Re: Defining "post-modernism" -- WAS--- First define "post-modern"photography, dammit
This is more a 'rattling on' than anything . . . and not a critique of Katherine either . . but more thoughts on PoMo for it is not easy, really, to grasp . . neither is the Post Structuralist movement it came from. One reason for Cindy Sher-person's success is a critique of "the way things are/were" in regard to women as portrayed in movies. The role of a woman was cliched yet employed for centuries w/ some exceptions like George Sand, the Bronte sisters, Mary Cassat, etc. WWII was a sort of climax of the thinking of "through the valley death rode the five hundred" by Tennyson reflecting upon Roger Fenton's now famous, and then famed, photograph. That charge of the light brigade created soldiers worn and torn with difficulties facing them upon returning home such as our present Iraq/ Afghanistan and Viet Nam soldiers have encountered. Some forty years later Rudyard Kipling wrote a sequel as a sort of plea to provide social welfare for the soldiers. This has not changed and is omnipresent today just as the attitude toward women did not change . . but, possibly, through PoMo intervention (one might say) social attitudes can be conscripted to change prevalent beliefs. How the he** we ended up with these dopes running our country today will be a lasting puzzle to me but is one the reasons for the rise of PoMo ideas. Second . . staying on the theme of war, from the Crimean to the Franco-Prussian, WWI and II, it was a European battle field littered with the bones of boys. Art, via photography, began fascinating protests right around the time of Manet. Remember the shooting of Emperor Maximillian? Done a few years after the charge of the light brigade. You might not know that Manet was a ridiculed person of his time for his 'daring' art, particularly that image of Olympia. Photography was the source for Manet and ideas such as foreshortening. The 'Dead Toreador' is similar to Mantegna's 'Dead Christ' some 400 years earlier so there is a hint of history and an acceptance of modernity (photography) in Manet's rendering. One of Manet's best friends was Marcel Proust who wrote, as you all know, of the decadence and ultimate failure of bourgeois society. They were, to a degree, flaneurs. Then Picasso/Braque break the space opened to them by Cezanne. William James, Proust and James Joyce, then Ezra Pound open the mind to waterfall-like pouring out of thought. Talk about cross- disciplinary. Then Europe is basically broke and we have a depression and Japan is still a feudal society and WWII brings us the cure-all A- Bomb and Abstract Expressionism is born. You, your parents, their parents and their grandparents have all been living in anger, represented by war, by killing and, oh well, you all know. Remember God is Dead in the 60's? Everything has been questioned pretty much since the 60's: freedom of speech, sex, drugs, diversity, the rich etc. What remains is a continued distrust of leadership. It is echoed in our society by overwight and under- educated children, the egregious SUV and multi-trillion $ debt on credit cards and society. No wonder PoMo is little understood for it is a critique of all this BS feeding off our veriest self. At the least it is a philosophical look at greed and excess. Perhaps some of the art which I really despise such as Richard Prince and Jeff Koons, does point out just how dumb we are and art collectors agree: we are dumb, so they buy it. Francis Bacon just sold big at Sotherby's. Koon's large valentine went for, what? Twelve Mill? To me the invidious aspect of this art is that it fools the people. Manet didn't but they very much thought he was not for them. They like Koons. We're in trouble . . that's what PM says as well. Jack
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