Part III. Postmodernism‟s Expansions: The Framers,

Artists, and Architects of Postmodernism

French critical theorists’ primary goal was

decentering- denying everything that implied a center or

hierarchy. All established assumptions could be inverted.

Barthes- death of the author, who originates a work; it is not “how do I

construct the world?” but “how does the world construct me?”; “The

birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”

Derrida- everything is a text and deconstruction is the marking of the

unmarked

Foucault- discourses that produce knowledge are charged from within

by power relations

Baudrillard- put Marxian analysis into a linguistic domain, displacement

of exchange-value from commodities to their representatives, logos;

the displacement is understood by way of the simulacrum, in which

reality is replaced by its representation.

Simulacra are, therefore, copies without originals.

Art theorist-critic-historians in the United States:

Rosalind Krauss, started October with Annette Michelson

Craig Owens

Douglas Crimp

Benjamin Buchloh

Hal Foster

All contributors to October

In place of the modernist-formalist Greenberg,

these postmodernist art theorist-critic-historians

translated and ensconced the French critical theorists.

Art Since 1900 editors are Krauss, Buchloh, Foster, and

Yve-Alain Bois.

Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-

object

Representational art- has a referent, the „real world‟

But for postmodernists, who reflect the postmodern

condition, there is a crisis of the referent, of „reality.‟

“Representations…instead of coming after reality, in an

imitation of it, now precede and construct reality. Our „real‟ emotions

imitate those we see on film and read about in pulp romances; our

„real‟ desires are structured for us by advertising images; the „real‟ of

our politics is prefabricated by television news and Hollywood

scenarios of leadership; our „real‟ selves are congeries and repetition

of all these images, strung together by narratives not of our own

making.”

The work of art was, therefore, treated as a kind of

unstable image-text complex, whose meanings are

endless and relational, versus the singleness and self-

containedness of the art-as-object.

Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-

object

In terms of language, in the vein of Derrida‟s “nothing is

outside-the-text”:

Reality is composed of circulating signifiers, meaning “self

and society become simply constructs of language,”

preceding and constructing that which is signified.

The crisis of the referent assures a multiplicity of readings,

and of realities. There is no “original” reality but a

multiplicity of realities.

Reflects Baudrillard‟s simulacra- reality is replaced by

representations!

Art as Representation vs. Art as Pure Form/Art-as-

object

So why photography for postmodernists?

Because reality is replaced by representations,

Because a “photograph is a multiple without an original,”

and because photography (film, video, etc) turns the real

into representations of themselves in the documents of

ephemeral postminimal, process, performance, site

specific, and conceptual art -art that challenges art-as-

object-

photography (film, video, etc) is mobilized by

postmodernist artists who understand art as

representation in contrast to art as pure form.

Sherrie Levine, Untitled, After Edward Weston I, 1980,

photography, Postmodernism

“photograph is a multiple without an original” “the „author‟ of this image is,

therefore, dazzlingly multiple”

Eleanor Antin, Representational Painting, 1970s, video,

Postmodernism

“theater of the self”~“readymade selves”

Feminist Performance art whose Video and photography

documentation turns the real into representations of

themselves; happens for all documents of ephemeral

postminimal, process, performance, site specific, and

conceptual art -art that challenges art-as-object-

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #7, 1970s, black and

white photography, Postmodernism

“Readymade selves”- selfhood is built on representation, on appropriating

his or her “self” -movie stars she impersonated, characters she implied,

directors whose styles she pastiched, and film genres she simulated

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #39, 1970s, black and

white photography, Postmodernism

Images are feminine but also Feminist in their dialogue with the “gaze”- the traces

of the male gaze trained on a waiting and defenseless female; the ways the

female reacts to this gaze, entreating it, ignoring it, placating it

under Patriarchy- Men were the speakers, the makers of meaning while women -

the spoken for- were the bearers of meaning, the passive objects and never the

agent of vision

Barbara Kruger, We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture, 1980s,

photography and typeface, Postmodernism

Second Generation Feminism; challenges institutional frame of gender, that both

artist and viewer are male, and binaries inherent to language and thus the structure

of society- that woman is essentially all nature, “marked” and limited, and man is

culture, “unmarked” with more options. Although woman here is the object of the

“gaze,” without vision of her own, referring to the narrative of the woman as object for

male subject, she speaks! Activates discourse, produces knowledge

Richard Prince, Untitled (Couple), 1970s, photography,

Postmodernism

Re-photographs captionless photographs from advertisements

and increases their size to the size of paintings

Richard Prince, Untitled (Four women looking in the

same direction) #1-#4, 1970s, photography,

Postmodernism

May 2003 Christie‟s auction, $175,000

Richard Prince, Untitled (cowboy), 1980s, photography,

Postmodernism

Re-photographed captionless photograph from a Marlboro

cigarette advertisement; he was attracted to social and

cultural stereotypes that doubled as the self‟s secret desires

and dreams

Baldessari uses movie imagery not to comment on mass

culture but to primarily use them as open-ended

signifiers—texts and images as open-ended signifiers—

He mobilizes the idea of the arbitrary nature of signs.

Any number of readings of his photoworks are possible!

John Baldessari, Concerning Diachronic/Synchronic

Time: Above/On/Under (with Mermaid), 1970s,

composite photowork- composed of six film stills

Postmodernism

For Blasted Allegories, “Baldessari photographed

images selected at random from a television screen,

using different color filters, because as he said:

‟The world constructed by the media seems to me a

reasonable surrogate for „real life,‟ whatever that is.‟”

John Baldessari, Blasted Allegories (Black and White

Sentence): Red to What is Red All Over and Black

and White, 1970s, composite photowork

Postmodernism