baudrillard that refers to a world in which codes of reality are used to simulate reality in cases where there is no referent in the real world. Hyperreality is thus a simulation of reality in which various elements function to emphasize their “realness”. In postmodern style, hyperrealism refers to the use of naturalistic effects to give an advertisement , for example, the look of a realist documentary yet which is understood to be a construction of the real.

-In general, postmodern anti-ads discuss their products little if at all. Instead, they do the work of establishing a tone which will then be associated with their brand name.

-Postmodernism addresses viewers as both complex readers and media and image conscious individuals.
-Postmodernism is also about acknowledging the overlap between the categories of art, commerce, news, and advertising.
-Postmodernism signals the rise of a generalized self-consciousness, which can be seen in both the reflexivity and the metacommunication of postmodern style and in the constant questioning of traditional metanarratives in all facets of everyday life.

KEY TERMS
*postmodernism- Art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes.

*postmodernism (Wikipedia)- a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism, which is equally esoteric. Largely influenced by the disillusionment induced by the Second World War, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality.

*Popular culture- Low (as opposed to high) culture, parts of which are known as kitsch and camp. With the increasing economic power of the middle- and lower-income populace since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, artists created various new diversions to answer the needs of these groups. These have included pulp novels and comic books, film, television, advertising, "collectibles," and tract housing.

*conceptual art- a style of art that emerged in the 1960s that focused on the idea of concept over material object. An attempt to counter the increased commercialism of the art world, conceptual art presented ideas rather than art works that could be bought and sold , and thus worked to shift the focus to the creative process and away from the art market.

*Found art (the ready made)- describes art created from the undisguised, but often modified, use of objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a mundane, utilitarian function. Marcel Duchamp was the originator of this in the early 20th-century.

*Assemblage -is an artistic process in which a three-dimensional artistic composition is made from putting together found objects.

*Appropriation- To appropriate something involves taking possession of it. In the visual arts, the term appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of new work. The borrowed elements may include images, forms or styles from art history or from popular culture, or materials and techniques from non-art contexts.

*Sampling in Music- In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or element of a new recording.

*Dada- is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature (poetry, art manifestoes, art theory), theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti war politic through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works.

*Surrealism- An art movement of the early 20th century in both literature and the visual arts that focused on the role of the unconscious in representation and in dismantling the opposition between the real and the imaginary. The Surrealists were interested in unlocking the unconscious and working against the rational.

*Marcel Duchamp- Marcel Duchamp- (1887 – 1968) was a French artist (he became an American citizen in 1955) whose work and ideas had considerable influence on the development of post-World War II Western art, and whose advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the Western art world. While he is most often associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements. His works include dubbing a urinal “art” and naming it The Fountain.
*Sherrie Levine- (1947 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania) is a photographer and conceptual artist. Much of her work is in the form of very direct image appropriation. Levine is best known for the work shown in "After Walker Evans," her 1981 solo exhibition at the Metro Pictures gallery. The works consist of famous Walker Evans photographs, rephotographed by Levine out of an Evans exhibition catalog, and then presented as Levine's artwork with no further manipulation of the images.
*Michael Ray Charles (1967- ) is an African American painter born in Lafayette, Louisiana. His graphically styled paintings investigate racial stereotypes drawn from a history of American advertising, product packaging, billboards, radio jingles, and television commercials. Charles lives in Texas and teaches at the University of Texas at Austin. Of his most recent works, The Three Graces is a sculpture that draws up the KKK.