From Modernism to Postmodernism

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." Karl Marx "In all periods of the world a political revolution is sanctioned in men's opinions, when it repeats itself. Thus Napoleon was twice defeated, and the Bourbons twice expelled. By repetition, that which at first appeared merely a matter of chance and contingency, became a real and ratified existence." G.W.F. Hegel

I begin this brief summary of the shift from modern to postmodern culture with two quotes used by Arthur Danto in a lecture given at SVA in 1993. They have to do with repetition and authenticity. The firsta famous and frequently cited line by Marx refers to the secondan obscure and never-quoted line from Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History. We'll apply them later to the question of repetition and the recycling of images in postmodernism. But first, let's review the very distinction itself between modernism and postmodernism. Three Key Concepts 1. Modernism is generally used as a way of referring to an aesthetic approach dominant in European and American art and literature in the Twentieth Century. The principles of formalism and the autonomy of art are generally assumed to be key features of Modernism. 2. The "project of Modernity" can be thought of as the development of science, philosophy, and art, each according to its own inner logic. [See Habermas, "ModernityAn Incomplete Project"; cf. Greenberg, "Modernist Painting".] This links the concept of modernity to the concept of Modernism as it was articulated by Greenberg. 3. The concept of the avant-garde is that of a loosely organized oppositional force and challenge to the dominant artistic culture. The avant-garde is often thought of as part of the "inner logic of modernism"the built-in source of contradiction or critique that moves art forward. (Note that this assumes a model of progress as part of the inner development of the arts and culture.) Postmodernism is often characterized as a critique of Modernism and the project of modernity. It is best understood as part of a cultural shift which has been felt in science, philosophy, and the arts. Modern Art
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1. Originality and Genius: In art, the notion of originality is linked to the romantic concept of artistic genius. The anonymity of the artist/craftsman in the Middle Ages gives way to the authenticity and authority of individual artistic expression. 2. Autonomy: Art, like philosophy and science, is seen as an independent, autonomous realm of human expression and individual freedom, governed by its own inherent principles and standards. The General Critique of Modernism and the Project of Modernity 1. Late Modernism: Social turmoil, increasing nuclear threat, the technologizing of the workforce under multinational capitalism, and the breakdown of religious belief leads to a kind of nihilism and anxiety about the future. a. World War IINegative effects of the war are offset temporarily by the economic prosperity and postwar reconstruction which takes place during the '50s. b. Cold WarTension between the Soviet Union and the United States under the strain of a nuclear buildup offsets the psychological effects of the postWar economic prosperity. c. Domestic tensions: Civil Rights Movement, Womens Movement, Environmentalism, Viet Nam, political assassinations (JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X). 2. All aspects of the Enlightenment project of modernity are called into question. This involves a radical critique and often uncritical rejection of: a. objectivity; b. the a priori subject as the source of meaning, authenticity, and authority; c. the importance of truth and abstract reason; d. the teleological approach to history; e. universalizing grand narratives that aspire to completeness; f. the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture. 3. According to Frederic Jameson1, postmodernism rejects what he calls "the depth model" and its binary oppositions: a. essence vs. appearance, b. latent vs. manifest content, c. authenticity vs. inauthenticity d. signifier vs. signified. 4. Thought, reason, and observation come to be seen as dependent on language as a structural, mediating system and not as the acts of a pure, nonmaterial consciousness with direct access to reality. 5. Thus, "there is no outside-the-text" [Derrida], i.e. there is no Archimedian point outside of some conceptual framework, model or form of representation. (Cf. Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Barthes, Foucault, Kuhn, Goodman, Rorty.) 6. There are no origins or fixed references. All discourse is an intertextual play of signifiers on a level surface without depth and without a foundation.

"The Deconstruction of Expression", in Art in Theory:1900-1990, Harrison and Wood (ed.), London: Blackwell, 1992,1078.
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7. The alienation of the subject is replaced by a sense of "free-floating and impersonal" fragmentation 2. This signals the "death of the subject", i.e. the end of Individualism. Jameson explains this in the following way: a. Modernism valorizes personal style. b. This presupposes a unique individualitya private identity or self (subject) that generates his or her own style according to a personal vision. c. This individualism is put into question in High (or Late) Modernism. The concept of the individual, autonomous subject is looked upon as ideological. d. This presents us with a problem: If there are no individual, creative subjects, and nothing new is possible, what is it that an artist does? e. What is left to the postmodern artist is the possibility of imitationthe recycling of images and forms, i.e. pastiche. f. With the death of the Subject comes the notion that the Past is now "unreachable". This adds an historical component to the problem.3 8. The postmodern condition is also characterized by Jameson as a kind of schizophrenia or postmodern temporality. This comes out of a Lacanian (structuralist) analysis of language and its role in the experience of time. a. There is no unmediated (direct) access to reality. Thus, the referent (object) drops out of the structuralist analysis and we are left with the sign and its two remaining aspects, i.e. signifier and signified. b. Meaning (signification) is not a one-to-one relation between a word and its related concept. Meaning emerges from a larger relationship, viz. that of the sentence. This places the signifier in the context of other signifiers. Thus, meaning (the signified) emerges from the signifier/signifier relations. c. "Schizophrenia is the breakdown of the relationship between signifiers." Thats because the experience of temporality itself depends on language. The sense of personal identity, i.e. a self that endures through time, is an effect of language. In fact, it is the very persistence of language over time that makes it possible for us to have an experience of time and, hence, of a continuous personal identity. d. In the schizophrenic, the language function is impaired and doesnt allow for this sense of temporal duration and continuity.4 9. Culture is seen by others (e.g. Jean Baudrillard) as an endless play of imitation (simulation) which signals the end of authenticity and reality and the emergence of "hyperreality".5 10.This critique of Modernity often takes the form of a challenge to the norms and values of western culture as a whole.

2 3

Ibid.

"Postmodernism and Consumer Society", in The Antiaesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, Hal Foster (ed.), Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983.
4 5

Ibid.

Jean Baudrillard characterizes hyper-reality as" the meticulous reduplication of the real...functioning entirely within the realm of simulation". ["The Hyper-realism of Simulation", in Harrison and Wood, op. cit., 1049-50]
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Two Aspects of Postmodern Practices in the Arts 1. Celebratory (This can be characterized as "nihilism without anxiety", or by what Jameson calls a "new superficiality". Since there is no underlying purpose or meaning in life, the only recourse is to take pleasure in this newly discovered freedom.) 2. Interventionist (The artist becomes a manipulator of signs more than a producer of art objects. The viewer becomes "an active reader of messages rather than a passive contemplator of the aesthetic".6 Art functions as "a social sign entangled with other signs in systems productive of value, power and prestige".7 Repetition, Epilogue, or a New Beginning Danto: Art After the End of Art "Objective Pluralism" ("no historically mandated directions for art to go in") everything is possibleanything can be a work of art Sontag: The Erotics of Interpretation The flight from interpretation seems particularly a feature of modern painting. Abstract painting is the attempt to have, in the ordinary sense, no content; since there is no content, there can be no interpretation. Pop Art works by the opposite means to the same result; using a content so blatant, so "what it is," it, too, ends by being uninterpretable.

T. R. Quigley

6 7

Hal Foster, "Subversive Signs", in Harrison and Wood, op. cit., 1066. Ibid.
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