Art & Post-Modernism
Mid-Town Jewel
Relative to people in-the-know, I do not know shit about art or the interpretation of it. Though I’ve been to Chicago, Denver, Toledo and Detroit’s art museums and thoroughly enjoyed each of them, I don’t profess to understand the complexities that go into defining and fully understanding what goes into it and how to interpret it. I have a very elementary and baseline understanding of the different eras and periods, I am able to grasp some of the symbolisms and references but I struggle particularly with modern art, periods from expressionism forward. A few Saturdays ago, I took a day trip down to mid-town and went to what I consider to be the best art museum that I’ve been to, I find the pieces that they’ve been able to acquire and the fact that they sit 18 minutes away, incredible. The path that I took was somewhat chronological, first starting in the Europe with the Middle Ages and renaissance then to the neoclassical period of Greek and Roman art of the 17th and 18th centuries. From there the era went into the direction of Monet, Matisse, and impressionism and from there into post-impressionism.. From impressionism and post-impressionism, the exhibit led into expressionism and then into contemporary works of the modern age including postmodernism. While I admit that I am biased with a much higher appreciation for the works of the renaissance and neoclassical period, I dedicated time to the modern era and what I left with was insight and clarity on a subject in which I know nothing about but that revealed to me as a microcosm of where we are at culturally.
Appetite for Deconstruction
For us laymen, working-class, non-art snobs there is the idea that exists that we cannot possibly understand the brilliance and complexities of today’s art. In my head I am picturing one of these obscure works that looks completely random and meaningless and looking at it thinking, “I don’t get it” and come to find out, the works are highly revered and valuable indicating that it is well above my head. What this trip to the DIA, combined with getting introduced to critiques of post-modernism, I have learned that it is not that today’s works of art is something that my simple uncultured brain cannot comprehend, it is that it is quite simply, deconstructionist garbage. My introduction into post-modernism was as a college student, much of what my classes taught me was through a lens of a post-modern interpretation. My learning of the faults within the idea has come recently, and although there are aspects to it that are good perspective, I have quickly learned that it is a cancer that has an insatiable hunger for culture and constructivism. Post-modernism got introduced to academe through French theorists in the late 20th century, since its introduction it has consumed education, art, and culture more broadly as a result. Post-modernism was a reactionary movement that sought to deconstruct the age of enlightenment, a time period of incredible human progress during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. The age of enlightenment introduced western Europe to science, logic, wisdom, often referred to as “The age of reason.” Through enlightenment, we were able to construct democracy and individual freedoms such as expression and speech, tolerance of one another’s thoughts and religions. This time period represented the decentralization of knowledge, instead of being handed down to people from institutions such as the catholic church or kings and queens where it can be contorted to serve the interests of those in power, knowledge was believed to have been found from within through accumulated life experiences combined with sciences. Figures of the Age of Enlightenment included, Voltaire, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Paine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Condorcet, Adam Smith and many others whose works were inspired by great thinkers such as Isaac Newton and Galileo, the great stoics such as Aristotle and Marcus Aurelias. Through the age of enlightenment, we learned how to make sense of the world in a secular way through natural philosophy which included the creation of biology, chemistry, geology, anatomy, etc. It is from these studies during the enlightenment otherwise known as “The age of Academies,” that we have learned nearly everything that brought us to this modern age of scientific achievement. What post-modernism, the theory and perspective that is dominating today’s higher education and culture represents, can be aptly summarized in its approach to the age of enlightenment as, “I doubt all that.”
My “Truth”
Post-modernism which made its way into academics through theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and others that introduced the idea of a broad skepticism and outright denial of the general philosophical viewpoints of the enlightenment age. While the post-modern belief that there are an infinite number of ways of interpretation is correct, what it does is completely dismiss the objective reality. To quote Britannica.com, “Postmodernists deny that there are aspects of reality that are objective; that there are statements about reality that are objectively true or false; that it is possible to have knowledge of such statements (objective knowledge); that it is possible for human beings to know some things with certainty; and that there are objective, or absolute, moral values. Reality, knowledge, and value are constructed by discourses; hence they can vary with them. This means that the discourse of modern science, when considered apart from the evidential standards internal to it, has no greater purchase on the truth than do alternative perspectives, including (for example) astrology and witchcraft. Postmodernists sometimes characterize the evidential standards of science, including the use of reason and logic, as “Enlightenment rationality.” It is precisely due to the infusion of post-modern beliefs that we now have in society not only a differing set of opinions but now also have a differing set of facts. In recent years we’ve heard the term “My truth” instead of just simply, “Truth.” What “My truth” represents is the moving away from objectivity and the elevation of subjectivity and this is no more relevant than in the world of art. Post-modernism fits the current society that we find ourselves in because it is an ideology of entitled and elitist snobbery posturing as brilliant by critiquing the great accomplishments of humanity through the lens of hindsight. This, is the source of the “Critical” theories from the universities that are often incoherent and contradictory thought characterized as profundity. It is the ideology of those who cannot create and construct so they instead resent and critique, they seek to deconstruct or “Dismantle” all that great people have previously constructed. It is the ideology of the petulant and jealous child who degrades something accomplished by one of their siblings. Post-modernism seeks to erase the belief in universal hierarchies, the belief that some things are simply and objectively better than others, in the art world this is evidenced by the degradation of great works such as the Sistine Chapel and the elevation of today’s senseless works and the claim that they are of equal accomplishment and achievement. It is no coincidence that the same halls of academe that purvey post-modernism are the same halls where socialist-marxism is the chosen economic theory, it fits perfectly for the entitled who do not possess or have respect for the ability to create industry so they must stick their hands out and say, “Where’s my share?” Post-modernism’s take on biological sex is in the form of gender ideology, the denying of the objective male and female, and the creation of a subjective interpretation of biological sex. In the world of art, it is the degradation of the great works of previous periods and the construction of incoherent subjective works that hide behind, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Façade
Recently a painting featuring a blank white canvas went for $20 million dollars. To draw a quote from art critic and journalist Madeline Phelps of the Eagle Times, “One of the most egregious aspects of the postmodern art world is the phenomenon known as “ready-made art” which could more effectively be called “random objects assigned convoluted meanings in order to be labeled as art so that some delusional jerk can make a quick buck.” What’s most frustrating about ready-made art is that it requires no effort whatsoever, and the so-called “thought” put behind it is often too ridiculous or nonsensical to even comprehend. For instance, if I crumpled up a tissue and displayed it on a stand, as one might display a sculpture, and then referred to it as “a symbol representing the fragility of the human psyche,” critics of the postmodern art community would actually buy it. It wouldn’t be any different than the infamous banana taped to an art gallery wall that sold for $120,000 before being consumed by a “performance artist.” To quote Phelps once more, “The postmodern art world of today is unbalanced, undefined, and uninspired. The best and most simple way for us to combat this unfortunate downfall is to ignore the art that has little to no effort put into it and to continually embrace the art that does.” While walking through the exhibits I noticed from the middle-age moving forward the works became gradually more refined and impressive to the point that depictions were closely resembling photos due to their incredible level of detail. Once the paintings reached this point of near perfect depictions, there was the movement immediately backwards through deconstruction and abstraction, ridding itself of form and detail. I see this as a metaphor that exemplifies the pattern that cultures, societies, and civilizations go through. We go through a period of struggle, then construction and achievement to eventually reach prosperity. Once a civilization or society reaches the point of prosperity it brings about comfort then complacency and becomes hellbent on being overly-critical and obsessed with picking itself apart, tearing down what took an incredible amount of hard work and struggle to produce. I do not know the answer to the age old question of whether art follows culture or vice versa but I do know they mirror one another. I do know, however, that it is not that we cannot simply comprehend the complexities within today’s artistic, academic, or literary works of postmodernism, rather, it is elitist stupidity masquerading as profundity.