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POSTMODERNISM ATR
Book

Author

Qusay tariq
The first edition 2014

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Dedicate this book to all my friends and parents of., And all those interested in the art world.
Number Sixteen book is the first book in English, I apologize for all the grammatical errors because it is not a native speaker.

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Thanks I thank all who encourages art and literature in the world.

Thank Wikipedia : the free encyclopedia

I thank all the artists in the world for their contributions continuing to beautify the world. Serving humanity and human rights. I thank the makers of Facebook, Mr.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

I thank all my professors and all the fans. Thanks for all journalists who help to emerge

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Chapter One Defining Postmodernism

D
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efinition of postmodernism in English

of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one<postmodern times> <a postmodern metropolis>

a : of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature) b : of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language "postmodern feminism1

postmodernism Pronunciation: /pstmdnz()m/ noun [mass noun] a late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.2
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postmodern 2postmodernism in other Oxford dictionaries http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/postmodernism (6)

Derivatives postmodernist noun & adjective postmodernity Pronunciation: /-dnti/ noun

Postmodernity (alsospelled post-modernity or termed the postmodern condition) is generally used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century in the 1980s or early 1990sand that it was replaced by postmodernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity, while some believe that modernity ended after World War II. Postmodernity can mean a personal response to a postmodern society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or the state of being that is associated with a postmodern society. In most contexts it should be distinguished from postmodernism, the adoption of postmodern philosophies or traits in art, literature, culture and society.3

Postmodernism is a term that describes the postmodernist movement in the arts, its set of cultural tendencies and associated cultural movements. It is in general the era that follows Modernism. It frequently serves as an ambiguous overarching term for skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought.4

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism (7)

Firstly, postmodernism was a movement in architecture that rejected the modernist, avant garde, passion for the new. Modernism is here understood in art and architecture as the project of rejecting tradition in favour of going "where no man has gone before" or better: to create forms for no other purpose than novelty. Modernism was an exploration of possibilities and a perpetual search for uniqueness and its cognate-individuality. Modernism's valorization of the new was rejected by architectural postmodernism in the 50's and 60's for conservative reasons. They wanted to maintain elements of modern utility while returning to the reassuring classical forms of the past. The result of this was an ironic brick-a-brack or collage approach to construction that combines several traditional styles into one structure. As collage, meaning is found in combinations of already created patterns. Following this, the modern romantic image of the lone creative artist was abandoned for the playful technician (perhaps computer hacker) who could retrieve and recombine creations from the past--data alone becomes necessary. This synthetic approach has been taken up, in a politically radical way, by the visual, musical,and literary arts where collage is used to startle viewers into reflection upon the meaning of reproduction. Here, pop-art reflects culture (American). Let me give you the example of Californian culture where the person--though ethnically European, African, Asian, or Hispanic--searches for authentic or "rooted" religious experience by dabbling in a variety of religious traditions. The foundation of authenticity has been overturned as the relativism of collage has set in. We see a pattern in the arts and everyday spiritual life away from universal standards into an atmosphere of multidimentionality and complexity, and most importantly--the dissolving of distinctions. In sum, we could simplistically outline this movement in historical terms: 1. premodernism: Original meaning is possessed by authority (for example, the Catholic Church). The individual is dominated by tradition. 2. modernism: The enlightenment-humanist rejection of tradition and authority in favour of reason and natural science. This is founded upon the assumption of the autonomous individual as the sole source of meaning and truth--the Cartesian cogito. Progress and novelty are valorized within a linear conception of history--a history of a "real" world
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that becomes increasingly real or objectified. One could view this as a Protestant mode of consciousness. 3. postmodernism: A rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective, anonymous experience. Collage, diversity, the mystically unrepresentable, Dionysian passion are the foci of attention. Most importantly we see the dissolution of distinctions, the merging of subject and object, self and other. This is a sarcastic playful parody of western modernity and the "John Wayne" individual and a radical, anarchist rejection of all attempts to define, reify or re-present the human subject.5 postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal. Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characterisitic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philospher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism "cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself."6

Postmodern: adj. Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional
5 1993-2000 Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, Robin Parmar. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html
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http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html (9)

or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes: The post-modern mode of tapering the tops of buildings (Jane Holtz Kay). 7 This, in a nutshell, presents us with the problem of knowing what we are talking about when we talk of Postmodernism. In literary theory, it is associated with Deconstruction, Queer theory, and a general denigration of the idea that there should be standards, or that literary analysis can in any way or should in any way be objective In architecture, it is associated with an eclecticism that partakes of many traditional design elements, as opposed to the rigid standards of the international style of modern architecture (e.g., Mies Van Der Rohe). art, it is associated with non-traditional forms of sculpture, such as environmental art, and with various forms of performance art. .In music, it appears to be about a return to accessibility and a certain eclecticism about adapting historical styles. there a principle behind the reaction to Modernism? Or is the reaction composed, as I think must be the case, of radically different camps? Perhaps we should be explicit in stating that Postmodernism is, for us, the new collection of cultural critiques now entrenched in literary criticism and cultural studies programs. There is the criterion of reaction against modernism. There is eclecticism as a principle, or the denial of objectivity. And then there is the content of the cultural critique: group rights, ethical relativism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism. that there are actually at least two closely related concepts: there is postmodern*ity*, and also postmodern*ism*. These take as their direct contrasts, respectively, modernity and modernism. The adjective postmodern is applied to anything in a culture which is evidence of that culture instantiating postmodernity. These things are, of course, also what
7

William Thomas wrote: The American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, defines Postmodernism.This commentary is part of The Atlas Society's 1999 online "CyberSeminar" entitled "The Continental Origins of Postmodernism."

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the postmodernity of the culture consists of. Thus there is postmodern literature and postmodern theory. This last is what is called postmodernism, because, being a theory, a postmodern theory is an ism. There is also an alternate usage of modernism and postmodernism, wherein a particular theory is a modernism or a postmodernism; so Kantianism might be a modernism, while Nietzsches philosophy might be the first postmodernism. Modernity and postmodernity are thought of as cultural conditions, and the marks of these cultural conditions are to be found in a cultures literature, journalism, law, science, humane studies, and so on. Modernism and postmodernism are thought of as kinds of theoretical approaches; specifically, the kind of theoretical approaches which try to understand modernity or postmodernity and which are themselves instances of modernity or postmodernity showing itself in the culture. Postmodernism is postmodernity showing itself in the humanities, just as modernism was modernitys version of humane studies. Modernity is marked, by these postmodernists, by (at least) three features.8 1) The desire to overcome prejudice and achieve objectivity. 2) The notion that progress was here to stay. 3) A set of distinctions which were supposed to make it so that we overcame prejudice and retained progress. The first idea is best seen in Kant's What is Enlightenment?, which answers that Enlightenment is a critical mentality which persists in questioning dogma until it is either proved or gotten rid of. Objectivism, of course, is a modern philosophy (a modernism) by this criterion.

The second idea is best seen in Hegel and Marx. For both of these thinkers, there is an underlying force moving the world, and the direction it is taking us is good. This modern confidence in worldly progress was supposed to replace the pre-modern confidence in otherworldly salvation.
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http://www.atlassociety.org/defining-postmodernism (11)

I have seen many a writer propose that this modern idea has definitively gone down in flames: Auschwitzs flames. Objectivism is not a modern philosophy by this criterion, because Objectivisms indeterminism allows that progress is not necessary but merely contingent (on human choice). The third idea is also best seen in Kant. Fact-value, subject-object (i.e., self-world), mind-body, and so forth are all distinctions best formalized in Kant. These pairings have been the common currency of most modern schools of thought; that is, most modernisms have agreed to the common matrix of the Kantian distinctions (thats why theyre modernisms). One semi-formal definition Ive seen of postmodernism is that it is theory which breaks down the untenable dualities of modernism, with a litany of examples following.Objectivism is apparently postmodern (is a postmodernism) by this criterion. Actually, the first condition, but for its salience, should be seen as an instance of this third condition. Modernism dichotomized objectivity and prejudice, postmodernism rejects the dichotomy. So postmodernism is a feature of postmodernity. Postmodernity takes modernity as its contrast object. The dimensions along which the two differ are their view of prejudice and objectivity, their optimism about progress, and their acceptance of the litany of modernist dichotomies stemming largely from Kant (and a few other places and phenomena). Their conceptual common denominator is that they are (kinds of) cultures. What is commonly called Modern philosophy--Hobbes to Hume, the late Renaissance through the Enlightenment--was in essence a period of epistemological realism. It was followed by nineteenth-century idealism, in a wide variety of forms. Idealism, in turn, was superseded in the twentieth century by both a modest realism (actually representationalism) and a modest idealism, which tried to make the coherence theory of meaning and truth more respectful of science. Postmodernism attempts to get beyond the realist versus idealist, primacy-of-existence versus primacy-of-consciousness, dichotomies, and to do so it sets forth what I take to be its defining tenet in philosophy. Thus, I would say: postmodernism, in philosophy, is the doctrine that language is simply one form of social behavior among many and the
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characteristics of language (for example, meaning and truth) are determined by the worldview of the speakers group, such as those groups characterized (in whole or part) by sex, race, class, nationality, age, era, and so forth. If that is accurate, the term postmodern is apt. For although Idealism was the first literal post-Modern philosophy, it retained (to varying degrees) a belief in objectivity and universality, key elements of the Modern outlook. Postmodernism rejects those elements. Bryan Register wrote: Roger Donway proposes that postmodernism, in philosophy, is the doctrine that language is simply one form of social behavior among many and the characteristics of language (for example, meaning and truth) are determined by the worldview of the speaker's group, such as those groups characterized (in whole or part) by sex, race, class, nationality, age, era, and so forth. Im afraid that I dont see the problem. For one thing, many analytic philosophers of language, following Wittgensteins lead, agree that language is but one form of social behavior; the production of speech acts is no different in principle from the production of any other socially defined act, such as moving a knight in chess. So the account seems to include Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, and a pile of other nonpostmodernists. But moreover, language *is* but one among many social behaviors, and the meanings of words and sentences *are* determined by the worldview of the speakers group, since theyre the ones from whom the speaker learned her language. This can be supported with examples; I'll use a close-to-home one. As a grader, Ive recently been spending a lot of time trying to puzzle through the poor writing of UT undergrads. In some cases, I find it necessary to note on their papers the actual meaning of sentences which are grammatical but misleading. The meaning intended by the student is often apparent, but the sentence has a meaning distinct from the one the student intended. The meaning, then, is not determined by the intentions of the student, but by the conventions of our common language.
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Likewise, a child cannot make a knight move in chess the way he likes (magically pushing across rows of opposition to win the game), but only in the way that the rules of chess allow him to move the knight. This is the reason that I can't say, Dinner is almost ready and mean Poughkeepsie was once the capital of New York, however much I might want to. Of course, this does not mean that the *thoughts* which one expresses in language are socially determined, or that the *truth* of ones utterances are socially determined (unless the utterance has as its subject matter something social). But language itself certainly is but one among many forms of socially determined behavior. So Roger Donways account of postmodernism not only includes a wide variety of nonpostmodernists, it also makes postmodernism true.9 William Dale wrote: Heres my attempt to differentiate the cultural movement of Postmodernism from other movements such as Objectivismby using three of the epistemological standards David Kelley suggested: unit, contrast objects, and CCD. I follow this analysis by offering a definition of Postmodernism based on those standards. Unit: I agree with Bryan Register that Postmodernism is essentially a cultural movement rather than a philosophical movement. Its defenders are concerned with changing the culture more than with philosophical theses per se. As Stephen Hicks pointed out in his talks on Postmodernism two summers ago, Postmodernists are defenders of a political position first, and concerned with philosophical ideas only as a means to the defense of their politics. The units of Postmodernism are the group of cultural opponents of modernism and/or modernity. According to my philosophical encyclopedia . the belief in the advancement of society through scientific advancement and epistemological enlightenment (i.e., modernity) and 2) traditional standards in art and language (i.e., modernism). They replace these with Postmodernity, a carefree skepticism about any attempt to make sense of history, and Postmodernism, in which language [is]
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http://www.atlassociety.org/defining-postmodernism (14)

treated as an object in its own right, rather than a stand-in for an ulterior reality. These theses may explain the advancement of Postmodernism through Literature and Sociology departments, rather than the philosophy departments where the Modernist analytic philosophy is predominant. The units of the concept would therefore be the adherents of a cultural movement who reject the idea of historical scientific progress, philosophical enlightenment, metaphysical realism, and standards of artistic achievement. Contrast Objects: Identifying the contrast objects is straightforward give the self-descriptive nature of the term in question, i.e. defenders of modernism and modernity (Modernists) of various kinds, including, I think, Objectivism. Modernists would include any cultural movements whose adherents accept the possibility of scientific advancement, philosophical enlightenment, and identifiable standards for aesthetics. CCD: Postmodernism advances several theses in the major philosophical branches. David Kelley noted that there are often multiple CCDs for complex concepts, and that seems to be the case for a highly abstract concept like Postmodernism. I think the dimensions of interest come out along the usual philosophic categories with which were all familiar. Here are what I take to be the primary measurements for Postmodernism along the relevant dimensions: Aesthetics: rejection of all usual standards Politics: collectivism (e.g., environmentalism, group rights, interestgroup politics, socialism) Ethics: egalitarianism and relativism (e.g., cultural relativism, animal rights) Epistemology: subjectivism (e.g., textual interpretation/deconstruction) Metaphysics: media of expression (e.g., texts) I list these in the above order purposely. I believe there is an underlying hierarchical organization to the above dimensions for defenders of Postmodernism, and it is an organization that inverts the usual Objectivist one rising from metaphysics through politics and
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aesthetics. Postmodernists are primarily defenders of aesthetic anarchy (e.g., deconstruction of texts, performance art) and collectivism (e.g., group rights, egalitarianism) with other philosophical theses such as epistemological subjectivity and ethical relativism as intellectual defenses to be used as necessary, but dropped if failing to defend the politics/aesthetics (if Ive understood Stephen Hickss thesis about this correctly). & definition of Postmodernism: A cultural movement which rejects the possibility of cultural advancement through scientific progress and principled aesthetics based on epistemological objectivity, and which instead defends political collectivism and standardless aesthetics based on epistemological relativism and ethical egalitarianism. Stephen Hicks wrote: propose that a definition of a comprehensive philosophy should be four-dimensional: It should identify the philosophys metaphysics, epistemology, view of human nature, and its core value theses. (2) I argue that there is a comprehensive philosophy characterized by metaphysical antirealism, epistemological collective subjectivism, social constructionism in human nature, and value collectivism. (3) I argue that postmodernism is an appropriate label for that philosophy, given the opposition of that philosophys theses to modernist philosophys theses. And (4) I argue that the views of several major contemporary thinkers (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Rorty) are similar enough to warrant categorizing them as the postmodernist school. Is there a set of ideas that may fruitfully be called postmodern? A comprehensive philosophy answers four questions: Whats real?, Who/what am I?, Whats good?, and How do I know? That is, a philosophy is a set of views on metaphysics, human nature, values, and epistemology. A philosopher who has developed views has a comprehensive philosophy. To the extent that different philosophers agree in their views in those areas, they can be grouped into schools.

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So then the questions are whether the thinkers we are considering as pomo-candidates have developed views in all those areas, and whether their views are similar enough to warrant categorizing them as members of the same school. At this point, Will Wilkinson raises two pitfalls to avoid: 1. Defining postmodernism as a school and contrasting it with analytic philosophy may lead us to miss the fact that analytic and continental philosophers sometimes agree, e.g., Quine and Derrida on indeterminacy in language. In other words, a definition may be too narrow and lead us away from grouping together thinkers who should be so grouped. 2. Defining postmodernism may, if there is no common core, lead us to characterize it so vaguely that we miss significant debates within the socalled pomo community. In other words, a definition may be too broad and lead us to lump together thinkers who should be separated. We should avoid these two vices, and when appropriate we should follow Will Wilkinsons advice and attack particular pomo and/or analytic theses themselves. If, however, there are sets of philosophical theses that are regularly packaged together and thinkers who organize themselves in schools around those packages, we should take cognizance of that, too. Thomas identifies four features for our attention: (1) eclecticism, (2) denial of objectivity, (3) various left positions such as group rights, ethical relativism, environmentalism, and anti-capitalism, and (4) reaction against modernism. All of these elements are parts of the pomo package. (1) Eclecticism is a consequence of the metaphysical anti-realism: if there is no reality out there, there is no identity, so there are no necessary connections among things; so anything can go with anything, and in postmodernist art one finds deliberate disintegrations and deliberate juxtapositions of parts that cannot be integrated. (2) Denial of objectivity is the fundamental part of the postmodern anti-reason epistemological package. (3) The various left positions are parts of the value collectivism. (4) Reaction against modernism is a summary and a negative historical situating of all of these views. The only thing missing from this list is an account of human nature.
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Similarly, Bryan Register identifies three modernist items and contrasts postmodernism to them. Modernisms features are (1) objectivity, (2) belief in progress, and (3) dualisms. Postmodernism is then a rejection of objectivity, the belief in progress, and all dualisms. Again, all of these are parts of the postmodernist package: the denial of objectivity is part of the epistemology, the denial of progress is a consequence of both epistemological relativism and the left-egalitarianism in values, and the rejection of all dualisms is a part of the postmodern metaphysics or antimetaphysics. On one level the postmodernist rejection of all dualisms is a straightforward consequence of the antirealism: if its not meaningful to speak of the way reality is, then any proposed real distinction can be deconstructed.10 (On another level the pomo blanket rejection of dualisms is tricky because one pomo strategy is to argue by package-deals. For most postmodernists there are no significant differences between, e.g., Plato and Aristotle, and so the choice is between postmodernism and the Plato/Aristotle approach. Similarly, conservatives sometimes characterize the debate as being between a Platonic/religious philosophy and a nihilistic postmodern one; for those conservatives there is no significant difference between the naturalistic Aristotle and the Sophists/postmodernists.) Finally, Roger Don way suggests that antirealism is the fundamental defining trait of postmodernism. He points out that a major modern debate was that between the realists and the idealists. The realists accepted the Primacy of Existence and so consequently accepted objectivity and universalism, while the idealists accepted the Primacy of Consciousness while trying to maintain objectivity and universalism. However, as the Primacy of Consciousness forces gradually won out, the objectivity and universalism were abandoned and we were left with postmodern Primacy of Consciousness, subjectivity, and relativism. That characterization of the evolution of the debate I think is correct, and I think it accounts for the pomos views in metaphysics and epistemology. I dont think it accounts for the postmodernist views in human nature, ethics, and politics, though. From Primacy of Consciousness, subjectivity,
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Return to the parent page for this 1999 online CyberSeminar, "The Continental Origins of Postmodernism". http://www.atlassociety.org/defining-postmodernism (18)

and relativism, no particular views about human nature, ethics, and politics follow, so I think we need to look elsewhere for the sources of those parts of the pomo package. And since specific views on human nature, ethics, and politics are integral parts of the pomo package, any definition needs to include them. should identify the philosophys metaphysics, epistemology, view of human nature, and its core value theses. (2) I have argued that there is a comprehensive philosophy characterized by metaphysical antirealism, epistemological collective subjectivism, social constructionism in human nature, and value collectivism. (3) I have argued that postmodernism is an appropriate label for that philosophy, given the opposition of that philosophys theses to modernist philosophy. And (4) I have suggested that the views of several major contemporary thinkers (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Rorty) are similar enough to warrant including them in the postmodernist school.11

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Return to the parent page for this 1999 online CyberSeminar, "The Continental Origins of Postmodernism". http://www.atlassociety.org/defining-postmodernism (19)

(20) comprehensive philosophy should be four-dimensional: It

The first chapter The second section History of term

The term 'postmodernism' has become so over-used during the past 50 years that it is now difficult to take seriously as a respectable philosophical or sociological concept. However, despite the difficulty many people seem to have in making sense of it, this very ubiquity can be taken as an indication that postmodernism fulfils a useful role in the way people think about the changes that society has undergone during this period. In order to understand it we need briefly to examine the modernism that postmodernism is supposed to be replacing. Generally, history is too messy to be divided into neat periods but a classification in which... The Ancient World ended with the fall of the Roman Empire The Middle Ages lasted until the Renaissance, and The Modern World developed through the Reformation and the Enlightenment ...is not too controversial for our purposes. What, then, was different about the modern world from that which existed before? One way of looking at the difference is through individual identity. People no longer identified themselves by their place in a rigid social structure; nor did they judge the success of their lives on how closely they had conformed to the course pre-determined by their place within that framework. The way of defining the individual began to change1, and it became necessary to find criteria that could define a good or successful life, other than those of established authority.

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Early Beginnings : One of the essential elements in the development of modern society was the search for a set of eternal or absolute values that would stand outside any particular time or society. These could provide a basis for rational and consistent judgements. The objectivity of the new positivistic science became the model for this search but the 'holy grail' of the Enlightenment - successfully applying the scientific method to the study of individuals and societies - proved far more elusive. GWF Hegel (1770 - 1831), influenced by the German Romantic Movement, recognised that the attempt to build a system from the individual upwards could not work. He understood that the individual would still be an instantiation2 of the social structure, rather than the social structure being merely a conglomeration of individuals - even if the individuals now saw the social structure very differently. From this Hegel could, perhaps, be called the first postmodernist but it would take many years for the social changes implicit in his philosophy to be worked out in the real world. The historian Arnold Toynbee (1889 1975), although not responsible for coining the term, was probably the first person to bring the idea to the attention of the general public in the 1940s. After the Second World War postmodernism gained recognition rapidly in the USA where, for example, social breakdown was analysed by the sociologist C Wright Mills (1916 - 1962). His work fitted in well with the atmosphere of anxiety and paranoia, expressed in a wide range of symptoms from anti-Communist witch-hunts3 to the first sightings of alien spacecraft. Developing Ideas: However, these commentators were still modernists and consequently regarded the signs of rapid social change very negatively. It was not until the 1960s that postmodernism began to be viewed as a positive idea. In the USA, the writings of Leslie Fiedler (1917 - 2003) and Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004) became the focal point for an eclectic mixture of anti-establishment views gathered together under the postmodernist banner. At about the same time several French philosophers - influenced by but also critical of existentialism4, structuralism5 and Freudian psychoanalysis6 - began to disseminate a more coherent approach than that of the Americans. Paul Ricoeur (1913 ), Roland Barthes (1915 - 1980), Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924 - 1998), Jean Baudrillard (1929 - ) and Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004) developed a
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post-structuralist perspective derived from the ideas of Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), Max Weber (1864 - 1920) and Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976) that refuses to gloss over the difficulties of finding a privileged position7 from which the real meaning of a text or culture can be discovered. For these philosophers, language is central to this view because they believe knowledge can only be expressed through language. This approach has been recognised in several different disciplines with varying degrees of success and conflict. For example: In architecture it was marked by the change from the austere, functional modernist style of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959) to a much more playful style making use of local techniques and materials. In the area of social policy, under names such as community empowerment, it has been eagerly grasped by politicians hoping to cut welfare spending by devolving power down to local communities without losing social democratic credibility. In the last quarter of the 20th Century the idea that the meaning of a text depended on the cultural influences of the reader as much as those of the writer turned literary criticism on its head. However, it has also been the subject of much mystification because of the necessity for postmodernist writers to develop a language that avoids using modernist concepts such as causality and absolute truth. Consequently it has become a common opinion that postmodernist writing can mean anything or nothing, leaving it open to attacks such as Alan Sokal's famous hoax. The term "Postmodern" was first used around the 1870s. John Watkins Chapman suggested "a Postmodern style of painting" as a way to move beyond French Impressionism. J. M. Thompson, in his 1914 article in The Hibbert Journal (a quarterly philosophical review), used it to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion: "The raison d'etre of Post-Modernism is to escape from the double-mindedness of Modernism by being thorough in its criticism by extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic tradition."
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In 1917, Rudolf Pannwitz used the term to describe a philosophicallyoriented culture. His idea of post-modernism drew from Friedrich Nietzsche's analysis of modernity and its end results ofdecadence and nihilism. Pannwitz's post-human would be able to overcome these predicaments of the modern human. Contrary to Nietzsche, Pannwitz also included nationalist and mythical elements in his use of the term. In 1921 and 1925, Postmodernism had been used to describe new forms of art and music. In 1942 H. R. Hays described it as a new literary form. However, as a general theory for a historical movement it was first used in 1939 by Arnold J. Toynbee: "Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the general war of 1914-1918." In 1949 the term was used to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, and led to the postmodern architecture movement, perhaps also a response to the modernist architectural movement known as the International Style. Postmodernism in architecture is marked by the reemergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban architecture, historical reference in decorative forms, and nonorthogonal angles.12 After that, Postmodernism was applied to a whole host of movements, many in art, music, and literature, that reacted against tendencies in the imperialist phase of capitalism called "modernism," and are typically marked by revival of historical elements and techniques. Walter Truett Anderson identifies Postmodernism as one of four typological world views. These four world views are the Postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed; the scientific-rational, in which truth is found through methodical, disciplined inquiry; the social-traditional, in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilization; and the neo-romantic, in which truth is found through attaining harmony with nature and/or spiritual exploration of the inner self. Postmodernist ideas in philosophy and the analysis of culture and society expanded the importance of critical theory and has been the point of departure for works of literature, architecture, and design, as well as
12A Brief History of Postmodernism. Created Sep 16, 2005 . Updated Jun 14, 2007. http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A5140829 (24)

being visible in marketing/business and the interpretation of history, law and culture, starting in the late 20th century. These developmentsreevaluation of the entire Western value system (love, marriage, popular culture, shift from industrial to service economy) that took place since the 1950s and 1960s, with a peak in the Social Revolution of 1968are described with the term Postmodernity, Influences on postmodern thought, Paul Ltzeler (St. Louis) as opposed to Postmodernism, a term referring to an opinion or movement. Postmodernism has also been used interchangeably with the term post-structuralism out of which postmodernism grew, a proper understanding of postmodernism or doing justice to the postmodernist thought demands an understanding of the poststructuralist movement and the ideas of its advocates. Poststructuralism resulted similarly to postmodernism by following a time of structuralism. It is characterized by new ways of thinking through structuralism, contrary to the original form. "Postmodernist" describes part of a movement; "Postmodern" places it in the period of time since the 1950s, making it a part of contemporary history.13 Michel Foucault gives us a great perspective of Postmodern history: I am well aware that I have never written anything but fictions. I do not mean to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems to me that the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth. One fictions history on the basis of a political reality that makes it true, one fictions a politics not yet in existence on the basis of a historical truth. The Postmodern approach to history differs dramatically from that of all other worldviews.2 For example, a Christian worldview sees history as the grand unfolding of Gods divine plan to redeem a fallen humanity. In contrast, the more radical Postmodernists see no ultimate purpose in history, advocating instead a nihilist perspective. Less radical Postmodernists advocate the view that history is what we make of it. They believe that historical facts are inaccessible, leaving the historian to his or her imagination and ideological bent to reconstruct what happened in the past.

13

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism (25)

Postmodernists use the term historicism to describe the view that all questions must be settled within the cultural and social context in which they are raised. Both Lacan and Foucault argue that each historical period has its own knowledge system and individuals are unavoidably entangled within these systems. Answers to lifes questions cannot be found by appealing to some external truth, but only to the norms and forms within each culture that phrase the question.14 Postmodern Fiction History. Unlike Postmodern history, the traditional approach to history holds that by sifting through the evidence at hand (texts, artifacts, etc.), we may arrive at a more or less accurate understanding of past events and their significance. This means that not all descriptions of history are equally valid. Some accounts may be more true to the actual events than others. As new information comes to light, any narrative of history could be revised or supplemented. However, most Postmodernists doubt that an accurate telling of the past is possible because they blur the difference between fact and fictionsome even claim that all historical accounts are fiction.3 Foucault is one of the originators of this Postmodern approach to history, which offers a profound challenge to the norm. Professor John Coffey, in a biography of Foucault, provides insight into how Foucaults background influenced his views on history: Thus Foucault was intent on liberating himself and others from all constraints: theological, moral, and social. Mark Poster observes, Foucault offers a new way of thinking about history, writing history and deploying history in current political struggles. Foucault is an antihistorian, one who in writing history, threatens every canon of the craft. Indeed, one of Foucaults major theses was that truth and knowledge were nothing other than claims to power.15

14

Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972 1977, Colin Gordon, ed. (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1980), 193. Cited in Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theories Are Murdering Our Past (San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 1996), 151. http://www.allaboutworldview.org/postmodern-history.htm 15 Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism and History: Mode of Production versus Mode of Information (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1984), 73. Cited in Windschuttle, The Killing of History, 132. http://www.allaboutworldview.org/postmodern-history.htm (26)

or Foucault, truth and knowledge were constructions we offer to persuade others. They need not correspond to reality, for we construct our own reality in such a way as to give us power over others. With this in mind, his admission in Knowledge/Power is revealing: I am well aware that I have never written anything but fictions. I do not mean to say, however, that truth is therefore absent. It seems to me that the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth, for a fictional discourse to induce effects of truth, and for bringing it about that a true discourse engenders or manufactures something that does not as yet exist, that it fictions it. One fictions history on the basis of a political reality that makes it true, one fictions a politics not yet in existence on the basis of a historical truth. Postmodern Revising History While the history of humanity itself may not have a purpose, the writing of historical accounts does. Resonating with Foucaults approach to history is the view that the writing of history should promote an ideology. If, as Foucault declares, a claim to knowledge really is nothing but an attempt to overpower others, then retelling history serves the purpose of gaining power for some repressed group. Thus, according to the Postmodern condition the discipline of history has turned away from the study of significant individuals and the struggles between nations to focus on social groups and institutions. Tom Dixon writes, Social historians are often driven by activist goals. Historical research becomes not an attempt to understand the past but a propaganda tool for use in modern political and social power struggles. Dixon also notes, Postmodern cultural historians consider bias unavoidable in whole or even in part. As a result we see a growing willingness to arrange and edit facts in a way that supports the message of particular historians. This is precisely where the line between recording history and revising history is crossed. This rewriting of the past to serve a purpose, known as revisionist history, contributes to empowering oppressed social minorities. Thus feminist histories attempt to expose a male-dominated, patriarchal past and point the way for empowering women. Likewise, homosexual histories are put forward (in response to homophobic repressions) to
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provide equality for homosexuals. Black histories emphasize the horrors of slavery to redress past maltreatment of African Americans. Every repressed groupminorities of all colors, ethnicities, nationalities, and sexualitieshas an injustice that must be exposed in order to rectify the abuses of the past. Take as one example Rigoberta Menchu, who won the Nobel Prize in 1992 for her autobiography, I, Rogoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Her book became an instant success on college campuses, where professors used her story to demonstrate the plight of the impoverished Guatemalans languishing under government death squads. Menchu maintains that she personally witnessed the Guatemalan army burn her brother alive in her towns public square. However, when doctoral student David Stoll went to Guatemala to verify Menchus story, he discovered no villager had a memory of such a slaughter by the Guatemalan Army.9 In fact, the key struggle in the book, between her father and a light-skinned landowner, was actually an argument between her father and his in-laws16. As it turns out, Menchu had told her story to French leftist Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, who actually wrote the autobiography, misrepresenting many facts in her book. Burgos-Debray claimed that Menchu, as a female, was denied school, yet she actually attended two Catholic boarding schools through seventh grade. The book states that she worked on a plantation under horrible conditions, yet she never set foot on a plantation as a child. Also, the author claimed that the local villagers saw the Marxist guerrillas as liberators, when in actuality the villagers were terrified of them. Kevin J. Kelley comments, U.S. leftists who give his [Stolls] arguments a full hearingand who have not been deafened by their own dogmawill find Stolls analysis difficult to dismiss. Yet, in response to Stolls research, Professor Marjorie Agosin of Wellesley College stated bluntly, Whether her book is true or not, I dont care. We should teach our students about the brutality of the Guatemalan military and the U.S. financing of it.11 Ideology therefore trumps integrity.

16

Cited in Dennis McCallum, ed., The Death of Truth (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1996), 133. http://www.allaboutworldview.org/postmodern-history.htm (28)

Some feminist historians assert that men cannot write histories of women, first because men simply cannot understand women, and second because men have masculine ideologies and women have feminine ideologies. The same is said about a person attempting to write the history of a different race. It cannot be done since all people are presumed to be under a cloud of racial bias. ideas have consequences, we cannot afford to overlook the consequences of the more radical Postmodern approaches to history. If history is mere fiction, or even largely so, then those who deny, for example, the Nazi holocaust are validated in their attempts to diminish the numbers of Jews imprisoned, tortured, starved, shot, cremated, or buried in mass graves. Indeed, if history is (largely) fiction, then Mother Teresa and Adolph Hitler cannot be used as examples of good and evil. There are no facts. There are only various degrees of fiction17

17

See David Stoll, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 1999). http://www.allaboutworldview.org/postmodern-history.htm (29)

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The first chapter The Third section

Postmodernity
Postmodernity is the state or condition of being postmodern after or in reaction to that which is modern, as in postmodern art .Modernity is defined as a period or condition loosely identified with the Progressive Era, the Industrial Revolution, or the Enlightenment. In philosophy and critical theory postmodernity refers to the state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity, a historical condition that marks the reasons for the end of modernity. This usage is ascribed to the philosophers Jean-Franois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard. One "project" of modernity is said by Habermas to have been the fostering of progress by incorporating principles of rationality and hierarchy into public and artistic life. Lyotard understood modernity as a cultural condition characterized by constant change in the pursuit of progress. Postmodernity then represents the culmination of this process where constant change has become the status quo and the notion of progress obsolete. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of the possibility of absolute and total knowledge Lyotard further argued that the various metanarratives of progress such as positivist science, Marxism, and structuralism were defunct as methods of achieving progress. The literary critic Fredric Jameson and the geographer David Harvey have identified postmodernity with "late capitalism" or "flexible accumulation", a stage of capitalism following finance capitalism, characterised by highly mobile labor and capital and what Harvey called "time and space compression". They suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which, they believe, defined the economic order following the Second World War 18. Those who generally
18

(See also consumerism, critical theory.) (31)

view modernity as obsolete or an outright failure, a flaw in humanity's evolution leading to disasters like Auschwitz and Hiroshima, see postmodernity as a positive development. Many philosophers, particularly those seeing themselves as within the modern project, use postmodernity to imply the presumed results of holding postmodernist ideas. Most prominently Jrgen Habermas and others contend that postmodernity represents a resurgence of long running counterenlightenment ideas, that the modern project is not finished and that universality cannot be so lightly dispensed with. Postmodernity, the consequence of holding postmodern ideas, is generally a negative term in this context.19 Postmodernity is a condition or a state of being associated with changes to institutions and creations (Giddens, 1990) and with social and political results and innovations, globally but especially in the West since the 1950s, whereas postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, the "cultural and intellectual phenomenon", especially since the 1920s' new movements in the arts. Both of these terms are used by philosophers, social scientists and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary culture, economics and society that are the result of features of late 20th century and early 21st century life, including the fragmentation of authority and the commoditization of knowledge. The relationship between postmodernity and critical theory, sociology and philosophy is fiercely contested. The terms "postmodernity" and "postmodernism" are often hard to distinguish, the former being often the result of the latter. The period has had diverse political ramifications: its "anti-ideological ideas" appear to have been associated with the feminist movement, racial equality movements, gay rights movements, most forms of late 20th century anarchism and even the peace movement as well as various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement. Though none of these institutions entirely embraces all aspects of the postmodern movement in its most concentrated definition they all reflect, or borrow from, some of its core ideas20

19 20

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernity (32)

Postmodernism according to friends, foes, and spectators When people talk about postmodernism, the problem is that they are referring to something very elusive and slippery. In the academic world, it is best understood as a new Weltanschauung - a new organizing principle in thought, action, and reflection, connected to many changing factors in modern society. The term postmodern was first applied, around 1971, to a new architectural style which combined old, classical forms with modern pragmatism and scientific engineering. Since then, the postmodernist advocates have used the term to describe their movement as a reaction to the wholesale failure of modernity - the betrayals of the modernist movement in the arts, primarily, but also modernity understood as a social process - industrialization, urbanization, centralization, and 'progress' and 'civilization' as those terms are often used popularly. This movement is not called 'antimodernism' because it is not a rejection of modernity in toto , but as its advocates claim, an effort to combine the best of the modern world with the best elements of the traditions of the past, in an organic way that eliminates the worst parts of both. So the Critics of postmodernism come mainly from the Marxist camp. They feel that postmodernism is a diversionary tactic, the last ditch of a late capitalism in the process of dying. They dislike fervently the way that postmodern aesthetics rejects socialist realism - and, for that matter, epistemological realism. They often point out how semiotics and the postmodern idea that everything is image and nothing is substance are used cynically by advertising agencies - which, unable to sell us real goods of real production, can now only sell us images of satisfaction and packaged happiness. Marxists also dislike postmodernism's relativist treatment of science, since as they see 'criticism' (the critical method) and science as being identical. And they are not all too pleased by postmodernism's rejection of the proletariat and industrialism as liberators, nor its insistence (dating from the Situationists) that liberation of leisure may be more important than liberation of work... the way postmodernism intertwines with Nietzschean thought, deep ecology, mysticism, and libertarian individualism makes many Marxists view it as right-wing, reactionary, perhaps even fascist! Non-Marxist critics of postmodernism abound, too. The right wing foams at the mouth at the way it dovetails with multiculturalism, feminism, 'direct democracy,' the "communitarian" movement, and some concerns they see as left-wing. The right-wingers feel that postmodernism is the
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last-ditch effort of a dying left wing... that left-wing academics, disappointed with Papa Joe Stalin and Pol Pot, have found a new weapon with which to smash Western civilization and rationalism. Other critics of postmodernism feel it is trying to have its cake and eat it too. From the modern world, it wants to take McLuhan's electronic technology and the 'global village' it allows while ditching other parts of modernity; without acknowledging that, sans modernity, such communication would not be possible. From the premodern world, it wants to recover the 'religious sensibility' and 'traditional values' of the past while jettisoning the intolerance and fundamentalism of religion or the "crushing weight" of tradition upon free thought. The postmodernists, their critics claim, do not see that both tradition and religion can be both liberating and stultifying, but you cannot "pick and choose" from both and claim to be doing anything but generating fictions. Sociologists see postmodernism at work everywhere. Take scientology or radionics, for example - which combine sophisticated technology and scientific-sounding concepts with some very, very old, perhaps antiquated ideas. If postmodernism is anything, I think, it is perhaps a rejection of linear narrative, and our central linear narrative is History. Associated with that constellation are ideas like Progress, whether one views it as the Hegelian spirit of consciousness or the inevitable progression of the factors and relations of economic production. Scientists hate postmodernism because it suggests there is no such thing as "superstition." In the discourse-world of Foucault Ian genealogy, there can be no ideas which are consigned to the "dustbin" of history. They can lose meaning as new discourses are adopted, perhaps even be abandoned as parts of discourses, but that does not mean they are "gone," for humanity never to reconsider. In the postmodern world, all things are subject to reconsideration . And that is how one can look at postmodernism: a reconsideration of the central constellation of ideas in the arts, economics, politics, philosophy, and sociology. 21 From prehistory to posthistory The postmodernists point to various reasons for the end of history. Most disagree with the Fukuyama/Whig version, which is that with liberal democracy we called an end to the game in 1789. But most agree with the Joycean version, which is that "history is a nightmare from which we are all trying to awaken." Some think that our post literate civilization simply
21 Steve Mizrach: An analysis of the postmodern movement http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/pomo.html (34)

will no longer wish to preserve history - at least, not in the oral or written way it has been done in the past. But most feel that the year1945 (when the apocalypse became a historical possibility, in the camps at Aushwitz and in the second sun of Hiroshima) or 1968 (when the world was turned upside down by a bunch of French students) marked the true signpost of the end of history, and the search for the way out. We have moved from anonymous prehistory to postnominal posthistory, to "history from below," where human actions continue to generate history, even if no one really knows where it is going or can honestly claim to control it. The task of the posthistorian is no longer charting the "lines" of history, but instead geneaology - a process that branches and bifurcates, dead-ends at some points and leapfrogs at others. Our posthistorical age is marked by several features, we are told. Its various Zeitgeists go by various academic-sounding names: poststructuralism, postindustrialism, postliberalism, postrationalism, and postpatriarchy. In each of these cases, the "post" is there for the same reason. The previous state of affairs has neither been overthrown nor dissolved. Rather, it has been co-opted, supplanted, reformulated, enantiodromized (made into its opposite), or transcended. Postmodernism is a parasite within the body of modernity, digesting it with its enzymes; it is not a conqueror or a destroyer. No discontinuity is noticeable: which is why some people still feel this is a 'modern' age, unable to see the thousand simultaneous, invisible paradigm shifts which annulled modernity, fraying it at its edges, rather than attacking its core. Some postmodernists deny that some of the core values of modernity - such as humanism - are being attacked by their movement. Nor do they feel they are nostalgiacs, reactionaries, or part of the continual "retro" fads of society. What is going on, they say, is a reconsideration, a return to reflection, a reappraisal. Can that be so bad?22 Postliberalism in politics: the radical 'center' Postmodernist politicians (more properly, politically conscious postmoderns) claim they hold the coveted Third Way of politics - a way out of the conventional divisions of Left and Right that polarize political thinking. The key terms for postmodern politics are 'participatory democracy,' (grassroots/electronic), 'decentralization,' and 'communitarian individualism.' Its key slogan - familiar to most advocates
22

Steve Mizrach: An analysis of the postmodern movement http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/pomo.html (35)

- is 'think globally, act locally.' Many of the 'postmodernists' in politics describe themselves as 'postliberals,' meaning that they often came to the movement from 60s modernist liberalism after seeing some of its inherent limitations. Others describe this as 'postliberalism' because it is a transcendence (not a rejection) of liberal democracy itself and its limitations. As they see it, it is the 'radical center' position because it is neither Left nor Right, but threatening to the powers that be on both sides, commisars & bureaucrats and capitalists & fat cats. The advocates of 'participatory democracy' see it as a step beyond pale representative democracy - as a return to the old town meetings of New England where everybody could have their say. Skeptics scoff at this, declaring it impossible to do in a country of 200 million people, but the postmodernists say it could be done through an 'electronic plebiscite.' Many of the mainstream politicians are turning on to this idea, especially former computer man Ross Perot, who wanted to stage 'electronic town hall meetings' on issues all over the country through sattelite hookups. The postmodernists say that what we have now is 'spectacle democracy' we elect people and then watch passively for four years the dreadful result. 'Participatory democracy' means grassroots citizen activism - that every citizen take an active involvement in the direction of governance and the making of decisions by consensus (mutual agreement) rather than voting, where the people in the minority feel bullied and overpowered by the majority. Consensus means compromise, but it creates workable solutions. "Decentralization" just means that power should be dispersed as far and wide as possible - that the less power is held in the center, the more people on the periphery are empowered to change their lives. Decentralists suggest that an important part of this is the growth of NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) which hold governments accountable for their actions, like Amnesty International. Also important are strategies of civil disobedience, as described by Gene Sharp in his Politics of Nonviolent Action , to keep governments responsible and responsive. Decentralists feel that centralized governments of either stripe - Left or Right - rely too much on coercive power, whether that be brute force (military, torture, etc.) or more subtle means (propaganda, imprisonment, etc.) To have a truly nonviolent, participatory society, the power of the centralized government must be reduced and shared with governance at all levels. The centralized government cannot be 'seized' and used for beneficial ends - the centralized State, as Max Weber understood, is
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primarily an instrument for the monopolization of violence and coercion, and can be nothing but that. Being the libertarian socialists that they are, most postmodernists support 'communitarian individualism' - the creation of communes or schemes whereby people who want to live cooperatively can, sort of like the kibbutzimof Israel. They support various ways of encouraging community and collective action and concern, as long as they are on a voluntary basis. But many feel taking wealth and redistributing it without asking merely creates resentment against the poor. Many feel the answer to poverty is a full-employment economy, which in their revisionary economics they say is quite possible, and can pay everybody good wages to boot! In any case, they support various forms of rotationary governance, so that everybody in the community gets a shot at running things, for a short while, at the local level. This 'rethinking' of politics by the postmoderns is often seen as idealistic by their critics, 'wooly-headed' at best but 'foolish' at worst, because "it denies human nature..." 23

23

Steve Mizrach: An analysis of the postmodern movement http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/pomo.html (37)

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The first chapter The Fourth section

Postmodern philosophy
Postmodern philosophy is a philosophical direction which is critical of the foundational assumptions and universalizing tendency of Western philosophy. It emphasizes the importance of power relationships, personalization and discourse in the "construction" of truth and world views. Postmodern philosophy is often particularly skeptical about simple binary oppositions characteristic of structuralism, emphasizing the problem of the philosopher cleanly distinguishing knowledge from ignorance, social progress from reversion, dominance from submission, and presence from absence24 While the idea of postmodernity had been around since the 1940s, postmodern philosophy originated primarily in France during the mid20th century. However, several philosophical antecedents inform many of postmodern philosophy's concerns. It was greatly influenced by the writings of Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century and other early-to-mid 20thcentury philosophers, including phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, structuralist Roland Barthes, and the language/logic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Postmodern philosophy also drew from the world of the arts and architecture, particularly Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and artists who

24

Charles Arthur Willard Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy. University of Chicago Press. 1996. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy (39)

practiced collage, and the architecture of Las Vegas and the Pompidou Centre.25 Early postmodern philosophers The most influential early postmodern philosophers were Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Franois Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Michel Foucault is also often cited as an 26 early postmodernist although he personally rejected that label. Following Nietzsche, Foucault argued that knowledge is produced through the operations of power, and changes fundamentally in different historical periods. The writings of Lyotard were largely concerned with the role of narrative in human culture, and particularly how that role has changed as we have left modernity and entered a "postindustrial" or postmodern condition. He argued that modern philosophies legitimized their truthclaims not (as they themselves claimed) on logical or empirical grounds, but rather on the grounds of accepted stories (or "metanarratives") about knowledge and the worldcomparing these with Wittgenstein's concept of language-games. He further argued that in our postmodern condition, these metanarratives no longer work to legitimize truth-claims. He suggested that in the wake of the collapse of modern metanarratives, people are developing a new "language game" -- one that does not make claims to absolute truth but rather celebrates a world of ever-changing relationships (among people and between people and the world). Derrida, the father of deconstruction, practiced philosophy as a form of textual criticism. He criticized Western philosophy as privileging the concept of presence and logos, as opposed to absence and markings or writings.27 In America, the most famous pragmatist and self-proclaimed postmodernist was Richard Rorty. An analytic philosopher, Rorty believed that combining Willard Van Orman Quine's criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction with Wilfrid Sellars's critique of the "Myth of the Given" allowed for an abandonment of the view of the thought or
25 26

Problematizing Global Knowledge. Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 23 (2-3). Sage, 2006 Postmodern philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy 27 John Deely, "Philosophy and Experience," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly LXVI.4 (Winter 1992), 299319, esp. 31415. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy (40)

language as a mirror of a reality or external world. Further, drawing upon Donald Davidson's criticism of the dualism between conceptual scheme and empirical content, he challenges the sense of questioning whether our particular concepts are related to the world in an appropriate way, whether we can justify our ways of describing the world as compared with other ways. He argued that truth was not about getting it right or representing reality, but was part of a social practice and language was what served our purposes in a particular time; ancient languages are sometimes untranslatable into modern ones because they possess a different vocabulary and are unuseful today. Donald Davidson is not usually considered a postmodernist, although he and Rorty have both acknowledged that there are few differences between their philosophies 28 Accordingly, we find that Postmodernism as a philosophical movement is largely a reaction against the philosophical assumptions, values, and intellectual worldview of the modern period of Western (specifically European) historyi.e., the period from about the time of the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries to the mid-20th century. Indeed, many of the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can fairly be described as the straightforward denial of the general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for granted during the 18thcentury Enlightenment, though they were not unique to that period. The most important of these viewpoints are the following. 1. There is an objective natural reality, a reality whose existence and properties are logically independent of human beingsof their minds, their societies, their social practices, or their investigative techniques. Postmodernists dismiss this idea as a kind of naive realism. Such reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language. This point also applies to the investigation of past events by historians and to the description of social institutions, structures, or practices by social scientists. 2. The descriptive and explanatory statements of scientists and historians can, in principle, be objectively true or false. The postmodern denial of this viewpoint-which follows from the rejection of an objective
28

Postmodern philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy. (41)

natural realityis sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing as Truth. 3. Through the use of reason and logic, and with the more specialized tools provided by science and technology, human beings are likely to change themselves and their societies for the better. It is reasonable to expect that future societies will be more humane, more just, more enlightened, and more prosperous than they are now. Postmodernists deny this Enlightenment faith in science and technology as instruments of human progress. Indeed, many postmodernists hold that the misguided (or unguided) pursuit of scientific and technological knowledge led to the development of technologies for killing on a massive scale in World War II. Some go so far as to say that science and technologyand even reason and logicare inherently destructive and oppressive, because they have been used by evil people, especially during the 20th century, to destroy and oppress others. 4. Reason and logic are universally valid i.e., their laws are the same for, or apply equally to, any thinker and any domain of knowledge. For postmodernists, reason and logic too are merely conceptual constructs and are therefore valid only within the established intellectual traditions in which they are used. 5. There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that are in some sense present in human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social forces. Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially determined. 6. Language refers to and represents a reality outside itself. According to postmodernists, language is not such a mirror of nature, as the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty characterized the Enlightenment view. Inspired by the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, postmodernists claim that language is semantically selfcontained, or self-referential: the meaning of a word is not a static thing in the world or even an idea in the mind but rather a range of contrasts and differences with the meanings of other words. Because meanings are in this sense functions of other meanings which themselves are functions of other meanings, and so on they are never fully present to
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the speaker or hearer but are endlessly deferred. Self -reference characterizes not only natural languages but also the more specialized discourses of particular communities or traditions; such discourses are embedded in social practices and reflect the conceptual schemes and moral and intellectual values of the community or tradition in which they are used. The postmodern view of language and discourse is due largely to the French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida (1930 2004), the originator and leading practitioner of deconstruction. 7. Human beings can acquire knowledge about natural reality, and this knowledge can be justified ultimately on the basis of evidence or principles that are, or can be, known immediately, intuitively, or otherwise with certainty. Postmodernists reject philosophical foundationalismthe attempt, perhaps best exemplified by the 17thcentury French philosopher Ren Descartess dictum cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), to identify a foundation of certainty on which to build the edifice of empirical (including scientific) knowledge. 8. It is possible, at least in principle, to construct general theories that explain many aspects of the natural or social world within a given domain of knowledgee.g., a general theory of human history, such as dialectical materialism. Furthermore, it should be a goal of scientific and historical research to construct such theories, even if they are never perfectly attainable in practice. Postmodernists dismiss this notion as a pipe dream and indeed as symptomatic of an unhealthy tendency within Enlightenment discourses to adopt totalizing systems of thought (as the French philosopher Emmanuel Lvinas called them) or grand metanarratives of human biological, historical, and social development (as the French philosopher Jean-Franois Lyotard claimed). These theories are pernicious not merely because they are false but because they effectively impose conformity on other perspectives or discourses, thereby oppressing, marginalizing, or silencing them. Derrida himself equated the theoretical tendency toward totality with totalitarianism.29

29

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1077292/postmodernism (43)

Post-Marxism Post-Marxism refers to extrapolations of philosophers and social theorists basing their postulations upon Karl Marx's writings and Marxism proper, thus, passing orthodox Marxism. Philosophically, post-Marxism counters derivationism and essentialism (e.g. the State is not an instrument that functions unambiguously and autonomously in behalf of a given class' interests). Recent overviews of post-Marxism are provided by Ernesto Screpanti, Gran Therborn, and Gregory Meyerson . Post-Marxism dates from the late 1960s; several trends and events of that period influenced its development. The weakness of the Russian Communist Sovietparadigm became evident beyond Russia. This happened concurrently with the occurrence internationally of the student riots of 1968, the rise of Maoist theory, and the proliferation of commercial television, which covered in its broadcasts the Vietnam War . Semiology and discourse When Roland Barthes began his sustained critique of mass culture via semiology the science of signs and the book Mythologies, some Marxist philosophers based their social criticism upon linguistics, semiotics, and discourse. Basing his approach on Barthes' work, Baudrillard wrote For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972), criticizing contemporary Marxism for ignoring the sign value of its philosophic discourse.30 Post-materialism In sociology, post-materialism is the transformation of individual values from materialist, physical and economic to new individual values of autonomy and self-expression.

30

ain Mclean & Alistair Mcmillan, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (Article: State), Oxford University Press, 2003Jump up "The Postmodern Crisis in Economics and the Revolution against Modernism", Rethinking Marxism, 2000 Jump up From Marxism to Post-Marxism. London:Verso, 2008, 208pp. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Marxism

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Post-materialism is a tool in developing an understanding of modern culture. It can be considered in reference of three distinct concepts of materialism. The first kind of materialism, and the one in reference to which the word post-materialism is used most often, refers to materialism as a value-system relating to the desire for fulfillment of material needs (such as security, sustenance and shelter) and an emphasis on material luxuries in a consumerist society. A second referent is the materialist conception of history held by many socialists, most notably Marx and Engels, as well as their philosophic concept of dialectical materialism. The third definition of materialism concerns the philosophical argument that matter is the only existing reality. The first concept is sociological, the second is both philosophical and sociological, and the third is philosophical. Depending on which of the three above notions of materialism are being discussed, post-materialism can be an ontological postmaterialism, an existentialistic postmaterialism, an ethical postmaterialism or a political-sociological postmaterialism, which is also the best known.31 Deconstruction One of the most well-known postmodernist concerns is "deconstruction," a concern for philosophy, literary criticism, and textual analysis developed by Jacques Derrida. The notion of a "deconstructive" approach implies an analysis that questions the already evident deconstruction of a text in terms of presuppositions, ideological underpinnings, hierarchical values, and frames of reference. A deconstructive approach further depends on the techniques of close reading without reference to cultural, ideological, moral opinions or information derived from an authority over the text such as the author. At the same time Derrida famously writes: "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte (there is no such thing as outside-of-the-text)." Derrida implies that the world follows the grammar of a text undergoing its own deconstruction. Derrida's method frequently involves recognizing and spelling out the different, yet similar interpretations of the meaning of a given text and the problematic implications of binary oppositions within
31

Michael Terwey: ALLBUS: A German General Social Survey. In: Schmollers Jahrbuch. Zeitschrift fr Wirtschafts- un Sozalwissenschaften. Journal of Applied Social Science Studies. Nr. 120, 2000: 151-158 Ronald Inglehart 1971: The Silent Revolution in Post-Industrial Societies. In: American Political Science Review 65: 991-1017. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-materialism (45)

the meaning of a text. Derrida's philosophy influenced a postmodern movement called deconstructivism among architects, characterized by the intentional fragmentation, distortion, and dislocation of architectural elements in designing a building. Derrida discontinued his involvement with the movement after the publication of his collaborative project with architect Peter Eisenmann in Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman.32 Postmodernism and Structuralism Structuralism was a philosophical movement developed by French academics in the 1950s, partly in response to French Existentialism. It has been seen variously as an expression of Modernism, High modernism, or postmodernism. "Post-structuralists" were thinkers who moved away from the strict interpretations and applications of structuralist ideas. Many American academics consider post-structuralism to be part of the broader, less well-defined postmodernist movement, even though many poststructuralists insisted it was not. Thinkers who have been called structuralists include the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss, the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and the semiotician Algirdas Greimas. The early writings of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the literary theorist Roland Barthes have also been called structuralist. Those who began as structuralists but became poststructuralists include Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze. Other post-structuralists include Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Franois Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, Hlne Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. The American cultural theorists, critics and intellectuals they influenced include Judith Butler, John Fiske, Rosalind Krauss, Avital Ronell, and Hayden White. Post-structuralism is not defined by a set of shared axioms or methodologies, but by an emphasis on how various aspects of a particular culture, from its most ordinary, everyday material details to its most abstract theories and beliefs, determine one another. Post-structuralist thinkers reject Reductionism and Epiphenomenalism and the idea that
32

Derrida (1967), Of Grammatology, Part II, Introduction to the "Age of Rousseau," section 2 "...That Dangerous Supplement...", title, The Exorbitant Question of Method, pp. 158 59, 163. Benot Peeters, Derrida: A Biography, pp. 3778, translated by Andrew Brown, Polity Press, 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism (46)

cause-and-effect relationships are top-down or bottom-up. Like structuralists, they start from the assumption that people's identities, values and economic conditions determine each other rather than having intrinsic properties that can be understood in isolation.Thus the French structuralists considered themselves to be espousing Relativism and Constructionism. But they nevertheless tended to explore how the subjects of their study might be described, reductively, as a set of essential relationships, schematics, or mathematical symbols. (An example is Claude Lvi-Strauss's algebraic formulation of mythological transformation in "The Structural Study of Myth"). Post-structuralists thinkers went further, questioning the existence of any distinction between the nature of a thing and its relationship to other things33.

Post-structuralism Post-Structuralists generally reject the notion of formulations of essential relations in primitive cultures, languages, or descriptions of psychological phenomena being forms of Aristotelianism, Rationalism, or Idealism. Another common thread among thinkers associated with the Post-Structuralist movement is the criticism of the absolutist, quasiscientific claims of Structuralist theorists as more reflective of the mechanistic bias inspired by bureaucratization and industrialization than of the inner-workings of actual primitive cultures, languages or psyches. Generally, Post-structuralists emphasize the inter-determination and contingency of social and historical phenomena with each other and with the cultural values and biases of perspective. Such realities were not to be dissected, in the manner of some Structuralists, as a system of facts that could exist independently from values and paradigms (either those of the analysts or the subjects themselves), but to be understood as both causes and effects of each other. For this reason, most Post-structuralists hold a more open-ended view of function within systems than did Structuralists and were sometimes accused of circularity and ambiguity. Poststructuralists countered that, when closely examined, all formalized claims describing phenomena, reality, or truth, rely on some form of
33

Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. II: A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 101http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism (47)

circular reasoning and self-referential logic that is often paradoxical in nature. Thus, it was important to uncover the hidden patterns of circularity, self-reference and paradox within a given set of statements rather than feign objectivity, as such an investigation might allow new perspectives to have influence and new practices to be sanctioned or adopted. In this latter respect, Post-structuralists were, as a group, continuing the philosophical project initiated by Martin Heidegger, who saw themselves as extending the implications of Friedrich Nietzsche's work. Post-structuralist writing tends to connect observations and references from many, widely varying disciplines into a synthetic view of knowledge and its relationship to experience, the body, society and economy a synthesis in which it sees itself as participating. Structuralists, while also somewhat inter-disciplinary, were more comfortable within departmental boundaries and often maintained the autonomy of their analytical methods over the objects they analyzed. Post-structuralists, unlike Structuralists, did not privilege a system of (abstract) "relations" over the specifics to which such relations were applied, but tended to see the notion of the relation or of systemiza tion itself as part-and-parcel of any stated conclusion rather than a reflection of reality as an independent, self-contained state or object. If anything, if a part of objective reality, theorization and systemization to Poststructuralists was an exponent of larger, more nebulous patterns of control in social orders patterns that could not be encapsulated in theory without simultaneously conditioning it. For this reason, certain Poststructural thinkers were also criticized by more Realist, Naturalist or Essentialist thinkers of anti-intellectualism or anti-Philosophy. Poststructuralists, in contrast to Structuralists, tend to place a great deal of skepticism on the independence of theoretical premises from collective bias and the influence of power, and reject the notion of a "pure" or "scientific" methodology in social analysis, semiotics or philosophical speculation. No theory, they said especially when concerning human society or psychology was capable of reducing phenomena to elemental systems or abstract patterns, nor could abstract systems be dismissed as

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secondary derivatives of a fundamental nature: phenomena, and values were part of each other.34

systemization,

Martin Heidegger (18891976) Rejected the philosophical basis of the concepts of "subjectivity" and "objectivity" and asserted that similar grounding oppositions in logic ultimately refer to one another. Instead of resisting the admission of this paradox in the search for understanding, Heidegger requires that we embrace it through an active process of elucidation he called the "Hermeneutic Circle". He stressed the historicity and cultural construction of concepts while simultaneously advocating the necessity of an atemporal and immanent apprehension of them. In this vein, he asserted that it was the task of contemporary philosophy to recover the original question of (or "openness to") Dasein (translated as Being or Being-in-the-World) present in the Presocratic philosophers but normalized, neutered and standardized since Plato. This was to be done, in part, by tracing the record of Dasein's sublimation or forgetfulness through the history of philosophy which meant that we were to ask again what constituted the grounding conditions in ourselves and in the World for the affinity between beings and between the many usages of the term "being" in philosophy. To do this, however, a non-historical and, to a degree, self-referential engagement with whatever set of ideas, feelings or practices would permit (both the non-fixed concept and reality of) such a continuity was required a continuity35 permitting the possible experience, possible existence indeed not only of beings but of all differences as they appeared and tended to develop. Such a conclusion led Heidegger to depart from the Phenomenology of his teacher Husserl and prompt instead an (ironically anachronistic) return to the yet-unasked questions ofOntology, a return that in general did not acknowledge an intrinsic distinction between phenomena and noumena or between things in themselves (de re) and things as they appear: Being-in-the-world, or rather, the openness to the process of Dasein's/Being's becoming was to bridge the age-old gap between these two. In this latter premise,
34

The Postmodern Turn, Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture, Ohio University Press, 1987. p12ffhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism 35 Lule, Jack. "The Postmodern Adventure (Book)." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78.4 (2001): 865866. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Apr 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Influential_postmodernist_philosophers (49)

Heidegger shares an affinity with the late Romantic philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, another principal forerunner of Poststructuralist and Postmodernist thought. Influential to thinkers associated with Postmodernism are Heidegger's critique of the subject-object or senseknowledgedivision implicit in Rationalism , Empiricism and Methodological Naturalism, his repudiation of the idea that facts exist outside or separately from the process of thinking and speaking them (however, Heidegger is not specifically a Nominalist), his related admission that the possibilities of philosophical and scientific discourse are wrapped up in the practices and expectations of a society and that concepts and fundamental constructs are the expression of a lived, historical exercise rather than simple derivations of external, apriori conditions independent from historical mind and changing experience andhis Instrumentalist and Negativist notion that Being (and, by extension, reality) is an action, method, tendency, possibility and question rather than a discreet, positive, identifiable state, answer or entity. 36 Jacques Derrida (19302004) Re-examined the fundamentals of writing and its consequences on philosophy in general; sought to undermine the language of 'presence' or metaphysics in an analytical technique which, beginning as a point of departure from Heidegger's notion of Destruktion, came to be known as Deconstruction. Derrida utilized, like Heidegger, references to Greek philosophical notions associated with the Skeptics and the Presocratics, such as Epoch and Aporia to articulate his notion of implicit circularity between premises and conclusions, origins and manifestations, but in a manner analogous in certain respects to Gilles Deleuze presented a radical re-reading of canonical philosophical figures such as Plato, Aristotle and Descartes as themselves being informed by such "destabilizing" notions. Michel Foucault (19261984) Introduced concepts such as 'discursive regime', or re-invoked those of older philosophers like 'episteme' and 'genealogy' in order to explain the relationship among meaning, power, and social behavior within social
36

(see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich von Kleist,Weltanschauung and Social Constructionism) (50)

orders37. In direct contradiction to what have been typified as Modernist perspectives on epistemology, Foucault asserted that rational judgment, social practice and what he called 'biopower' are not only inseparable but co-determinant. While Foucault himself was deeply involved in a number of progressive political causes and maintained close personal ties with members of the far-Left, he was also controversial with Leftist thinkers of his day, including those associated with various strains of Marxism, proponents of Left libertarianism (e.g. Noam Chomsky) and Humanism (e.g. Jrgen Habermas), for his rejection of what he deemed to be Enlightenment concepts of freedom, liberation, selfdetermination and human nature. Instead, Foucault focused on the ways in which such constructs can foster cultural hegemony, violence and exclusion. In line with his rejection of such 'positive' tenets of Enlightenment-era Humanism, he was active, with Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, in the Anti-Psychiatry Movement, considering much of institutionalized psychiatry and, in particular, Freud's concept of repression central to Psychoanalysis (which was still very influential in France during the 1960s and 70s), to be both harmful and misplaced. Foucault was known for his controversial aphorisms, such as "language is oppression", meaning that language functions in such a way as to render nonsensical, false or silent tendencies that might otherwise threaten or undermine the distributions of power backing a society's conventions even when such distributions purport to celebrate liberation and expression or value minority groups and perspectives. His writings have had a major influence on the larger body of Postmodern academic literature. Jean-Franois Lyotard (19241998) Identified in The Postmodern Condition a crisis in the "discourses of the Human Sciences" latent in Modernism but catapulted to the fore by the advent of the "computerized" or "telematic" era38. This crisis, insofar as it pertains to academia, concerns both the motivations and justification procedures for making research claims: unstated givens or values that have validated the basic efforts of academic research since the late 18th century might no longer be valid (particularly, in Social Science &
37

(see The Order of Things, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality) 38 (see Information Revolution) (51)

Humanities research, though examples from Mathematics are given by Lyotard as well). As formal conjecture about real-world issues becomes inextricably linked to automated calculation, information storage and retrieval, such knowledge becomes increasingly "exteriorised" from its knowers in the form of information. Knowledge is materialized and made into a commodity exchanged between producers and consumers; it ceases to be either an idealistic end-in-itself or a tool capable of bringing about liberty or social benefit; it is stripped of its humanistic and spiritual associations, its connection with education, teaching and human development, being simply rendered as "data" omnipresent, material, unending and without any contexts or pre-requisites. Furthermore, the 'diversity' of claims made by various disciplines begins to lack any unifying principle or intuition as objects of study become more and more specialized due to the emphasis on specificity, precision and uniformity of reference that competitive, database-oriented research implies. The value-premises upholding academic research have been maintained by what Lyotard considers to be quasi-mythological beliefs about human purpose, human reason and human progress large, background constructs he calls "Metanarratives". These Metanarratives still remain in Western society but are now being undermined by rapid Informatization and the commercialization of the University and its functions. The shift of authority from the presence and intuition of knowers from the good-faith of Reason to seek diverse knowledge integrated for human benefit or truth fidelity to the automated database and the market had, in Lyotard's view, the power to unravel the very idea of 'justification' or 'legitimation' and, with it, the rationale for research altogether-esp. in disciplines pertaining to human life, society and meaning. We are now controlled not by binding extra-linguistic value paradigms defining notions of collective identity and ultimate purpose, but rather by our automatic responses to different species of "language games" (a concept Lyotard imports from JL Austin's theory of speech acts). In his vision of a solution to this "vertigo," Lyotard opposes the assumptions of universality, consensus, and generality that he identified within the thought of Humanistic, Neo-Kantian philosophers like Jrgen Habermas and proposes a continuation of experimentation and diversity to be assessed pragmatically in the context of language games rather than via appeal to a resurrected series of transcendentals and metaphysical unities.
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Richard Rorty (19312007) Argues in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that contemporary Analytic philosophy mistakenly imitates scientific methods. In addition, he denounces the traditional epistemological perspectives of Representationalism and Correspondence theory that rely upon the independence of knowers and observers from phenomena and the passivity of natural phenomena in relation to consciousness. As a proponent of anti-foundationalism and anti-essentialism within a Pragmatist framework, he echoes Postmodern strains of Conventionalism and Philosophical Relativism, but opposes much Postmodern thinking with his commitment to Social Liberalism. Jean Baudrillard (19292007), In Simulacra and Simulation, introduced the concept that reality or the principle of the "Real" is short-circuited by the interchangeability of signs in an era whose communicative and semantic acts are dominated by electronic media and digital technologies. Baudrillard proposes the notion that, in such a state, where subjects are detached from the outcomes of events (political, literary, artistic, personal, or otherwise), events no longer hold any particular sway on the subject nor have any identifiable context; they therefore have the effect of producing widespread indifference, detachment, and passivity in industrialized populations. He claimed that a constant stream of appearances and references without any direct consequences to viewers or readers could eventually render the division between appearance and object indiscernible, resulting, ironically, in the "disappearance" of mankind in what is, in effect, a virtual or holographic state, composed only of appearances. Fredric Jameson (born 1934) Set forth one of the first expansive theoretical treatments of Postmodernism as a historical period, intellectual trend and social phenomenon in a series of lectures at the Whitney Museum, later expanded as Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991). Eclectic in his methodology, Jameson has continued a sustained examination of the role that Periodizationcontinues to play as a grounding assumption of critical methodologies in Humanities disciplines. He has contributed extensive effort to explicating the importance of concepts of Utopianismand Utopia as driving forces in the
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cultural and intellectual movements of Modernity, and outlining the political and existential uncertainties that may result from the decline or suspension of this trend in the theorized state of Postmodernity. Like Susan Sontag, Jameson served to introduce a wide audience of American readers to key figures of the 20th Century Continental European intellectual Left, particularly those associated with the Frankfurt School, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Thus, his importance as a 'translator' of their ideas to the common vocabularies of a variety of disciplines in the Anglo-American academic complex is equally as important as his own critical engagement with them. 39 Douglas Kellner (born 1943) In "Analysis of the Journey," a journal birthed from postmodernism, Kellner insists that the "assumptions and procedures of modern theory" must be forgotten. His terms defined in the depth of postmodernism is based on advancement, innovation, and adaptation. Extensively, Kellner analyzes the terms of this theory in real life experiences and examples. Kellner used science andtechnology studies as a major part of his analysis; he urged that the theory is incomplete without it. The scale was larger than just postmodernism alone, it must be interpreted through cultural studies where science and technology studies play a huge role. The reality of the September Eleventh attacks on the United States of America is the catalyst for his explanation. This catalystis used as a great representation due to the mere fact of the planned ambush and destruction of "symbols of globalization", insinuating the World Trade Centers. One of the numerous, yet appropriate definitions of postmodernism and the qualm aspect aids this attribute to seem perfectly accurate. In response, Kellner continues to examine the repercussions of understanding the effects of the September Eleventh attacks. He questions if the attacks are only able to be understood in a limited form of postmodern theory due to the level of irony. In further studies, he enhances the idea of semiotics in alignment with the theory. Similar to the act of September 11 and the symbols that were interpreted through this postmodern ideal, he continues to even describe this as "semiotic systems" that people use to make sense of their lives and the events that occur in them. Kellner's adamancy that signs are necessary to understand one's culture is what he analyzes from the evidence that most cultures have used signs in place of existence.
39

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Influential_postmodernist_philosophers (54)

Finally, he recognizes that many theorists of postmodernism are trapped by their own cogitations. He finds strength in theorist Baudrillard and his idea of Marxism. Kellner acknowledges Marxism's end and lack of importance to his theory. The conclusion he depicts is simple: postmodernism, as most utilize it today, will decide what experiences and signs in one's reality will be one's reality as they know it.40

Criticism of postmodernism Criticisms of postmodernism are intellectually diverse, including the belief that postmodernism is meaningless and promotes obscurantism. Philosopher Noam Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond like people in other fields when asked: Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames. In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins writes in a favorable review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures: Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.41

40

Danto, AC 1990, "The Hyper-Intellectual", New Republic, 203, 11/12, pp. 44-48, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 April 2012http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Influential_postmodernist_philosophers 41 Yilmaz, K 2010, "Postmodernism and its Challenge to the Discipline of History: Implications for History Education", Educational Philosophy & Theory, 42, 7, pp. 779-795, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 April 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism (55)

Dawkins then uses a quotation from Flix Guattari as an example of this "lack of content". It has been suggested that the term "postmodernism" is a mere buzzword that means nothing. For example, Dick Hebdige, in "Hiding in the Light," writes: When it becomes possible for a people to describe as postmodern the dcor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a scratch video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the intertextual relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an antiteleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the metaphysics of presence, a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the predicament of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, 42a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the de-centring of the subject, an incredulity towards metanarratives, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the implosion of meaning, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear selfdestruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a media, consumer or multinational phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of placelessness or the abandonmen t of placelessness (critical regionalism) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it becomes possible to describe all these things as Postmodern (or more simply using a current abbreviation as post or very post) then its clear we are in the presence of a buzzword. Others, such as the British historian Perry Anderson, have argued that the various meanings assigned to the term "postmodernism" only contradict one another on the surface and that a postmodernist analysis can offer insight into contemporary culture. Kaya Yilmaz defends the lack of clarity and consistency in the term's definition. Yilmaz points out that
42

Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,Duke UP, 1991. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism (56)

because the theory itself is anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist it is fitting that the term cannot have any essential or fundamental meaning 43

43

Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, The New Tolerance (Carol Stream IL: Tyndale House, 1998), p. 208. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism (57)

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Postmodern psychology Postmodern psychology is an approach to psychology that questions whether an ultimate or singular version of truth is actually possible within its field.It also challenges the modernist view of psychology as the science of the individual, in favour of seeing man as a cultural/communal product, dominated by language rather than by an inner self.44 Postmodern psychology relies on using a range of different methodologies rather than a singular approach, to embrace the complexity of reality and avoid oversimplification. Post-modernism challenges a systematic, analytical approach to the understanding of the human psyche, as inherently flawed by the impossibility of taking a detached, 'objective' position; and favours instead a transmutable position which may maintain the possibility of taking conceptual hold of a self that is itself decentered. Some would maintain that the very project of a postmodern psychology is self-contradictory in the wake of the deconstruction of the unified self the fading or aphanisis of the subject that psychology is traditionally supposed to investigate.45 Postmodern psychology has also been linked to the Tetrad of Marshall McLuhan "Tetradic logic" supposedly allowing us to accept knowing without knowing in the context of changingness. Paul Vitz refers to yet a further development, that of "transmodern" psychology, as a "new mentality that both transcends and transforms modernity ... (where) psychology would be the handmaid of philosophy and theology, as from the beginning it was meant to be"aspiring to cure mental problems through integrated intervention into the human mind and body combined.46

44

Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (1994) p. 2078http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_psychology 45 L. Holtzman/J. R. Moss eds., Postmodern Psychologies, Societal Practice and Political Life(2000) p. 179. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_psychology 46 J. Childers/G. Hentzi eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism(1995) p. 71. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_psychology (59)

For the reasons covered above, therapists today are increasingly concluding that effective helping is culture-bound. The very strategy that works within one cultural context may make no sense in another. They argue that: Communication and language patterns are bound with the structure of power within the family system Pathology doesn't reside within the "identified patient," but within the interactional patterns of the family The "identified patient" merely bears the symptoms of dysfunctional family communication patterns Symptoms are a form of language (i.e. metaphors) In each of these assumptions, the centrality of language betrays the influence of postmodernism. The use of language defines and identities of those in charge as well as those who are "sick." It constructs the "reality" of each individual as it's defined within the family "culture ". Postmodern-influenced therapies often use language maneuvers to effect change because of their belief that reality is a language construct. A clear example is paradoxical intervention in which the therapist prescribes the symptom--an approach we discuss in some detail in The Death of Truth. [This approach is articulated by, among others, by Jay Haley Problem Solving Therapy47, Postmodern Loss of Identity Those of us who are postmodernists feel compelled to act without a foundation in truth. When this is the case, we are in a position of not really knowing why we do what we do, or why we believe what we believe. It's all a matter of where, and with whom, we happen to be at the moment. Consequently, we lose a sense of who we are--we lose a sense of identity--in a world of equally valid, but dissonant, alternatives. One way to reduce the dissonance is to surrender to the culture of the moment--to exchange a consistent self-identity for shifting cultural
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Jim Fidelibus, Ph.D. Postmodernism and You: Psychology. http://www.xenos.org/ministries/crossroads/dotpsy.htm (60)

identity. Thus, coasting through the ebb-and-flow of social change, we yield an independent "I" for an ever-changing "we." This is the direction postmodernists would have us take, as Cregen explains.

Postmodern psychology argues for the erasure of the category of self. No longer can one securely determine what it is to be a specific kind of person--male or female--or even a person at all. As the category of the individual person fades from view, consciousness of social construction becomes focal. We realize increasingly that who and what we are is not so much the result of our "personal essence" (real feelings, deep beliefs, and the like), but of how we are constructed in various social groups.48

Postmodern Loss of Identity is Not Self-sacrifice Do not, however, confuse the postmodern de-emphasis on self as equivalent to a self-sacrificing attitude. Postmodernism doesn't account for self-sacrifice as anything more than a metaphor--a way of communicating. True self-sacrifice is a distinctively biblical concept. While substituting "We" for "I" might seem to self-giving, it can easily produce as much harm as good. The loss of self-identity has been associated with some of the most unsettling findings in the entire psychology research literature. The loss of self-identity isn't only frightening. It can be tragic. We need to think back no further than Waco or Guyana to see the devastation that can result from the surrender of self-identity to a culture.49 Loss of personal identity and truth may lead to some devastating problems: Loss of Individual Freedom - Cultural determinism led to the definition of Jews as non-persons, resulting in their near extermination in Europe. Cultural determinism has led to the definition of the unborn as non48

J. Childers/G. Hentzi eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism(1995) p. 71. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_psychology 49 Jim Fidelibus, Ph.D. Postmodernism and You: Psychology. How biblical Christians should respond to the postmodern shift in the field of psychotherapy Copyright 1996 Xenos Christian Fellowship. http://www.xenos.org/ministries/crossroads/dotpsy.htm (61)

persons, resulting in their destruction by the millions. When society is left to determine who counts, anything is possible. Danger to Mental Health - With the loss of self, or identity, culture is given enormous power. If I cannot stand apart from my culture, then I am completely controlled by it. Whether I can feel good about myself, and whether I really matter at all, is determined by society and those who run it. Mental Illness An Illusion - If there is no self apart from a social construction, then mental illness is an illusion. Dysfunction must be seen exclusively in the social environment. While this is often the case, this way of thinking can also contribute to a radical sense of victimization in which emotional problems are too easily interpreted as purely the result of past abuse. Such theories ignore the individual's response to abuse. Psychology As An Instrument Of Social Control - Not long ago in the Soviet Union, psychology became the tool of choice for waging war against those who would not conform to the totalitarian standards of the state. From the time of Breshnev on, the Soviets often preferred to put dissidents into psychiatric wards rather than into Gulags. Without the applications of objective diagnostic standards, it could well be that anyone who fails to conform to the status quo (who perhaps is too "intolerant" or "fundamentalist") may be considered insane. Postmodernism is a stealth-destroyer. It may seem open-minded and comfortably tolerant on the surface, but with its denial of the individual and its fascination with power, the makings of manipulation are all present. People may not recognize its danger until it's too late. 50

Postmodern social construction of nature

postmodern social construction of nature is a theorem or speculation of postmodernist continental philosophy that poses analternative critique of previous mainstream, promethean dialogue about environmental sustainability and ecopolitics.
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Jim Fidelibus, Ph.D. Postmodernism and You: Psychology. How biblical Christians should respond to the postmodern shift in the field of psychotherapy Copyright 1996 Xenos Christian Fellowship. http://www.xenos.org/ministries/crossroads/dotpsy.htm

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Whereas traditional criticisms of environmentalism come from the more conservative "right" of politics, leftist critiques of nature pioneered by postmodernist constructionism highlight the need to recognise "the other". The implicit assumption made by theorists like Wapner refer to it as a new "response to eco-criticism would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they themselves silence nature and then to respect the sheer otherness of the non-human world." Critics argue that, by capturing the nonhuman world within its own conceptual domain, postmodern exerts precisely the urge toward mastery that it criticizes in modernity. Thus, postmodern cultural criticism deepens the modernist urge toward mastery by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world. "What else could it mean to assert that there is no such thing as nature?". The issue becomes an existentialist query about whether nature can exist in a humanist critique, and whether we can discern the "others'" views in relation to our actions on their behalf. This is referred to as the Wapner Paradox

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Chapter II First research

Postmodern art
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as Intermedia, Installation art, Conceptual Art and Multimedia, particularly involving video are described aspostmodern. There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use of words prominently as the central artistic element,collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture. The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is "contemporary art". Not all art labeled as contemporary art is postmodern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject postmodernism for other reasons. Arthur Danto argues that "contemporary" is the broader term, and that postmodern objects represent a "subsector" of the contemporary movement. Some postmodern artists have made a more distinctive break from the ideas of modern art and there is no consensus as to what is "late-modern" and what is "post-modern." Ideas rejected by the modern aesthetic have been re-established. In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation. Traditional techniques and subject matter have returned in art. It has even been argued that much of what is called postmodern today, the latest avant-gardism, should still be classified as modern art. As well as describing certain tendencies of contemporary art, postmodern has also been used to denote a phase of modern art. This position is adopted by both defenders of modernism such as Clement Greenberg, as well as radical opponents of modernism such as Flix Guattari, who calls it modernism's "last gasp".The neo-conservative Hilton Kramer describes
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postmodernism as "a creation of modernism at the end of its tether." JeanFranois Lyotard, in Fredric Jameson's analysis, does not hold that there is a postmodern stage radically different from the period of high modernism; instead, postmodern discontent with this or that high modernist style is part of the experimentation of high modernism, giving birth to new modernisms. In the context of aesthetics and art, JeanFranois Lyotard is a major philosopher of postmodernism. Many critics hold that postmodern art emerges from modern art. Suggested dates for the shift from modern to postmodern include 1914 in Europe and 1962or 1968 in America. James Elkins, commenting on discussions about the exact date of the transition from modernism to postmodernism, compares it to the discussion in the 1960s about the exact span of Mannerism and whether it should begin directly after the High Renaissance or later in the century. He makes the point that these debates go on all the time with respect to art movements and periods, which is not to say that they are not important. The close of the period of postmodern art has been dated to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact of globalization and new media. American Marxist philosopher Fredric Jameson argues that the condition of life and production will be reflected in all activity, including the making of art. Jean Baudrillard has had a significant influence on postmodern-inspired art and has emphasised the possibilities of new forms of creativity. The artist Peter Halley describes his day-glo colours as "hyperrealization of real color", and acknowledges Baudrillard as an influence. Baudrillard himself, since 1984, was fairly consistent in his view that contemporary art, and postmodern art in particular, was inferior to the modernist art of the post World War II period, while Jean-Franois Lyotard praised Contemporary painting and remarked on its evolution from Modern art. Major Women artists in the Twentieth Century are associated with postmodern art since much theoretical articulation of their work emerged from French psychoanalysis and Feminist Theory that is strongly related to post modern philosophy.

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As with all uses of the term postmodern there are critics of its application. Kirk Varnedoe, for instance, stated that there is no such thing as postmodernism, and that the possibilities of modernism have not yet been exhausted. Though the usage of the term as a kind of shorthand to designate the work of certain Post-war "schools" employing relatively specific material and generic techniques has become conventional since the mid-1980s, the theoretical underpinnings of Postmodernism as an epochal or epistemic division are still very much in controversy So Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as Intermedia, Installation art, Conceptual Art and Multimedia, particularly involving video are described aspostmodern. There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use of words prominently as the central artistic element,collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture. Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism. Specific trends of modernism that are generally cited are formal purity, medium specificity, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. However, paradox is probably the most important modernist idea against which postmodernism reacts. Paradox was central to the modernist enterprise, having been introduced by Manet. Manet's various violations of representational art brought to prominence the supposed mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation, design and representation, abstraction and reality, and so on. The incorporation of paradox was highly stimulating from Manet to the conceptualists. The status of the avant-garde is particularly controversial: many institutions argue that being visionary, forward-looking, cutting-edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and therefore postmodern art contradicts the value of "art of our times". Postmodernism
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rejects the notion of advancement or progress in art per se, and thus aims to overturn the "myth of the avant-garde". Rosalind Krauss was one of the important enunciators of the view that avant-gardism was over, and that the new artistic era is post-liberal and post-progress. Griselda Pollock studied and confronted the avant-garde and modern art in a series of groundbreaking books, reviewing modern art at the same time as redefining postmodern art. One characteristic of postmodern art is its conflation of high and low culture through the use of industrial materials and pop culture imagery. The use of low forms of art were a part of modernist experimentation as well, as documented in Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik's 1990-91 show High and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art at New York's Museum of Modern Art, an exhibition that was universally panned at the time as the only event that could bring Douglas Crimp and Hilton Kramer together in a chorus of scorn. Postmodern art is noted for the way in which it blurs the distinctions between what is perceived as fine or high art and what is generally seen as low or kitsch art. Whilst this concept of 'blurring' or 'fusing' high art with low art had been experimented during modernism, it only ever became fully endorsed after the advent of the postmodern era. Postmodernism introduced elements of commercialism, kitsch and a general camp aesthetic within its artistic context; postmodernism takes styles from past periods, such as Gothicism, the Renaissance and the Baroque, and mixes them in a fashion which ignores their original use in their corresponding artistic movement. Such elements are common characteristics of what is defined as postmodern art . Fredric Jameson suggests that postmodern works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity. Against this definition, Art and Language's Charles Harrison and Paul Wood maintained that pastiche and discontinuity are endemic to modernist art, and are deployed effectively by modern artists such as Manet and Picasso. One compact definition is that postmodernism rejects modernism's grand narratives of artistic direction, eradicating the boundaries between high and low forms of art, and disrupting genre's conventions with collision, collage, and fragmentation. Postmodern art holds that all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the
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only positions that cannot be overturned by critique or revision. "Pluralism and diversity" are other defining features 51 Technically We find that modern art is the cultural expression of the historical moment of modernity. But how to unpack that statement is contested. One way of defining modern art, or anything really, is describing what it is not. Traditional academic painting and sculpture dominated the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It was about perfect, seamless technique and using that perfect, seamless technique to execute very well-established subject matter, says Ho. There was a hierarchy of genres, from history paintings to portraiture to still lifes and landscapes, and very strict notions of beauty. Part of the triumph of modernism is overturning academic values, she says. In somewhat of a backlash to traditional academic art, modern art is about personal expression. Though it was not always the case historically, explains Ho, now, it seems almost natural that the way you think of works of art are as an expression of an individual vision. Modernism spans a huge variety of artists and kinds of art. But the values behind the pieces are much the same. With modern art, there is this new emphasis put on the value of being original and doing something innovative, says Ho. Edouard Manet and the Impressionists were considered modern, in part, because they were depicting scenes of modern life. The Industrial Revolution brought droves of people to the cities, and new forms of leisure sprung up in urban life. Inside the Hirshhorns galleries, Ho points out Thomas Hart Bentons People of Chilmark, a painting of a mass of tangled men and women, slightly reminiscent of a classical Michelangelo or Thodore Gricaults famous Raft of the Medusa, except that it is a contemporary beach scene, inspired by the Massachusetts town where Benton summered. Ringside Seats, a painting of a boxing match by George Bellows, hangs nearby, as do three paintings by Edward Hopper, one titled First Row Orchestra of theatergoers waiting for the curtains to be drawn. In Renaissance art, a high premium was put on imitating nature. Then, once that was chipped away at, abstraction is allowed to flourish, says
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Postmodern art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art (69)

Ho. Works like Bentons and Hoppers are a combination of observation and invention. Cubists, in the early 1900s, started playing with space and shape in a way that warped the traditional pictorial view. Art historians often use the word autonomous to describe modern art. The vernacular would be art for arts sake, explains Ho. It doesnt have to exist for any kind of utility value other than its own existential reason for being. So, assessing modern art is a different beast. Rather than asking, as one might with a history painting, about narrative Who is the main character? And what is the action? assessing a painting, say, by Piet Mondrian, becomes more about composition. It is about the compositional tension, says Ho, the formal balance between color and line and volume on one hand, but also just the extreme purity of and rigor of it.

According to Ho, some say that modernism reaches its peak with Abstract Expressionism in America during the World War II era. Each artist of the movement tried to express his individual genius and style, particularly through touch. So you get Jackson Pollock with his dripping and throwing paint, says Ho. You get Mark Rothko with his very luminous, thinly painted fields of color. And, unlike the invisible brushwork in heavily glazed academic paintings, the strokes in paintings by Willem de Kooning are loose and sometimes thick. You really can feel how it was made, says Ho. Shortly after World War II, however, the ideas driving art again began to change. Postmodernism pulls away from the modern focus on originality, and the work is deliberately impersonal. You see a lot of work that uses mechanical or quasi-mechanical means or deskilled means, says Ho. Andy Warhol, for example, uses silk screen, in essence removing his direct touch, and chooses subjects that play off of the idea of mass production. While modern artists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman made color choices that were meant to connect with the viewer emotionally, postmodern artists like Robert Rauschenberg introduce chance to the process. Rauschenburg, says Ho, was known to buy paint in unmarked cans at the hardware store.
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 Postmodernism is associated with the deconstruction of the idea, I am the artistic genius, and you need me, says Ho. Artists such as Sol LeWitt and Lawrence Weiner, with works in the Hirshhorn, shirk authorship even more. Weiners piece titled A RUBBER BAL L THROWN ON THE SEA, Cat. No. 146, for example, is displayed at the museum in large, blue, sans-serif lettering. But Weiner was open to the seven words being reproduced in any color, size or font. We could have taken a marker and written it on the wall, says Ho. In other words, Weiner considered his role as artist to be more about conception than production. Likewise, some of LeWitts drawings from the late 1960s are basically drawings by instruction. He provides instructions but anyone, in theory, can execute them. In this post-war generation, there is this trend, in a way, toward democratizing art, says Ho. Like the Sol LeWitt drawing, it is this opinion that anybody can make art . Labels like modern and postmodern, and trying to pinpoint start a nd end dates for each period, sometimes irk art historians and curators. I have heard all kinds of theories, says Ho. I think the truth is that modernity didnt happen at a particular date. It was this gradual transformation that happened over a couple hundred of years. Of course, the two times that, for practical reasons, dates need to be set are when teaching art history courses and organizing museums. In Hos experience, modern art typically starts around the 1860s, while the postmodern period takes root at the end of the 1950s. The term contemporary is not attached to a historical period, as are modern and postmodern, but instead simply describes art of our moment. At this point, though, work dating back to about 1970 is often considered contemporary. The inevitable problem with this is that it makes for an ever-expanding body of contemporary work for which professors and curators are responsible. You just have to keep an eye on how these things are going, advises Ho. I think they are going to get redefined.52 The question what is art is both more simple and more complex than it might seem at first glance. Andy Warhol once quipped, Art is whatever
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Megan Gambino .Ask an Expert: What is the Difference Between Modern and Postmodern Art? Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Ask-an-Expert-What-is-the-differencebetween-modern-and-postmodern-art.html#ixzz2m9cFam4w . (71)

you can get away with. Is it? His observation raises some interesting questions: How does one go about judging a work of art as good, bad, or better than something else? What standards are used? Is something shocking, like a New York City artist who recently put vials filled with her menstrual fluids on display, art? Or is such a display really something else?53 Art criticism and the fine arts in general have fallen on strange times, which is why so many of us end up going through museums of modern art with either a roll of our eyes or a confused expression on our faces. Poetry and literature have not faired much better, and the reasons lay in the adoption of a particular kind of postmodern approach to criticism, deconstructive postmodernism. Art and its critics, many of whom probably are not even familiar with postmodernism as a movement, have nevertheless been under the influence of deconstructive postmodern philosophy since the days of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, an ordinary white porcelain urinal, signed by Duchamp, put on display in 1917 as serious artwork. Its display caused a sensation and critics, the public, and other artists argued strenuously about the work. But Duchamp was clearly onto something, for in 2004 five-hundred leaders in the art world voted it the most influential work of modern art, beating out Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica. How is it that a signed toilet is viewed with such reverence, and without a knowing wink? 54 For those of you not familiar with deconstructive postmodernism a very short introduction might include tales of professors who debate not truth or beauty, but semantics (the study of language creation). Truth and beauty, in their world, are something merely constructed, bound by culture, hemmed in by psychology, framed by gender, driven by economics, warped by language, distorted by the powerful, tied to the patriarchy and the domination of nature, and totally relative always. Only the nave or those who wish to dominate believe in any kind of crosscultural (or inherent) truth, cross-cultural (or inherent) beauty, or a
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KEITH MARTIN-SMITH.ART, POSTMODERN CRITICISM, AND THE EMERGING INTEGRAL MOVEMENT. August 2007. http://www.integralworld.net/martin-smith.html.
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hierarchy of any kind. In other words, there are no cross-cultural truths outside of biological/physical ones (for example men cannot, in any culture, give biological birth). As an example of how far-reaching this worldview is, a deconstructive postmodernist would argue that gorillas are protected more passionately than reptiles only because they remind us of us. It is our own unconscious narcissism that makes us value them more than a shellfish or insect, not any inherent or innate value. Wanting to save gorillas instead of reptiles or insects or shellfish shows only your own bias towards things more like you, and not one thing more for gorillas and people and gnats are all equally evolved in the sense all three have had 4.5 billion years or so to develop. So in the world of the deconstructive postmodernist, truth and beauty in art are mere constructions, mere fabrications. They believe the very idea of truth and beauty imply a single standard of judgment, something that postmodernism rejects. Think of it this way: aesthetic beauty (the beauty of appearance) to an Australian Aborigine might be very different than a New York City playwright's which might be very different than a ranch hand's in southern Texas, which might be very different from yours. Postmodernism points out that any assumed standard for beauty is just that: an assumption that basically imposes its standards on everyone. And since art relies on aesthetic beauty at least in-part, that leaves the postmodernist with a real problem: what is attractive? What is art? Since art can no longer be judged on culturally-constructed ideas of beauty, what is left? For postmodernism, irony is one of the things most valued to mock and shock are what great postmodern art primarily does. The vast majority of leading edge artists and critics have bought into this, which is why crucifixes in urine [Serrano's Piss Christ] and menstrual fluids in beakers nailed to a wall are passing as art.

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For the critics who praise these things, value comes through the scale of irony in a postmodernist piece. They look to see how deeply this art pierces the collective consciousness and how much damage it does to the edifice of "established" culture. This helps to explain why Fountain is so highly praised it went to the heart of the exaltation of art and, pun intended, pissed all over it. Guernica, on the other hand, is about Spain's experience during civil war under Franco as the Second World War closed in all around something that is perhaps less relevant to a critic born in America when Jimmy Carter was in office. rony and its scale of impact, then, are very important in postmodern art. Another measure of value the postmodern critic uses is that the work in question be different so long as an artist is different than the establishment their work gains automatic points. Critics see it as daring to stand apart from the dominating culture menstrual fluids in beakers nailed to a wall as a kind of feminist protest against patriarchy, or so I assume. Beauty and truth? For the postmodernist, beauty and truth really can't exist, so for them beauty becomes the irony itself. Most of us have been to modern museums of art, and seen the rather dull geometric shapes painted onto canvases that are, at best, mildly interesting. These museums bore or confuse most of us, which is why they struggle to continue to exist. Much of the work inside their walls speaks to the head, to the educated who get their irony and find it attractive. But most of us agree that a triangle
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painted on a black canvas, or ink blots thrown across a wall, have nothing whatsoever to say to the heart, to the person looking for an emotional or evengaspspiritual connection to the work.55 Postmodern art's real power comes from forcing the receiver of the art to question their assumptions about what art is, about who and what and how art is created, and how it is received. Beauty and truth are left to antiquity, to the nave who still believe in cross-cultural truths. In that sense Fountain can be said to have achieved success it forced viewers to question, and often angrily dismiss, the work because it challenged their assumptions, destroyed their sacred cows, and in so doing influenced the next two generations of artists profoundly. And in this Duchamp's brilliance is simply without question. The question remains, though: is it art, or is it really something else? Before we get to that, let us summarize: postmodern critics give points for irony, points for having a scale of impact, and points for coming from a different member of society (preferably no white heterosexual males, please). Fountain scores on irony and scale of impact; Serrano's Piss Christ scores on all three counts. Since the postmodernist finds irony itself beautiful they therefore consider these things art. And yet if we remove shock, neither Piss Christ nor Fountain offers any other evocative emotional response, because neither Fountain nor Piss Christ has any inherent beauty at all. The postmodern critic shrugs his shoulders at that observation and asks, What is beauty, anyway? Whose beauty? Yours? Mine? Maybe this lack of so-called beauty is showing us an important point? What does beauty even mean And then comes the smug look: he gets it, and you, who even ask such nave questions, clearly do not. As Shakespeare said, therein lies the rub: postmodern critics fail to see that just being ironic, different, and having impact isn't enough to make something art. It is enough to make it social commentary, but not necessarily anything more unless you think irony itself if beautiful. And most of us do not think that, for very obvious reasons. People do not stand in front of triangles for hours on end, moved to tears as they draw in their sketchbooks, or tremble at the sight of a postmodern sculpture of
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KEITH MARTIN-SMITH.ART, POSTMODERN CRITICISM, AND THE EMERGING INTEGRAL MOVEMENT. August 2007. http://www.integralworld.net/martin-smith.html (75)

entwined geometric shapes, giant clothespins, or stick figures holding hands. And so art struggles in our postmodern world, where genius has been pronounced dead and mediocrity and irony congratulate one another on their empty existence. Art and literature have lost their power over our collective imaginations because they can no longer speak for us in any meaningful way. The proverbial head ate the heart in an attempt to understand it, so that avante garde art and literature have sadly been relegated to PhD's and ever-narrowing groups of intellectuals who get it, never bothering to ask if it's worthy of being gotten in the first place. Can anyone really say they understood, much less enjoyed, slogging through Joyce's Ulysses or Pynchon's Mason & Dixon? Brilliant in conception, yes, but in execution? Does anyone really enjoy looking at red squares painted onto black canvases, or blots of ink scattered across a wall? Wasn't art once more than just an intellectual slight-of-hand? Didn't art once speak to more than just the hyper-educated elite? Didn't Shakespeare labor mightily to make his works accessible to everyone, commoner and aristocrat alike? Do we really need to listen to postmodern critics, full of banal intellectual discourse and smug obfuscations, telling us why we should appreciate shit smeared across a wall? A crucifix sitting in a bowl of piss? The answer is no, we do not need to listen, which is why so many leading edge artistic institutions are seeing falling membership and declining interest art has become an inside joke about an inside joke that fewer and fewer people are interested in hearing. What needs to happen is a distinction must be made, a distinction between social commentary and art. Sometimes, of course, a work can be both, but irony really only speaks to the former rather than the latter.56
THE INTEGRAL ARTIST AND CRITIC

Let's look at the book, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini American postmodern critics will value it automatically because it is from another culture and be reluctant to judge it based on our culture's valuesbut that begs the question: is the book any damn good? Is it art? How DO we judge it?
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To answer this question we need to take a brief look at the newest kind of art entering popular culture, art that will become more and more prevalent in the coming decades: post-post modern, or integral, art and literature. This will be explored in much greater detail in Part II, "The Future of Art and Art Criticism", but a brief overview starts with the idea that integral art also challenges the receiver, it too forces her to question her assumptions and her beliefs about what art is. But in order for integral art to be understood, one must embrace not fragmentation, not deconstruction, but rather integration, a larger whole, a larger perspective than the viewer may currently hold. The reader/viewer must create a whole new context in which to hold the art, one which may truly challenge his belief structures, one which may force him, to make sense of what he is seeing, to hold a larger perspective than he currently has in place. Postmodern art demands the reader deconstruct their habitual methods of analyzing art; Integral art does this first step as well, but then also demands the reader integrate the separate strands of information to form a whole new narrative in which a more true meaning of the story/artwork will rest. It does not rest on cultural givens, but it does rest on a larger truth. This meta-narrative isn't fixed in stone, it isn't pre-given, but it is tied directly to the demands the art makes on the receiver. Integral art requires more, not less, complexity to see the overarching point of the artwork. Integral art moves beyond irony and deconstruction and once again demands a larger perspective be put into place to analyze the artwork, not just to deconstruct the society in which it arose.
POSTMODERN CRITICISM OF ESTABLISHED ART

As the American philosopher Ken Wilber once quipped, if you don't have the brains to build a building you can still burn one down. And postmodern criticism has, for too long, relied on burning down buildings, on deconstructing, as its primary tool. They have made their point. They have shown us a powerful truth. But the whole of art and literature, spanning thousands of years of human history, is more than fodder for a fire. The classics are studied, still, not just because they were written by dead white men and current living white men want to perpetuate that power base. It is true that most pre-19th Century forms of art assume a
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single point of view, a single truth that was tied to an often-prettyhorrible-reality for a marginalized group or groups. Yet there is often a hugely important insight and staggering genius in the classics to not study them institutionally borders on the self-destructive. The fact that most cultures in the past gave certain kinds of people more privileges than others to engage in art is an important fact worth studying, but it is also largely beside the point it does not detract from the insights and genius of pre-19th Century pieces anymore than calculus is any less true because a white man (actually two white men), who were part of the patriarchy, invented it. So those of you paying attention might notice that I still haven't answered the rather thorny question, what is art? We've seen how postmodern art defines itself, and how Integral art defines itself, but both beg the question: what is art? The bottom line is that art is more than just irony, impact, and difference. Its beauty needs to rest on more than just those things. To become art and not be just social commentary, the work mustoffer more it must offer something greater than mere criticism to land it somewhere closer to the soul, to the place where true art climbs inside of you and illuminates something within. True art leaves you breathless, amazed, wondering, perhaps even terrified or furious you are brought somewhere miraculous within yourself somewhere you might not have even known existed. So Piss Christ and Fountain could only be considered art if you believed that irony, and irony alone, is beautiful. Otherwise, it is merely social commentary in visual form. Maybe Oscar Wilde said it best, for he anticipated postmodernism's insights decades before it arrived: Art can never really show us the exterior world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world of which we have any real cognizanceit is art, and art alone, that reveals us to ourselves.57 In Part II we'll unpack a new definition of art that can transcend and include all of the things discussed here. This definition may one day might explain why museums are once more packing in men and women from all walks of life and all educational backgrounds to marvel at that
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which hangs from their walls, something that once again touches the soul.58 First of all, postmodern art departs from modern art in its abandonment of political advocacy for a singular ideology. The modernist avant-garde viewed art as an agent of social change and even helped to shape many of the political movements of the twentieth century. Just look at the way futurism promoted Italian fascism with its aesthetic of the machine. By the nineteen-seventies, the political ideals that fueled modernism had given way to profound disillusionment with abhorrent wars such as Vietnam, ultra-utilitarian architecture, and academic minimalism. Artists began to use artistic styles independently of their original political agenda. This appropriation of historic styles irrespective of their original ideological contexts sets postmodern art apart from modern art. For example, Postmodern Elegy makes liberal reference to cubism, surrealism, and expressionism without adhering to the stylistic purity of modernism or striving to advance any singular ideology. Rather than using style to convey monolithic ideologies, postmodernism undermines the manipulative aspect of ideologies by exposing the artificiality of style.59 ostmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as Intermedia, Installation art, Conceptual Art and Multimedia, particularly involving video are described as postmodern. .60 There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use of words prominently as the central artistic element,collage, simplification, appropriation, performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well

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KEITH MARTIN-SMITH.ART, POSTMODERN CRITICISM, AND THE EMERGING INTEGRAL MOVEMENT. August 2007. http://www.integralworld.net/martin-smith.html 59 Francis Berry. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MODERN ART AND POSTMODERN ART. 26 June 2006. http://postmodern-art.com/.
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as the break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture.61 The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is "contemporary art". Not all art labeled as contemporary art is postmodern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist and late modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject postmodernism for other reasons. Arthur Danto argues that "contemporary" is the broader term, and that postmodern objects represent a "subsector" of the contemporary movement. Some postmodern artists have made a more distinctive break from the ideas of modern art and there is no consensus as to what is "late-modern" and what is "post-modern." Ideas rejected by the modern aesthetic have been re-established. In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation.[4]Traditional techniques and subject matter have returned in art. It has even been argued that much of what is called postmodern today, the latest avant-gardism, should still be classified as modern art. As well as describing certain tendencies of contemporary art, postmodern has also been used to denote a phase of modern art. This position is adopted by both defenders of modernism such asClement Greenberg, as well as radical opponents of modernism such as Flix Guattari, who calls it modernism's "last gasp" The neo-conservative Hilton Kramer describes postmodernism as "a creation of modernism at the end of its tether." JeanFranois Lyotard, in Fredric Jameson's analysis, does not hold that there is a postmodern stage radically different from the period of high modernism; instead, postmodern discontent with this or that high modernist style is part of the experimentation of high modernism, giving birth to new modernisms. In the context of aestheticsand art, JeanFranois Lyotard is a major philosopher of postmodernism. Many critics hold that postmodern art emerges from modern art. Suggested dates for the shift from modern to postmodern include 1914 in Europe, and 1962 or 1968 in America. James Elkins, commenting on discussions about the exact date of the transition from modernism to
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After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History Arthur C. Danto

Jump up^ Wendy Steiner, Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th-Century Art, New York: The Free Press, 2001

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postmodernism, compares it to the discussion in the 1960s about the exact span of Mannerism and whether it should begin directly after the High Renaissance or later in the century. He makes the point that these debates go on all the time with respect to art movements and periods, which is not to say that they are not important. The close of the period of postmodern art has been dated to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact of globalization and new media. American Marxist philosopher Fredric Jameson argues that the condition of life and production will be reflected in all activity, including the making of art. Jean Baudrillard has had a significant influence on postmodern-inspired art and has emphasised the possibilities of new forms of creativity. The artist Peter Halley describes his day-glo colours as "hyperrealization of real color", and acknowledges Baudrillard as an influence. Baudrillard himself, since 1984, was fairly consistent in his view that contemporary art, and postmodern art in particular, was inferior to the modernist art of the post World War II period, while Jean-Franois Lyotard praised Contemporary painting and remarked on its evolution from Modern art. MajorWomen artists in the Twentieth Century are associated with postmodern art since much theoretical articulation of their work emerged from French psychoanalysis and Feminist Theory that is strongly related to post modern philosophy. As with all uses of the term postmodern there are critics of its application. Kirk Varnedoe, for instance, stated that there is no such thing as postmodernism, and that the possibilities of modernism have not yet been exhausted. Though the usage of the term as a kind of shorthand to designate the work of certain Post-war "schools" employing relatively specific material and generic techniques has become conventional since the mid-1980s, the theoretical underpinnings of Postmodernism as an epochal or epistemic division are still very much in controversy Defining postmodern art Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends inmodernism. Specific trends of modernism that are generally cited are formal purity, medium specificity, art for art's
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sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. However, paradox is probably the most important modernist idea against which postmodernism reacts. Paradox was central to the modernist enterprise, having been introduced by Manet. Manet's various violations of representational art brought to prominence the supposed mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation, design and representation, abstraction and reality, and so on. The incorporation of paradox was highly stimulating from Manet to the conceptualists. The status of the avant-garde is particularly controversial: many institutions argue that being visionary, forward-looking, cutting-edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and therefore postmodern art contradicts the value of "art of our times". Postmodernism rejects the notion of advancement or progress in art per se, and thus aims to overturn the "myth of the avant-garde". Rosalind Krauss was one of the important enunciators of the view that avant-gardism was over, and that the new artistic era is post-liberal and post-progress. Griselda Pollock studied and confronted the avant-garde and modern art in a series of groundbreaking books, reviewing modern art at the same time as redefining postmodern art. One characteristic of postmodern art is its conflation of high and low culture through the use of industrial materials and pop culture imagery. The use of low forms of art were a part of modernist experimentation as well, as documented in Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik's 1990-91 show High and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art at New York's Museum of Modern Art an exhibition that was universally panned at the time as the only event that could bring Douglas Crimp and Hilton Kramer together in a chorus of scorn. Postmodern art is noted for the way in which it blurs the distinctions between what is perceived as fine or high art and what is generally seen as low or kitsch art. Whilst this concept of 'blurring' or 'fusing' high art with low art had been experimented during modernism, it only ever became fully endorsed after the advent of the postmodern era. Postmodernism introduced elements of commercialism, kitsch and a general camp aesthetic within its artistic context; postmodernism takes styles from past periods, such as Gothicism, the Renaissance and the Baroque, and mixes them in a fashion which ignores their original use in their corresponding artistic
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movement. Such elements are common characteristics of what is defined as postmodern art. Fredric Jameson suggests that postmodern works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity. Against this definition, Art and Language's Charles Harrison and Paul Wood maintained that pastiche and discontinuity are endemic to modernist art, and are deployed effectively by modern artists such as Manet and Picasso. One compact definition is that postmodernism rejects modernism's grand narratives of artistic direction, eradicating the boundaries between high and low forms of art, and disrupting genre's conventions with collision, collage, and fragmentation. Postmodern art holds that all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions that cannot be overturned by critique or revision. "Pluralism and diversity" are other defining features. Avant-garde precursors radical movements and trends regarded as influential and potentially as precursors to postmodernism emerged around World War I and particularly in its aftermath. With the introduction of the use of industrial artifacts in art and techniques such as collage, avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Dada and Surrealism questioned the nature and value of art. These movements were influenced by new artforms such as cinema and the rise of reproduction as a means of creating artworks. The ignition point for the definition of modernism, Clement Greenberg's essay, AvantGarde and Kitsch, first published in Partisan Review in 1939, is a defence of the avant-garde in the face of popular culture. Later, Peter Brger would make a distinction between the historical avant-garde and modernism, and critics such as Krauss, Huyssen, and Douglas Crimp, following Brger, identified the historical avant-garde as a precursor to postmodernism. Krauss, for example, describes Pablo Picasso's use of collage as an avant-garde practice that anticipates postmodern art with its emphasis on language at the expense of autobiography. Another point of view is that avant-garde and modernist artists used similar strategies and that postmodernism repudiates both.

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Art begins in the mind of a creative individual. The artist takes his significant experiences and thoughts as raw material and creates a perceptual embodiment for them. Each artist makes independent judgments about which of his experiences and thoughts are significant. And to the best of his ability and with his unique style, each artist employs the techniques of his perceptual medium of choice. The result is an object that, at its best, has an awesome power to exalt the senses, the intellects, and the passions of those who experience it. Those individuals who over the centuries accepted art's calling developed it into a vehicle that called upon the highest insights of the human creative vision and demanded exacting skill. The names that evoke in us a sense of greatness - Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer - stand for those individuals who expanded the range of themes and subjects and developed the repertoire of techniques to the next generation of artists. Their achievements created the status of the artist as not merely a visionary or a craftsman, but as a special individual in whom both vision and craft are integrated and heightened.62 But by about the middle of the nineteenth century, the art world began to lose its confidence. The art world's symptoms of decline were part of the broader intellectual world's slipping into a sense that progress, beauty, optimism, and genuine originality were no longer possible. "The artist is not an archaeologist, and the point is not to resurrect and imitate the past. The point is that the world they saw and a whole lot more is still out there." The causes of the sense of decline were many. The increasing naturalism of the nineteenth century led, for those who had not shaken off their religious heritage, to a feeling of being alone and without guidance in a vast, empty universe. The rise of philosophical theories of skepticism and irrationalism led many to distrust their cognitive faculties of perception and reason. The development of scientific theories such as
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Post-Postmodern Art by. Stephen Hicks, philosopher .is the introduction to the Newberry Manifesto . An Artist's Voice. Aesthetic Commentary. 2013. http://michaelnewberry.com/av/post/post.html ( Stephen R. C. Hicks .Associate Professor of Philosophy .Chairman, Department of Philosophy .Director, Honors Program in Liberal Arts .Rockford College)

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evolution and entropy brought with them pessimistic accounts of human nature and the destiny of the world. The spread of liberalism and free markets caused their opponents on the political left, many of whom were members of the artistic avant garde, to see political developments as a series of deep disappointments. And the technological revolutions spurred by the combination of science and capitalism led many to project a future in which mankind would be dehumanized or destroyed by the very machines that were supposed to improve their lot. By the turn of the twentieth century, the nineteenth-century intellectual world's sense of disquiet had become a full-blown anxiety. The artists responded, exploring in their works the implications of a world in which reason, order, certainty, dignity, and optimism seemed to have disappeared. The works that are the iconic pieces of twentieth century art express the minds of the great names that created them.63 Twentieth-century art is Pablo Picasso's fractured world populated by vacant-eyed, disjointed beings. It is Edward Hopper's emotionally out-oftune men and women in bland, worn settings. It is the predatory horror of Willem de Kooning's Woman series. It is Salvador Dali's surreal world in which the distinction between subjective dream states and objective reality is obliterated. It is Andy Warhol's smirking trivialization and mechanical reproductions. It is a reality that is captured presciently in Edvard Munch's The Scream, the horror of being a cypher in a world of hideously swirling near-formless forms. The twentieth-century world is also the story of its own self-elimination. While Picasso and Munch looked at reality and reported their depressed observations, others retreated from the world and proceeded to strip away from art anything that they could. On the grounds that other media such as photography and literature reproduced reality and told stories, many eliminated as much content as they could from their works. Art came to be a self-contained study of dimension, color, and composition. But the reductionist, stripping-away game led quickly to challenges even to those features. In the sterile color studies of Piet Mondrian and Barnett Newman, any sense of a third dimension disappeared. In Kasimir Malevich's near63

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monochrome White on White, color differentiation was abandoned. And with Jackson Pollock's erratic paint drips and splatters, any role of artistic composition was eliminated. The art world had reached a dead end. When it looked out at the world through the eyes of Picasso and Munch, it saw nothing of value. When it looked at what the reductionists had produced, it saw that nothing uniquely artistic had survived. Collectively, the leading members of the art world had decided that art has no content, that it has no special media or techniques, and that the artist has no crucial role in the process. Art became nothing - or a statement of nothingness. Asked to submit something for display in 1917, Duchamp sent a urinal. Duchamp of course knew the history of art. He knew what had been achieved - how over the centuries art had been a powerful vehicle that called upon the highest development of the human creative vision and demanded exacting technical skill; and he knew that art had an awesome power to exalt the senses, the minds, and the passions of those who experience it. Duchamp reflected on the history of art and decided to make a statement. The artist is not a great creator - Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing store. The artwork is not a special object - it was mass-produced in a factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennobling - at best it is puzzling and mostly leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and above that, Duchamp did not select just any readymade object to display. In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss on. Art by its nature is about the significant. To the extent that art is an expression of the artist's being, it expresses what the artist thinks and feels to be significant. To the extent that art is an act of communication, it is a statement to an audience of what the artist thinks and feels to be important. When an artist decides to devote a week, a month, or a year or more of his life to creating This rather than That - he is saying that This is worth his time and effort. When the artist presents the results of his efforts to an audience, he is telling them that his creation is worthy of the time and effort of their contemplation. We do not waste our time on the insignificant or ask others to waste theirs - unless we wish to express the significant belief that nothing is significant. Duchamp and the others have become the iconic figures of recent art history. Through them, the story of the art world is a story of selfconscious disintegration. Once, however, everything has been disintegrated, every artist has a choice. He can choose to play the current game of cynicism and despair,
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hoping, at best, to introduce a minor variation here and there. Or he can look afresh at the world and rediscover in it the potential that earlier great artists pointed us toward. Much of the art world is currently a long way from building upon Michelangelo's powerfully stylized human forms, Rembrandt's skill of characterization, Vermeer's exquisite use of light. Though closer in time, much of it is also a long way from the majesty in the works of Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Church, the elegance of John Singer Sargent's paintings or the exuberance of Frederic Remington's. The artist is not an archaeologist, and the point is not to resurrect and imitate the past. The point is that the world they saw and a whole lot more is still out there. The artist, like every thinking and passionate human being, has the power to decide whether to accept the assumptions of the recent past and work within them, or whether to strike out on his own, questioning those assumptions and actively seeking alternatives to them. Every artist, in his work, expresses the deepest choices he has made. That power of expression is what compels some of us to be artists in the best sense, and it is what attracts those of us who are not artists to their creations. The strategic choice of what to express and how, accordingly, is everything. 64

Radical movements and trends regarded as influential and potentially as precursors to postmodernism emerged around World War I and particularly in its aftermath. With the introduction of the use of industrial artifacts in art and techniques such as collage, avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Dada and Surrealism questioned the nature and value of art. These movements were influenced by new artforms such as cinema and the rise of reproduction as a means of creating artworks. The ignition point for the definition of modernism, Clement Greenberg's essay, AvantGarde and Kitsch, first published in Partisan Review in 1939, is a defence of the avant-garde in the face of popular culture. Later, Peter Brger would make a distinction between the historical avant-garde and modernism, and critics such as Krauss, Huyssen, and Douglas Crimp, following Brger, identified the historical avant-garde as a precursor to
64

Post-Postmodern Art by. Stephen Hicks, philosopher .is the introduction to the Newberry Manifesto . An Artist's Voice. Aesthetic Commentary. 2013. http://michaelnewberry.com/av/post/post.html . (87)

postmodernism. Krauss, for example, describes Pablo Picasso's use of collage as an avant-garde practice that anticipates postmodern art with its emphasis on language at the expense of autobiography. Another point of view is that avant-garde and modernist artists used similar strategies and that postmodernism repudiates both65 Architecture The idea of Postmodernism in architecture began as a response to the perceived blandness, inhumanity, and failed Utopianism of the Modern movement. Modern Architecture, as established and developed by Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, was focused on the pursuit of a perceived ideal perfection, and attempted harmony of form and function, and dismissal of "frivolous ornament." Critics of modernism argued that the attributes of perfection and minimalism themselves were subjective, and pointed out anachronisms in modern thought and questioned the benefits of its philosophy. Definitive postmodern architecture such as the work ofMichael Graves and Robert Venturi rejects the notion of a 'pure' form or 'perfect' architectonic detail, instead conspicuously drawing from all methods, materials, forms and colors available to architects. Modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is associated with the phrase "less is more"; in contrast Venturi famously said, "Less is a bore." Postmodernist architecture was one of the first aesthetic movements to openly challenge Modernism as antiquated and "totalitarian", favoring personal preferences and variety over objective, ultimate truths or principles. It is this atmosphere of criticism, skepticism, and emphasis on difference over and against unity that distinguishes the postmodernism aesthetic. Among writers defining the terms of this discourse is Charles Jencks, described by Architectural Design Magazine as "the definer of PostModernism for thirty years" and the "internationally acclaimed critic..., whose name became synonymous with Post-modernism in the 80s66 Literature Literary postmodernism was officially inaugurated in the United States with the first issue of boundary 2, subtitled "Journal of Postmodern
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism (88)

Literature and Culture", which appeared in 1972. David Antin, Charles Olson, John Cage, and the Black Mountain College school of poetry and the arts were integral figures in the intellectual and artistic exposition of postmodernism at the time. boundary 2 remains an influential journal in postmodernist circles today. Jorge Luis Borges's (1939) short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, is often considered as predicting postmodernism and conceiving the ideal of the ultimate parody. Samuel Beckett is sometimes seen as an important precursor and influence. Novelists who are commonly connected with postmodern literature include Vladimir Nabokov, William Gaddis, John Hawkes, William Burroughs, Giannina Braschi, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, E.L. Doctorow,Jerzy Kosinski, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon (Pynchon's work has also been described as "high modern"), Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, Ana Lydia Vega, and Paul Auster. In 1971, the Arab-American scholar Ihab Hassan published The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature, an early work of literary criticism from a postmodern perspective, in which the author traces the development of what he calls "literature of silence" through Marquis de Sade, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Beckett, and many others, including developments such as the Theatre of the Absurd and the nouveau roman. In 'Postmodernist Fiction' (1987), Brian McHale details the shift from modernism to postmodernism, arguing that the former is characterized by an epistemological dominant and that postmodern works have developed out of modernism and are primarily concerned with questions of ontology. In Constructing Postmodernism (1992), McHale's second book, he provides readings of postmodern fiction and of some of the contemporary writers who go under the label ofcyberpunk. McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007), follows Raymond Federman's lead in now using the past tense when discussing postmodernism. Music ostmodern music is either music of the postmodern era, or music that follows aesthetic and philosophical trends of postmodernism. As the name suggests, the postmodernist movement formed partly in reaction to the ideals of the modernist. Because of this, Postmodern music is mostly
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defined in opposition to modernist music, and a work can either be modernist, or postmodern, but not both. Jonathan Kramer posits the idea (following Umberto Eco and Jean-Franois Lyotard) that postmodernism (including musical postmodernism) is less a surface style or historical period (i.e., condition) than an attitude. The postmodern impulse in classical music arose in the 1960s with the advent of musical minimalism. Composers such as Terry Riley, Krzysztof Penderecki,Gyrgy Ligeti, Henryk Grecki, Bradley Joseph, John Adams, George Crumb, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Lou Harrison reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant harmonies, whilst others, most notably John Cage challenged the prevailing Narratives of beauty and objectivity common to Modernism. Some composers have been openly influenced by popular music and world ethnic musical traditions. Postmodern Classical music as well is not a musical style, but rather refers to music of the postmodern era. It bears the same relationship to postmodernist music that postmodernity bears to postmodernism. Postmodern music, on the other hand, shares characteristics with postmodernist artthat is, art that comes after and 67 reacts against modernism . A clarifying example of this phenomenon would be a rock band that sells T-shirts, ostensibly an adjunct business to their primary musical pursuit, yet the T-Shirts become more popular or are deemed "cooler" than the band's original musical output. Though representing a general return to certain notions of music-making that are often considered to be classical or romantic , not all postmodern composers have eschewed the experimentalist or academic tenets of modernism. The works of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, for example, exhibit experimentalist preoccupation that is decidedly antiromantic. Eclecticism and freedom of expression, in reaction to the rigidity and aesthetic limitations of modernism, are the hallmarks of the postmodern influence in musical composition.68

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Chapter III First research

Radical movements in Postmodernism art
World War II and the Post-War period During the period leading up to and during World War II modernist artists, writers, and poets, as well as important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and the onslaught of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States. Many of those who didn't flee perished. Among the artists and collectors who arrived in New York during the war (some with help from Varian Fry) were Hans Namuth, Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, Max Ernst, Jimmy Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, Leo Castelli, Marcel Duchamp, Andr Masson, Roberto Matta, Andr Breton, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Fernand Lger and Piet Mondrian. A few artists, notably Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard remained in France and survived. The post-war period left the capitals of Europe in upheaval with an urgency to economically and physically rebuild and to politically regroup. In Paris, formerly the center of European culture and capital of the art world, the climate for art was a disaster and New York replaced Paris as the new center of the art world. In Europe after the war there was the continuation of Surrealism, Cubism, Dada and the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Art brut, and Lyrical Abstraction or Tachisme (the European equivalent to Abstract expressionism) took hold of the newest generation. Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Stal, Georges Mathieu, Vieira da Silva,Jean Dubuffet, Yves Klein, Pierre Soulages and Jean Messagier, among others are considered important figures in post-war European painting. In the United States a new generation of American artists began to emerge and to dominate the world stage and they were called Abstract Expressionists

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Dada
In the early 20th century Marcel Duchamp 69exhibited a urinal as a sculpture. His point was to have people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art, because he said it was a work of art. He referred to his work as "Readymades". The Fountain, was a urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, that shocked the art world in 1917. This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled as Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor to conceptual art. It is questionable, to some, whether Duchampwhose obsession with paradox is well knowncan be called postmodernist on only the grounds that he eschews any specific medium, since paradox is not medium-specific, although it arose first in Manet's paintings. Dadaism can be viewed as part of the modernist propensity to challenge established styles and forms, along with Surrealism, Futurism and Abstract Expressionism. From a chronological point of view Dada is located solidly within modernism, however a number of critics have held that it anticipates postmodernism, while others, such as Ihab Hassan and Steven Connor, consider it a possible changeover point between modernism and postmodernism. For example, according to McEvilly, postmodernism begins with the realization that one no longer believes in the myth of progress, and that Duchamp sensed this in 1914 when he changed his modernist practice to a postmodernist one, "abjuring aesthetic delectation, transcendent ambition, and tour de force demonstrations of formal agility in favor of aesthetic indifference, acknowledgement of the ordinary world, and the found object or readymade."
69 Marcel Duchamp French: [masl dy ]; 28 July 1887 2 October 1968 was a FrenchAmerican painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Dadaism and conceptual art, although not directly associated with Dada groups. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Duchamp has had an immense impact on twentieth-century and twenty first-century art. By World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists (like Henri Matisse) as "retinal" art, intended only to please the eye. Instead, Duchamp wanted to put art back in the service of the mind. Ian Chilvers & John Glaves-Smith, A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press, p. 203 Poincar, H. (1902) Science and Hypothesis. London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., p. xxiv.

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Abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is an American post World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. Although the term "abstract expressionism" was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates, it had been first used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm, regarding German Expressionism. In the United States, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky. Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of Andr Masson, Max Ernst and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate the "all-over" look of Pollock's drip paintings. The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionistswith the antifigurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist. California Abstract Expressionist Jay Meuser, who typically painted in the non-objective style, wrote about his painting Mare Nostrum, "It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples." Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are different, both technically and aesthetically, from the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning's figurative paintings and the rectangles of color in Mark
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Jackson Pollock, No. 5, 1948, oil onfiberboard, 244 122 cm. (96 48 in.), private collection

Rothko'sColor Field paintings (which are not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all four artists are classified as abstract expressionists. Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. With artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Emma Kunz, and later on Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Agnes Martin, abstract art clearly implied expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, the unconscious and the mind. Why this style gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s is a matter of debate. American social realism had been the mainstream in the 1930s. It had been influenced not only by the Great Depression but also by the muralists of Mexico such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera.
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The political climate after World War II did not long tolerate the social protests of these painters. Abstract expressionism arose during World War II and began to be showcased during the early forties at galleries in New York like The Art of This Century Gallery. The McCarthy era after World War II was a time of artistic censorship in the United States, but if the subject matter were totally abstract then it would be seen as apolitical, and therefore safe. Or if the art was political, the message was largely for the insiders. .70 While the movement is closely associated with painting, and painters like Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, Hans Hofmann, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and others, collagistAnne Ryan and sculpture and certain sculptors in particular were also integral to Abstract Expressionism. David Smith, and his wife Dorothy Dehner, Herbert Ferber, Isamu Noguchi, Ibram Lassaw, Theodore Roszak, Phillip Pavia, Mary Callery, Richard Stankiewicz, Louise Bourgeois, and Louise Nevelson in particular were some of the sculptors considered as being important members of the movement. In addition, the artists David Hare, John Chamberlain, James Rosati, Mark di Suvero, and sculptors Richard Lippold, Herbert Ferber, Raoul Hague, George Rickey,Reuben Nakian, and even Tony Smith, Seymour Lipton, Joseph Cornell, and several other were integral parts of the Abstract expressionist movement. Many of the sculptors listed participated in the Ninth Street Show the famous exhibition curated by Leo Castelli on East Ninth Street in New York City in 1951. Besides the painters and sculptors of the period the New York School of Abstract expressionism also generated a number of supportive poets, like Frank O'Hara and photographers like Aaron Siskind and Fred McDarrah, (whose book The Artist's World in Picturesdocumented the New York School during the 1950s), and filmmakers notably Robert Frank as well. Although the abstract expressionist school spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and the San Francisco Bay area of California.

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, Canticle, 1954. Tobey, like Pollock, was known for his calligraphic style of allover compositions.Mark Tobey

Art critics of the postWorld War II era At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. Harold Rosenbergn the 1940s there were not only few galleries (The Art of This Century, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Julien Levy Gallery and a few others) but also few critics who were willing to follow the work of the New York Vanguard. There were also a few artists with a literary background, among them Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman who functioned as critics as well. While New York and the world were yet unfamiliar with the New York avant-garde by the late 1940s, most of the artists who have become household names today had their well established patron critics: Clement Greenberg advocated Jackson Pollock and the color field painters like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and
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Hans Hofmann. Harold Rosenberg seemed to prefer the action painters like Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline, as well as the seminal paintings of Arshile Gorky. Thomas B. Hess, the managing editor of ARTnews, championed Willem de Kooning. The new critics elevated their protgs by casting other artists as "followers" or ignoring those who did not serve their promotional goal. 71 In 1958, Mark Tobey "became the first American since Whistler (1895) to win top prize at the Venice Biennale. painter

Barnett Newman, a late member of the Uptown Group, wrote catalogue forewords and reviews, and by the late 1940s became an exhibiting artist at Betty Parsons Gallery. His first solo show was in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Barnett Newman remarked in one of the Artists' Session at Studio 35: "We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image." Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of the way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter on April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis: it is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it."72 Strangely the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style was a New York Trotskyite Clement Greenberg. As long time art critic for the Partisan Review and The Nation, he became an early and literate proponent of abstract expressionism. The well-heeled artist Robert Motherwell joined Greenberg in promoting a style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era. Clement Greenberg proclaimed abstract expressionism and Jackson Pollock in particular as the epitome of aesthetic value. It supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Czanne to Monet, in which painting became ever 'purer'
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and more concentrated in what was 'essential' to it, the making of marks on a flat surface. Jackson Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Harold Rosenberg spoke of the transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". "The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value political, aesthetic, moral." One of the most vocal critics of abstract expressionism at the time was New York Times art critic John Canaday. Meyer Schapiro, and Leo Steinberg along with Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg were important art historians of the post-war era who voiced support for abstract expressionism. During the early to mid-sixties younger art critics Michael Fried, Rosalind Krauss and Robert Hughes added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to grow around abstract expressionism

, Woman V,19521953. De Kooning's series of Woman paintings in the early 1950s caused a stir in the New York City avant-Willem de Kooning garde circle.

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Gorky, Hofmann and Graham The 1940s in New York City heralded the triumph of American Abstract expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned fromHenri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, Joan Mir, Cubism, Fauvism, and early Modernism via great teachers in America like Hans Hofmann from Germany and John D. Graham from Russia. Graham's influence on American art during the early 1940s was particularly visible in the work of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Richard Pousette-Dart among others. Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as lyrical abstraction was a "new language. He "lit the way for two generations of American artists". The painterly spontaneity of mature works like "The Liver is the Cock's Comb". "The Betrothal II", and "One Year the Milkweed" immediately prefigured Abstract expressionism, and leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence. American artists also benefited from the presence of Piet Mondrian, Fernand Lger, Max Ernst and the Andr Breton group, Pierre Matisse's gallery, and Peggy Guggenheim's gallery The Art of This Century, as well as other factors. Hans Hofmann in particular as teacher, mentor and artist was both important and influential to the development and success of Abstract Expressionism in the United States. Among Hofmann's protgs was Clement Greenberg who became an enormously influential voice for American painting and among his students was Lee Krasner who introduced her teacher Hans Hofmann to Jackson Pollock her husband.

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Pollock and Abstract influences During the late 1940s Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all Contemporary art that followed him. To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making a work of art was as important as the work of art itself. Like Pablo Picasso's innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture near the turn of the century via Cubism and constructed sculpture, with influences as disparate as Navaho sand paintings, surrealism, Jungian analysis, and Mexican mural art, Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. His move away from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating signal to the artists of his era and to all that came after. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's processthe placing of unstretched raw canvas on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artist materials and industrial materials; linear skeins of paint dripped and thrown; drawing, staining, brushing; imagery and non-imagery essentially took artmaking beyond any prior boundary. Abstract expressionism in general expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities that artists had available for the creation of new works of art. The other Abstract expressionists followed Pollock's breakthrough with new breakthroughs of their own. In a sense the innovations of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, Robert Motherwell,Peter Voulkos and others opened the floodgates to the diversity and scope of all the art that followed them. The new art movements of the 1960s essentially followed the lead of Abstract Expressionism and in particular the innovations of Pollock, De Kooning, Rothko, Hofmann, Reinhardt and Newman. The radical Anti-Formalist movements of the 1960s and 1970s including Fluxus, Neo-Dada, Conceptual art and the Feminist movement can be traced to the innovations of Abstract Expressionism. Rereadings into abstract art, done by art historians such as Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollockand Catherine de Zegher critically shows, however, that pioneer women artists who have produced major innovations in modern art had been ignored by the official accounts of its history, but finally began to achieve long overdue recognition in the wake of the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s.

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Barnett Newman, Onement 1,1948. During the 1940s Barnett Newman wrote several important articles about the new American painting.

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Action painting The style was widespread from the 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms action painting and abstract expressionism interchangeably). A comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the Frenchtachisme. The term was coined by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 and signaled a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of New York Schoolpainters and critics. According to Rosenberg the canvas was "an arena in which to act". While abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning had long been outspoken in their view of a painting as an arena within which to come to terms with the act of creation, earlier critics sympathetic to their cause, like Clement Greenberg, focused on their works' "objectness." To Greenberg, it was the physicality of the paintings' clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them as documents of the artists' existential struggle. Rosenberg's critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle itself, with the finished painting being only the physical manifestation, a kind of residue, of the actual work of art, which was in the act or process of the painting's creation. This spontaneous activity was the "action" of the painter, through arm and wrist movement, painterly gestures, brushstrokes, thrown paint, splashed, stained, scumbled and dripped. The painter would sometimes let the paint drip onto the canvas, while rhythmically dancing, or even standing in the canvas, sometimes letting the paint fall according to the subconscious mind, thus letting the unconscious part of the psyche assert and express itself. All this, however, is difficult to explain or interpret because it is a supposed unconscious manifestation of the act of pure creation. 73

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In practice, the term abstract expressionism is applied to any number of artists working in New York who had quite different styles, and even applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic action paintings, with their "busy" feel, are different both technically and aesthetically, to the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning. Woman V is one of a series of six paintings made by de Kooning between 1950 and 1953 that depict a three-quarter-length female figure. He began the first of these paintings, Woman I,collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, in June 1950, repeatedly changing and painting out the image until January or February 1952, when the painting was abandoned unfinished. The art historian Meyer Schapiro saw the painting in de Kooning's studio soon afterwards and encouraged the artist to persist. De Kooning's response was to begin three other paintings on the same theme; Woman II, collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Woman III, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Woman IV, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. During the summer of 1952, spent at East Hampton, de Kooning further explored the theme through drawings and pastels. He may have finished work on Woman I by the end of June, or possibly as late as November 1952, and probably the other three women pictures were concluded at much the same time. The Woman series are decidedly figurative paintings. Another important artist is Franz Kline, as demonstrated by his painting Number 2, 1954 as with Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, was labelled an "action painterbecause of his seemingly spontaneous and intense style, focusing less, or not at all, on figures or imagery, but on the actual brush strokes and use of canvas. Automatic writing was an important vehicle for action painters Franz Kline in his black and white paintings, Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey and Cy Twombly who used gesture, surface, and line to create calligraphic, linear symbols and skeins that resemble language, and resonate as powerful manifestations from the collective unconscious. Robert Motherwell in his Elegy to the Spanish Republic series also painted powerful black and white paintings using gesture, surface and symbol evoking powerful emotional charges. While other action painters notably Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Norman Bluhm, Joan Mitchell, and James Brooks .

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Richard Pousette-Dart, Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental, 1941-42

Color field

Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and the serenely shimmering blocks of color in Mark Rothko's work , are classified as abstract expressionists, albeit from what Clement Greenberg termed the Color field direction of abstract expressionism. Both Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell can be comfortably described as practitioners of action painting andColor field painting. In the 1940s Richard PousetteDart's tightly constructed imagery often depended upon themes of mythology and mysticism; as did the paintings of Adolph Gottlieb, and Jackson Pollock in that decade as well. Color Field painting initially referred to a particular type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt and several series of paintings by Joan Mir. Art critic Clement Greenberg perceived Color Field painting as related to but different from Action painting. The Color Field painters sought to rid their art of superfluous rhetoric. Artists like Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Francis, Mark Tobey and especially Barnett Newman whose masterpiece Vir heroicus sublimis is in the collection of MoMA and Ad Reinhardt used greatly reduced references to nature, and they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In general these artists eliminated recognizable imagery. In the case of Rothko and Gottlieb sometimes using symbol and sign as replacement of imagery. Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general color field painting presents abstraction as an end in itself. In pursuing this direction
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of modern art, artists wanted to present each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image.

Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944), oil on canvas, 73 98" (186 249 cm) AlbrightKnox Art Gallery,Buffalo, New York.

In distinction to the emotional energy and gestural surface marks of Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, the Color Field painters initially appeared to be cool and austere, effacing the individual mark in favor of large, flat areas of color, which these artists considered to be the essential nature of visual abstraction, along with the actual shape of the canvas, which later in the 1960s Frank Stella in particular achieved in unusual ways with combinations of curved and straight edges. However Color Field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive albeit in a different way from gestural Abstract expressionism. Although Abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and California, especially in the New York School, and the San Francisco Bay area. Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases, an "all-over" approach, in which the whole
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canvas is treated with equal importance . The canvas as the arena became a credo of Action painting, while the integrity of the picture plane became a credo of the Color field painters. Younger artists began exhibiting their abstract expressionist related paintings during the 1950s as well including Alfred Leslie, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Cy Twombly,Milton Resnick, Michael Goldberg, Norman Bluhm, Grace Hartigan, Friedel Dzubas, and Robert Goodnough among others.

Hans Hofmann The Gate,19591960. Hofmann's presence in New York City and Provincetown as a teacher and as an artist was influential to the development of American painting in the 1930s and 1940s.

Although Pollock is closely associated with Action Painting because of his style, technique, and his painterly touch and his physical application of paint, art critics have likened Pollock to both Action painting and color field painting. Another critical view advanced by Clement Greenberg
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connects Pollock's allover canvasses to the large-scale Water Lilies of Claude Monet done during the 1920s. Greenberg, art critic Michael Fried, and others have observed that the overall feeling in Pollock's most famous works his drip paintings read as vast fields of built-up linear elements often reading as vast complexes of similar valued paint skeins that read as all over fields of color and drawing, and are related to the mural-sized late Monets that are constructed of many passages of close valued brushed and scumbled marks that also read as close valued fields of color and drawing that Monet used in building his picture surfaces. Pollock's use of all-over composition lend a philosophical and a physical connection to the way the color field painters like Newman, Rothko and Still construct their unbroken and in Still's case broken surfaces. In several paintings that Pollock painted after his classic drip painting period of 1947-1950, he used the technique of staining fluid oil paint and house paint into raw canvas. During 1951 he produced a series of semifigurative black stain paintings, and in 1952 he produced stain paintings using color. In his November 1952 exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City Pollock showed Number 12, 1952, a large, masterful stain painting that resembles a brightly colored stained landscape (with an overlay of broadly dripped dark paint); the painting was acquired from the exhibition by Nelson Rockefeller for his personal collection. In 1960 the painting was severely damaged by fire in the Governors Mansion in Albany that also severely damaged an Arshile Gorky painting and several other works in the Rockefeller collection. However, by 1999 it had been restored and was installed in Albany Mall. While Arshile Gorky is considered to be one of the founding fathers of Abstract Expressionism and a Surrealist, he was also one of the first painters of the New York School who used the technique of staining. Gorky created broad fields of vivid, open, unbroken color that he used in his many of his paintings as grounds.In Gorky's most effective and accomplished paintings between the years 1941-1948, he consistently used intense stained fields of color, often letting the paint run and drip, under and around his familiar lexicon of organic and biomorphic shapes and delicate lines. Another abstract expressionist whose works in the 1940s call to mind the stain paintings of the 1960s and the 1970s is James Brooks. Brooks regularly used stain as a technique in his paintings from the late 1940s. Brooks began diluting his oil paint in order to have fluid
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colors with which to pour and drip and stain into the mostly raw canvas that he used. These works often combined calligraphy and abstract shapes. During the final three decades of his career, Sam Francis' style of large-scale bright Abstract expressionism was closely associated with Color field painting. His paintings straddled both camps within the Abstract Expressionist rubric, Action painting and Color Field painting .

Franz Kline, Painting Number 2, 1954,The Museum of Modern Art

Having seen Jackson Pollock's 1951 paintings of thinned black oil paint stained into raw canvas, Helen Frankenthalerbegan to produce stain paintings in varied oil colors on raw canvas in 1952. Her most famous painting from that period is Mountains and Sea. She is one of the originators of the Color Field movement that emerged in the late 1950s. Frankenthaler also studied with Hans Hofmann. Hofmann's paintings are a symphony of color as seen in The Gate, 1959-1960. Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. Hans Hofmann, who came to the United States from Germany in the early 1930s, brought with him the legacy of Modernism. Hofmann was a young artist working in Paris who painted there beforeWorld War I. Hofmann worked in Paris with Robert
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Delaunay, and he knew firsthand the innovative work of both Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Matisse's work had an enormous influence on him, and on his understanding of the expressive language of color and the potentiality of abstraction. Hofmann was one of the first theorists of color field painting, and his theories were influential to artists and to critics, particularly to Clement Greenberg, as well as to others during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1953 Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland were both profoundly influenced by Helen Frankenthaler's stain paintings after visiting her studio in New York City. Returning to Washington, DC., they began to produce the major works that created the color field movement in the late 1950s.

James Brooks, 1957, Tate Gallery

Clement Greenberg included the work of both Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland in a show that he did at the Kootz Gallery in the early 1950s. Clem was the first to see their potential. He invited them up to New York in 1953, I think it was, to Helen's studio to see a painting that she had just done called Mountains and Sea, a very, very beautiful painting, which was in a sense, out of Pollock and out of Gorky. It also was one of the first stain pictures, one of the first large field pictures in which the stain technique was used, perhaps the first one. Louis and Noland saw the picture unrolled on the floor of her studio and went back to Washington, DC., and worked together for a while, working at the implications of this kind of painting
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Mark Rothko, No. 61 (Rust and Blue), 1953, 115 cm 92 cm (45 in 36 in). Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Abstract expressionism and the Cold War Since the mid-1970s it has been argued by revisionist historians that the style attracted the attention, in the early 1950s, of the CIA, who saw it as representative of the USA as a haven of free thought and free markets, as well as a challenge to both the socialist realist styles prevalent in communist nations and the dominance of the European art markets. The book by Frances Stonor Saunders,The Cultural Cold War The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters,published in the UK as Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War, details how the CIA financed and organized the promotion of American abstract expressionists as part of
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cultural imperialism via the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1950 to 1967. Notably Robert Motherwell's series Elegy to the Spanish Republic addressed some of those political issues. Tom Braden, founding chief of the CIA's International Organizations Division (IOD) and ex-executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art said in an interview, "I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War. Against this revisionist tradition, an essay by Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of The New York Times, calledRevisiting the Revisionists: The Modern, Its Critics and the Cold War, argue that much of this information (as well as the revisionists' interpretation of it) concerning what was happening on the American art scene during the 1940s and 50s is flatly false, or at best (contrary to the revisionists' avowed historiographic principles) decontextualized. Other books on the subject include Art in the Cold War by Christine Lindey, which also describes the art of the Soviet Union at the same time; and Pollock and After edited by Francis Frascina, which reprinted the Kimmelman article.

, 1957-D No. 1. During the 1950s Still's paintings were characterized as being related to Color Clyfford Still Fields

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, Cyclops,1947, oil on canvas, Chicago Art Institute. Baziotes' abstract expressionist works William Baziotes show the influence of Surrealism

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Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952. Frankenthaler began to produce stain paintings with oil colors on raw canvas, in 1952. She is one of the originators of theColor Field movement that emerged in the late 1950

, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?, 1966. Typical of Newman's later work, with the use Barnett Newman of pure and vibrant color.

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Consequences: Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle (19232002), a member of the Montreal-based surrealist-inspired group Les Automatistes, helped introduce a related style of abstract impressionism to the Parisian art world from 1949. Michel Tapi's groundbreaking book, Un Art Autre (1952), was also enormously influential in this regard. Tapi was also a curator and exhibition organizer who promoted the works of Pollock and Hans Hofmann in Europe. By the 1960s, the movement's initial affect had been assimilated, yet its methods and proponents remained highly influential in art, affecting profoundly the work of many artists who followed. Abstract Expressionism preceded Tachisme, Color Field painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Fluxus, Pop Art,Minimalism, Postminimalism, Neo-expressionism, and the other movements of the sixties and seventies and it influenced all those later movements that evolved. Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against abstract expressionism began with Hard-edge painting (Frank Stella, Robert Indiana and others) and Pop artists, notably Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein who achieved prominence in the US, accompanied byRichard Hamilton in Britain. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in the US formed a bridge between abstract expressionism and Pop art.Minimalism was exemplified by artists such as Donald Judd, Robert Mangold and Agnes Martin.74

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However, many painters, such as Jules Olitski, Joan Mitchell (a one-time pupil of Hans Hofmann), and Antoni Tpies continued to work in the abstract expressionist style for many years, extending and expanding its visual and philosophical implications, as many abstract artists continue to do today, in styles described as Lyrical Abstraction, Neo-expressionist and others. In the years after World War II, a group of New York artists started one of the first true schools of artists in America, bringing about a new era in American artwork: Abstract Expressionism. This led to the American art boom that brought about styles such as Pop Art. This also helped to make New York into a cultural and artistic hub. Abstract expressionist value expression over perfection, vitality over finish, fluctuation over repose, the unknown over the known, the veiled over the clear, the individual over society and the inner over the outer.

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 110 1971

In the 1960s after abstract expressionism Post-painterly abstraction, Color Field painting, Lyrical Abstraction, Arte Povera, Process Art, Minimal art, Postminimalism, and Western painting

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In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s, several new directions, like the Hard-edge painting exemplified by John McLaughlin, emerged. Meanwhile, as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract expressionism, other forms of Geometric abstraction began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-gardecircles. Clement Greenberg became the voice of Post-painterly abstraction; by curating an influential exhibition of new painting that toured important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. Color field painting, Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction emerged as radical new directions.75

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Happening

Survival Research LaboratoriesPerformance in L.A. 2006

A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere, and are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation. This new media art aspect to happenings eliminates the boundary between the artwork and its viewer. Henceforth, the interactions between the audience and the artwork makes the audience, in a sense, part of the art. In the late 1960s, perhaps due to the depiction in films of hippie culture, the term was used much less specifically to mean any gathering of interest, from a pool hall meetup or a jamming of a few young people to a beer blast or fancy formal party. Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in the spring of 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal's farm to describe the art pieces that were going on. The first appearance in print was in Kaprow's famous "Legacy of Jackson Pollock" essay that was published in 1958 but primarily written in 1956. "Happening" also appeared in print in one issue of the
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Rutgers University undergraduate literary magazine, Anthologist. The form was imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the U.S., Germany, and Japan. Jack Kerouac referred to Kaprow as "The Happenings man", and an ad showing a woman floating in outer space declared, "I dreamt I was in a happening in my Maidenform brassiere."

Argentine artist Marta Minujn in a 1965 happening, Reading the news, in which she got into the Ro de La Plata wrapped in newspapers

Happenings are difficult to describe, in part because each one is unique and completely different from one another. One definition comes from Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort in The New Media Reader, "The term "Happening" has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction." Another definition is, "a purposefully composed form of theatre in which diverse alogical elements, including nonmatrixed performing, are organized in a compartmented structure". A "Happening" of the same performance will have a different outcomes because each performance depends on the action of the audience. In New York City especially, "Happenings" become quite popular even though many have not seen nor experienced it.76
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Fluxus Happening Gund

Happenings can be a form of participatory new media art, emphasizing an interaction between the performer and the audience. Breaking the fourth wall between performer and spectator, it replaces criticism with support. For some happenings, everyone present is included in the making of the art and even the form of the art depends on audience engagement, for they are a key factor in where the performers' spontaneity leads. Later happenings had no set rules, only vague guidelines that the performers follow based on surrounding props. Unlike other forms of art, Happenings that allow chance to enter are ever-changing. When chance determines the path the performance will follow, there is no room for failure. As Kaprow wrote in his essay, "'Happenings' in the New York Scene", "Visitors to a Happening are now and then not sure what has taken place, when it has ended, even when things have gone 'wrong'. For when something goes 'wrong', something far more 'right,' more revelatory, has many times emerged". The art thrives on an artist's whim, with the comfort of giving their mistakes the benefit of the doubt. The art defines itself by the fact that it is a unique, one-time experience that depends on audience response. It cannot be bought or brought home, which entitles every Happening artist to a sense of privacy. As Kaprow explains in the aforementioned essay, since the performances are always different, each one of these artists cannot lose their creative drive to a mainstream force.

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Kaprows piece 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) is commonly cited as the first happening, although that distinction is sometimes given to a 1952 performance of Theater Piece No. 1 at Black Mountain College by John Cage, one of Kaprow's teachers in the mid-1950s. Cage stood reading from a ladder, Charles Olson read from another ladder, Robert Rauschenberg showed some of his paintings and played wax cylinders of dith Piaf on an Edison horn recorder, David Tudor performed on a prepared piano and Merce Cunningham dancedAll these things took place at the same time, among the audience rather than on a stage. Happenings flourished in New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Key contributors to the form included Carolee Schneemann, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine Car Crash,Claes Oldenburg, Robert Delford Brown, Lucas Samaras, and Robert Rauschenberg. Some of their work is documented in Michael Kirby's book Happenings (1966). Interestingly, Kaprow claimed that "some of us will become famous, and we will have proven once again that the only success occurred when there was a lack of it" ".

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Jean-Jacques Lebel - at Exhibition Beat Generation, 2013

During the summer of 1959, Red Grooms along with others (Yvonne Andersen, Bill Barrell, Sylvia Small and Dominic Falcone) staged the non-narrative "play" Walking Man, which began with construction sounds, such as sawing. Grooms recalls, "The curtains were opened by me, playing a fireman wearing a simple costume of white pants and Tshirt with a poncholike cloak and a Smokey Stoverish fireman's helmet. Bill, the 'star' in a tall hat and black overcoat, walked back and forth across the stage with great wooden gestures. Yvonne sat on the floor by a suspended fire engine. She was a blind woman with tin-foil covered glasses and cup. Sylvia played a radio and pulled on hanging junk. For the finale, I hid behand a false door and shouted pop code words. Then the cast did a wild run around and it ended". Dubbing his 148 Delancey Street studio The Delancey Street Museum, Grooms staged three more happenings there, A Garden, The Burning Building and The Magic Trainride (originally titled Fireman's Dream). No wonder Kaprow called Grooms "a Charlie Chaplin forever dreaming about fire". On the opening night of The Burning Building, Bob Thompson solicited an audience member for a light, since none of the cast had one, and this gesture of spontaneous theater recurred in eight subsequent performances . The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama staged nude happenings during the late '60s in New York City. Difference from plays Happenings emphasize the organic connection between art and its environment. Kaprow supports that "happenings invite us to cast aside for a moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and life. It is a rough and sudden act, where one often feels "dirty", and dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and
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everything including the visitors can grow a little into such circumstances." Secondly, happenings have no plot or philosophy, but rather is materialized in an improvisatory fashion. There is no direction thus the outcome is unpredictable. "It is generated in action by a headful of ideas ...and it frequently has words but they may or may not make literal sense. If they do, their meaning is not representational of what the whole element conveys. Hence they carry a brief, detached quality. If they do not make sense, then they are acknowledgement of the sound of the word rather than the meaning conveyed by it." Last, due to the convention's nature, there is no such term as "failure" which can be applied. "For when something goes "wrong", something far more "right", more revelatory may emerge. This sort of sudden near-miracle presently is made more likely by chance procedures." As a conclusion, a happening is fresh while it lasts and cannot be reproduced Regarding happenings, Red Grooms has remarked, "I had the sense that I knew it was something. I knew it was something because I didn't know what it was. I think that's when you're at your best point. When you're really doing something, you're doing it all out, but you don't know what it is. The lack of plot as well as the expected audience participation can be likened to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, which also claims that "spectator is a bad word". Boal expected audience members to participate in the theater of the oppressed by becoming the actors. His goal was to allow the downtrodden to act out the forces oppressing them in order to mobilize the people into political action. Both Kaprow and Boal are reinventing theater to try to make plays more interactive and to abolish the traditional narrative form to make theater something more free-form and organic. In 1959 the French artist Yves Klein first performed Zone de Sensibilit Picturale Immatrielle. The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine. The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses.
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In 1960, Jean-Jacques Lebel oversaw and partook in the first European Happening L'enterrement de la Chose in Venice. For his performance there - called Happening Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Process - Lebel invited the audience to attend a ceremony in formal dress. In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped 'cadaver' rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an 'executioner' while a 'service' was read consisting of extracts from the French dcadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans and le Marquis de Sade. Then pall-bearers carried the coffin out into a gondola and the 'body' - which was in fact a mechanical sculpture by Jean Tinguely - was ceremonially slid into the canal Poet and painter Adrian Henri claimed to have organized the first happenings in England in Liverpool in 1962,taking place during the Merseyside Arts Festival. The most important event in London was the Albert Hall International Poetry Incarnation on June 11, 1965, where an audience of 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading avant-garde young British and American poets of the day . One of the participants, Jeff Nuttall, went on to organize a number of further happenings, often working with his friend Bob Cobbing, sound poet and performance poet. In Tokyo in 1964, Yoko Ono created a happening by performing her "Cut Piece" at the Sogetsu Art Center. She walked onto the stage draped in fabric, presented the audience with a pair of scissors, and instructed the audience to cut the fabric away gradually until the performer decides they should stop. In Belgium, the first happenings were organized around 1965 1968 in Antwerp, Brussels and Ostend by artists Hugo Heyrman and Panamarenko . In the Netherlands,the first documented happening took place in 1961, with the Dutch artist and performer Wim T. Schippers emptying a bottle of soda water in the North Sea near Petten. Later on, he organized random walks in the Amsterdam City Centre. Provo organized happenings around the little statue "Het Lieverdje" on the Spui, a square in the centre of Amsterdam, from 1966 till 1968. Police often raided these events.

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In the 1960s Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Dick Higgins, and HA Schult staged Happenings in Germany. In Australia, the Yellow House Artist Collective in Sydney housed 24hour happenings throughout the early 1970s.77

Beuys Felt TV performance by Lothar Wolleh

Behind the Iron Curtain, in Poland, artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor staged the first happenings starting in 1965. Also, in the second half of 1980s, a student-based happening movement Orange Alternative founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych became known for its much attended happenings (over 10 thousand participants at one time) aimed against the military regime led by General Jaruzelski and the fear blocking the Polish society ever since the Martial Law had been imposed in December 1981. Since 1993 the artist Jens Galschit have made political happenings all over the world, in November 1993 he made the happening my inner beast
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where twenty sculptures were erected within 55 hours without the knowledge of the authorities all over Europe. Pillar of Shame is a series of Galschit's sculptures. The first was erected in Hong Kong on 4 June 1997, ahead of the handover from British to Chinese rule on 1 July 1997, as a protest against China's crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. On 1 May 1999, a Pillar of Shame was set up on the Zcalo in Mexico City. It stood for two days in front of the Parliament to protest the oppression of the region's indigenous people.

Flash Mob Bang

The non-profit, artist-run organization, iKatun, has reflected the use of "Happenings" influence while incorporating the medium of internet. They aim is one that "fosters public engagement in the politics of information". Their project entitled The International Database of Corporate Commands presents a scrutinizing look at the super-saturating advertisements slogans, and "commands" of companies. "The Institute for Infinitely Small Things uses these commands to conduct research performancesperformances in which we attempt to enact, as literally as possible, what the command tells us to do and where it tells us to do it. For example, a user may look at a long list of slogans on the website database section, and may submit, in text, his or her take on the most literal way to act out the slogan/ command. The iKatun team will then act out the slogan in a research-performance related way. This means of performance art draws on the collaboration of the web world and tangible reality to conduct a new, modern Happening
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Philosophy Kaprow explains that happenings are not a new style, but a moral act, a human stand of great urgency, whose professional status as art is less critical than their certainty as an ultimate existential commitment. He argues that once artists have been recognized and paid, they also surrender to the confinement, rather the tastes of the patrons (even if that may not be the intention on both ends). "The whole situation is corrosive, neither patrons nor artists comprehend their role...and out of this hidden discomfort comes a stillborn art, tight or merely repetitive and at worst, chic." Though the we may easily blame those offering the temptation, Kaprow reminds us that it is not the publicist's moral obligation to protect the artist's freedom, and artists themselves hold the ultimate power to reject fame if they do not want its responsibilities.

Festivals as happenings Art and music festivals play a large role in positive and successful happenings. Some of these festivals include Burning Man and Oregon Country Fair. Along with the famous Allan Kaprow, Burning Man frowns on the idea of spectators and stresses the importance of everyone being involved to create something amazing and unique. Both parties embody the "audience" and instead of creating something to show the people, the people become involved in helping create something incredible and spontaneous to the moment. Both of these events are happenings that are recreated and special each year and are always new and organic. These events draw crowds of close to 50,000 people each year and reach more people then just the attendees with their messages and ideals 78
78See: )Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, ed (2003). The New Media Reader. pp. 8388. The MIT Press. Soke Dinkla, "From Participation to Interaction" (283, 289-290) Referenced in Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, ed (2003). The New Media Reader. The MIT PressJoseph Nechvatal, Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009.Kaprow, Allan. Allan Kaprow: 18 Happenings in 6 Parts. 2007. Print . Hendricks, Geoffrey. Critical Mass: Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, Intermedia, and Rutgers University, 1958-1972. New Brunswick, N.J.: Mason Gross Art Galleries, Rutgers University, 2003. Print.Kaprow, Allan, and Jean Jacques. Lebel. Assemblage, Environments & Happenings. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1966. Print. Das Theater ist auf der Strae, Die Happenings von Wolf Vostell. Museum Morsbroich Leverkusen. Kerber Verlag, 2010) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happenings (127)

Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media; the performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.

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Conceptual work by Yves Klein at Rue Gentil-Bernard, Fontenay-aux-Roses, October 1960, photo by Shunk Kender. Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void)

Visual arts, performing arts, and art performance Performance art is an essentially contested concept: any single definition of it implies the recognition of rival uses. As concepts like "democracy" or "art", it implies productive disagreement with itself. The meaning of the term in the narrower sense is related to postmodernist traditions in Western culture. From about the mid-1960s into the 1970s, often derived from concepts of visual art, with respect to Antonin Artaud, Dada, the Situationists, Fluxus, Installation art, and Conceptual Art, performance art tended to be defined as an antithesis to theatre, challenging orthodox art forms and cultural norms. The ideal had been an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer and audience in an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased. The in this time widely discussed difference, how concepts of visual arts and concepts of
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performing arts are utilized, can determine the meanings of a performance art presentation . Performance art is a term usually reserved to refer to a conceptual art which conveys a content-based meaning in a more drama-related sense, rather than being simple performance for its own sake for entertainment purposes. It largely refers to a performance presented to an audience, but which does not seek to present a conventional theatrical play or a formal linear narrative, or which alternately does not seek to depict a set of fictitious characters in formal scripted interactions. It therefore can include action or spoken word as a communication between the artist and audience, or even ignore expectations of an audience, rather than following a script written beforehand. Some kinds of performance art nevertheless can be close to performing arts. Such performance may utilize a script or create a fictitious dramatic setting, but still constitute performance art in that it does not seek to follow the usual dramatic norm of creating a fictitious setting with a linear script which follows conventional real-world dynamics; rather, it would intentionally seek to satirize or to transcend the usual real-world dynamics which are used in conventional theatrical plays. Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about "what art is". As long as the performer does not become a player who repeats a role, performance art can include satirical elements ; utilize robots and machines as performers, as in pieces of the Survival Research Laboratories; involve ritualised elements (e.g. Shaun Caton); or borrow elements of any performing arts such as dance, music, and circus.

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Carolee Schneemann, performing her piece Interior Scroll. Yves Klein in France, and Carolee Schneemann, Yayoi Kusama,Charlotte Moorman, and Yoko Ono in New York City were pioneers of performance based works of art, that often entailed nudity.

Some artists, e.g. the Viennese Actionists and neo-Dadaists, prefer to use the terms "live art", "action art", "actions", "intervention" or "manoeuvre" to describe their performing activities. As genres of performance art appear body art, fluxus-performance, happening, action poetry, and intermedia.79 Performance art activity is not confined to European or American art traditions; notable practitioners can be found in Asia and Latin America. Performance artists and theorists point to different traditions and histories, ranging from tribal to sporting and ritual or religious events. In an episode of In Our Time broadcast on Thu, 20 Oct 2005, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4, Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Warwick; Miriam Griffin, Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford; and John Moles, Professor of Latin, University of Newcastle discussed with Melvyn Bragg the idea that Antisthenes and Diogenes in ancient Greece practiced a form
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of performance art and that they acquired the epithet of cynic which means "dog" due to Diogenes behaving repeatedly like a dog in his performances. There are also accounts of Renaissance artists such as itinerant poets putting on public performances that could be said to be ancestors of performance art.

Chris Burden during the performance of his 1974 piece Trans-fixed where he was nailed to the back of a Volkswagen

Western cultural theorists often trace performance art activity back to the beginning of the 20th century, to the Russian constructivists, Futurists and Dada. Dada provided a significant progenitor with the unconventional performances of poetry, often at the Cabaret Voltaire, by the likes of Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara. Russian Futurist artists could be identified as precursors of performance, such as David Burliuk, who painted his face for his actions (1910 20) and Alexander Rodchenko and his wife Varvara Stepanova. According to the art critic Harold Rosenberg in the 1940s and 1950s Action Painting gave artists the freedom to perform - the canvas as "an arena in which to act", thereby rendering the paintings as traces of the artist's performance in his/her studio. Abstract expressionism and Action painting preceded the Fluxus movement, Happenings and the emergence of Performance Art.
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Performance art was anticipated, if not explicitly formulated, by Japan's Gutai group of the 1950s, especially in such works as Atsuko Tanaka's "Electric Dress" (1956) . Yves Klein had been a precursor of performance art with the conceptual pieces of Zone de Sensibilit Picturale Immatrielle (Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) 195962, and works like the photomontage, Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). In the late 1960s Earth artists as diverse as Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, Michael Heizer and Carl Andre created environmental pieces that predict the performance art of the 1970s. Works of conceptual artists in the early 1980s, like Sol LeWitt, who converted mural-style drawing into an act of performance by others, were influenced by Yves Klein and the Earth artists as well. In the 1960s a variety of new works, concepts and the increasing number of artists led to new kinds of performance art.Prototypic for the artform later explicitly labeled "performance art", were works of artists like Yoko Ono with her Wall piece for orchestra (1962); Carolee Schneemann with pieces like Meat Joy (1964) and Interior Scroll (1975); Wolf Vostell with his Happening YOU (1964 in New York); Joseph Beuys with How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965); Yayoi Kusama, with actions such as a naked flag-burning on the Brooklyn Bridge (1968) and Allan Kaprow in his many Happenings. Kaprow had coined the term Happening describing a new artform, at the beginning of the 1960s. A Happening allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells. One of Kaprow's earliest was "Happenings in the New York Scene," written in 1961 as the form was developing. Notably in the Happenings of Allan Kaprow, the audience members become performers. While the audiences in Happenings had been welcomed as the performers, it is only sometimes and often unwittingly that they become an active part in a Performance. Other artists who created Happenings besides Kaprow include Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Whitman, and Wolf Vostell: Theater is in the Street (Paris in 1958). Hermann Nitsch in 1962 presented his "Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries" (Orgien- und Mysterien Theater), a precursor to performance art, close to the performing arts.
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Andy Warhol during the early 1960s beginning to create films and video, in the mid-60s sponsored the Velvet Underground and staged events and performances in New York, like the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966) that featured live Rock music, exploding lights, and film. Indirectly influential for art-world performance, particularly in the United States, were new forms of theatre, embodied by the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Living Theatre and showcased in Off-Off Broadway theaters in SoHO and at La MaMa in New York City. The Living Theatre chiefly toured in Europe between 1963 and 1968, and in the U.S. in 1968. A work of this period, Paradise Now was notorious for its audience participation and a scene in which actors recited a list of social taboos that included nudity, while disrobing. The work of performance artists after 1968 often showed influences of the cultural and political events of that year. Barbara T. Smith with Ritual Meal (1969) was at the forefront of the feminist body-, and performance art of the 1970s; among others including: Carolee Schneemann, and Joan Jonas. Schneemann and Jonas along with Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Allan Kaprow, Vito Acconci, and Chris Burden pioneered the relationship between Body art and performance art. Artists whose work already before tended to be a performance art, as well as new artists, at the beginning of the 1970s began to present performance art in a stricter form. New artists with radical performances were Chris Burden, with the 1971 performance piece Shoot, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters, and Vito Acconci in the same year with Seedbed. The book Expanded Cinema, by Gene Youngblood, marked a shift in the use of media by performance artists. The first book considering video art as an art form, mentions Jud Yalkut as a pioneering video artist. Since 1965 he had collaborated in dozens of intermedia performances throughout the United States, also with Nam June Paik, who beginning of the 1960s already had been a fluxus performer on the way to become a media artist. As to the art of Paik, Youngblood refers to works of Carolee Schneemann and Robert Whitman from the 1960s, which had been
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pioneering for performance art, becoming an independent artform at the beginning of the 1970s.80 The British-based pair Gilbert and George, already in 1970, had documented actions of themselves on video, and created their "living sculpture" performance, being painted in gold and singing "Underneath The Arches" for extended periods. Joan Jonas began to include video in her experimental performances in 1972. In 1973 Laurie Anderson performed Duets on Ice, on the streets of New York City. Marina Abramovi, in the performance "Rhythm 10", conceptually included the violation of her body. Thirty years later, the theme of violation, shame, and sexual exploitation would be re-imagined in the contemporary performance works of artists such as Clifford Owens, Gillian Walsh, Pat Oleszko and Rebecca Patek, among others. Since 1973 the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles had a formative impact on the wave of performances with feminist background. Carolee Schneemann work in 1963, Eye Body, already had been a prototype of performance art. Schneemann in 1975 drew on with innovative solo performances, like Interior Scroll, showing the female body as an artistic medium. In 1976, HA Schult filled St. Mark's Square in Venice with old newspapers in an overnight action he called Venezia vive. In his 1977 performance, "Crash", the same artist let a Cessna crash into the garbage dump on Staten Island, New York. Performance art, because of its relative transience, by the 1970s, had a fairly robust presence in the avant-garde of East Bloc countries, especially Yugoslavia and Poland. Until the 1980s, performance art had been demystifying virtuosity. Now it began to embrace technical brilliance. In reference to Presence and Resistanc by Philip Auslander, dance critic Sally Banes writes by the end of the 1980s, performance art had become so widely known that it no longer needed to be defined; mass culture, especially television, had come
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to supply both structure and subject matter for much performance art; and several performance artists, including Laurie Anderson, Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Willem Dafoe, and Ann Magnuson, had indeed become crossover artists in mainstream entertainment. Despite the fact that many performances are held within the circle of a small art-world group, RoseLee Goldberg notes in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present that "performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. Conversely, public interest in the medium, especially in the 1980s, stems from an apparent desire of that public to gain access to the art world, to be a spectator of its ritual and its distinct community, and to be surprised by the unexpected, always unorthodox presentations that the artists devise. Among the performance art most discussed in the art-world of this decade were a performance by Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh between July 1983 and July 1984, Art/Life: One Year Performance (Rope Piece), and Karen Finleys I'm an Ass Man 1987. Until the decline of the European eastern block during the late 1980s, performance art by most communist governments had actively been rejected. With the exception of Poland and Yugoslavia, performance art was more or less banned in countries where any independent public event was feared. In the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Latvia it happened in apartments, at seemingly spontaneous gatherings in artist studios, in church-controlled settings, or covered as another activity, like a photo-shooting. Isolated of the western conceptual context, in different settings it could be like a playful protest or like a bitter comment, using subversive metaphors to express dissent with the political situation. Prior to 1982, Hedwig Gorski designated the term performance poetry, to distinguish her text-based vocal performances from performance art, especially the work of performance artists, such as Laurie Anderson, who worked with music at that time. Performance poets relied more on the rhetorical and philosophical expression in their poetics than performance artists, who arose from the visual art genres of painting and sculpture.
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From 1981 to 1994, the Dutch visual artist PINK de Thierry created what she came to call meta-performances: a conceptual mix of intervention art in public space, performance art - interacting with an audience, installation art - utilizing large structures to perform in or with, and media art - photography and film to register and exhibit. While the Soviet bloc disintegrated, formerly repressed activities of performance artists like Gyrgy Galntai in Hungary, or the Collective Action Group in Russia, became better known. Young artists from all over the former Eastern bloc, including Russia, turned to performance. Performance art at about the same time appeared in Cuba, the Caribbean and China. Chinese performance artists like Zhang Huan had been performing underground since the late 1980s. In the early 1990s Chinese performance art already was acclaimed in the international art scene. "In these contexts performance art became a critical new voice with a social force similar to that found in Western Europe, the United States and South America in the 1960s and early 1970s. It should be emphasized that the eruption of performance art in the 1990s in Eastern Europe, China, South Africa, Cuba, and elsewhere should never be considered either secondary to or imitative of the West." Since 1996, HA Schult has installed one thousand life sized "Trash People" made from garbage as "silent witnesses to a consumer age that has created an ecological imbalance worldwide". They travelled to Moscow's Red Square (1999), the Pyramids of Giza (2002) and the Great Wall of China (2001). In the western world in the 1990s, even sophisticated performance art became part of the cultural mainstream. In the second half of the decade, computer-aided forms of performance art began to take place.81 Since January 2003 Tate Modern in London has had a curated programme of live art and performance and in 2012 The Tanks at Tate Modern were opened: the first dedicated spaces for performance, film and installation in a major modern and contemporary art museum. From March 14 to May 31, 2010, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective and performance recreation of Marina Abramovi's
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work, the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA's history. During the run of the exhibition, Abramovi performed "The Artist is Present," a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium, while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her. A support group for the "sitters," "Sitting with Marina," was established on Facebook. The performance attracted celebrities such as Bjrk and James Franco and received coverage on the internet.

Yves Klein and Dino Buzzatiengaged in the ritual transfer of immateriality, January 26, 1962

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82 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art.:-See:(Carlson, Marvin (1996) Performance: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge..Carr, C. (1993) On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Wesleyan University Press..Thomas Dreher: Performance (138)

Assemblage art Assemblage is an artistic process. In the visual arts, it consists of making three-dimensional or two-dimensional artistic compositions by putting together found objects. In literature, assemblage refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts in order to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context the origin of the word (in its artistic sense) can be traced back to the early 1950s, when Jean Dubuffet created a series of collages of butterfly wings, which he titled assemblages d'empreintes. However, both Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso had been working with found objects for many years prior to Dubuffet. They were not alone. Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin creates his "counter-reliefs" in the middle of 1910s. Alongside Tatlin, the earliest woman artist to try her hand at assemblage was Elsa von FreytagLoringhoven, the Dada Baroness. In addition, one of the earliest and most prolific was Louise Nevelson, who began creating her sculptures from found pieces of wood in the late 1930s. In 1961, the exhibition "The Art of Assemblage" was featured at the New York Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition showcased the work of early 20th-century European artists such as Braque, Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso, and Kurt Schwitters alongside Americans Man Ray, Joseph Cornell, Robert Mallary and Robert Rauschenberg, and also included less well known American West Coast assemblage artists such as George Herms, Bruce Conner and Edward Kienholz. William C Seitz, the curator of the exhibition, described assemblages as being made up of preformed natural or manufactured materials, objects, or fragments not intended as art materials.83
Art nach 1945. Aktionstheater und Intermedia. Mnchen: Wilhelm Fink 2001. (in German)Erika Fischer-Lichte: sthetik des Performativen. Frankfurt: edition suhrkamp 2004. (in German)..Goldberg, Roselee (1998) Performance: Live Art Since 1960. Harry N. Abrams, NY NY. ..Goldberg, Roselee (2001) Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (World of Art). Thames & HudsonGmez-Pea, Guillermo (2005) Ethno-techno: Writings on performance, activism and pedagogy. Routledge, London. Jones, Amelia and Heathfield, Adrian (eds.) (2012), Perform, Repeat, Record. Live Art in History. Intellect, Bristol. Rockwell, John (2004) Preserve Performance Art? New York Times, April 30Schimmel, Paul (ed.) (1998) Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979. Thames and Hudson, Los Angeles. Library of the Congress NX456.5.P38 S35 1998Smith, Roberta (2005) Performance Art Gets Its Biennial. New York Times, November 2.)
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, Canyon, 1959, Assemblage: oil, housepaint, pencil, paper, fabric, metal, buttons, nails, cardboard, Robert Rauschenberg printed paper, photographs, wood, paint tubes, mirror string, pillow & bald eagle on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Sander Reijgers

Qusay tariq: Bull Moses

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Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc. In pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it. Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them. And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. Pop art is aimed to employ images of
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popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of Post-modern Art themselves.84 Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising.Product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, like in the Campbell's Soup Cans labels, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the shipping box containing retail items has been used as subject matter in pop art, for example in Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Juice Box 1964, , or his Brillo Soap Box sculptures .

The origins of pop art in North America and Great Britain developed differently. In the United States, it marked a return to hard-edged composition and representational art as a response by artists using impersonal, mundane reality, irony and parody to defuse the personal
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symbolism and "painterly looseness" of Abstract Expressionism. By contrast, the origin in post-War Britain, while employing irony and parody, was more academic with a focus on the dynamic and paradoxical imagery of American popular culture as powerful, manipulative symbolic devices that were affecting whole patterns of life, while improving prosperity of a society. Early pop art in Britain was a matter of ideas fueled by American popular culture viewed from afar, while the American artists were inspired by the experience of living within that culture. Similarly, pop art was both an extension and a repudiation of Dadaism. While pop art and Dadaism explored some of the same subjects, pop art replaced the destructive, satirical, and anarchic impulses of the Dada movement with detached affirmation of the artifacts of mass culture. Among those artists seen by some as producing work leading up to Pop art are Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, and Man Ray.

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United Kingdom: The Independent Group

Eduardo Paolozzi. I was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947) is considered the initial standard bearer of "pop art" and first to display the word "pop". Paolozzi showed the collage in 1952 as part of his groundbreaking Bunk! series presentation at the initial Independent Group meeting in London.

The Independent Group (IG), founded in London in 1952, is regarded as the precursor to the pop art movement. They were a gathering of young painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who were challenging prevailing modernist approaches to culture as well as traditional views of Fine Art. The group discussions centered on popular culture implications from such elements as mass advertising, movies, product design, comic strips, science fiction and technology. At the first Independent Group meeting in 1952, co-founding member, artist and sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi presented a lecture using a series of collages titled Bunk! that he had assembled during his time in Paris between 1947 1949.This material of "found objects" such as, advertising, comic book characters, magazine covers and various mass-produced graphics that mostly represented American popular culture. One of the images in that presentation was
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Paolozzi's 1947 collage, I was a Rich Man's Plaything, which includes the first use of the word "pop, appearing in a cloud of smoke emerging from a revolver. Following Paolozzi's seminal presentation in 1952, the IG focused primarily on the imagery of American popular culture, particularly mass advertising.

Andy Warhol, 1962 Campbell's Soup Cans

Subsequent coinage of the complete term "pop art" was made by John McHale for the ensuing movement in 1954. "Pop art" as a moniker was then used in discussons by IG members in the Second Session of the IG in 1955, and the specific term "pop art" first appeared in published print in an article by IG members Alison and Peter Smithson in Arc, 1956. However, the term is often credited to British art critic/curator, Lawrence Alloway in a 1958 essay titled The Arts and the Mass Media, although the term he uses is "popular mass culture" Nevertheless, Alloway was one of the leading critics to defend the inclusion of the imagery found in mass culture in fine arts.

United States
Although Pop Art began in the late 1950s, Pop Art in America was given its greatest impetus during the 1960s. The term "Pop Art" was officially introduced in December 1962; the Occasion was a "Symposium on Pop Art" organized by the Museum of Modern Art. By this time, American advertising had adopted many elements and inflections of modern art and functioned at a very sophisticated level. Consequently, American artists had to search deeper for dramatic styles that would distance art from the well-designed and clever commercial materials. As the British viewed
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American popular culture imagery from a somewhat removed perspective, their views were often instilled with romantic, sentimental and humorous overtones. By contrast, American artists being bombarded daily with the diversity of mass-produced imagery, produced work that was generally more bold and aggressive.85 Two important painters in the establishment of America's pop art vocabulary were Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. While the paintings of Rauschenberg have relationships to the earlier work of Kurt Schwitters and other Dadaists, his concern was with social issues of the moment. His approach was to create art out of ephemeral materials and using topical events in the life of everyday America gave his work a unique quality. Johns' and Rauschenberg's work of the 1950s is classified as Neo-Dada, and is visually distinct from the classic American Pop Art which began in the early 1960s.

Jasper Johns's 'Flag', Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood

Of equal importance to American pop art is Roy Lichtenstein. His work probably defines the basic premise of pop art better than any other through parody.Selecting the old-fashioned comic strip as subject matter, Lichtenstein produces a hard-edged, precise composition that documents while it parodies in a soft manner. Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963), which was appropriated from the lead story in DC Comics' Secret Hearts #83. (Drowning Girl now is in the collection of Museum of Modern Art, New
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York.) Also featuring thick outlines, bold colors and Ben-Day dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction. Lichtenstein would say of his own work: Abstract Expressionists "put things down on the canvas and responded to what they had done, to the color positions and sizes. My style looks completely different, but the nature of putting down lines pretty much is the same; mine just don't come out looking calligraphic, like Pollock's or Kline's." Pop art merges popular and mass culture with fine art, while injecting humor, irony, and recognizable imagery and content into the mix. The paintings of Lichtenstein, like those of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and others, share a direct attachment to the commonplace image of American popular culture, but also treat the subject in an impersonal manner clearly illustrating the idealization of mass production. Andy Warhol is probably the most famous figure in Pop Art, in fact, art critic Arthur Danto once called Warhol "the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced". Warhol attempted to take Pop beyond an artistic style to a life style, and his work often displays a lack of human affectation that dispenses with the irony and parody of many of his peers.
Early exhibitions

Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and Tom Wesselmann had their first shows in the Judson Gallery in 1959/60. In 1960 Martha Jackson showed installations and assemblages, New Media - New Forms featured Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine and May Wilson. In 1961, Oldenburg created a store for Martha Jackson's spring show Environments, Situations, Spaces. In December he showed The Store at his studio. Andy Warhol held his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in early July 1962 at Irving Blum's Ferus Gallery where he showed 32 paintings of Campell's soup cans, one for every flavor. Warhol sold the set of paintings to Blum for $1,000; in 1996, when the Museum of Modern Art acquired it, the group was valued at $15 million.

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Andy Warhol, Campbell's Tomato Juice Box, 1964, Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on wood, 10 inches 19 inches 9 inches (25.4 48.3 24.1 cm),Museum of Modern Art, New York City

In London, the annual RBA exhibition of young talent in 1960 first showed American Pop influences. In January 1961, the most famous RBA-Young Contemporaries of all put David Hockney, the American R B Kitaj, New Zealander Billy Apple, Allen Jones, Derek Boshier, Patrick Caulfield, Peter Phillips and Peter Blake on the map - Apple designed the posters and invitations for both the 1961 and 1962 Young Contemporaries exhibitions.Hockney, Kitaj and Blake went on to win prizes at the John-Moores-Exhibition in Liverpool in the same year. Apple and Hockney travelled together to New York during the Royal College's 1961 summer break, which is when Apple first made contact with Andy Warhol - both later moved to the United States and Apple became involved with the New York pop scene. Opening October 31, 1962, Willem de Kooning's New York art dealer, the Sidney Janis Gallery, organized the groundbreaking International Exhibition of the New Realists, a survey of new to the scene American Pop, French, Swiss, Italian New Realism, and British Pop art. The fiftyfour artists shown included Richard Lindner, Wayne Thiebaud, Roy Lichtenstein (including his painting Blam), Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Tom Wesselmann, George Segal, Peter Phillips and Peter Blake (his large The Love Wall from 1961) and Yves Klein, Arman, Daniel Spoerri, Christo, Mimmo Rotella. Martial Raysse, Niki de Saint-Phalle and Jean Tinguely saw the show in New York and were stunned by the size and the look of the American work. Also shown were Marisol, Mario Schifano, Enrico Baj and yvind Fahlstrm. Janis lost some of his abstract expressionist
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artists, as Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb and Philip Guston quit the gallery but gained Dine, Oldenburg, Segal and Wesselmann.Later that evening, October 31, 1962, at an opening-night soiree thrown by the wealthy collector Burton Tremaine, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wesselmann, Rosenquist, and Indiana were all being served drinks by uniformed maids when de Kooning appeared in the doorway and was swiftly turned away by Tremaine, who ironically owned a number of de Koonings works. Rosenquist recalled that "at that moment I thought, something in the art world has definitely changed". Turning away Willem de Kooning, a respected abstract artist, proved that as early as 1962, the pop art movement began to dominate art culture in New York. A bit earlier, on the West-coast, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine and Andy Warhol from NYC, Phillip Hefferton and Robert Dowd from Detroit; Edward Ruscha and Joe Goode from Oklahoma City, and Wayne Thiebaud from California were included in the New Painting of Common Objects show. This first Pop Art museum exhibition in America was curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum the art world forever. New York followed Pasadena in 1963 when the Guggenheim Museum exhibited Six Painters and the Object, curated by Lawrence Alloway. The artists were Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol. Another pivotal early exhibition was The American Supermarket organised by the Bianchini Gallery in 1964. The show was presented as a typical small supermarket environment, except that everything in it - the produce, canned goods, meat, posters on the wall, etc., was created by prominent pop artists of the time, including Apple, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wesselmann, Oldenburg, and Johns - this project was recreated as part of the Tate Gallery's Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture in 2002.

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Roy Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl(1963) on display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

By 1962, the Pop artists began to exhibit in commercial galleries in New York and Los Angeles, for some it was their first commercial one-man show. The Ferus Gallery presented Andy Warhol in Los Angeles and Ed Ruscha in 1963. In New York, the Green Gallery showed Rosenquist, Segal, Oldenburg, and Wesselmann, the Stable Gallery R. Indiana and Warhol (his first New York show), the Leo Castelli Gallery presented Rauschenberg, Johns, and Lichtenstein, Martha Jackson showed Jim Dine, and Allen Stone showed Wayne Thiebaud. By 1965 1966 after the Green Gallery and the Ferus Gallery closed the Leo Castelli Gallery represented Rosenquist, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns, Lichtenstein and Ruscha, The Sidney Janis Gallery represented Oldenburg, Segal, Wesselmann and Marisol, while Allen Stone continued to represent Thiebaud, and Martha Jackson continued representing Robert Indiana In 1968, the "Sao Paulo 9 Exhibition - Environment U.S.A: 1957 - 1967" featured the "Who's Who" of the Pop Art Icons. It could be considered as a summation of the classical phase of the American Pop Art period.The exhibit was curated by William Seitz. The artists were Edward Hopper,
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James Gill, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Tom Wesselmann .

Richard Hamilton's collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956) is one of the earliest works to be considered "pop art"

Proto-pop It should also be noted that while the British pop art movement predated the American pop art movement, there were some earlier American proto-Pop origins which utilized "as found" cultural objects. During the 1920s American artists Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis created paintings prefiguring the pop art movement that contained pop culture imagery such as mundane objects culled from American commercial products and advertising design.86

86http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art see: Francis, Mark and Hal Foster. Pop. London and New York: Phaidon, 2010.Haskell, Barbara. BLAM! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism and Performance 1958-1964. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1984.Lippard, Lucy R. Pop Art, with contributions by Lawrence Alloway, Nancy Marmer, Nicolas Calas, Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1966.MoMa. "A symposium on Pop Art. Arts Magazine, April 1963, pp. 3645. Transcript of symposium was held at The Museum of Modern Art in 1962. Transcript reprinted at

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Fluxus

Fluxus Manifesto, 1963, by George Maciunas.

Fluxusa name taken from a Latin word meaning "flow, flux" (noun); "flowing, fluid" (adj.)is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning, architecture, and design. Fluxus is sometimes described as intermedia.

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The Fluxus movement... developed its 'anti-art', anti-commercial aesthetics under the leadership of George Maciunas. Fluxus staged a series of festivals in Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London and New York, with avant-garde performances often spilling out into the street. Most of the experimental artists of the period, including Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik, took part in Fluxus events. The movement, which still continues, played an important role in the opening up of definitions of what art can be. The origins of Fluxus lie in many of the concepts explored by composer John Cage in his experimental music of the 1950s. Cage taught a series of Experimental Composition classes, run between 1957 and 1959 at the New School for Social Research in New York City which explored notions of indeterminacy in art. These classes later taught by Richard Maxfield were attended by many artists and musicians who would become involved in Fluxus, including Jackson Mac Low, La Monte Young, George Brecht, Al Hansen, Dick Higgins and George Maciunas. The other main influence, Marcel Duchamp, was a French artist who had originally been active within Dada, and was by now resident in New York. He had created a series of artworks that used found objects, thereby negating any need for traditional artistic skill. Known as readymades, of which the most famous is Fountain, these artworks were to become a major influence on Fluxus and conceptual art in general. A number of other contemporary happenings are credited as either anticipating Fluxus, or as proto-fluxus events.The most commonly cited include the series of Chamber's Street loft concerts, New York, curated by Yoko Ono and La Monte Young in 1961 featuring pieces by Jackson Mac Low and Henry Flynt, the month-long Yam festival held in upstate New York by George Brecht and Robert Watts in May, 1963 with Ray Johnson and Allan Kaprow that was the culmination of a year's worth of Mail Art pieces, and a series of concerts held in Mary Bauermeister's studio, Cologne, 1960-61 featuring Nam June Paik and John Cage amongst many others. Fluxus started with the work, and then came together, applying the name Fluxus to work which already existed. It was as if it started in the middle of the situation, rather than at the beginning.
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Flux Year Box 2, c.1967, a Flux box edited and produced by George Maciunas, containing works by many early Fluxus artists.

The American musician and artist La Monte Young had been asked to guest-edit an issue of a literary journal, Beatitude East, and asked George Maciunas, a trained graphic designer, for help with the layout; Maciunas supplied the paper, design, and some money for publishing of the anthology, which contained a more or less arbitrary association of New York avant-garde artists at that time. By the end of 1961 before An Anthology of Chance Operations was completed (it was finally published in 1963 by Mac Low and Young), Maciunas had moved to Germany to escape his creditors. From there, he continued his contact with the New York artists and sent out announcements about a series of yearbooks of artists' works under the title of Fluxus.

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Early Fluxus & Neo-Dada

Fluxus was conceived by Lithuanian-born George Maciunas as an attempt to 'fuse... cultural, social, & political revolutionaries into [a] united front and action'. After having fled Lithuania at the end of World War II, his family had moved to New York, where Maciunas first came into contact with a group of avant-garde artists and musicians centered around John Cage and La Monte Young. Initially opening an art gallery on Madison Avenue which showed work by Higgins, Ono, Jonas Mekas, Ray Johnson, Flynt and Young, he moved to Wiesbaden, West Germany having taken a job as a graphic designer with the US Air Force in late 1961 after the gallery had gone bust. Maciunas first publically coined the term Fluxus (meaning 'to flow') in a 'brochure prospectus' that he distributed to the audience at a festival he had organized, called Aprs Cage; Kleinen Sommerfest (After Cage; a Small Summer Festival), in Wuppertal, West Germany, June 9, 1962. Maciunas was an avid art historian, and initially referred to fluxus as 'neo-dadaism' or 'renewed dadaism'. He wrote a number of letters to Raoul Hausmann, an original dadaist, outlining his ideas. Hausmann discouraged the use of the term;
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I note with much pleasure what you said about German neodadaists but I think even the Americans should not use the term "neodadaism" because neo means nothing and -ism is old-fashioned. Why not simply "Fluxus"? It seems to me much better, because it's new, and dada is historic. As part of the festival, Maciunas wrote a lecture, entitled 'Neo-Dada in the United States'. After an attempt to define 'Concretist Neo-Dada' art, he explained that Fluxus was opposed to the exclusion of the everyday from art. Using 'anti-art and artistic banalities', Fluxus would fight the 'traditional artificialities of art'. The lecture ended with the declaration; Anti-art is life, is nature, is true realityit is one and all.

Willem de Ridder's Mail Order FluxShop, Amsterdam, with Dorothea Meijer, winter 1964-65. Photo by Willem de Ridder

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European festivals & the Fluxkits

With the help of a group of artists including Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell, Maciunas then organised a series of Fluxfests across Western Europe. Starting with 14 concerts between 1 and 23 September 1962, at Wiesbaden, these Fluxfests presented work by musicians such as John Cage, Ligeti, Penderecki, Terry Riley and Brion Gysin alongside performance pieces written by Dick Higgins, George Brecht and Nam June Paik amongst many others. One performance in particular became notorious; Piano Activities by Philip Corner.87 The score which asks for any number of performers to, among other things, play, pluck or tap, scratch or rub, drop objects on, act on strings with, strike soundboard, pins, lid or drag various kinds of objects across them and act in any way on underside of pianoresulted in the total destruction of a piano when performed by Maciunas, Higgins and others at Wiesbaden. The performance was considered scandalous enough to be shown on German television four times, with the introduction "The lunatics have escaped!" At the end we did Corner's Piano Activities not according to his instructions since we systematically destroyed a piano which I bought for $5 and had to have it all cut up to throw it away, otherwise we would have had to pay movers, a very practical composition, but German sentiments about this "instrument of Chopin" were hurt and they made a row about it... At the same time, Maciunas used his connections at work to start printing cheap mass-produced books and multiples by some of the artists that were involved in the performances. The first three to be printed were Composition 1961 by La Monte Young see, An Anthology of Chance Operations edited by Young and Mac Low and Water Yam, by George Brecht. Water Yam, a series of event scores printed on small sheets of card and collected together in a cardboard box, was the first in a series of artworks that Maciunas printed that became known as Fluxkits. Cheap, mass-produced and easily distributed, Fluxkits were originally intended to form an ever-expanding library of modern performance art. Water

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Yam was published in an edition of 1000 and originally cost $4.By April, 1964, almost a year later, Maciunas still had 996 copies unsold.

Traitor, you left Fluxus!, a postcard sent by George Maciunas to Nam June Paik, c late 1964, after the latter's involvement with Stockhausen's Originale

Maciunas' original plan had been to design, edit and pay for each edition himself, in exchange for the copyright to be held by the collective. Profits were to be split 80/20 at first, in favor of the artist. Since most of the composers already had publishing deals, Fluxus quickly moved away from music toward performance and visual art. John Cage, for instance, never published work under the Fluxus moniker due to his contract with the music publishers Edition Peters. Maciunas seemed to have a fantastic ability to get things done.... if you had things to be printed he could get them printed. It's pretty hard in East Brunswick to get good offset printing. It's not impossible, but it's not so easy, and since I'm very lazy it was a relief to find somebody who could take the burden off my hands. So there was this guy Maciunas, a Lithuanian or Bulgarian, or somehow a refugee or whatever beautifully dressed"astonishing looking" would be a better adjective. He was somehow able to carry the whole thing off, without my having to go 57 miles to find a printer. Since Maciunas was colorblind, Fluxus multiples were almost always black and white. New York & the FluxShops After his contract with the US Air Force was terminated due to ill health, Maciunas was forced to return to the US on September 3, 1963. Once back in New York, he set about organizing a series of street concerts and
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opened a new shop, the 'Fluxhall', on Canal Street. 12 concerts, 'away from the beaten track of the New York art scene ' took place on Canal Street, 11 April to 23 May 1964. With photographs taken by Maciunas himself, pieces by Ben Vautier, Alison Knowles and Takehisha Kosugi were performed in the street for free, although in practice there was 'no audience to speak of' anyway. 'The people in Fluxus had understood, as Brecht explained, that "concert halls, theaters, and art galleries" were "mummifying." Instead, these artists found themselves "preferring streets, homes, and railway stations...." Maciunas recognized a radical political potential in all this forthrightly anti-institutional production, which was an important source for his own deep commitment to it. Deploying his expertise as a professional graphic designer, Maciunas played an important role in projecting upon Fluxus whatever coherence it would later seem to have had.' Julia Robinson Along with the New York shop, Maciunas built up a distribution network for the new art across Europe and later outlets in California and Japan. Gallery and mail order outlets were established in Amsterdam, Villefranche-Sur-Mer, Milan and London, amongst others. By 1965, the first anthology Fluxus 1 was available, consisting of manila envelopes bolted together containing work by numerous artists who would later become famous including LaMonte Young, Christo and Yoko Ono. Other pieces available included packs of altered playing cards by George Brecht, sensory boxes by Ay-O, a regular newsletter with contributions by artists and musicians such as Ray Johnson and John Cale, and tin cans filled with poems, songs and recipes about beans by Alison Knowles

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Cut Piece, a performance piece by Yoko Ono in which the audience is invited to cut off her clothing. This version was staged at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, 21 March 1965. Still taken from a film by Albert and David Maysles

Stockhausen's Originale

After returning to New York, Maciunas became reacquainted with Henry Flynt, who encouraged members of Fluxus to take a more overtly political stance. One of the results of these discussions was to set up a picket line at the American premiere of Originale, a recent work by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, 8 September 1964. Stockhausen was deemed a 'Cultural Imperialist' by Maciunas and Flynt, while other members vehemently disagreed. The result was members of Fluxus, such as Nam June Paik and Jackson Mac Low, crossing a picket line made up of other members, including Ben Vautier and Takako Saito who handed out leaflets denouncing Stockhausen as "a characteristic European-North American ruling-class Artist". Dick Higgins participated in the picket, and then coolly joined the other performers inside; Maciunas and his friend Henry Flynt tried to get the Fluxus people to march around outside the circus with white cards that said Originale was bad. And they tried to say that the Fluxus people who were in the circus weren't Fluxus any more. That was silly, because it made a split. I thought it was funny, and so first I walked around with Maciunas and with Henry with a card, then I went inside and joined the circus; so both
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groups got angry with me. Oh well. Some people say that Fluxus died that day I once thought so myself but it turned out I was wrong. The event, arranged by Charlotte Moorman as part of her 2nd Annual New York Avant Garde Festival, would cement animosities between Maciunas and her, with Maciunas frequently demanding that artists associated with Fluxus have nothing to do with the annual festival, and would often expel artists who ignored his demands. This hostility continued throughout Maciunas' life much to Moorman's bemusement despite her continued championing of Fluxus art and artists. The picketing of Originale marked the high point of Maciunas' agit prop approach, an approach that estranged many of Fluxus' early proponents; Jackson Mac Low had resigned immediately after hearing 'antisocial' plans laid in April 1963, such as breaking down trucks under the Hudson River Brecht threatened to quit on the same issue, and then left New York in the spring of 1965. Dick Higgins fell out with Maciunas around the same time, ostensibly over his setting up the Something Else Press which printed many key Fluxus texts. Instead of folding, however, Fluxus practise became increasingly influenced by Japanese members of the group '. Since returning to Japan in 1961, Yoko Ono had been recommending colleagues look Maciunas up if they moved to New York; by the time she had returned, in early 1965, Hi Red Center, Shigeko Kubota, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi and Ay-O had all started to make work for Fluxus, often of a contemplative nature.
Blurring boundaries

As fluxus gradually became more famous, Maciunas' ambitions for the sale of cheap multiples grew. The second flux anthology, the Fluxkit , collected together early 3D work made by the collective in a businessman's case, an idea borrowed directly from Duchamp's Boite en Valise . Within a year, plans for a new anthology, Fluxus 2, were in full swing to contain Flux films by John Cale and Yoko Ono (with hand held projectors provided), disrupted matchboxes and postcards by Ben Vautier, plastic food by Claes Oldenburg, FluxMedicine by Shigeko Kubota,and artworks made of rocks, ink stamps, outdated travel tickets, undoable puzzles and a machine to facilitate humming.

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Maciunas' belief in the collective extended to authorship; a number of pieces from this period were anonymous, mis-attributed, or have had their authorship since questioned. As a further complication, Maciunas was in the habit of dramatically changing ideas submitted by various artists before he put the works into production. Solid Plastic in Plastic Box, credited to Per Kirkeby 1967, for instance, had originally been realised by Kirkeby as a metal box, inscribed 'This Box Contains Wood'. When opened, the box would be found to contain sawdust. By the time the multiple had been manufactured by Maciunas, it was a block of solid plastic contained in a plastic box of the same colour. Conversely, Maciunas assigned Degree Face Clock- in which a clock face is measured out in 360- to Kirkeby despite being an idea by Robert Watts 88 Some years ago, when I spoke with Robert Watts about Degree Face Clock and Compass Face Clock, he had recalled thinking up the idea himself and was surprised that George Maciunas advertised them as Per Kirkeby's. Watts shrugged and said that was the way George worked. There would be ideas in the air and Maciunas would assign the piece to one artist or another Other tactics from this time included Maciunas buying large amounts of plastic boxes wholesale, and handing them out to artists with the simple request to turn them into Fluxkits, and the use of the rapidly growing international network of artists to contribute items needed to complete works. Robert Watts' Fluxatlas, 1973, for instance, contains small rocks sent by members of the group from around the world. Utopian communities A number of artists in the group were interested in setting up Flux communes, intending to 'bridge the gap between the artist community and the surrounding society' The first of these, The Cedilla That Smiles,was set up in Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, by Robert Filliou and George Brecht, 1965-1968 Intended as an 'International Centre of Permanent Creation', the shop sold Fluxkits and other small wares as well as housing a 'non-school', boasting the motto "A carefree exchange of information and experience. No students, no teachers. Perfect licence, at times to listen at times to talk." In 1966, Maciunas, Watts and others took
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advantage of new legislation drafted to regenerate the area of Manhattan known as 'Hell's Hundred Acres', soon to become rebranded as SoHo, allowing artists to buy live/work spaces in an area that had been blighted due to a proposed 18-lane expressway along Broome Street.Led by Maciunas, plans were laid to start a series of real-estate developments in the area, designed to create an artists' community within a few streets of the FluxShop on Canal Street. 'Maciunas wanted to establish collective workshops, food-buying cooperatives and theaters to link the strengths of various media together and bridge the gap between the artist community and the surrounding society' The first warehouse, intended to house Maciunas, Watts, Christo & Jeanne-Calude, Jonas Mekas, LaMonte Young & others, was located on Greene Street. Likening these communities to the soviet Kolkhozs, Maciunas didn't hesitate to adopt the title 'Chairman of Bldg. Co-Op' without first registering an office or becoming a member of the New York State Association of. FluxHousing Co-Operatives continued to redevelop the area over the next decade, and were widened to include plans to set up a FluxIsland- a suitable island was located near Antigua, but the money to buy and develop it remained unforthcoming- and finally a performance arts centre called the FluxFarm established in New Marlborough, Massachusetts. The plans were continually dogged by financial problems, constant run-ins with the New York authorities, and eventually resulted, on 8 November 1975, in Maciunas being severely beaten by thugs sent by an unpaid electrical contractor. Since 1978 fter the death of George Maciunas in 1978 a rift opened in the movement between a few collectors and curators who placed Fluxus in a specific time frame (1962 to 1978), and the artists themselves, many of whom continued to see Fluxus as a living entity held together by its core values and world view. Different theorists and historians adopted each of these views. Fluxus is therefore referred to variously in the past or the present tense. The question is now significantly more complex due to the fact that many of the original artists who were still living when the controversy arose are now dead.
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Some have argued that the unique control that curator Jon Hendricks holds over a major historical Fluxus collection (the Gilbert and Lila Silverman collection) has enabled him to influence, through the numerous books and catalogues subsidized by the collection, the view that Fluxus died with Maciunas. Hendricks argues that Fluxus was a historical movement that occurred at a particular time, asserting that such central Fluxus artists as Dick Higgins and Nam June Paik could no longer label themselves as active Fluxus artists after 1978, and that contemporary artists influenced by Fluxus cannot lay claim to be Fluxus artists. The Museum of Modern Art makes the same claim dating the movement to the 1960s and 1970s. However, the influence of Fluxus continues today in multi-media digital art performances.89 Others, including Hannah Higgins, daughter of fluxus artists Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins, assert that although Maciunas was a key participant, there were many more, including Fluxus co-founder Higgins, who continued to work within Fluxus after the death of Maciunas.There are a number of post-1978 artists who remain associated with Fluxus. Some were contemporaries of Maciunas who became active in Fluxus after 1978. While there is not a large Fluxus artist community in any single urban center, the rise of the Internet in the 1990s has enabled a vibrant Fluxus community to thrive online. Some of the original artists from the 1960s and 1970s remain active in online communities such as the Fluxlist, and other artists, writers, musicians, and performers have joined them in cyberspace. Fluxus-oriented artists continue to meet in cities around the world to collaborate and communicate in "real-time" and physical spaces. Fluxus art Fluxus encouraged a do-it-yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. Like Dada before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. As Fluxus artist Robert Filliou wrote, however, Fluxus differed from Dada in its richer set of aspirations, and the positive social

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and communitarian aspirations of Fluxus far outweighed the anti-art tendency that also marked the group. In terms of an artistic approach, Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues. Outsourcing part of the creative process to commercial fabricators was not usually part of Fluxus practice. Maciunas personally hand-assembled many of the Fluxus multiples and editions.While Maciunas assembled many objects by hand, he designed and intended them for mass production. Where many multiple publishers produced signed, numbered objects in limited editions intended for sale at high prices, Maciunas produced open editions at low prices.Several other Fluxus publishers produced different kinds of Fluxus editions. The best known of these was the Something Else Press, established by Dick Higgins, probably the largest and most extensive Fluxus publisher, producing books in editions that ran from 1,500 copies to as many as 5,000 copies, all available at standard bookstore prices. Higgins created the term "intermedia" in a 1966 essay.90 The art forms most closely associated with Fluxus are event scores and Fluxus boxes. Fluxus boxes (sometimes called Fluxkits or Fluxboxes) originated with George Maciunas who would gather collections of printed cards, games, and ideas, organizing them in small plastic or wooden boxes. The idea of the event began in Henry Cowell's philosophy of music. Cowell, a teacher to John Cage and later to Dick Higgins, coined the term that Higgins and others later applied to short, terse descriptions of performable work. The term "score" is used in exactly the sense that one uses the term to describe a music score: a series of notes that allow anyone to perform the work, an idea linked both to what Nam June Paik labeled the "do it yourself" approach and to what Ken Friedman termed "musicality." While much is made of the do it yourself approach to art, it is vital to recognize that this idea emerges in music, and such important Fluxus artists as Paik, Higgins, or Corner began as composers, bringing to art the idea that each person can create the work by "doing it." This is what Friedman meant by musicality, extending the idea more radically to conclude that anyone can create work of any kind from a score, acknowledging the composer as the originator of the work while realizing
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the work freely and even interpreting it in far different ways from those the original composer might have done. Event scores, such as George Brecht's "Drip Music", are essentially performance art scripts that are usually only a few lines long and consist of descriptions of actions to be performed rather than dialogue. Fluxus artists differentiate event scores from "happenings". Whereas happenings were sometimes complicated, lengthy performances meant to blur the lines between performer and audience, performance and reality, Fluxus performances were usually brief and simple. The Event performances sought to elevate the banal, to be mindful of the mundane, and to frustrate the high culture of academic and market-driven music and art. Other creative forms that have been adopted by Fluxus practitioners include collage, sound art, music, video, and poetry-especially visual poetry and concrete poetry. Among its early associates were Joseph Beuys, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Wolf Voste ll, La Monte Young, Joseph Byrd, and Yoko Ono who explored media ranging from performance art to poetry to experimental music to film. They took the stance of opposition to the ideas of tradition and professionalism in the arts of their time, the Fluxus group shifted the emphasis from what an artist makes to the artist's personality, actions, and opinions. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s (their most active period) they staged "action" events, engaged in politics and public speaking, and produced sculptural works featuring unconventional materials. Their radically untraditional works included, for example, the video art of Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman and the performance art of Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell. The often playful style of Fluxus artists led to their being considered by some little more than a group of pranksters in their early years. Fluxus has also been compared to Dada and aspects of Pop Art and is seen as the starting point of mail art and no wave artists. Artists from succeeding generations such as Mark Bloch do not try to characterize themselves as Fluxus but create spinoffs such as Fluxpan or Jung Fluxus as a way of continuing some of the Fluxus ideas in a 21stcentury, post-mail art context.91
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Hendricks, Jon. Fluxus Codex. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1989.Higgins, Dick. 1966. "Intermedia." Something Else Newsletter. Vol. 1, No. 1.Kellein, Thomas, and Jon Hendricks (1995). Fluxus. London: Thames & Hudson.O'Dell, Kathy. 1997. "Fluxus Feminus." The Drama (166)

Minimalism

Piet Mondrian, Composition No. 10, 1939-42, oil on canvas, 80 x 73 cm, private collection.

Minimalism is a term referring to styles of visual art and music displaying pared-down design elements.As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. It derives from the reductive aspects of Modernism and

Review. Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 4360.Oren, Michel. 1993. "Anti-Art as the End of Cultural History." Performing Arts Journal. Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 130.Robinson, Julia. 2005. George Brecht Events: A Heterospective. Cologne: Museum Ludwig and Bucchandlung Walther Koenig.Robinson, Julia. 2008. From Abstraction to Model: In the Event of George Brecht and the Conceptual Turn in the Art of the 1960s. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Princeton: Princeton University.Rush, Michael. 2005. New Media in Art. London: Thames & Hudson.Smith, Owen. 1998. Fluxus: The History of an Attitude. San Diego: San Diego State University Press.Williams, Emmett, and Ann Noel, eds. Mr. Fluxus: A Collective Portrait of George Maciunas. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

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is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract expressionism and a bridge to Postminimal art practices.92 The terms have expanded to encompass a movement in music that features such repetition and iteration as those of the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Minimalist compositions are sometimes known as systems music. The term "minimalist" often colloquially refers to anything that is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has also been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, and the automobile designs of Colin Chapman. The word was first used in English in the early 20th century to describe "a 1913 composition by the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich of a black square on a white ground." The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture wherein the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. Minimalistic design has been highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture. The work of De Stijl artists is a major source of reference for such work: De Stijl expanded the ideas that could be expressed by very particularly organizing such basic elements as lines and planes.

The reconstruction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion in Barcelona

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Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe adopted the motto "Less is more" to describe his aesthetic tactic of arranging the numerous necessary components of a building to create an impression of extreme simplicity by enlisting every element and detail to serve multiple visual and functional purposes (for example, designing a floor to also serve as the radiator, or a massive fireplace to also house the bathroom). Designer Buckminster Fuller adopted the engineer's goal of "Doing more with less", but his concerns were oriented towards technology and engineering rather than aesthetics. A similar sentiment was industrial designer Dieter Rams' motto, "Less but better" adapted from Mies. The structure uses relatively simple elegant designs; ornamentations are good rather than many. Lighting, using the basic geometric shapes as outlines, using only a single shape or a small number of like shapes for components for design unity, and using tasteful non-fussy bright color combinations, (usually natural textures and colors) and clean and fine finishes also influence a structure's beauty. Sometimes using the beauty of natural patterns on stone cladding and real wood encapsulated within ordered simplified structures along with real metal produces a simplified but prestigious architecture and interior design. Color brightness balance and contrast between surface colors can improve visual aesthetics. The structure would usually have industrial and space age style utilities (lamps, stoves, stairs, technology, etc.) neat and straight components (like walls or stairs) that appear to be machined with equipment, flat or nearly flat roofs, pleasing negative spaces, and large windows to let in much sunlight. Minimalism and science fiction may have contributed to the late twentieth century futuristic architecture design and modern home decor. Modern minimalistic home architecture probably led to the popularity of the open plan kitchen and living room style by removing unnecessary internal walls Luis Barragn is another exemplary modern, minimalist designer. Minimalist architectural designers focus on the connection between perfect planes, elegant lighting, and careful consideration of the void spaces left by the removal of three-dimensional shapes from an architectural design. More attractive minimalistic home designs are not

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truly minimalistic because these use more expensive building materials and finishes and are larger.93 Contemporary minimalist architects include John Pawson, Eduardo Souto de Moura, lvaro Siza Vieira, Tadao Ando, Alberto Campo Baeza, Yoshio Taniguchi, Peter Zumthor, Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Vincent Van Duysen, Claudio Silvestrin, Michael Gabellini, and Richard Gluckman. Minimalist architecture and space he term minimalism is a trend from early 19th century and gradually became an important movement in response to the over decorated design of the previous period. Minimalist architecture became popular in the late 1980s in London and New York, where architects and fashion designers worked together in the boutiques to achieve simplicity, using white elements, cold lighting, large space with minimum objects and furniture. Minimalist architecture simplifies living space to reveal the essential quality of buildings and conveys simplicity in attitudes toward life. It is highly inspired from the Japanese traditional design and the concept of Zen philosophy.

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Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915, Oil on Canvas, State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg

Concepts and design elements The concept of minimalist architecture is to strip everything down to its essential quality and achieve simplicity. The idea is not completely without ornamentation, but that all parts, details and joinery are considered as reduced to a stage where no one can remove anything further to improve the design. The considerations for essences are light, form, detail of materi al, space, place and human condition. Minimalist architects not only consider the physical qualities of the building. Moreover, they look deeply into the
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spiritual dimension and the invisible, by listening to the figure and paying attention to the details, people, space, nature and materials. Which reveals the abstract quality of something that is invisible and search for the essence from those invisible qualities. Such as natural light, sky, earth and air. In addition, they open up dialogue with the surrounding environment to decide the most essential materials for the construction and create relationships between buildings and sites. In minimalist architecture, design elements convey the message of simplicity. The basic geometric forms, elements without decoration, simple materials and the repetitions of structures represent a sense of order and essential quality. The movement of natural light in buildings reveals simple and clean spaces. In late 19th century as the arts and crafts movement began to be popular in Britain, people valued the attitude of truth to materials, with respect to the profound and innate characteristics of materials. Minimalist architects humbly 'listen to figure,' seeking essence and simplicity by rediscovering the valuable qualities in simple and common materials. Influences from Japanese tradition The idea of simplicity appears in many cultures, especially the Japanese traditional culture of Zen Philosophy. Japanese manipulate the Zen culture into aesthetic and design elements for their buildings. This idea of architecture has influenced Western Society, especially in America since the mid 18th century. Moreover, it inspired the minimalist architecture in the 19th century. Zen concepts of simplicity transmit the ideas of freedom and essence of living. Simplicity is not only aesthetic value, it has a moral perception that looks into the nature of truth and reveals the inner qualities of materials and objects for the essence. For example, the sand garden in Ryoanji temple demonstrates the concepts of simplicity and the essentiality from the considered setting of a few stones and a huge empty space. The Japanese aesthetic principle of Ma refers to empty or open space. That removes all the unnecessary internal walls and opens up the space between interior and the exterior. Frank Lloyd Wright was influenced by the design element of Japanese sliding door that allows to bring the
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exterior to the interior. The emptiness of spatial arrangement is another idea that reduces everything down to the most essential quality. The Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi values the quality of simple and plain objects. It appreciates the absence of unnecessary features to view life in quietness and reveals the most innate character of materials. For example, the Japanese flora art, also known as Ikebana has the meaning of let flower express itself. People cut off the branches, leaves and blossoms from the plants and only retain the essential part from the plant. This conveys the idea of essential quality and innate character in nature.

Tony Smith, Free Ride, 1962, 6'8 x 6'8 x 6'8

MA is manifest in Japanese living architecture, garden design and flower arrangement (Ikebana). However, far from being just a spatial concept, MA is ever-present in all aspects of Japanese daily life, as it applies to time as well as to daily tasks. Minimalist architects and their works The Japanese minimalist architect, Tadao Ando conveys the Japanese traditional spirit and his own perception of nature in his works. His design concepts are materials, pure geometry and nature. He normally uses concrete or natural wood and basic structural form to achieve austerity and rays of light in space. He also sets up dialogue between the site and nature to create relationship and order with the buildings. Andos works and the translation of Japanese aesthetic principles are highly influential on Japanese architecture.

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In Vitra Conference Pavilion, Weil am Rhein, 1993, the concepts are to bring together the relationships between building, human movement, site and nature. Which as one main point of minimalism ideology that establish dialogue between the building and site. The building uses the simple forms of circle and rectangle to contrast the filled and void space of the interior and nature. In the foyer, there is a large landscape window that looks out to the exterior. This achieves the simple and silence of architecture and enhances the light, wind, time and nature in space. John Pawson is a British minimalist architect, his design concepts are soul, light and order. He believes that though reduced clutter and simplification of the interior to a point that gets beyond the idea of essential quality, there is a sense of clarity and richness of simplicity instead of emptiness. The materials in his design reveal the perception toward space, surface and volume. Moreover, he likes to use natural materials because of their aliveness, sense of depth and quality of individual. He is also attracted by the important influences from Japanese Zen Philosophy.

minimalist effect in a maximalist market

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Calvin Klein Madison Avenue, New York, 1995 96, is a boutique that conveys Calvin Kleins ideas of fashion. John Pawsons interior design concepts for this project are to create simple, peaceful and orderly spatial arrangements. He used stone floors and white walls to achieve simplicity and harmony for space. He also emphasises reduction and eliminates the visual distortions, such as the air conditioning and lamps to achieve a sense of purity for interior. Alberto Campo Baeza is a Spanish architect and describes his work as essential architecture. He values the concepts of light, idea and space. Light is essential and achieves the relationship between inhabitants and the building. Ideas are to meet the function and context of space, forms and construction. Space is shaped by the minimal geometric forms to avoid decoration that is not essential. Gasper House, Zahora, 1992 is a residence that client requested to be independent. High walls create the enclosed space and the stone floors used in house and courtyard show the continuality of interior and exterior. The white colour of the walls reveals the simplicity and unity of the building. The feature of the structure make lines to form the continuously horizontal house, therefore natural light projects horizontally through the building. Minimal art, minimalism in visual art Minimalism in visual art, generally referred to as "minimal art", literalist art and ABC Art emerged in New York in the early 1960s as new and older artists moved toward geometric abstraction; exploring via painting in the cases of Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland, Al Held, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Ryman and others; and sculpture in the works of various artists including David Smith, Anthony Caro, Tony Smith, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and others. Judd's sculpture was showcased in 1964 at the Green Gallery in Manhattan as were Flavin's first fluorescent light works, while other leading Manhattan galleries like the Leo Castelli Gallery and the Pace Gallery also began to showcase artists focused on geometric abstraction. In addition there were two seminal and influential museum exhibitions: Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture' shown from April 27 - June 12, 1966 at the Jewish Museum in New York, organized by the museum's Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Kynaston McShine and Systemic Painting, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum curated by Lawrence Alloway also in
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1966 that showcased Geometric abstraction in the American art world via Shaped canvas, Color Field, and Hard-edge painting. In the wake of those exhibitions and a few others the art movement called minimal art emerged. In a more broad and general sense, one finds European roots of minimalism in the geometric abstractions of painters associated with the Bauhaus, in the works of Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian and other artists associated with the De Stijl movement, and the Russian Constructivist movement, and in the work of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brncui. Minimal art is also inspired in part by the paintings of Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Josef Albers, and the works of artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio Morandi, and others. Minimalism was also a reaction against the painterly subjectivity of Abstract Expressionism that had been dominant in the New York School during the 1940s and 1950s. Artist and critic Thomas Lawson noted in his 1977 catalog essay Last Exit: Painting, minimalism did not reject Clement Greenberg's claims about modernist painting's reduction to surface and materials so much as take his claims literally. According to Lawson minimalism was the result, even though the term "minimalism" was not generally embraced by the artists associated with it, and many practitioners of art designated minimalist by critics did not identify it as a movement as such. Also taking exception to this claim was Clement Greenberg himself; in his 1978 postscript to his essay Modernist Painting he disavowed this incorrect interpretation of what he said; Greenberg wrote: There have been some further constructions of what I wrote that go over into preposterousness: That I regard flatness and the inclosing of flatness not just as the limiting conditions of pictorial art, but as criteria of aesthetic quality in pictorial art; that the further a work advances the selfdefinition of an art, the better that work is bound to be. The philosopher or art historian who can envision meor anyone at allarriving at aesthetic judgments in this way reads shockingly more into himself or herself than into my article.

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Minimalism style painting.

In contrast to the previous decade's more subjective Abstract Expressionists, with the exceptions of Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt; minimalists were also influenced by composers John Cage and LaMonte Young, poet William Carlos Williams, and the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. They very explicitly stated that their art was not about self-expression, unlike the previous decade's more subjective philosophy about art making theirs was 'objective'. In general, Minimalism's features included geometric, often cubic forms purged of much metaphor, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, and industrial materials. Robert Morris, a theorist and artist, wrote a three part essay, "Notes on Sculpture 1-3", originally published across three issues of Artforum in 1966. In these essays, Morris attempted to define a conceptual framework and formal elements for himself and one that would embrace the practices of his contemporaries. These essays paid great attention to the idea of the gestalt - "parts... bound together in such a way that they create a maximum resistance to perceptual separation." Morris later described an art represented by a "marked lateral spread and no regularized units or symmetrical intervals..." in "Notes on Sculpture 4: Beyond Objects", originally published in Artforum, 1969, continuing to say that "indeterminacy of arrangement of parts is a literal aspect of the physical existence of the thing." The general shift in theory of which this essay is

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an expression suggests the transitions into what would later be referred to as postminimalism.94 One of the first artists specifically associated with minimalism was the painter, Frank Stella, four of whose early "black paintings" were included in the 1959 show, 16 Americans, organized by Dorothy Miller at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The width of the stripes in Frank Stellas's black paintings were often determined by the dimensions of the lumber used for stretchers, visible as the depth of the painting when viewed from the side, used to construct the supportive chassis upon which the canvas was stretched. The decisions about structures on the front surface of the canvas were therefore not entirely subjective, but preconditioned by a "given" feature of the physical construction of the support. In the show catalog, Carl Andre noted, "Art excludes the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes. There is nothing else in his painting." These reductive works were in sharp contrast to the energy-filled and apparently highly subjective and emotionally-charged paintings of Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline and, in terms of precedent among the previous generation of abstract expressionists, leaned more toward the less gestural, often somber, color field paintings of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. Although Stella received immediate attention from the MoMA show, artists including Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, Robert Motherwell and Robert Ryman had also begun to explore stripes, monochromatic and Hard-edge formats from the late 50s through the 1960s. Because of a tendency in minimal art to exclude the pictorial, illusionistic and fictive in favor of the literal, there was a movement away from painterly and toward sculptural concerns. Donald Judd had started as a painter, and ended as a creator of objects. His seminal essay, "Specific Objects" (published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965), was a touchstone of theory for the formation of minimalist aesthetics. In this essay, Judd found a starting point for a new territory for American art, and a simultaneous rejection of residual inherited European artistic values. He pointed to evidence of this development in the works of an array of artists active in New York at the time, including Jasper Johns, Dan Flavin and Lee Bontecou. Of "preliminary" importance for Judd was the work of
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George Earl Ortman, who had concretized and distilled painting's forms into blunt, tough, philosophically charged geometries. These Specific Objects inhabited a space not then comfortably classifiable as either painting or sculpture. That the categorical identity of such objects was itself in question, and that they avoided easy association with well-worn and over-familiar conventions, was a part of their value for Judd. This movement was heavily criticised by modernist formalist art critics and historians. Some critics thought minimal art represented a misunderstanding of the modern dialectic of painting and sculpture as defined by critic Clement Greenberg, arguably the dominant American critic of painting in the period leading up to the 1960s. The most notable critique of minimalism was produced by Michael Fried, a formalist critic, who objected to the work on the basis of its "theatricality". In Art and Objecthood (published in Artforum in June 1967) he declared that the minimal work of art, particularly minimal sculpture, was based on an engagement with the physicality of the spectator. He argued that work like Robert Morris's transformed the act of viewing into a type of spectacle, in which the artifice of the act observation and the viewer's participation in the work were unveiled. Fried saw this displacement of the viewer's experience from an aesthetic engagement within, to an event outside of the artwork as a failure of minimal art. Fried's essay was immediately challenged by postminimalist and earth artist Robert Smithson in a letter to the editor in the October issue of Artforum. Smithson stated the following: "What Fried fears most is the consciousness of what he is doing--namely being himself theatrical." In addition to the already mentioned Robert Morris, Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Robert Ryman and Donald Judd other minimal artists include: Robert Mangold, Larry Bell, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Jo Baer, John McCracken, Ad Reinhardt, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Tony Smith, Patricia Johanson, Blinky Palermo and Anne Truitt.95

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Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915, Oil on Canvas, State Russian Museum, St.Petersburg

Ad Reinhardt, actually an artist of the Abstract Expressionist generation, but one whose reductive nearly all-black paintings seemed to anticipate minimalism, had this to say about the value of a reductive approach to art: The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is. More is less. Less is more. The eye is a menace to clear sight. The laying bare of oneself is obscene. Art begins with the getting rid of nature. Reinhardt's remark directly addresses and contradicts Hans Hofmann's regard for nature as the source of his own abstract expressionist paintings. In a famous exchange between Hofmann and Jackson Pollock as told by Lee Krasner in an interview with Dorothy Strickler (1964-11-02) for the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art. In Krasner's words, "When I brought Hofmann up to meet Pollock and see his work which was before we moved here, Hofmanns reaction wasone of the
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questions he asked Jackson was, do you work from nature? There were no still lifes around or models around and Jacksons answer was, I am nature. And Hofmanns reply was, Ah, but if you work by heart, you will repeat yourself. To which Jackson did not reply at all." The meeting between Pollock and Hofmann took place in 1942. Literary minimalism Literary minimalism is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description. Minimalist writers eschew adverbs and prefer allowing context to dictate meaning. Readers are expected to take an active role in the creation of a story, to "choose sides" based on oblique hints and innuendo, rather than reacting to directions from the writer. The characters in minimalist stories and novels tend to be unexceptional. Some 1940s-era crime fiction of writers such as James M. Cain and Jim Thompson adopted a stripped-down, matter-of-fact prose style to considerable effect; some classify this prose style as minimalism. Another strand of literary minimalism arose in response to the metafiction trend of the 1960s and early 1970s (John Barth, Robert Coover, and William H. Gass). These writers were also spare with prose and kept a psychological distance from their subject matter. Minimalist writers, or those who are identified with minimalism during certain periods of their writing careers, include the following: Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Bret Easton Ellis, Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, K. J. Stevens, Amy Hempel, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff, Grace Paley, Sandra Cisneros, Mary Robison, Frederick Barthelme, Richard Ford, Patrick Holland and Alicia Erian. American poets such as Stephen Crane, William Carlos Williams, early Ezra Pound, Robert Creeley, Robert Grenier, and Aram Saroyan are sometimes identified with their minimalist style. The term "minimalism" is also sometimes associated with the briefest of poetic genres, haiku, which originated in Japan, but has been domesticated in English literature by poets such as Nick Virgilio, Raymond Roseliep, and George Swede.

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The Irish writer Samuel Beckett is well known for his minimalist plays and prose, as is the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse. In his novel The Easy Chain, Evan Dara includes a 60-page section written in the style of musical minimalism, in particular inspired by composer Steve Reich. Intending to represent the psychological state (agitation) of the novel's main character, the section's successive lines of text are built on repetitive and developing phrases. 96

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See also:( Asencio Cerver, Francisco (1997). The Architecture of Minimalism. New York: Arco; Hearst Books international. Bertoni, Franco (2002). Minimalist Architecture, edited by Franco Cantini, translated from the Italian by Lucinda Byatt and from the Spanish by Paul Hammond. Basel, Boston, and Berlin: Birkhuser. Carlos, Espartaco (1989). Eduardo Sanguinetti: The Experience of Limits. Buenos Aires: Ediciones de Arte.Gaglianone. Lancaster, Clay (September 1953). "Japanese Buildings in the United States before 1900: Their Influence upon American Domestic Architecture". The Art Bulletin, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 217224.Pawson, John (1996). Minimum. London: Phaidon Press Limited. Rossell, Quim (2005). Minimalist Interiors. New York: Collins Design.Saito, Yuriko (2007). The Moral Dimension of Japanese Aesthetics. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol.65, no. 1 (Winter), pp. 8597. Retrieved 2011-10-18.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism

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Postminimalism

Fulcrum 1987, 55-foot freestanding sculpture ofCor-ten steel near Liverpool Street station,

Postminimalism is an art term coined (as "post-minimalism") by Robert Pincus-97Witten in 1971used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of
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Robert Pincus-Witten (born 1935, New York City) is an American art critic, curator and art historian. An initial book on minimalism and the era following it was issued in 1977. His collected art criticism was published as Eye to Eye: Twenty Years of Art Criticism, in 1984. His treatise on post-modern art, Postminimalism into Maximalism: American Art 1966-1986, appeared in 1987. Postminimalism is an art term coined (as "post-minimalism") by Pincus-Witten in 1971 used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond, the aesthetic of minimalism Pincus-Witten curated art shows for the Gagosian Gallery (East) in New York city, until 1996. That year he joined the staff of C&M Arts, New York City as Director of Exhibitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pincus-Witten (183)

minimalism. The expression is used specifically in relation to music and the visual arts, but can refer to any field using minimalism as a critical reference point. In music, postminimalism refers to music following minimal music98. Coined (as "post-minimalism") by Robert Pincus-Witten, in 1971, it is a term used in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop and go beyond the aesthetic of minimalism. In visual art, postminimalism refers specifically to the work of those artists who use minimalism either as an aesthetic or conceptual reference point. The term refers less to a particular movement than an artistic tendency. Postminimalist artworks are usually everyday objects, use simple materials, and sometimes take on a "pure", formalist aesthetic. However, since postminimalism includes such a diverse and disparate group of artists, it is impossible to enumerate all the continuities and similarities between them.

Sea Level (South-West part), Zeewolde,Netherlands

The work of Eva Hesse is also postminimalist: it uses "grids" and "seriality", themes often found in minimalism, but is also usually handmade, introducing a human element into her art, in contrast to the machine or custom-made works of minimalism. Richard Serra is a prominent post-minimalist99

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Richard Serra (born November 2, 1939) is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement. He lives and works in Tribeca, New York, and on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. n 1966, Serra made his first sculptures out of nontraditional materials such as fiberglass and rubber.Serra's earliest work was abstract and process-based made from molten lead hurled in large splashes against the wall of a studio or exhibition space. In 1967 and 1968 he compiled a list of infinitives that served as catalysts for subsequent work: to hurl suggested the hurling of molten lead into crevices between wall and floor; to roll led to the rolling of the material into dense, metal logs. He began in 1969 to be primarily concerned with the cutting, propping or stacking of lead sheets, rough timber, etc., to create structures, some very large, supported only by their own weight. His Prop pieces from the late 1960s are arranged so that weight and gravity balance lead rolls and sheets. Cutting Device: Base Plate Measure (1969) consists of an assemblage of heterogeneous materials (lead, wood, stone and steel) into which two parallel cuts have been made and the results strewn around in a chance configuration. In Malmo Role (1984), a four-foot-square steel plate, one and a half inches thick, bisects a corner of the room and is prevented from falling by a short cylindrical prop wedged into the corner of the walls.

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The Matter of Time at theGuggenheim Museum Bilbao

Still, he is better known for his minimalist constructions from large rolls and sheets of metal (COR-TEN-Steel). Many of these pieces are selfsupporting and emphasize the weight and nature of the materials. Rolls of lead are designed to sag over time. Around 1970, Serra shifted his activities out of doors and became a pioneer of large-scale site-specific sculpture. Serra often constructs site-specific installations, frequently on a scale that dwarfs the observer. His site-specific works challenge viewers perception of their bodies in relation to interior spaces and landscapes, and his work often encourages movement in and around his sculptures. Most famous is the "Torqued Ellipse" series, which began in 1996 as single elliptical forms inspired by the soaring space of the early 17th century Baroque church San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome. Made
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of huge steel plates bent into circular sculptures with open tops, they rotate upward as they lean in or out.100 Serra usually begins a sculpture by making a small maquette (or model) from flat plates of steel at an inch-to-foot ratio: if the piece is going to be 40 feet long he starts with a 40-inch model.He usually makes the models in lead as it is "very malleable and easy to rework continuously"; however, the Torqued Ellipses were started with wooden models. He then consults a structural engineer, who specifies how the piece should be made to retain its balance and stability.The steel pieces are fabricated in Germany and installed by Budco Enterprises, a Long Island rigging company with which he has worked for more than 30 years as one generation rolled into another. As Cor-Ten steel was designed to acquire a dark, even patina of rust over time, the exterior steel sculptures go through an initial oxidation process, but after 810 years, the patina of the steel settles to one color (mostly brown) that will remain relatively stable over the piece's life. Serra's first larger commissions were mostly realized outside the United States. Shift (197072) consists of six walls of concrete zigzag across a grassy hillside in King City, Ontario. Spin Out (1972 73), a trio of steel plates facing one another, is situated on the grounds of the Krller-Mller Museum in Otterloo, Holland.(Schunnemunk Fork (1991), a work similar to that of his in the Netherlands can be found in Storm King Art Center in Upstate New York.) Part of a series works involving round steelplates, Elevation Circles: In and Out (1972 77) was installed at Schlosspark Haus Weitmar in Bochum, Germany. For documenta VI (1977), Serra designed Terminal, four 41-foot-tall trapezoids that form a tower, situated in front of the main exhibition venue. After long negotiations, accompanied by violent protests, Terminal was purchased by the city of Bochum and finally installed at the city's train station in 1979. Carnegie (1984 85), a 39-foot-high vertical shaft outside the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, received high praise. Similar sculptures, like Fulcrum (1987), Axis (1989), and Torque (1992), were later installed in London's Broadgate, at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, and at Saarland University, respectively. Initially located in the
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French town of Puteaux, Slat (1985) consists of five steel plates - four trapezoidal and one rectangular - each one roughly 12 feet wide and 40 feet tall,that lean on one another to form a tall, angular tepee. Already in 1989 vandalism and graffiti prompted that towns mayor to remove it, and only in December 2008, after almost 20 years in storage, Slat was reanchored in La Dfense. Because of its weight, officials chose to ground it in a traffic island behind the Grande Arche. In 1981, Serra installed Tilted Arc, a gently curved, 3.5 meter high arc of rusting mild steel in the Federal Plaza in New York City. There was controversy over the installation from day one, largely from workers in the buildings surrounding the plaza who complained that the steel wall obstructed passage through the plaza. A public hearing in 1985 voted that the work should be moved, but Serra argued the sculpture was site specific and could not be placed anywhere else. Serra famously issued an often-quoted statement regarding the nature of site-specific art when he said, "To remove the work is to destroy it." Eventually on March 15, 1989, the sculpture was dismantled by federal workers and taken for scrap. In May 1989 the piece was cut into three parts and consigned to a New York warehouse where it has languished ever since.William Gaddis satirized these events in his 1994 novel A Frolic of His Own. Serra continues to produce large-scale steel structures for sites throughout the world, and has become particularly renowned for his monumental arcs, spirals, and ellipses, which engage the viewer in an altered experience of space. In particular, he has explored the effects of torqued forms in a series of single and double-torqued ellipses. He was invited to create a number of artworks in France: Philibert et Marguerite in the cloister of the Muse de Brou at Bourg-en-Bresse (1985); Threats of Hell (1990) at the CAPC (Centre d'arts plastiques contemporains de Bordeaux) in Bordeaux; Octagon for Saint Eloi (1991) in the village of Chagny in Burgundy; and Elevations for L'Alle de la Mormaire in Grosrouvre (1993). Alongside those works, Serra designed a series of forged pieces including Two Forged Rounds for Buster Keaton (1991); Snake Eyes and Boxcars (1990-1993), six pairs of forged hyper-dense Cor-Ten steel

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blocks;, Ali-Frazier (2001), two forged blocks of weatherproof steel; and Santa Fe Depot (2006).101 In 2000 he installed Charlie Brown, a 60-foot-tall sculpture in atrium of the new Gap Inc. headquarters in San Francisco. To encourage oxidation, or rust, sprinklers were initially directed toward the four German-made slabs of steel that make up the work. Working with spheroid and toroid sections for the first time, Betwixt the Torus and the Sphere (2001) and Union of the Torus and the Sphere (2001) introduced entirely new shapes into Serra's sculptural vocabulary. Wake (2003) was installed at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, with its five pairs of locked toroid forms measuring 14 feet high, 48 feet long and six feet wide apiece. Each of these five closed volumes is composed of two toruses, with the profile of a solid, vertically flattened S. Named for the late Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. (1913-1993), the rolled-steel elliptical sculpture Joe (2000) is the first in Serra's series of "Torqued Spirals". It is, The 42.5-ton piece T.E.U.C.L.A., another part of the "Torqued Ellipse" series and Serra's first public sculpture in Southern California, was installed in 2006 in the plaza of UCLA's Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center. That same year, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa installed Serra's Connector, a 66-foot-tall towering sculpture on a pentagonal base, on its plaza. Another famous work of Serra's is the mammoth sculpture Snake, a trio of sinuous steel sheets creating a curving path, permanently located in the largest gallery of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In 2005, the museum mounted an exhibition of more of Serra's work, incorporating Snake into a collection entitled The Matter of Time. The whole work consists of eight sculptures measuring between 12 and 14 feet in height and weighing from 44 to 276 tons.Already in 1982-84, he had installed the
101

Jump up to:a b Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 569. Jump up Kristine Stiles & Peter Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings (Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by Kristine Stiles) University of California Press 2012, p. 686Jump up Smith, Roberta (April 14, 2011). "Richard Serra's Drawings at Metropolitan Museum of Art", NYTimes.com. Accessed 8 June .012.Jump up Kyle Gann. 2001. "Minimal Music, Maximal Impact: Minimalism's Immediate egacy: Postminimalism". New Music Box: The Web Magazine from the American Music Center (November 1) (Accessed 4 February 2012). (189)

permanent work La palmera in the Plaa de la Palmera in Barcelona. He has not always fared so well in Spain, however; also in 2005, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofa in Madrid announced that the 38-tonne sculpture Equal-Parallel/Guernica-Bengasi (1986) had been "mislaid". In 2008, a duplicate copy was made by the artist and displayed in Madrid. In spring 2005, Serra returned to San Francisco to install his first public work, Ballast (2004), in that city (previous negotiations for a commission fell through) two 50-foot steel blades in the main open space of the new University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) campus. Weighing 160 tons, placing the work in its Mission Bay location posed serious challenges, since it is, like many parts of San Francisco, built on landfill. From May 7 to June 15, 2008 Serra showed his installation Promenade at the Grand Palais, Paris. "A radical, poetic landscape of steel, minimalist yet full of movement." Serra was the second artist, after Anselm Kiefer, to be invited to fill the 13,500 m nave of the Grand Palais with a group of new works created specially for the event.102 Birmingham City Council is currently considering a proposal for an outdoor installation by Serra in front of their new Library of Birmingham to replace the destroyed Forward sculpture by Raymond Mason in Centenary Square. In December 2011, Serra unveiled his sculpture 7 in Doha, Qatar. The sculpture, located at an artificial plaza in Doha harbour, is composed of seven steel sheets and is 80-foot high. The sculpture was commissioned by the Qatar Museums Authority and took one year to be built. In the past Serra has dedicated work to Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Buster Keaton, the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the art critic David Sylvester Memorials For the city of Goslar, Serra designed Goslar Memorial (1981). In 1987, he created Berlin Junction as a memorial to those who lost their lives to the Nazis' genocide program. First shown at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the sculpture was installed permanently at the Berliner Philharmonie in 1988.
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For the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he designed Gravity, a 10-inch-thick, 10-foot-square standing slab of steel, in 1993. After initially joining with architect Peter Eisenmann to submit a design for Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Serra abruptly pulled out of the project for "personal and professional reasons" in 1998.103

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Conceptual art

Barbara Kruger installation detail at Melbourne

onceptual art, sometimes simply called Conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many works of conceptual art, sometimes called installations, may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to American artist Sol LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print: In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.104

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Tony Godfrey, author of Conceptual Art (Art & Ideas) (1998), asserts that conceptual art questions the nature of art, a notion that Joseph Kosuth elevated to a definition of art itself in his seminal, early manifesto of conceptual art, "Art after Philosophy" (1969). The notion that art should examine its own nature was already a potent aspect of the influential art critic Clement Greenberg's vision of Modern art during the 1950s. With the emergence of an exclusively language-based art in the 1960s, however, conceptual artists such as Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner and the English Art & Language group began a far more radical interrogation of art than was previously possible . One of the first and most important things they questioned was the common assumption that the role of the artist was to create special kinds of material objects.

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs(1965)

Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, in popular usage, particularly in the UK, "conceptual art" came to denote all contemporary art that does not practice the traditional skills of painting and sculpture. It could be said that one of the reasons why the term "conceptual art" has come to be associated with various contemporary practices far removed from its original aims and forms lies in the problem of defining the term itself. As the artist Mel Bochner suggested as early as 1970, in explaining why he does not like the epithet "conceptual", it is not always entirely clear what "concept" refers to, and it runs the risk of being confused with
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"intention." Thus, in describing or defining a work of art as conceptual it is important not to confuse what is referred to as "conceptual" with an artist's "intention." The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works-the readymades, for instance. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain (1917), a standard urinal-basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York (which rejected it).The artistic tradition does not see a commonplace object (such as a urinal) as art because it is not made by an artist or with any intention of being art, nor is it unique or hand-crafted. Duchamp's relevance and theoretical importance for future "conceptualists" was later acknowledged by US artist Joseph Kosuth in his 1969 essay, "Art after Philosophy," when he wrote: "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually". In 1956 the founder of Lettrism, Isidore Isou, developed the notion of a work of art which, by its very nature, could never be created in reality, but which could nevertheless provide aesthetic rewards by being contemplated intellectually. This concept, also called Art esthapriste (or "infinite-aesthetics"), derived from the infinitesimals of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - quantities which could not actually exist except conceptually. The current incarnation (As of 2013) of the Isouian movement, Excordism, self-defines as the art of the infinitely large and the infinitely small. In 1961 the term "concept art", coined by the artist Henry Flynt in his article bearing the term as its title, appeared in a proto-Fluxus publication An Anthology of Chance Operations. However it assumed a different meaning when employed by Joseph Kosuth and by the English Art and Language group, who discarded the conventional art object in favour of a documented critical inquiry into the artist's social, philosophical and psychological status. By the mid-1970s they had produced publications, indices, performances, texts and paintings to this end. In 1970 Conceptual Art and Conceptual Aspects, the first dedicated conceptual-art exhibition, took place at the New York Cultural Center.
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The critique of formalism and the commodification of art

Conceptual art emerged as a movement during the 1960s. In part, it was a reaction against formalism as it was then articulated by the influential New York art critic Clement Greenberg. According to Greenberg Modern art followed a process of progressive reduction and refinement toward the goal of defining the essential, formal nature of each medium. Those elements that ran counter to this nature were to be reduced. The task of painting, for example, was to define precisely what kind of object a painting truly is: what makes it a painting and nothing else? As it is of the nature of paintings to be flat objects with canvas surfaces onto which colored pigment is applied, such things as figuration, 3-D perspective illusion and references to external subject matter were all found to be extraneous to the essence of painting, and ought to be removed.

Lawrence Weiner. Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2005.

Some have argued that conceptual art continued this "dematerialization" of art by removing the need for objects altogether, while others, including many of the artists themselves, saw conceptual art as a radical break with Greenberg's kind of formalist Modernism. Later artists continued to share a preference for art to be self-critical, as well as a distaste for illusion. However, by the end of the 1960s it was certainly clear that Greenberg's
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stipulations for art to continue within the confines of each medium and to exclude external subject matter no longer held traction. Conceptual art also reacted against the commodification of art; it attempted a subversion of the gallery or museum as the location and determiner of art, and the art market as the owner and distributor of art. Lawrence Weiner said: "Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it." Many conceptual artists' work can therefore only be known about through documentation which is manifested by it, e.g. photographs, written texts or displayed objects, which some might argue are not in themselves the art. It is sometimes (as in the work of Robert Barry, Yoko Ono, and Weiner himself) reduced to a set of written instructions describing a work, but stopping short of actually making it-emphasising that the idea is more important than the artifact. This reveals an explicit preference for the "art" side of the ostensible dichotomy between art and Craft, where the former, unlike craft, takes place within and engages historical discourse: for example, Ono's "written instructions" make more sense alongside other conceptual art of the time.

Language and/as art

Language was a central concern for the first wave of conceptual artists of the 1960s and early 1970s. Although the utilisation of text in art was in no way novel, it was not until the 1960s that the artists Lawrence Weiner, Edward Ruscha, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, and the English Art & Language group began to produce art by exclusively linguistic means. Where previously language was presented as one kind of visual element alongside others, and subordinate to an overarching composition (e.g. Synthetic Cubism), the conceptual artists used language in place of brush and canvas, and allowed it to signify in its own right. Of Lawrence Weiner's works Anne Rorimer writes, "The thematic content of individual works derives solely from the import of the language employed, while presentational means and contextual placement play crucial, yet separate, roles." The British philosopher and theorist of conceptual art Peter Osborne suggests that among the many factors that influenced the gravitation toward language-based art, of central importance for conceptualism was
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the turn to linguistic theories of meaning in both Anglo-American analytic philosophy, and structuralist and post structuralist Continental philosophy during the middle of the twentieth century. This linguistic turn "reinforced and legitimized" the direction the conceptual artists took. Osborne also notes that the early conceptualists were the first generation of artists to complete degree-based university training in art. Osborne later made the observation that contemporary art is post-conceptual in a public lecture delivered at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Villa Sucota in Como on July 9th, 2010. It is a claim made at the level of the ontology of the work of art (rather than say at the descriptive level of style or movement).105

Stuckist artists leave a coffin, marked "The death of conceptual art", outside theWhite Cube gallery in Shoreditch, July 25, 2002.

The American art historian Edward A. Shanken points to the example of Roy Ascott who "powerfully demonstrates the significant intersections between conceptual art and art-and-technology, exploding the conventional autonomy of these art-historical categories." Ascott, the British artist most closely associated with cybernetic art in England, was not included in Cybernetic Serendipity because his use of cybernetics was
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primarily conceptual and did not explicitly utilize technology. Conversely, although his essay on the application of cybernetics to art and art pedagogy, The Construction of Change (1964), was quoted on the dedication page (to Sol Lewitt) of Lucy R. Lippards seminal Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Ascotts anticipation of and contribution to the formation of conceptual art in Britain has received scant recognition, perhaps (and ironically) because his work was too closely allied with art-and-technology. Another vital intersection was explored in Ascotts use of the thesaurus in 1963 which drew an explicit parallel between the taxonomic qualities of verbal and visual languages, and which concept would be taken up in Joseph Kosuths Second Investigation, Proposition 1 (1968) and Mel Ramsdens Elements of an Incomplete Map (1968).

Conceptual art and artistic skill

"By adopting language as their exclusive medium, Weiner, Barry, Wilson, Kosuth and Art & Language were able to sweep aside the vestiges of authorial presence manifested by formal invention and the handling of materials."An important difference between conceptual art and more "traditional" forms of art-making goes to the question of artistic skill. Although it is often the case that skill in the handling of traditional media plays little role in conceptual art, it is difficult to argue that no skill is required to make conceptual works, or that skill is always absent from them. John Baldessari, for instance, has presented realist pictures that he commissioned professional sign-writers to paint; and many conceptual performance artists (e.g. Stelarc, Marina Abramovi) are technically accomplished performers and skilled manipulators of their own bodies. It is thus not so much an absence of skill or hostility toward tradition that defines conceptual art as an evident disregard for conventional, modern notions of authorial presence and individual artistic expression.106

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See also: Books, by year of publication:Ermanno Migliorini, Conceptual Art, Florence: 1971

.Klaus Honnef, Concept Art, Cologne: Phaidon, 1972Ursula Meyer, ed., Conceptual Art, New York: Dutton, 1972 Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: the Dematerialization of the Art Object From 1966 to 1972. 1973. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Gregory Battcock, ed., Idea Art: (198)

Contemporary Influence The first wave of the "conceptual art" movement extended from approximately 1967 to 1978. Early "concept" artists like Henry Flynt, Robert Morris, and Ray Johnson influenced the later, widely accepted movement of conceptual art. Conceptual artists like Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, and Lawrence Weiner have proven very influential on subsequent artists, and well known contemporary artists such as Mike Kelley or Tracey Emin are sometimes labeled "second- or thirdgeneration" conceptualists, or "post-conceptual" artists. Many of the concerns of the conceptual art movement have been taken up by contemporary artists. While they may or may not term themselves "conceptual artists", ideas such as anti-commodification, social and/or political critique, and ideas/information as medium continue to be aspects of contemporary art, especially among artists working with installation art, performance art, net.art and electronic/digital art Controversy in the UK

A Critical Anthology, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1973Juan Vicente Aliaga & Jos Miguel G. Corts, ed., Arte Conceptual Revisado/Conceptual Art Revisited, Valencia: Universidad Politcnica de Valencia, 1990Thomas Dreher, Konzeptuelle Kunst in Amerika und England zwischen 1963 und 1976 (Thesis Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversitt, Mnchen), Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992Robert C. Morgan, Conceptual Art: An American Perspective, Jefferson, NC/London: McFarland, 1994Robert C. Morgan, Art into Ideas: Essays on Conceptual Art, Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1996Tony Godfrey, Conceptual Art, London: 1998Alexander Alberro & Blake Stimson, ed., Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press, 1999Michael Newman & Jon Bird, ed., Rewriting Conceptual Art, London: Reaktion, 1999Anne Rorimer, New Art in the 60s and 70s: Redefining Reality, London: Thames & Hudson, 2001Peter Osborne, Conceptual Art (Themes and Movements), Phaidon, 2002 (See also the external links for Robert Smithson)Alexander Alberro. Conceptual art and the politics of publicity. MIT Press, 2003.Michael Corris, ed., Conceptual Art: Theory, Practice, Myth, Cambridge, Mass.,: Cambridge University Press, 2004Daniel Marzona, Conceptual Art, Cologne: Taschen, 2005John Roberts, The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade, London and New York: Verso Books, 2007

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Robert Rauschenberg, Portrait of Iris Clert 1961

In Britain, the rise to prominence of the Young British Artists (YBAs) after the 1988 Freeze show, curated by Damien Hirst, and subsequent promotion of the group by the Saatchi Gallery during the 1990s, generated a media backlash, where the phrase "conceptual art" came to be a term of derision applied to much contemporary art. This was amplified by the Turner Prize whose more extreme nominees (most notably Hirst and Emin) caused a controversy annually. The Stuckist group of artists, founded in 1999, proclaimed themselves "pro-contemporary figurative painting with ideas and anti-conceptual art, mainly because of its lack of concepts." They also called it pretentious, "unremarkable and boring" and on July 25, 2002 deposited a coffin outside the White Cube gallery, marked "The Death of Conceptual Art". They staged yearly demonstrations outside the Turner Prize.

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Jacek Tylicki, Stone sculpture, "Give If You Can - Take If You Have To". Palolem Island, India, 200

In 2002, Ivan Massow, the Chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts branded conceptual art "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat" and in "danger of disappearing up its own arse ... led by cultural tsars such as the Tate's Sir Nicholas Serota." Massow was consequently forced to resign. At the end of the year, the Culture Minister, Kim Howells (an art school graduate) denounced the Turner Prize as "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit". In October 2004 the Saatchi Gallery told the media that "painting continues to be the most relevant and vital way that artists choose to communicate." One of the criticisms of recent conceptual art in the UK is that the concepts or ideas have been weak. Writing in The Jackdaw magazine in 2013 the art theorist Michael Paraskos suggested that current conceptualist art retains the forms of historic conceptual art but is almost devoid of ideas. For that reason he suggested a new name for this kind of art, deconceptualism. Deconceptualism is, according to Paraskos, conceptual art without a concept.107
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See : Peter Osborne, Conceptual Art: Themes and movements, Phaidon, London, 2002. p. 28.Godrey, Tony (1988). Conceptual Art (Art & Ideas). London: Phaidon Press Ltd.Joseph (201)

Installation art

Guardians of Time, Manfred Kielnhofer,Festival of Lights (Berlin) French Cathedral, Berlin, Velotaxi 2011

Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior
Kosuth, "Art After Philosophy" (1969). Reprinted in Peter Osborne, Conceptual Art: Themes and movements, Phaidon, London, 2002. p. 232. Art & Language, Art-Language (journal): Introduction (1969). Reprinted in Osborne (2002) p. 230Anne Rorimer, New Art in the Sixties and Seventies, Thames & Hudson, 2001; p. 71 Smith, Roberta. "Art in review: Ronald Jones Metro Pictures", The New York Times, 27 December 1991. Retrieved 8 July 2008.Reynolds, Nigel 2004 "Saatchi's latest shock for the art world is painting" The Daily Telegraph 10 February 2004. Accessed April 15, 2006

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interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between these terms overlap. Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, as well as public and private spaces. The genre incorporates a broad range of everyday and natural materials, which are often chosen for their "evocative" qualities, as well as new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual reality and the internet. Many installations are site-specific in that they are designed to exist only in the space for which they were created, appealing to qualities evident in a three-dimensional immersive medium. Artistic collectives such as the Exhibition Lab at New York's American Museum of Natural History created environments to showcase the natural world in as realistic a medium as possible. Likewise, Walt Disney Imagineering employed a similar philosophy when designing the multiple immersive spaces for Disneyland in 1955. Since its acceptance as a separate discipline, a number of institutions focusing on Installation art were created. These included the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, the Museum of Installation in London, and the Fairy Doors of Ann Arbor, MI, among others.108

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An urban interactive art installation byMaurizio Bolognini (Genoa, 2005), which everybody can modify by using a cell phone.

Installation art came to prominence in the 1970s but its roots can be identified in earlier artists such as Marcel Duchamp and his use of the readymade and Kurt Schwitters' Merz art objects, rather than more traditional craft based sculpture. The "intention" of the artist is paramount in much later installation art whose roots lie in the conceptual art of the 1960s. This again is a departure from traditional sculpture which places its focus on form. Early non-Western installation art includes events staged by the Gutai group in Japan starting in 1954, which influenced American installation pioneers like Allan Kaprow. Wolf Vostell shows his installation 6 TV De-coll/age in 1963 at the Smolin Gallery in New York.

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Allan McCollum.The Shapes Project, 2005/06

nstallation as nomenclature for a specific form of art came into use fairly recently; its first use as documented by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1969. It was coined in this context, in reference to a form of art that had arguably existed since prehistory but was not regarded as a discrete category until the mid-twentieth century. Allan Kaprow used the term Environment in 1958 (Kaprow 6) to describe his transformed indoor spaces; this later joined such terms as project art and temporary art. Essentially, installation/environmental art takes into account a broader sensory experience, rather than floating framed points of focus on a neutral wall or displaying isolated objects (literally) on a pedestal. This may leave space and time as its only dimensional constants, implying dissolution of the line between "art" and "life"; Kaprow noted that if we bypass art and take nature itself as a model or point of departure, we may be able to devise a different kind of art... out of the sensory stuff of ordinary life . The conscious act of artistically addressing all the senses with regard to a total experience made a resounding debut in 1849 when Richard Wagner conceived of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or an operatic work for the stage that drew inspiration from ancient Greek theater in its inclusion of all the major art forms: painting, writing, music, etc. (Britannica) In devising operatic works to commandeer the audiences senses, Wagner left
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nothing unobserved: architecture, ambience, and even the audience itself were considered and manipulated in order to achieve a state of total artistic immersion. In the book "Themes in Contemporary Art, it is suggested that installations in the 1980s and 1990s were increasingly characterized by networks of operations involving the interaction among complex architectural settings, environmental sites and extensive use of everyday objects in ordinary contexts. With the advent of video in 1965, a concurrent strand of installation evolved through the use of new and everchanging technologies, and what had been simple video installations expanded to include complex interactive, multimedia and virtual reality environments. Art and Objecthood in Art and Objecthood, Michael Fried derisively labels art that acknowledges the viewer as theatrical (Fried 45). There is a strong parallel between installation and theater: both play to a viewer who is expected to be at once immersed in the sensory/narrative experience that surrounds him and maintain a degree of self-identity as a viewer. The traditional theater-goer does not forget that he has come in from outside to sit and take in a created experience; a trademark of installation art has been the curious and eager viewer, still aware that he is in an exhibition setting and tentatively exploring the novel universe of the installation. The artist and critic Ilya Kabakov mentions this essential phenomenon in the introduction to his lectures On the Total Installation: [One] is simultaneously both a victim and a viewer, who on the o ne hand surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other, follows those associations, recollections which arise in him[;] he is overcome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion (Kabakov 256). Here installation art bestows an unprecedented importance on the observers inclusion in that which he observes. The expectations and social habits that the viewer takes with him into the space of the installation will remain with him as he enters, to be either applied or negated once he has taken in the new environment. What is common to nearly all installation art is a consideration of the experience in toto and the problems it may present, namely the constant conflict between disinterested criticism and sympathetic involvement. Television and video offer somewhat immersive experiences, but their unrelenting control over therhythm of
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passing time and the arrangement of images precludes an intimately personal viewing experience (Kabakov 257). Ultimately, the only things a viewer can be assured of when experiencing the work are his own thoughts and preconceptions and the basic rules of space and time. All else may be molded by the artists hands. The central importance of the subjective point of view when experiencing installation art, points toward a disregard for traditional Platonic image theory. In effect, the entire installation adopts the character of the simulacrum or flawed statue: it neglects any ideal form in favor of optimizing its direct appearance to the observer. Installation art operates fully within the realm of sensory perception, in a sense installing the viewer into an artificial system with an appeal to his subjective perception as its ultimate goal.109

Interactive installations Interactive installation is a sub-category of installation art. An interactive installation frequently involves the audience acting on the work of art or the piece responding to users' activity. There are several kinds of interactive installations that artists produce, these include web-based installations (e.g.,Telegarden), gallery-based installations, digital-based installations, electronic-based installations, mobile-based installations, etc. Interactive installations appeared mostly at end of the 1980s ( Legible City by Jeffrey Shaw, La plume by Edmond Couchot, Michel Bret...) and became a genre during the 1990s, when artists became particularly

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Rachel Whitread, Embankment at Tate Modern, London

interested in using the participation of the audiences to activate and reveal the meaning of the installation. Immersive virtual reality With the improvement of technology over the years, artists are more able to explore outside of the boundaries that were never able to be explored by artists in the past. The media used are more experimental and bold; they are also usually cross media and may involve sensors, which plays on the reaction to the audiences movement when looking at the installations. By using virtual reality as a medium, immersive virtual reality art is probably the most deeply interactive form of art. By allowing the spectator to "visit" the representation, the artist creates "situations to
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live" vs "spectacle to watch". At the turn of a new century, there is a trend of interactive installations using digital, video, film, sound and sculpture.110

110

See also:Bishop, Claire. Installation Art a Critical History. London: Tate, 2005.Coulter-Smith, Graham. Deconstructing Installation Art. Online resource.Fried, Michael. Art and Objecthood. In Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.Installation [Environment].Grove Art Encyclopedia. 2006. Grove Art Online. 30 January 2006 .Installation. Oxford English Dictionary. 2006. Oxford English Dictionary Online. 30 January 2006 .Install, v. Oxford English Dictionary. 2006. Oxford English Dictionary Online. 30 January 2006 .Timothy Murray, Derrick de Kerckhove, Oliver Grau, Kristine Stiles, Jean-Baptiste Barrire, Dominique Moulon, Jean-Pierre Balpe, Maurice Benayoun Open Art, Nouvelles ditions Scala, 2011, French version, Kabakov, Ilya. On the Total Installation. Ostfildern, Germany: Cantz, 1995, 243-260.Kaprow, Allan. Notes on the Creation of a Total Art. In Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, ed. Jeff Kelley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.Mondloch, Kate. Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.Joseph Nechvatal, Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. 2009.Oliver Grau Virtual Art, from Illusion to Immersion, MIT Press 2004, "opera." Britannica Student Encyclopedia. 2006. Encyclopdia Britannica Online. 15 February 2006 .Reiss, Julie H. From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001 .Rosenthal, Mark. Understanding Installation Art: From Duchamp to Holzer. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2003.Suderburg, Erika. Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art. Minneapolis London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000 .Ferriani, Barbara. Ephemeral Monuments: History and Conservation of Installation Art. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2013. (209)

Lowbrow (art movement)

Lowbrow, or lowbrow art. describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. It is a populist art movement with its cultural roots in underground comix, punk music, and hot-rod cultures of the street. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art often has a sense of humor sometimes the humor is gleeful, sometimes impish, and sometimes it is a sarcastic comment.111

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Most lowbrow artworks are paintings, but there are also toys, digital art, and sculpture. Some of the first artists to create what came to be known as lowbrow art were underground cartoonists like Robert Williams and Gary Panter. Early shows were in alternative galleries in New York and Los Angeles such as Psychedelic Solutions Gallery in Greenwich Village, New York City which was run by Jacaeber Kastor, La Luz de Jesus run by Billy Shire and 01 gallery in Hollywood, run by John Pochna. The movement steadily grew from its beginning, with hundreds of artists adopting this style. As the number of artists grew, so did the number of galleries showing Lowbrow; The Julie Rico Gallery and the Bess Cutler Gallery both showed important artists and helped expand the kind of art that was classified as Lowbrow. The lowbrow magazine Juxtapoz by Robert Williams, first published in 1994, has been a mainstay of writing on lowbrow art and has helped direct and grow the movement.

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Isabella Muerta by Daniel Esparza Mexican Sugar Skull Tattoo Canvas Art Print

Writers have noted that there are now distinctions to be drawn between how lowbrow manifests itself in different regions and places. Some see a distinct U.S. "west coast" lowbrow style, which is more heavily influenced by underground comix and hot rod car-culture than elsewhere. As the lowbrow style has spread around the world, it has been intermingled with the tendencies in the visual arts of those places in which it has established itself. As lowbrow develops, there may be a branching (as there was with previous art movements) into different strands and even whole new art movements.

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Origin of the term "lowbrow art" In an article in the February 2006 issue of his magazine Juxtapoz, Robert Williams took credit for originating the term "lowbrow art." He stated that in 1979 Gilbert Shelton of the publisher Rip-Off Press decided to produce a book featuring Willams' paintings. Williams said he decided to give the book the self-deprecating title, "The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams,"since no authorized art institution would recognize his type of art. "Lowbrow" was thus used by Williams in opposition to "highbrow." He said the name then stuck, even though he feels it is inappropriate. Williams refers to the movement as "cartoon-tainted abstract surrealism ." Lately, Williams has begun referring to his own work as "Conceptual Realism.

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Lowbrow or pop surrealism Lowbrow is also commonly referred to as pop surrealism. The term "pop surrealism" was coined by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum for its 1998 exhibit of the same name. The exhibit featured work by over seventy artists, including Gregory Crewdson, Mariko Mori, Ashley Bickerton, Art Spiegelman, Tony Oursler, and Cindy Sherman, and was memorialized in the 1999 book of the same name. Reviewing the exhibition for ArtForum, Steven Henry Madoff wrote: "The mutant sensibility at work in this droll, smartly curated exhibition proposes the marriage of Surrealism's dream-laden fetish for the body eroticized and grotesque and Pop art's celebration of the shallower, corrosively bright world given over the packaged good." The New York Times said of the exhibit "at first, Surrealism and popular culture would seem to be oil and water. Surrealism mines dreams and the unconscious, while popular culture is concerned with surface and commonplaces. But in recent years they have been brought together in exhibitions concerned with proving that High and Low are related."Kirsten Anderson, who edited a second
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book called Pop Surrealism, considers lowbrow and pop surrealism to be related but distinct movements. However, Matt Dukes Jordan, author of Weirdo Deluxe, views the terms as interchangeable. Lowbrow vs. fine art

Glenn Arthur

Museums, art critics, mainstream galleries, etc., have been uncertain as to the status of lowbrow in relation to the fine art world, and today it has been largely excluded - although this has not stopped some collectors from buying the works. Some art critics doubt that lowbrow is a "legitimate" art movement, and there is thus very little scholarly critical writing about it. The standard argument of critics is that critical writing arises naturally from within an art movement first, and then a wider circle of critics draws upon this writing to inform their own criticism. This apparent absence of internal critical writing may be because many lowbrow artists began their careers in fields not normally considered fine art, such as illustration, tattooing and comic books. Many lowbrow artists
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are self-taught, which further alienates them from the world of museum curators and art schools.

Glenn Arthur

Many in the art world have deeper difficulties with lowbrow's figurative focus, its cultivation of narrative, and its strong valuing of technical skill. All these aspects of art were deeply disparaged in the art schools and by curators and critics throughout the 1980s and 90s. However, a number of artists who started their careers by showing in lowbrow galleries have gone on to show their work primarily in mainstream fine art galleries. Joe Coleman, Mark Ryden (from his 2007 'Tree Show' exhibition), Robert Williams, Ciou, Manuel Ocampo, Georganne Deen, and the Clayton Brothers are examples. Some origins of lowbrow's approach can be traced to art movements of the early 20th century, specifically the works of the Dadaists and the leading proponents of the American Regionalism movement (artists such as Thomas Hart Benton) in which such art movements have questioned the distinctions between high and low art, fine art and folk art, and
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popular culture and high-art culture. In some sense lowbrow art is about exploring and critiquing those distinctions, and it thus shares similarities with the pop art of the 1960s and early 70s. One can also note that just as the lowbrow artists play in the blurred (or perhaps evaporated) boundaries between high and low culture, other more "mainstream" contemporary artists use artistic strategies similar to those employed by lowbrow artists. Examples include: Lisa Yuskavage, Kenny Scharf, Takashi Murakami, Greg Colson, Inka Essenhigh, Jim Shaw, John Currin, Mike Kelley, Nicola Verlato, Mark Bryan (artist) and the San Francisco-based Mission School, which includes Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Dan Plasma, Wolf in a Spacesuit.112

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Billy Shire. (2011 La Luz de Jesus 25. .. A collection of La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Culver City, CA that has carried Lowbrow art for 25 years.Kirsten Anderson. (2005) Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art.Matt Dukes Jordan. (2005) Weirdo Deluxe: The Wild World of Pop Surrealism and Lowbrow Art. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. In addition to showing some of the best examples of the work of 23 lowbrow/pop surrealist artists, "Weirdo Deluxe" includes an introduction, an extensive illustrated timeline of 20th-century popular and fine-art culture that has shaped this movement, plus interviews with the artists in which they discuss influences on their art. The detailed timeline includes information about shows and events in Pop Surreal/Lowbrow art, and, when combined with the interviews and the introduction, offers the first comprehensive history of this movement, charting its key moments, its origins, and its rise to worldwide influence and popularity.Aaron Rose and Christian Strike. (2004). Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture.Sherri Cullison. (2002) Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious: 20th Century Women Artists. The women of Lowbrow.Pop Surrealism - What A Wonderfool World / Dimension: 1725 cm / Content: Illustrations, photos, text / Format: hardcover / Pages: 91 / Published: 2010 by Drago and Dorothy Circus Gallery / Language: english/italianThere are also books focusing on individual lowbrow artists, including Mark Ryden, Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, SHAG (Josh Agle), Anthony Ausgang, Niagara (artist), Stacy Lande, Todd Schorr, Camille Rose Garcia, Alex Pardee and Elizabeth McGrath.Honerla, Elisabeth, 2008,' 'The Upset-Young Contemporary Art, published by Gestalten, Berlin, 283 pages.

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Paintings of Weird and Wonderful Women by Elizabeth Caffey

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Digital art

Qusay tariq : Nefertiti

Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process. Since the 1970s, various names have been used to
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describe the process including computer art and multimedia art, and digital art is itself placed under the larger umbrella term new media art. After some initial resistance, the impact of digital technology has transformed activities such as painting, drawing, sculpture and music/sound art, while new forms, such as net art, digital installation art, and virtual reality, have become recognized artistic practices. More generally the term digital artist is used to describe an artist who makes use of digital technologies in the production of art. In an expanded sense, "digital art" is a term applied tocontemporary art that uses the methods of mass production or digital media.

Irrationnal Geometrics digital art installation 2008 by Pascal Dombis

Digital production techniques in visual media The techniques of digital art are used extensively by the mainstream media in advertisements, and by film-makers to produce visual effects. Desktop publishing has had a huge impact on the publishing world, although that is more related to graphic design. Both digital and traditional artists use many sources of electronic information and programs to create their work. Given the parallels between visual and musical arts, it is possible that general acceptance of the value of digital
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art will progress in much the same way as the increased acceptance of electronically produced music over the last three decades. Digital art can be purely computer-generated (such as fractals and algorithmic art) or taken from other sources, such as a scanned photograph or an image drawn using vector graphics software using a mouse or graphics tablet. Though technically the term may be applied to art done using other media or processes and merely scanned in, it is usually reserved for art that has been non-trivially modified by a computing process (such as a computer program,microcontroller or any electronic system capable of interpreting an input to create an output); digitized text data and raw audio and video recordings are not usually considered digital art in themselves, but can be part of the larger project of computer art and information art. Artworks are considered digital painting when created in similar fashion to non-digital paintings but using software on a computer platform and digitally outputting the resulting image as painted on canvas.

Digital sculpting can createphotorealistic 3d models used in still imagery.

Andy Warhol created digital art using a Commodore Amiga where the computer was publicly introduced at the Lincoln Center, New York in July 1985. An image of Debbie Harry was captured in monochrome from a video camera and digitized into a graphics program called ProPaint. Warhol manipulated the image adding colour by using flood fills. 113 Computer-generated visual media
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Digital visual art consists of either 2D visual information displayed on an electronic visual display or information mathematically translated into 3Dinformation, viewed through perspective projection on an electronic visual display. The simplest is 2D computer graphics which reflect how you might draw using a pencil and a piece of paper. In this case, however, the image is on the computer screen and the instrument you draw with might be a tablet stylus or a mouse. What is generated on your screen might appear to be drawn with a pencil, pen or paintbrush. The second kind is 3D computer graphics, where the screen becomes a window into a virtual environment, where you arrange objects to be "photographed" by the computer. Typically a 2D computer graphics use raster graphics as their primary means of source data representations, whereas 3D computer graphics use vector graphics in the creation ofimmersive virtual reality installations. A possible third paradigm is to generate art in 2D or 3D entirely through the execution of algorithms coded into computer programs and could be considered the native art form of the computer. That is, it cannot be produced without the computer. Fractal art,Datamoshing, algorithmic art and realtime generative art are examples. Computer generated 3D still imagery 3D graphics are created via the process of designing imagery from geometric shapes, polygons or NURBS curves to create three-dimensional objects and scenes for use in various media such as film, television, print, rapid prototyping, games/simulations and special visual effects. There are many software programs for doing this. The technology can enable collaboration, lending itself to sharing and augmenting by a creative effort similar to the open source movement, and the creative commons in which users can collaborate in a project to create unique pieces of art.

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Qusay tariq Digital art: Layla Al-Attar

Computer generated animated imagery Computer-generated animations are animations created with a computer, from digital models created by the 3D artists or procedurally generated. The term is usually applied to works created entirely with a computer. Movies make heavy use of computer-generated graphics; they are called computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the film industry. In the 1990s, and early 2000s CGI advanced enough so that for the first time it was possible to create realistic 3D computer animation, although films had been using extensive computer images since the mid-70s. A number of modern films have been noted for their heavy use of photo realistic CGI Digital installation art Digital installation art constitutes a broad field of activity and incorporates many forms! Some resemble video installations, particularly large scale works involving projections and live video capture. By using projection techniques that enhance an audiences impression of sensory envelopment, many digital installations attempt to create immersive environments. Others go even further and attempt to facilitate a complete immersion in virtual realms. This type of installation is generally site(223)

specific, scalable, and without fixed dimensionality, meaning it can be reconfigured to accommodate different presentation spaces. Noah Wardrip-Fruin's "Screen" (2003) is an example of digital installation art which makes use of a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment to create an interactive experience. Leading art theorists and historians Leading art theorists and historians in this field include Christiane Paul, Frank Popper, Mario Costa, Christine BuciGlucksmann, Dominique Moulon, Robert C. Morgan, Roy Ascott, Catherine Perret, Margot Lovejoy, Edmond Couchot, Fred Forest and Edward A. Shanken.114

Qusay tariq Digital art: Ishtar lovers

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Intermedia

Artwork by Kathleen Griffin

Intermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting and theatre could be described as intermedia. With repeated occurrences, these new genres between genres could develop their own names (e.g. visual poetry or performance art 115 Characteristics Higgins described the tendency of the most interesting and best in the new art to cross the boundaries of recognized media or even to fuse the boundaries of art with media that had not previously been considered for art forms, including computers. "Part of the reason that Duchamp's objects are fascinating while Picasso's voice is fading is that the Duchamp pieces are truly between media,
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between sculpture and something else, while a Picasso is readily classifiable as a painted ornament. Similarly, by invading the land between collage and photography, the German John Heartfield produced the what are probably the greatest graphics of our century"... Higgins, Intermedia, 1966 With characteristic modesty, he often noted that Samuel Taylor Coleridge had first used the term.

Naqeeb Stevens

Academia In 1968, Hans Breder founded the first university program in the United States to offer an M.F.A. in intermedia. The Intermedia Area at The University of Iowa graduated artists such as Ana Mendieta and Charles Ray. In addition, the program developed a substantial visiting artist tradition, bringing artists such as Dick Higgins, Vito Acconci, Allan Kaprow, Karen Finley, Robert Wilson and others to work directly with Intermedia students. Over the years, especially on the Iowa campus, "Intermedia" has been used interchangeably with "Multi-media". However, recently the latter term has become identified with electronic media in pop-culture. While Intermedia values both disciplines, the term "Intermedia" has become the preferred term for interdisciplinary practice.116
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Two other prominent University programs focusing on "Intermedia" practice are the Intermedia program at Arizona State University and the Intermedia M.F.A. at the University of Maine, founded and directed by

Jesus & Ceaphas Stubbs, Naqeeb Stevens, 2012/Performance Photograph Edition of 3+ 3AP Digital Cprint 12 x 18

Fluxus scholar and author Owen Smith. Additionally, the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California features Intermedia as an area of emphasis in their B.A. and B.F.A. programs. Concordia University in Montreal, QC offers a B.F.A. in Intermedia/Cyberarts. Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis, has a M.F.A. Program Photography and Intermedia degree117

117http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermedia Dick Higgins, Intermedia, Something Else Newsletter 1, 1966.Owen Smith (1998) Fluxus: The History of an Attitude, San Diego State University Press.Hannah B Higgins, "The Computational Word Works of Eric Andersen and Dick Higgins" in H. Higgins, & D. Kahn (Eds.), Mainframe experimentalism: Early digital computing in the experimental arts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (2013)

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Sandy Skoglund. Revenge of dogs

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Telematic art

Photo: Members of Dance Kaleidoscope performing with pianist Lily Popova online. Photo by Jammy Straub.

Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic encounters. Telematics was first coined by Simon Nora and Alain Minc in The Computerization of Society.Roy Ascott sees the telematic art form as the transformation of the viewer into an active participator of creating the artwork which remains in process throughout its duration. Ascott has been at the forefront of the theory and practice of telematic art since 1978 when he went online for the first time, organizing different collaborative online projects118. Pioneering experiments Although Ascott was the first person to name this phenomenon, the first use of telecommunications as an artistic medium has occurred in 1922 when the Hungarian constructivist artist Lszl Moholy-Nagy made the
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work Telephone Pictures. This work questioned the idea of the isolated individual artist and the unique art object. In 1932 Bertold Brecht emphasized the idea of telecommunications as an artistic medium in his essay 'The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication'. In this essay Brecht advocated the two-way communication for radio to give the public the power of representation and to pull it away from the control of corporate media. Art historian Edward A. Shanken has authored several historical accounts of telematic art, including "From Cybernetics to Telematics: The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott."

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Final Performance piece from SIA's Interactive Performance Workshop. With Annie B Parsons, Paul Lazar .

In 1970 two projects used satellites to connect artists on the east and west coast of the United States. This was the first time that artists were connected in a telematic way. With the support of NASA the artist produced composite images of participants, enabling an interactive dance

http://vimeo.com/channels/culturehub/5106248 (231)

concert amongst geographically disparate performers. An estimated audience of 25,000 saw bi-coastal discussions on the impact of new technologies on art, and improvised, interactive dance and music performances that were mixed in real time and shown on a split screen. These first satellite works emphasized the primacy of process that remained central to the theory and practice of telematic art. Ascott used telematics for the first time in 1978 when he organized a computer-conferencing project between the United States and the United Kingdom called Terminal Art. For this project he used Jacques Valle's Infomedia Notepad System, which made it possible for the users to retrieve and add information stored in the computers memory. This made it possible to interact with a group of people to make "aesthetic encounters more participatory, culturally diverse, and richly layered with meaning".Ascott did more similar projects like Ten Wings which was part of Robert Adrians The World in 24 Hours in 1982. The most important telematic artwork of Ascott is La Plissure du Texte from 1983. This project allowed Ascott and other artists to participate in collectively creating texts to an emerging story by using computer networking. This participation has been termed as distributed authorship. But the most significant matter of this project is the interactivity of the artwork and the way it breaks the barriers of time and space. In the late 1980s the interest in this kind of project using computer networking expanded, especially with the release of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. French side story In terms of telematic art, France has had a special destiny. Indeed, from 1982 thanks to the Minitel, this country had a public telematic infrastructure more than a decade before the outbreak of the World Wide Web (1994). Attempts of telematic art of the 70' and 80', which consisted mainly of point-to-point connections, could therefore take a different turn in France. As reported by Don Foresta and Gilbertto Prado, several French artists made some collective art experiments, using the Minitel, among them: Jean-Claude Anglade, Jean-Marc Philippe, Fred Forest, Marc Denjean and Olivier Auber. These experiments, mostly forgotten but some still up and running (Poietic Generator), foreshadowed applications that were developed later on the web, especially the "social
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networks" (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), at the same time they were offering theoretical critiques.119 Pop culture & Mass media The Telematic art is now being used more frequently by televised performers.Shows such as American Idol, MTV, and other shows that are based highly form viewer polls incorporate telematic art. This type of consumer applications is now grouped under the term "transmedia".120

119 120

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telematic_art See Also : Ascott, R. 1998. Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara). A. Takada & Y. Yamashita eds. Tokyo: NTT Publishing Co.,Ltd. Ascott, R. 2002. Technoetic Arts (Editor and Korean translation: YI, Won-Kon), (Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University). Yonsei: Yonsei University Press Ascott, Roy(2003).Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness. (Ed.) Edward A. Shanken. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press. Edward A. Shanken. Tele-Agency: Telematics, Telerobotics, and the Art of Meaning. Art Journal, issue 2 2000.

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Institutional Critique

Daniel "Dan" Graham Pavilion in Berlin, Germany

In art, Institutional Critique is the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, such as galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists like Michael Asher,Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson, and Hans Haacke. Institutional Critique is a form of commentary on the various institutions and conventions of art, as well as a radical disarticulation of the institution of art. For instance, assumptions about the supposed aesthetic autonomy or neutrality of painting and sculpture are often explored as a subject in the field of art, and are then historically and socially mapped out (e.g. ethnographically, archaeologically) as discursive formations, then framed within the context of the museum itself. As such,
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Institutional Critique seeks to make visible the historically and socially constructed boundaries between inside and outside, public and private. Institutional Critique is often critical of the false separations often made between distinctions of taste and supposedly disinterested aesthetic judgement, and affirms that taste is an institutionally cultivated sensibility that may tend to differ according to the class, ethnic, sexual and gender backgrounds of art's audiences.

Condensation Cube, begun 1965, completed 2008; Plexiglas and water;Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Hans Haacke

Institutional Critique is a practice that emerged out of the developments of Minimalism and its concerns with the phenomenology of the viewer, as well as formalist art criticism and art history (e.g.Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried), conceptual art and its concerns with language, processes, and administrative society, and appropriation art and its concerns with consumption and identity. Institutional critique is often site-specific, and perhaps could be linked to the advent of the "earthwork" by minimalist artists such as Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria. Institutional critique is also often associated with the developments of structuralist and post-structuralist philosophy, critical theory and literary theory.

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SHARE/FAVORITE/ASHER PENN/Untitled (Institutional Critique), 201264.5 94.6 cm

Artists associated with Institutional Critique and active since the 1960s include Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Michael Asher, Robert Smithson, Dan Graham, Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Martha Rosler. Artists active since the 1980s include Louise Lawler, Antoni Muntadas, Fred Wilson, Rene Green, Andrea Fraser, Christian Philipp Mller and Mark Dion. More recently, Matthieu Laurette, Graham Harwood, Carey Young and others have all taken a critical eye to the modern art museum and its role as a public and private institution. The Artout project, started in 2006 by Anton Koslov Mayr, critically investigates the relationship between artists and collectors.

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Daniel Buren D`un Losange L`autre", unique wall painting at Hudiksvallsgatan 8 in Stockholm

Haacke's exhibition at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne was cancelled due to the inclusion by Haacke of the work "Manet '74" that connected the funding of the museum to the cultural politics of the Cold War. In 1993 Haacke shared, with Nam June Paik, the Golden Lion for the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Haacke's installation "Germania" made explicit reference to the Biennale's roots in the politics of Fascist Italy. One of the criticisms of Institutional Critique is its complexity. As many have noted, it is a practice that often only advanced artists, theorists, historians, and critics can participate in. Due to its highly sophisticated understanding of modern art and society, as part of a privileged discourse like that of any other specialized form of knowledge, it can often leave layman viewers alienated and/or marginalized.

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DIS, Video still from: Emerging Artist, 2013, HD Video, 1:06

Another criticism is that it can be a misnomer, since it could be argued that institutional critique artists often work within the context of the very same institutions. Most institutional critique art, for instance, is displayed in museums and galleries, despite its critical stance towards them.

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Neo-expressionism and painting

Eric Fischl .Bad boy, oil on linen, 66 by 96 inches (1.7 2.4 m) by Eric Fischl

The return to the traditional art forms of sculpture and painting in the late 1970s and early 1980s seen in the work of Neo-expressionist artists such asGeorg Baselitz and Julian Schnabel has been described as a postmodern tendency, and one of the first coherent movements to emerge in the postmodern era. Its strong links with the commercial art market has raised questions, however, both about its status as a postmodern movement and the definition of postmodernism itself. Hal Foster states that neoexpressionism was complicit with the conservative cultural politics of the Reagan-Bush era in the U.S. Flix Guattari disregards the "large promotional operations dubbed 'neo-expressionism' in Germany," (an example of a "fad that maintains itself by means of publicity") as a too easy way for him "to demonstrate that postmodernism is nothing but the last gasp of modernism." These critiques of neo-expressionism reveal that money and public relations really sustained contemporary art world credibility in America during the same period that conceptual artists, and
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practices of women artists including painters and feminist theorists like Griselda Pollock, were systematically reevaluating modern art. Brian

Robert H. Colescott,Heartbreak Hotel (1990), oil on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Massumi claims that Deleuze and Guattari open the horizon of new definitions of Beauty in postmodern art. For Jean-Franois Lyotard, it was painting of the artists Valerio Adami, Daniel Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Bracha Ettinger, and Barnett Newman that, after the avantgarde's time and the painting of Paul Czanne and Wassily Kandinsky, was the vehicle for new ideas of the sublime in contemporary art

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.Elizabeth MurrayWiggle Manhattan, lithograph, 1992, Museum of Modern Art

Neo-expressionism is a style of modern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid1980s. Related to American Lyrical Abstraction of the 60s and 70s, Bay Area Figurative School of the 50s and 60s, the continuation of Abstract Expressionism, New Image Painting and precedents in Pop painting, it developed as a reaction against the conceptual art and minimal art of the 1970s. Neo-expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (although sometimes in an abstract manner), in a rough and violently emotional way using vivid colours and banal colour harmonies.121 Overtly inspired by the so-called German Expressionist painters--Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner--and other expressionist artists such as James Ensor andEdvard Munch. Neoexpressionists were sometimes called Neue Wilden ('The new wild ones'; 'New Fauves' would better meet the meaning of the term). The style emerged internationally and was viewed by many critics such as Achille Bonito Oliva and Donald Kuspit as a revival of traditional themes of selfexpression in European art after decades of American dominance. The social and economic value of the movement was hotly debated .

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Brett WhiteleyAlmost Once (1991), Domain, Sydney

Critics such as Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, Craig Owens, and Mira Schor were highly critical of its relation to the marketability of painting on the rapidly expanding art market, celebrity, thebacklash against feminism, anti-intellectualism, and a return to mythic subjects and individualist methods they deemed outmoded. Women were notoriously marginalized in the movement, and painters such as Elizabeth Murray and Maria Lassnig were omitted from many of its key exhibitions, most notoriously the 1981 "New Spirit in Painting" exhibition in London which included 38 male painters but no female painters122.

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Michael Hafftka "Leap of Faith," o/c, 78 x 62 in. (198 x 157.5 cm), by Michael Hafftka, 1998

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appropriation art and neo-conceptual art

In his 1980 essay The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism, Craig Owens identifies the re-emergence of an allegorical impulse as characteristic of postmodern art. This impulse can be seen in the appropriation art of artists such as Sherrie Levine and Robert Longo because, "Allegorical imagery is appropriated imagery." Appropriation art debunks modernist notions of artistic genius and originality and is more ambivalent and contradictory than modern art, simultaneously installing and subverting ideologies, "being both critical and complicit". Neo-conceptual art Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in the 1980s and particularly 1990s to date that derive from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These subsequent initiatives have included the Moscow Conceptualists, United States neo-conceptualists such as Sherrie Levine and the Young British Artists, notably Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the United Kingdom, where there is also a Stuckism countermovement and criticism from the 1970s conceptual art group Art and Language. Many of the concerns of the "conceptual art" movement proper have been taken up by many contemporary artists since the initial wave of conceptual artists. While many of these artists may not term themselves "conceptual artists", ideas such as anti-commodification, social and/or political critique, digital art, and ideas/information as medium continue to be aspects of contemporary art, especially among artists working with computer art, installation art, performance art,net.art and electronic art. Many critics and artists may speak of conceptual aspects of a given artist or art work, reflecting the enduring influence that many of the original conceptual artists have had on the art world.

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The Shapes Project by artistAllan McCollum New York City The idea of neo-conceptual art (sometimes later termed post-conceptual art) in the United States was clearly articulated by Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo (working as a team called: Collins & Milazzo) in the early 1980s in New York City, when they brought to prominence a whole new generation of artists through their copious writings and curatorial activity. It was their exhibitions and writings that originally fashioned the theoretical context for a new kind of neo (or post) conceptual art; one that argued simultaneously against Neo-Expressionism and Picture-Theory Art. It was through this context that the work of many of the artists associated with Neo-Conceptualism (or what some of the critics reductively called Simulationism and Neo Geo) was first brought together: artists such as Ross Bleckner, James Welling, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, Peter Nagy, Joseph Nechvatal, Sarah Charlesworth, Mark Innerst, Allan McCollum, Peter Halley, Jonathan Lasker, Haim Steinbach, Philip Taaffe, Robert Gober and Saint Clair Cemin. The Young British Artists (YBAs), led by Damien Hirst, came to prominence in the 1990s and their work was described at the time as neoconceptual,even though it relies very heavily on the art object to make its
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impact. The term is used in relation to them on the basis that the object is not the artwork, or is often a found object, which has not needed artistic skill in its production. Tracey Emin is seen as a leading YBA and a neoconceptualist, even though she has denied that she is and has emphasised personal emotional expression. Charles Harrison, a member of the conceptual art group Art and Language in the 1970s, criticizes the neoconceptual art of the 1990s as conceptual art "without threat or awkwardness" and a "vacant" prospect. Other notable artists associated with neo-conceptualism in the UK include Martin Creed, Liam Gillick, Bethan Huws, Simon Patterson, Simon Starling and Douglas Gordon. In Britain, the rise to prominence of the Young British Artists (YBAs) after the 1988 Freeze show, curated by Damien Hirst, and subsequent promotion of the group by the Saatchi Gallery during the 1990s, generated a media backlash, where the phrases "conceptual art" and "neoconceptual" came to be terms of derision applied to much contemporary art. This was amplified by the Turner Prize whose more extreme nominees (most notably Hirst and Emin) caused a controversy annually. Stuckists' "Death of Conceptual Art" coffin demonstration, 2002

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Maurizio Bolognini'sProgrammed Machines (Sealed) hundreds of computers are programmed to generate endless flows of random images which nobody would see

The Stuckist group of artists, founded in 1999, proclaimed themselves "pro-contemporary figurative painting with ideas and anti-conceptual art, mainly because of its lack of concepts." They also called it pretentious, "unremarkable and boring" and on July 25, 2002 deposited a coffin outside the White Cube gallery, marked "The Death of Conceptual Art". They staged yearly demonstrations outside the Turner Prize. In 2002, Ivan Massow, the Chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts branded conceptual art "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat" and in "danger of disappearing up its own arse ... led by cultural tsars such as the Tate's Sir Nicholas Serota. Massow was consequently forced to resign. At the end of the year, the Culture Minister, Kim Howells (an art school graduate) denounced the Turner Prize as "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit".
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In October 2004 the Saatchi Gallery told the media that "painting continues to be the most relevant and vital way that artists choose to communicate." Following this Charles Saatchi began to sell prominent works from his YBA collection. Appropriation in art is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts (literary, visual, musical and performing arts). Appropriation (art) Appropriation can be understood as "the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work."In the visual arts, to appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects (or the entire form) of human-made visual culture. Notable in this respect are the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp. Other strategies include "re-vision, re-evaluation, variation, version, interpretation, imitation, proximation, supplement, increment, improvisation, prequel... pastiche, paraphrase, parody, homage, mimicry, shan-zhai, echo, allusion, intertextuality and karaoke."The term appropriation refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work (as in 'the artist uses appropriation') or refers to the new work itself (as in 'this is a piece of appropriation art'). Inherent in our understanding of appropriation is the concept that the new work recontextualises whatever it borrows to create the new work. In most cases the original 'thing' remains accessible as the original, without change. In the early twentieth century Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque appropriated objects from a non-art context into their work. In 1912, Picasso pasted a piece of oil cloth onto the canvas. Subsequent compositions, such as Guitar, Newspaper, Glass and Bottle (1913) in which Picasso used newspaper clippings to create forms, became categorized as synthetic cubism. The two artists incorporated aspects of the "real world" into their canvases, opening up discussion of signification and artistic representation. Marcel Duchamp is credited with introducing the concept of the readymade, in which industrially produced utilitarian objectsachieve the
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status of art merely through the process of selection and presentation. Duchamp explored this notion as early as 1913 when he mounted a stool with a bicycle wheel and again in 1915 when he purchased a snow shovel and humorously inscribed it in advance of the broken arm, Marcel Duchamp. In 1917, Duchamp formally submitted a readymade into the Society of Independent Artists exhibition under the pseudonym, R. Mutt. Entitled Fountain, it consisted of a porcelain urinal that was propped atop a pedestal and signed "R. Mutt 1917". The work posed a direct challenge to traditional perceptions of fine art, ownership, originality and plagiarism, and was subsequently rejected by the exhibition committee.Duchamp publicly defended Fountain, claiming whether Mr.Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view-and created a new thought for that object.

John LeKay Untitled, 1991, ladder and wheelchair

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The Dada movement (including Duchamp as an associate) continued with the appropriation of everyday objects. Dada works featured deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. Kurt Schwitters, who produced art at the same time as the Dadaists, shows a similar sense of the bizarre in his "merz" works. He constructed these from found objects, and they took the form of large constructions that later generations would call installations. The Surrealists, coming after the Dada movement, also incorporated the use of 'found objects' such as Mret Oppenheim's Object (Luncheon in Fur) (1936). These objects took on new meaning when combined with other unlikely and unsettling objects. In 1938 Joseph Cornell produced what might be considered the first work of film appropriation in his randomly cut and reconstructed film 'Rose Hobart'. In the 1950s Robert Rauschenberg used what he dubbed "combines", literally combining readymade objects such as tires or beds, painting, silk-screens, collage, and photography. Similarly, Jasper Johns, working at the same time as Rauschenberg, incorporated found objects into his work. The Fluxus art movement also utilised appropriation: its members blended different artistic disciplines including visual art, music, and literature. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s they staged "action" events and produced sculptural works featuring unconventional materials. Along with artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol appropriated images from commercial art and popular culture as well as the techniques of these industries. Often called "pop artists", they saw mass popular culture as the main vernacular culture, shared by all irrespective of education. These artists fully engaged with the ephemera produced from this mass-produced culture, embracing expendability and distancing themselves from the evidence of an artist's hand. In 1958 Bruce Conner produced the influential 'A Movie' in which he recombined existing film clips. In 1958 Raphael Montanez Ortiz produced "Cowboy and Indian Film', a seminal appropriation film work.
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In the late 1970s Dara Birnbaum was working with appropriation to produce feminist works of art. In 1978-79 she produced one of the first video appropriations. 'Technology, Transformation : Wonder Woman' utilised video clips from the Wonder Woman television series. The term appropriation art was in common use in the 1980s with artists such as Sherrie Levine, who addressed the act of appropriating itself as a theme in art. Levine often quotes entire works in her own work, for example photographing photographs of Walker Evans. Challenging ideas of originality, drawing attention to relations between power, gender and creativity, consumerism and commodity value, the social sources and uses of art, Levine plays with the theme of "almost same". During the 1970s and 1980s Richard Prince re-photographed advertisements such as for Marlboro cigarettes or photo-journalism shots. His work takes anonymous and ubiquitous cigarette billboard advertising campaigns, elevates the status and focusses our gaze on the images. Appropriation artists comment on all aspects of culture and society. Joseph Kosuth appropriated images to engage with philosophy and epistemological theory. Other artists working with appropriation during this time with included Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Greg Colson, and Malcolm Morley. In the 1990s artists continued to produce appropriation art, using it as a medium to address theories and social issues, rather than focussing on the works themselves. Damian Loeb used film and cinema to comment on themes of simulacrum and reality. Other high-profile artists working at this time included Christian Marclay, Deborah Kass, Damien Hirst and Genco Gulan. Other contemporary appropriation artists include the Chapman brothers, Benjamin Edwards, Joy Garnett, Nikki S. Lee, Paul Pfeiffer, Pierre Huyghe. Appropriation art and copyrights Despite the long and important history of appropriation, this artistic practice has recently resulted in contentious copyright issues which reflects more restrictive copyright legislation. The U.S. has been
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particularly litigious in this respect. A number of case-law examples have emerged that investigate the division between transformative works and derivative works. Many countries are following the U.S lead toward more restrictive copyright, which risks making this art practice difficult if not illegal. Andy Warhol faced a series of lawsuits from photographers whose work he appropriated and silk-screened. Patricia Caulfield, one such photographer, had taken a picture of flowers for a photography demonstration for a photography magazine. Warhol had covered the walls of Leo Castelli's New York gallery in 1964 with the silk-screened reproductions of Caulfield's photograph. After seeing a poster of their work in a bookstore, Caulfield claimed ownership of the image and while Warhol was the author of the successful silk screens, he settled out of court, giving Caulfield a royalty for future use of the image as well as two of the paintings.123 On the other hand, Warhol's famous Campbell's Soup Cans are generally held to be non-infringing, despite being clearly appropriated, because "the public was unlikely to see the painting as sponsored by the soup company or representing a competing product. Paintings and soup cans are not in themselves competing products", according to expert trademark lawyer Jerome Gilson. Jeff Koons has also confronted issues of copyright due to his appropriation work .Photographer Art Rogers brought suit against Koons for copyright infringement in 1989. Koons' work, String of Puppies sculpturally reproduced Rogers' black and white photograph that had appeared on an airport greeting card that Koons had bought. Though he claimed fair use and parody in his defense, Koons lost the case, partially due to the tremendous success he had as an artist and the manner in which he was portrayed in the media. The parody argument also failed, as the appeals court drew a distinction between creating a parody of modern society in general and a parody directed at a specific work, finding parody of a specific work, especially of a very obscure one, too weak to justify the fair use of the original.

123

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In October 2006, Koons won one for "fair use." For a seven-painting commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, Koons drew on part of a photograph taken by Andrea Blanch titled Silk Sandals by Gucci and published in the August 2000 issue of Allure magazine to illustrate an article on metallic makeup. Koons took the image of the legs and diamond sandals from that photo and used it in his painting Niagara, which also includes three other pairs of women's legs dangling surreally over a landscape of pies and cakes.124 In his court filing, Koons' lawyer, John Koegel, said that Niagara is "an entirely new artistic work... that comments on and celebrates society's appetites and indulgences, as reflected in and encouraged by a ubiquitous barrage of advertising and promotional images of food, entertainment, fashion and beauty". In his decision, Judge Louis L. Stanton of U.S. District Court found that Niagara was indeed a "transformative use" of Blanch's photograph. "The painting's use does not 'supersede' or duplicate the objective of the original", the judge wrote, "but uses it as raw material in a novel way to create new information, new aesthetics and new insights. Such use, whether successful or not artistically, is transformative". The detail of Blanch's photograph used by Koons is only marginally copyrightable. Blanch has no rights to the Gucci sandals, "perhaps the most striking element of the photograph", the judge wrote. And without the sandals, only a representation of a women's legs remains-and this was seen as "not sufficiently original to deserve much copyright protection." In 2000, Damien Hirst's sculpture Hymn (which Charles Saatchi had bought for a reported 1m) was exhibited in Ant Noises in the Saatchi Gallery. Hirst was sued for breach of copyright over this sculpture despite the fact that he transformed the subject. The subject was a 'Young Scientist Anatomy Set' belonging to his son Connor, 10,000 of which are sold a year by Hull (Emms) Toy Manufacturer. Hirst created a 20 foot, six ton enlargement of the Science Set figure, radically changing the perception of the object. Hirst paid an undisclosed sum to two charities, Children Nationwide and the Toy Trust in an out-of-court settlement. The

124

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charitable donation was less than Emms had hoped for. Hirst sold three more copies of his sculpture for similar amounts to the first. 125 Appropriating a familiar object to make an art work can prevent the artist claiming copyright ownership. Jeff Koons threatened to sue a gallery under copyright, claiming that the gallery infringed his proprietary rights by selling bookends in the shape of balloon dogs. Koons abandoned that claim after the gallery filed a complaint for declaratory relief stating, "As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain."

Campbell's Soup (1968). Andy Warhol. In 2008, photojournalist Patrick Cariou sued artist Richard Prince, Gagosian Gallery and Rizzoli books for copyright infringement. Prince had appropriated 40 of Cariou's photos of Rastafarians from a book, creating a series of paintings known as Canal Zone. Prince variously altered the photos, painting objects, oversized hands, naked women and male torsos over the photographs, subsequently selling over $10 million worth of the works. In March 2011, a judge ruled in favor of Cariou, but Prince and Gargosian appealed on a number of points. Three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the right to an appeal. Princes attorney argued that "Appropriation art is a well-recognized modern and postmodern art form that has challenged the way people think about art, challenged the way people think about objects, images, sounds, culture" On April 24, 2013, the appeals court largely overturned the original
125

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decision, deciding that the paintings had sufficiently transformed the original images and were therefore a permitted use

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Conclusions: problems of postmodernity : When Abstract Expressionism reigned supreme, the key debate among critics was between those who emphasized art's formal elements and those who focused on the artist's emotional response to the canvas. Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, when Abstract Expressionism had already been falling out of public favor for some time, many artists turned increasingly toward mixed-media art forms, such as Conceptualism, Super-Realism and Neo-Expressionism, which were precursors to Postmodern art. This shift compelled critics to reconsider the factors that determined an artwork's intrinsic value. In these new styles, critics noted an unprecedented degree of self-awareness on the part of the artists, as well as a rejection of Modern art's emotional and spiritual detachment from society. This gave rise to the two distinct schools of Postmodern art theory. There are many problems in postmodernism. At various turns, it has been accused of being romantic, idealistic, unrealistic, wooly-headed, and so forth. But there are those who feel it is truly dangerous. Do the postmoderns mean to put an end to progress itself, to consign us all to a steady-state Utopia where all needs may be provided for but there is no room for growth, change, or movement? Some buckle at such an existence. Is it merely a step backwards, to chucking all our agricultural, scientific, and industrial revolutions aside, and going back to swinging in the trees? The postmoderns say no, they want to move forward in a way that utilizes the insights of the past but is not identical to it. Their struggle is to fight the vast totalizing schemes, like Comtean positivist history, which have been imposed on our historical existence and command our destiny. Postmodernism is at once a rejection of teleology, yet it contains in itself some teleological notions of "where things are going." A bundle of contradictions, an enigma within an enigma, it may be impossible to ever grasp Lyotard's "postmodern mood" and hold it up to the light. Is it really possible to see the origins of the postmodern ideology in the changing social and economic structures of our time? Is it all basically the ruling idea of a new ruling class - the information czars and advertising moguls of America's Sunbelt overthrowing the industrial barons of the North, as some have argued? Why is it, then, that the key ideas of postmodernism seem to be coming from Europe and being imported to
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America wholesale, via Baudrillard, Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault, et al.? Is it because modernism - especially Levi-Straussian structuralism, artistic modernism (a la Picasso, Mondrian, etc.), and architectural modernism (the Eiffel Tower: need one say more) - started there also? If liberal progress is at an end, is postmodernism at the root of racial reaction, religious fundamentalism, ethnic and nationalistic retrenchment, feminist 'backlash', and other "backward strides of history" as some critics have suggested? Was the New Left the last grasp for modernist/Enlightenment optimism, or the first wave of postmodern/postMarxist pessimism? Postmodernists have often accused Marxists of having a critique of society but no real way of changing it because they ignore the 'superstructure' of society. The same could be said of postmodernism: while the world has had some Marxist states, no one so far has even suggested what a postmodern state would look like, if it was a state at all. The postmodernists seem to be giving hints that all societies on the planet are moving postmodernally - that is to say, toward not moving at all, in terms of 'progress' - with or without any "postmodernists" in charge. The problem with trying to figure out what the postmodernists would do if they were 'running the show' is nobody knows who they are. There are people pointing to trends, shifts, and changes, but nobody claims to be making them, let alone seeking the 'revolution' to bring them about. Are they merely the prophets of postmodernity or its priests? Derrida won't say what his role is: to lead us out of history or to merely point the way out. It is a role befitting a master magician.126 Postmodernism and Post-postmodernism Recently the notions of metamodernism, Post-postmodernism and the "death of postmodernism" have been increasingly widely debated: in 2007 Andrew Hoborek noted in his introduction to a special issue of the journal Twentieth Century Literature titled "After Postmodernism" that "declarations of postmodernism's demise have become a critical commonplace". A small group of critics has put forth a range of theories that aim to describe culture and/or society in the alleged aftermath of postmodernism, most notably Raoul Eshelman (performatism), Gilles
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Lipovetsky (hypermodernity), Nicolas Bourriaud (Altermodern), and Alan Kirby (digimodernism, formerly called pseudo-modernism). None of these new theories and labels have so far gained very widespread acceptance. The exhibition Postmodernism - Style and Subversion 19701990 at the Victoria and Albert Museum 127 was billed as the first show ever to document postmodernism as a historical movement.

127

(London, 24 September 2011 15 January 2012) (258)

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Conclusions:

Based on the findings of the researcher, we find a set of conclusions follows:

1. References formed with different types of pressure in the formation of post-modernism, and contributed to the diversity of visual systems and multimedia carrier. 2. Contributed to the concepts of postmodern intellectual and philosophical systems in loosening appointment within the visual form, which led to a shift in systems construction. 3. Arts adopted postmodern culture and the concepts and ideas of the era of post-modernism, which is the system that is rich in game transformations and contradictions and lack of authority of the center, and nihilism and disassembly, and believes in pluralism versus diodes and tampering versus mental, And fell in front of grand narratives dominance of micro narratives, and the absence of self-elitist in front of popular culture, and the absence of a stable front variable, with the adoption of the open-ended.

4. Arts hired postmodern technological developments, industrial, technical and information technology, advertising, media and fashion in the completion of the work involved in the drafting of those forms of the arts.

5. Announced postmodern their allegiance to the front of the form of artistic decline content and content. The concepts become replacement and differences and metaphor and trading concepts is most present in the form of artwork according to invent systems act simultaneously.
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6. Tangle trends with neighboring structures contributed to the loosening of appointment systems owned by foundations and elements of the formal structure of these trends. In addition to the introduction of new elements and influences do not belong to the area of formation, contributed to the inability to naturalization artworks within a single region.

7. Not based forms of postmodern references to foundations or techniques or special technical Every action has its rules and its terms of reference and his style and ideas that are different from the other work, even if those acts belong to one direction.

8. Born artistic trends from the womb of Arts preceded but rebel against them and trying to demolition and dismantling in an attempt to change the meanings and objectives and references, to achieve the unfamiliar forms, according to the concept associated with the era of post-modernism.

9. Based works of art in the postmodern trends on the concepts of fragmentation, and disassembly, and nihilism, and tampering, and the consumer, and the marginalized, anxiety, fear, sex, and alienation.

10. Consumer income approach to map the technical and postmodern art has become dependent on the same approach. And became a work of art reproduces and is trading just like any other goods and exposed to shift and change and vanishing.

11. Contributed to the curriculum of modern monetary structuralism and semiotics and deconstruction to emphasize the fragmentation of centers artwork, and activation centers marginalized to bear all the workspace the same importance.
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12. Contributed to modern technologies in the activation of the visual shape and variety of spaces offers in the formation postmodern.

13. Income of the recipient to the art world to become an integral part of the work required his presence, by relying on the appointed receiver or depending on the entire body, has become the interpretation of the receiver is the most important after the announcement of the death of the author (refer to the disappearance of the artist).

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Sources book:
1. Abstractexpressionismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_expressionism#B ooks 2. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History Arthur C. Danto 3. ain Mclean & Alistair Mcmillan, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics Article: State, Oxford University Press, 2003Jump up "The Postmodern Crisis in Economics and the Revolution against Modernism", Rethinking Marxism, 2000Jump up From Marxism to Post-Marxism. London:Verso, 2008,. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 4. Ascott, R. 1998. Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. Japanese trans. E. Fujihara. A. Takada & Y. Yamashita eds. Tokyo: NTT Publishing Co.,Ltd. 5. Ascott, R. 2002. Technoetic Arts Editor and Korean translation: YI, WonKon, Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University. Yonsei: Yonsei University Press 6. Ascott, Roy2003.Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness. Ed. Edward A. Shanken. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press. 7. Barnett Newman Selected Writings and Interviews, University of California Press, 1990. ed. by John P. O'Neill, pgs.: 240241, Abstractexpressionismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_expressionis m#Books 8. Charles Arthur Willard Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy. University of Chicago Press. 1996. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy 9. Cited in Dennis McCallum, ed., The Death of Truth Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1996, 10. Danto, AC 1990, "The Hyper-Intellectual", New Republic, 203, 11/12, pp. 4448, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 April 2012http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Influential_postmodernist_p hilosophers 11. David Stoll, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 1999. http://www.allaboutworldview.org/postmodern-history.htm 12. Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. II: A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1987, p. 101http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism 13. Edward A. Shanken. Tele-Agency: Telematics, Telerobotics, and the Art of Meaning. Art Journal, issue 2 2000. 14. Francis Berry. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MODERN ART AND POSTMODERN ART. 26 June 2006. http://postmodern-art.com/. 15. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,Duke UP, 1991. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism 16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_Art
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17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_art 18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus 19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happenings 20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermodernism_art 21. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installation_art 22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermedia 23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermedia Dick Higgins, Intermedia, 1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art 24. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowbrow_art_movement 25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism 26. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-conceptual_art 27. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-expressionism 28. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art 29. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art 30. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Marxism 31. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postminimalism 32. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art 33. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_psychology 34. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism 35. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Influential_postmodernist_philos ophers 36. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra 37. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telematic_art 38. http://vimeo.com/channels/culturehub/5106248 39. http://www.allaboutworldview.org/postmodern-history.htm 40. http://www.atlassociety.org/defining-postmodernism 41. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1077292/postmodernism 42. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postmodern 43. http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html 44. http://www.xenos.org/ministries/crossroads/dotpsy.htm 45. http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/pomo.html 46. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html 47. Jim Fidelibus, Ph.D. Postmodernism and You: Psychology. How biblical Christians should respond to the postmodern shift in the field of psychotherapy Copyright 1996 Xenos Christian Fellowship. http://www.xenos.org/ministries/crossroads/dotpsy.htm 48. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich von Kleist,Weltanschauung and Social Constructionism 49. John Deely, "Philosophy and Experience," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly LXVI.4 Winter 1992, 299319, esp. 31415. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy 50. Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, The New Tolerance Carol Stream IL: Tyndale House, 1998, 51. Jump up Wendy Steiner, Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20thCentury Art, New York: The Free Press, 2001 52. KEITH MARTIN-SMITH.ART, POSTMODERN CRITICISM, AND THE EMERGING INTEGRAL MOVEMENT. August 2007. http://www.integralworld.net/martin-smith.html

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53. KEITH MARTIN-SMITH.ART, POSTMODERN CRITICISM, AND THE EMERGING INTEGRAL MOVEMENT. August 2007. http://www.integralworld.net/martin-smith.html. 54. L. Holtzman/J. R. Moss eds., Postmodern Psychologies, Societal Practice and Political Life2000 p. 179. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_psychology 55. Lule, Jack. "The Postmodern Adventure Book." Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78.4 2001: 865866. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Apr 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Influential_postmodernist_philos ophers 56. Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism and History: Mode of Production versus Mode of Information Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1984, 73. Cited in Windschuttle, The Killing of History, 132. http://www.allaboutworldview.org/postmodern-history.htm 57. Megan Gambino .Ask an Expert: What is the Difference Between Modern and Postmodern Art? Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/artsculture/Ask-an-Expert-What-is-the-difference-between-modern-andpostmodern-art.html#ixzz2m9cFam4w . 58. Postmodern art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art 59. Postmodern philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_philosophy. 60. postmodernism in other Oxford dictionaries http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/postmodernism 61. Post-Postmodern Art by. Stephen Hicks, philosopher .is the introduction to the Newberry Manifesto . An Artist's Voice. Aesthetic Commentary. 2013. http://michaelnewberry.com/av/post/post.html 62. Post-Postmodern Art by. Stephen Hicks, philosopher .is the introduction to the Newberry Manifesto . An Artist's Voice. Aesthetic Commentary. 2013. http://michaelnewberry.com/av/post/post.html . 63. Problematizing Global Knowledge. Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 23 2-3. Sage, 2006 64. Return to the parent page for this 1999 online CyberSeminar, "The Continental Origins of Postmodernism". http://www.atlassociety.org/definingpostmodernism 65. Steve Mizrach: An analysis of the postmodern movement http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/pomo.html 66. The 20th-Century art book. Reprinted. ed.. London: Phaidon Press. 2001 Abstractexpressionismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_expressionism#B ooks 67. The Order of Things, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality 68. The Postmodern Turn, Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture, Ohio University Press, 1987. p12ffhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism 69. Thomas B. Hess, "Willem de Kooning", George Braziller, Inc. New York, 1959 p.:13 70. translated by Andrew Brown, Polity Press, 2013http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism 71. William Thomas wrote: The American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, defines Postmodernism.This commentary is part of The Atlas Society's 1999 online "CyberSeminar" entitled "The Continental Origins of Postmodernism."
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72. Yilmaz, K 2010, "Postmodernism and its Challenge to the Discipline of History: Implications for History Education", Educational Philosophy & Theory, 42, 7, pp. 779-795, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 April 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism

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Contents
Chapter OneDefining Postmodernism 6-19 The first chapter -The second section-History of term21-29 The first chapter- The Third section-Postmodernity 31-38 The first chapter-The Fourth section-Postmodern philosophy 39Chapter II-First research-Postmodern art 65-90 Chapter III-First research-Radical movements in Postmodernism art-World War II and the Post-War period 92 Dada 93 Abstract expressionism 94 Happening 118 Performance art 128 Assemblage art 139-140 Pop art 141-151 Fluxus 152-166 Minimalism 167 -182 Postminimalism 183-191 Conceptual art 192-201 Installation art 202-209 Lowbrow (art movement)210-218 Digital art219- 224 Intermedia 225-228 Telematic art 229-233 Institutional Critique 234-238 Neo-expressionism and painting 239-243 appropriation art and neo-conceptual art 244- 255 Conclusions: problems of postmodernity 258 Conclusion 260-262
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Sources book:263 -266

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Qusay tariq
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Mahdi Shafiq and total of Altdresen . Ishtar Award .

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