Aziz Art June 2019
History of art(west and middle east)- contemporary art ,art ,contemporary art ,art-history of art ,iranian art ,iranian contemporary art ,middle east art ,european art
History of art(west and middle east)- contemporary art ,art ,contemporary art ,art-history of art ,iranian art ,iranian contemporary art ,middle east art ,european art
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<strong>Aziz</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>June</strong> <strong>2019</strong><br />
Postmodern art<br />
Ricky Swallow<br />
Abdulnasser Gharem
1- Postmodern<br />
20- Ricky Swallow<br />
21- Abdulnasser Gharem<br />
Director: <strong>Aziz</strong> Anzabi<br />
Editor : Nafiseh<br />
Yaghoubi<br />
Translator : Asra<br />
Yaghoubi<br />
Research: Zohreh<br />
Nazari<br />
Iranian art<br />
department:<br />
Mohadese Yaghoubi<br />
http://www.aziz-anzabi.com
Postmodern art is a body of art<br />
movements that sought to<br />
contradict some aspects of<br />
modernism or some aspects that<br />
emerged or developed in its<br />
aftermath. In general, movements<br />
such as intermedia, installation art,<br />
conceptual art and multimedia,<br />
particularly involving video are<br />
described as postmodern.<br />
There are several characteristics<br />
which lend art to being<br />
postmodern; these include<br />
bricolage, the use of text<br />
prominently as the central artistic<br />
element, collage, simplification,<br />
appropriation, performance art,<br />
the recycling of past styles and<br />
themes in a modern-day context, as<br />
well as the break-up of the barrier<br />
between fine and high arts and<br />
low art and popular culture.<br />
Use of the term<br />
The predominant term for art<br />
produced since the 1950s is<br />
"contemporary art". Not all art<br />
labeled as contemporary art is<br />
postmodern, and the broader<br />
term encompasses both artists<br />
who continue to work in<br />
modernist and late modernist<br />
traditions, as well as artists who<br />
reject postmodernism for other<br />
reasons. <strong>Art</strong>hur Danto argues<br />
"contemporary" is the broader<br />
term, and postmodern objects<br />
represent a "subsector" of the<br />
contemporary movement. Some<br />
postmodern artists have made<br />
more distinctive breaks from the<br />
ideas of modern art and there is no<br />
consensus as to what is "latemodern"<br />
and what is "postmodern."<br />
Ideas rejected by the<br />
modern aesthetic have been reestablished.<br />
In painting,<br />
postmodernism reintroduced<br />
representation.Some critics argue<br />
much of the current "postmodern"<br />
art, the latest avant-gardism,<br />
should still classify as modern art.<br />
As well as describing certain<br />
tendencies of contemporary art,<br />
postmodern has also been used to<br />
denote a phase of modern art.<br />
Defenders of modernism, such as<br />
Clement Greenberg,as well as<br />
radical opponents of modernism,<br />
such as Félix Guattari, who calls it<br />
modernism's "last gasp," have<br />
adopted this position.<br />
1
The neo-conservative Hilton<br />
Kramer describes postmodernism<br />
as "a creation of modernism at the<br />
end of its tether."Jean-François<br />
Lyotard, in Fredric Jameson's<br />
analysis, does not hold there is a<br />
postmodern stage radically<br />
different from the period of high<br />
modernism; instead, postmodern<br />
discontent with this or that high<br />
modernist style is part of the<br />
experimentation of high<br />
modernism, giving birth to new<br />
modernisms. In the context of<br />
aesthetics and art, Jean-François<br />
Lyotard is a major philosopher of<br />
postmodernism.<br />
Many critics hold postmodern art<br />
emerges from modern art.<br />
Suggested dates for the shift from<br />
modern to postmodern include<br />
1914 in Europe, and 1962or<br />
1968 in America. James Elkins,<br />
commenting on discussions about<br />
the exact date of the transition<br />
from modernism to<br />
postmodernism, compares it to<br />
the discussion in the 1960s about<br />
the exact span of Mannerism and<br />
whether it should begin directly<br />
after the High Renaissance or later<br />
in the century. He makes the point<br />
these debates go on all the time<br />
with respect to art movements and<br />
periods, which is not to say they<br />
are not important.The close of the<br />
period of postmodern art has been<br />
dated to the end of the 1980s,<br />
when the word postmodernism lost<br />
much of its critical resonance, and<br />
art practices began to address the<br />
impact of globalization and new<br />
media.<br />
Jean Baudrillard has had a<br />
significant influence on<br />
postmodern-inspired art and<br />
emphasised the possibilities of new<br />
forms of creativity.The artist Peter<br />
Halley describes his day-glo colours<br />
as "hyperrealization of real color",<br />
and acknowledges Baudrillard as an<br />
influence.Baudrillard himself, since<br />
1984, was fairly consistent in his<br />
view contemporary art, and<br />
postmodern art in particular, was<br />
inferior to the modernist art of the<br />
post World War II period,while<br />
Jean-François Lyotard praised<br />
Contemporary painting and<br />
remarked on its evolution from<br />
Modern art
Major Women artists in the<br />
Twentieth Century are associated<br />
with postmodern art since much<br />
theoretical articulation of their<br />
work emerged from French<br />
psychoanalysis and Feminist Theory<br />
that is strongly related to post<br />
modern philosophy.<br />
As with all uses of the term<br />
postmodern there are critics of its<br />
application. Kirk Varnedoe, for<br />
instance, stated that there is no<br />
such thing as postmodernism, and<br />
that the possibilities of modernism<br />
have not yet been exhausted.<br />
Though the usage of the term as a<br />
kind of shorthand to designate the<br />
work of certain Post-war "schools"<br />
employing relatively specific<br />
material and generic techniques<br />
has become conventional since the<br />
mid-1980s, the theoretical<br />
underpinnings of Postmodernism<br />
as an epochal or epistemic division<br />
are still very much in controversy.<br />
Defining postmodern art<br />
Postmodernism describes<br />
movements which both arise from,<br />
and react against or reject, trends<br />
in modernism.General citations for<br />
specific trends of modernism are<br />
formal purity, medium specificity,<br />
art for art's sake, authenticity,<br />
universality, originality and<br />
revolutionary or reactionary<br />
tendency, i.e. the avant-garde.<br />
However, paradox is probably the<br />
most important modernist idea<br />
against which postmodernism<br />
reacts. Paradox was central to the<br />
modernist enterprise, which Manet<br />
introduced. Manet's various<br />
violations of representational art<br />
brought to prominence the<br />
supposed mutual exclusiveness of<br />
reality and representation, design<br />
and representation, abstraction and<br />
reality, and so on. The<br />
incorporation of paradox was highly<br />
stimulating from Manet to the<br />
conceptualists.<br />
The status of the avant-garde is<br />
controversial: many institutions<br />
argue being visionary, forwardlooking,<br />
cutting-edge, and<br />
progressive are crucial to the<br />
mission of art in the present, and<br />
therefore postmodern art<br />
contradicts the value of "art of our<br />
times". Postmodernism rejects the<br />
notion of advancement or progress<br />
in art per se, and thus aims to<br />
overturn the "myth of the avantgarde".
Rosalind Krauss was one of the<br />
important enunciators of the view<br />
that avant-gardism was over, and<br />
the new artistic era is post-liberal<br />
and post-progress.Griselda Pollock<br />
studied and confronted the avantgarde<br />
and modern art in a series of<br />
groundbreaking books, reviewing<br />
modern art at the same time as<br />
redefining postmodern art.<br />
One characteristic of postmodern<br />
art is its conflation of high and low<br />
culture through the use of<br />
industrial materials and<br />
pop culture imagery. The use of<br />
low forms of art were a part of<br />
modernist experimentation as well,<br />
as documented in Kirk Varnedoe<br />
and Adam Gopnik's 1990–91 show<br />
High and Low: Popular Culture<br />
and Modern <strong>Art</strong> at New York's<br />
Museum of Modern <strong>Art</strong>,an<br />
exhibition that was universally<br />
panned at the time as the only<br />
event that could bring Douglas<br />
Crimp and Hilton Kramer together<br />
in a chorus of scorn.<br />
Postmodern art is noted for the<br />
way in which it blurs the<br />
distinctions between what is<br />
perceived as fine or high art and<br />
what is generally seen as low or<br />
kitsch art.While this concept of<br />
"blurring" or "fusing" high art with<br />
low art had been experimented<br />
during modernism, it only ever<br />
became fully endorsed after the<br />
advent of the postmodern<br />
era.Postmodernism introduced<br />
elements of commercialism, kitsch<br />
and a general camp aesthetic<br />
within its artistic context;<br />
postmodernism takes styles from<br />
past periods, such as Gothicism, the<br />
Renaissance and the Baroque, and<br />
mixes them so as to ignore their<br />
original use in their corresponding<br />
artistic movement. Such elements<br />
are common characteristics of what<br />
defines postmodern art.<br />
Fredric Jameson suggests<br />
postmodern works abjure any claim<br />
to spontaneity and directness of<br />
expression, making use instead of<br />
pastiche and discontinuity. Against<br />
this definition, <strong>Art</strong> and Language's<br />
Charles Harrison and Paul Wood<br />
maintained pastiche and<br />
discontinuity are endemic to<br />
modernist art, and are deployed<br />
effectively by modern artists such<br />
as Manet and Picasso.
One compact definition is<br />
postmodernism rejects<br />
modernism's grand narratives of<br />
artistic direction, eradicating the<br />
boundaries between high and low<br />
forms of art, and disrupting genre's<br />
conventions with collision, collage,<br />
and fragmentation. Postmodern art<br />
holds all stances are unstable and<br />
insincere, and therefore irony,<br />
parody, and humor are the only<br />
positions critique or revision<br />
cannot overturn. "Pluralism and<br />
diversity" are other defining<br />
features.<br />
Avant-garde precursors<br />
Radical movements and trends<br />
regarded as influential and<br />
potentially as precursors to<br />
postmodernism emerged around<br />
World War I and particularly in its<br />
aftermath. With the introduction<br />
of the use of industrial artifacts in<br />
art and techniques such as collage,<br />
avant-garde movements such as<br />
Cubism, Dada and Surrealism<br />
questioned the nature and value<br />
of art. New artforms, such as<br />
cinema and the rise of<br />
reproduction, influenced these<br />
movements as a means of creating<br />
artworks. The ignition point for the<br />
definition of modernism, Clement<br />
Greenberg's essay, Avant-Garde<br />
and Kitsch, first published in<br />
Partisan Review in 1939, defends<br />
the avant-garde in the face of<br />
popular culture.Later, Peter Bürger<br />
would make a distinction between<br />
the historical avant-garde and<br />
modernism, and critics such as<br />
Krauss, Huyssen, and Douglas<br />
Crimp, following Bürger, identified<br />
the historical avant-garde as a<br />
precursor to postmodernism.<br />
Krauss, for example, describes<br />
Pablo Picasso's use of collage as an<br />
avant-garde practice anticipating<br />
postmodern art with its emphasis<br />
on language at the expense of<br />
autobiography.Another point of<br />
view is avant-garde and modernist<br />
artists used similar strategies and<br />
postmodernism repudiates both.<br />
Dada<br />
In the early 20th century Marcel<br />
Duchamp exhibited a urinal as a<br />
sculpture. His point was to have<br />
people look at the urinal as if it<br />
were a work of art just because he<br />
said it was a work of art. He<br />
referred to his work as<br />
"Readymades".
The Fountain was a urinal signed<br />
with the pseudonym R. Mutt,<br />
which shocked the art world in<br />
1917. This and Duchamp's other<br />
works are generally labelled as<br />
Dada. Duchamp can be seen as a<br />
precursor to conceptual art. Some<br />
critics question calling<br />
Duchamp—whose obsession with<br />
paradox is well known—<br />
postmodernist on the grounds he<br />
eschews any specific medium,<br />
since paradox is not mediumspecific,<br />
although it arose first in<br />
Manet's paintings.<br />
Dadaism can be viewed as part of<br />
the modernist propensity to<br />
challenge established styles and<br />
forms, along with Surrealism,<br />
Futurism and Abstract<br />
Expressionism.From a<br />
chronological point of view,<br />
Dada is located solidly within<br />
modernism, however a number of<br />
critics hold it anticipates<br />
postmodernism, while others,<br />
such as Ihab Hassan and Steven<br />
Connor, consider it a possible<br />
changeover point between<br />
modernism and<br />
postmodernism.For example,<br />
according to McEvilly,<br />
postmodernism begins with<br />
realizing one no longer believes in<br />
the myth of progress, and Duchamp<br />
sensed this in 1914 when he<br />
changed from a modernist practice<br />
to a postmodernist one, "abjuring<br />
aesthetic delectation, transcendent<br />
ambition, and tour de force<br />
demonstrations of formal agility in<br />
favor of aesthetic indifference,<br />
acknowledgement of the ordinary<br />
world, and the found object or<br />
readymade.<br />
Radical movements in modern art<br />
In general, Pop <strong>Art</strong> and Minimalism<br />
began as modernist movements: a<br />
paradigm shift and philosophical<br />
split between formalism and antiformalism<br />
in the early 1970s<br />
caused those movements to be<br />
viewed by some as precursors or<br />
transitional postmodern art. Other<br />
modern movements cited as<br />
influential to postmodern art are<br />
conceptual art and the use of<br />
techniques such as assemblage,<br />
montage, bricolage, and<br />
appropriation.<br />
Jackson Pollock and abstract<br />
expressionism<br />
Main articles: Jackson Pollock,<br />
Abstract expressionism, and<br />
Western painting
During the late 1940s and early<br />
1950s, Pollock's radical approach to<br />
painting revolutionized the<br />
potential for all Contemporary art<br />
following him. Pollock realized the<br />
journey toward making a work of<br />
art was as important as the work<br />
of art itself. Like Pablo Picasso's<br />
innovative reinventions of<br />
painting and sculpture near the<br />
turn of the century via Cubism<br />
and constructed sculpture,<br />
Pollock redefined artmaking<br />
during the mid-century. Pollock's<br />
move from easel painting and<br />
conventionality liberated his<br />
contemporaneous artists and<br />
following artists. They realized<br />
Pollock's process — working on<br />
the floor,<br />
unstretched raw canvas, from all<br />
four sides, using artist materials,<br />
industrial materials, imagery, nonimagery,<br />
throwing linear skeins of<br />
paint, dripping, drawing, staining,<br />
brushing - blasted artmaking<br />
beyond prior boundaries. Abstract<br />
expressionism expanded and<br />
developed the definitions and<br />
possibilities artists had available<br />
for the creation of new works of<br />
art. In a sense, the innovations of<br />
Jackson Pollock, Willem de<br />
Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko,<br />
Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann,<br />
Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Ad<br />
Reinhardt and others, opened the<br />
floodgates to the diversity and<br />
scope of following artworks.<br />
After abstract expressionism<br />
Main articles: Post-painterly<br />
abstraction, Color Field painting,<br />
Lyrical Abstraction, <strong>Art</strong>e Povera,<br />
Process <strong>Art</strong>, and Western painting<br />
In abstract painting during the<br />
1950s and 1960s several new<br />
directions like Hard-edge painting<br />
and other forms of Geometric<br />
abstraction like the work of Frank<br />
Stella popped up, as a reaction<br />
against the subjectivism of Abstract<br />
expressionism began to appear in<br />
artist studios and in radical avantgarde<br />
circles. Clement Greenberg<br />
became the voice of Post-painterly<br />
abstraction; by curating an<br />
influential exhibition of new<br />
painting touring important art<br />
museums throughout the United<br />
States in 1964. Color field painting,<br />
Hard-edge painting and Lyrical<br />
Abstraction emerged as radical new<br />
directions.
By the late 1960s, Postminimalism,<br />
Process <strong>Art</strong> and <strong>Art</strong>e Povera also<br />
emerged as revolutionary<br />
concepts and movements<br />
encompassing painting and<br />
sculpture, via Lyrical Abstraction<br />
and the Postminimalist movement,<br />
and in early Conceptual<br />
<strong>Art</strong>.Process art as inspired by<br />
Pollock enabled artists to<br />
experiment with and make use<br />
of a diverse encyclopedia of style,<br />
content, material, placement,<br />
sense of time, and plastic and real<br />
space. Nancy Graves, Ronald Davis,<br />
Howard Hodgkin, Larry Poons,<br />
Jannis Kounellis, Brice Marden,<br />
Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle,<br />
Alan Saret, Walter Darby Bannard,<br />
Lynda Benglis, Dan Christensen,<br />
Larry Zox, Ronnie Landfield, Eva<br />
Hesse, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra,<br />
Sam Gilliam, Mario Merz, Peter<br />
Reginato, Lee Lozano, were some of<br />
the younger artists emerging during<br />
the era of late modernism<br />
spawning the heyday of the art of<br />
the late 1960s.<br />
Pop <strong>Art</strong><br />
Lawrence Alloway used the term<br />
"Pop art" to describe paintings<br />
celebrating consumerism of the<br />
post World War II era. This<br />
movement rejected Abstract<br />
expressionism and its focus on the<br />
hermeneutic and psychological<br />
interior, in favor of art which<br />
depicted, and often celebrated,<br />
material consumer culture,<br />
advertising, and iconography of the<br />
mass production age. The early<br />
works of David Hockney and the<br />
works of Richard Hamilton, John<br />
McHale, and Eduardo Paolozzi were<br />
considered seminal examples in the<br />
movement. While later American<br />
examples include the bulk of the<br />
careers of Andy Warhol and Roy<br />
Lichtenstein and his use of Benday<br />
dots, a technique used in<br />
commercial reproduction.<br />
There is a clear connection<br />
between the radical works of<br />
Duchamp, the rebellious Dadaist —<br />
with a sense of humor; and Pop<br />
<strong>Art</strong>ists like Claes Oldenburg, Andy<br />
Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and the<br />
others.<br />
Thomas McEvilly, agreeing with<br />
Dave Hickey, says U.S<br />
postmodernism in the visual arts<br />
began with the first exhibitions of<br />
Pop art in 1962,.
"though it took about twenty years<br />
before postmodernism became a<br />
dominant attitude in the visual<br />
arts."Fredric Jameson, too,<br />
considers pop art to be<br />
postmodern<br />
One way Pop art is postmodern<br />
is it breaks down what Andreas<br />
Huyssen calls the "Great Divide"<br />
between high art and popular<br />
culture.Postmodernism emerges<br />
from a "generational refusal of the<br />
categorical certainties of high<br />
modernism.<br />
Fluxus<br />
Fluxus was named and loosely<br />
organized in 1962 by George<br />
Maciunas (1931–78), a Lithuanianborn<br />
American artist.<br />
Fluxus traces its beginnings to<br />
John Cage's 1957 to 1959<br />
Experimental Composition classes<br />
at the New School for Social<br />
Research in New York City.<br />
Many of his students were artists<br />
working in other media with little<br />
or no background in music. Cage's<br />
students included Fluxus founding<br />
members Jackson Mac Low, Al<br />
Hansen, George Brecht and Dick<br />
Higgins. In 1962 in Germany Fluxus<br />
started with the: FLUXUS<br />
Internationale Festspiele Neuester<br />
Musik in Wiesbaden with, George<br />
Maciunas, Joseph Beuys, Wolf<br />
Vostell, Nam <strong>June</strong> Paik and others.<br />
And in 1963 with the: Festum<br />
Fluxorum Fluxus in Düsseldorf with<br />
George Maciunas, Wolf Vostell,<br />
Joseph Beuys, Dick Higgins, Nam<br />
<strong>June</strong> Paik, Ben Patterson, Emmett<br />
Williams and others.<br />
Fluxus encouraged a do it yourself<br />
aesthetic, and valued simplicity<br />
over complexity. Like Dada before<br />
it, Fluxus included a strong current<br />
of anti-commercialism and an antiart<br />
sensibility, disparaging the<br />
conventional market-driven art<br />
world in favor of an artist-centered<br />
creative practice. Fluxus artists<br />
preferred to work with whatever<br />
materials were at hand, and either<br />
created their own work or<br />
collaborated in the creation process<br />
with their colleagues.<br />
Fluxus can be viewed as part of the<br />
first phase of postmodernism,<br />
along with Rauschenberg, Johns,<br />
Warhol and the Situationist<br />
International
Fluxus can be viewed as part of the<br />
first phase of postmodernism,<br />
along with Rauschenberg, Johns,<br />
Warhol and the Situationist<br />
International.Andreas Huyssen<br />
criticises attempts to claim Fluxus<br />
for postmodernism as, "either the<br />
master-code of postmodernism or<br />
the ultimately unrepresentable art<br />
movement – as it were,<br />
postmodernism's sublime." Instead<br />
he sees Fluxus as a major Neo-<br />
Dadaist phenomena within the<br />
avant-garde tradition. It did not<br />
represent a major advance in the<br />
development of artistic strategies,<br />
though it did express a rebellion<br />
against, "the administered culture<br />
of the 1950s, in which a moderate,<br />
domesticated modernism served<br />
as ideological prop to the Cold<br />
War."<br />
Minimalism<br />
By the early 1960s Minimalism<br />
emerged as an abstract movement<br />
in art (with roots in geometric<br />
abstraction via Malevich, the<br />
Bauhaus and Mondrian) which<br />
rejected the idea of relational, and<br />
subjective painting, the complexity<br />
of Abstract expressionist surfaces,<br />
and the emotional zeitgeist and<br />
polemics present in the arena of<br />
Action painting. Minimalism argued<br />
extreme simplicity could capture<br />
the sublime representation art<br />
requires. Associated with painters<br />
such as Frank Stella, minimalism in<br />
painting, as opposed to other<br />
areas, is a modernist movement<br />
and depending on the context can<br />
be construed as a precursor to the<br />
postmodern movement.<br />
Hal Foster, in his essay The Crux of<br />
Minimalism, examines the extent to<br />
which Donald Judd and Robert<br />
Morris both acknowledge and<br />
exceed Greenbergian modernism in<br />
their published definitions of<br />
minimalism. He argues minimalism<br />
is not a "dead end" of modernism,<br />
but a "paradigm shift toward<br />
postmodern practices that continue<br />
to be elaborated today.
Postminimalism<br />
Robert Pincus-Witten coined the<br />
term Post-minimalism in 1977 to<br />
describe minimalist derived art<br />
which had content and contextual<br />
overtones minimalism rejected.<br />
His use of the term covered the<br />
period 1966 – 1976 and applied to<br />
the work of Eva Hesse, Keith<br />
Sonnier, Richard Serra and new<br />
work by former minimalists<br />
Robert Smithson, Robert Morris,<br />
Sol LeWitt, and Barry Le Va, and<br />
others Process art and anti-form<br />
art are other terms describing this<br />
work, which the space it occupies<br />
and the process by which it is<br />
made determines.<br />
Rosalind Krauss argues by 1968<br />
artists such as Morris, LeWitt,<br />
Smithson and Serra had "entered<br />
a situation the logical conditions<br />
of which can no longer be<br />
described as modernist."The<br />
expansion of the category of<br />
sculpture to include land art and<br />
architecture, "brought about the<br />
shift into postmodernism."<br />
Minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan<br />
Flavin, Carl Andre, Agnes Martin,<br />
John McCracken and others<br />
continued to produce their late<br />
modernist paintings and sculpture<br />
for the remainder of their careers.<br />
Movements in postmodern art<br />
Conceptual art<br />
Conceptual art is sometimes<br />
labelled as postmodern because it<br />
is expressly involved in<br />
deconstruction of what makes a<br />
work of art, "art". Conceptual art,<br />
because it is often designed to<br />
confront, offend or attack notions<br />
held by many of the people who<br />
view it, is regarded with particular<br />
controversy.[citation needed]<br />
Precursors to conceptual art<br />
include the work of Duchamp, John<br />
Cage's 4' 33", in which the music is<br />
said to be "the sounds of the<br />
environment that the listeners'<br />
hear while it is performed," and<br />
Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning<br />
Drawing. Many conceptual works<br />
take the position that art is created<br />
by the viewer viewing an object or<br />
act as art, not from the intrinsic<br />
qualities of the work itself. Thus,<br />
because Fountain was exhibited, it<br />
was a sculpture.
Installation art<br />
An important series of<br />
movements in art which have<br />
consistently been described as<br />
postmodern involved installation<br />
art and creation of artifacts that<br />
are conceptual in nature. One<br />
example being the signs of Jenny<br />
Holzer which use the devices of<br />
art to convey specific messages,<br />
such as "Protect Me From What I<br />
Want". Installation <strong>Art</strong> has been<br />
important in determining the<br />
spaces selected for museums of<br />
contemporary art in order to be<br />
able to hold the large works which<br />
are composed of vast collages of<br />
manufactured and found objects.<br />
These installations and collages<br />
are often electrified, with moving<br />
parts and lights.<br />
They are often designed to create<br />
environmental effects, as Christo<br />
and Jeanne-Claude's Iron Curtain,<br />
Wall of 240 Oil Barrels, Blocking<br />
Rue Visconti, Paris, <strong>June</strong> 1962<br />
which was a poetic response to<br />
the Berlin Wall built in 1961.<br />
Lowbrow art<br />
Lowbrow is a widespread populist<br />
art movement with origins in the<br />
underground comix world, punk<br />
music, hot-rod street culture, and<br />
other California subcultures. It is<br />
also often known by the name pop<br />
surrealism. Lowbrow art highlights<br />
a central theme in postmodernism<br />
in that the distinction between<br />
"high" and "low" art are no longer<br />
recognized.<br />
Digital art<br />
Digital art is a general term for a<br />
range of artistic works and<br />
practices that use digital<br />
technology as an essential part of<br />
the creative and/or presentation<br />
process. The impact of digital<br />
technology has transformed<br />
activities such as painting, drawing,<br />
sculpture and music/sound art,<br />
while new forms, such as net art,<br />
digital installation art, and virtual<br />
reality, have become recognized<br />
artistic practices.<br />
Leading art theorists and historians<br />
in this field include Christiane Paul,<br />
Frank Popper, Christine Buci-<br />
Glucksmann, Dominique Moulon,<br />
Robert C. Morgan, Roy Ascott,<br />
Catherine Perret, Margot Lovejoy,<br />
Edmond Couchot, Fred Forest and<br />
Edward A. Shanken.
Intermedia and multi-media<br />
Another trend in art which has<br />
been associated with the term<br />
postmodern is the use of a<br />
number of different media<br />
together. Intermedia, a term<br />
coined by Dick Higgins and meant<br />
to convey new artforms along the<br />
lines of Fluxus, Concrete Poetry,<br />
Found objects, Performance art,<br />
and Computer art. Higgins was the<br />
publisher of the Something Else<br />
Press, a Concrete poet, married to<br />
artist Alison Knowles and an<br />
admirer of Marcel Duchamp. Ihab<br />
Hassan includes, "Intermedia, the<br />
fusion of forms, the confusion of<br />
realms," in his list of the<br />
characteristics of postmodern<br />
art.One of the most common<br />
forms of "multi-media art" is the<br />
use of video-tape and CRT<br />
monitors, termed Video art. While<br />
the theory of combining multiple<br />
arts into one art is quite old, and<br />
has been revived periodically, the<br />
postmodern manifestation is often<br />
in combination with performance<br />
art, where the dramatic subtext is<br />
removed, and what is left is the<br />
specific statements of the artist in<br />
question or the conceptual<br />
statement of their action.Higgin's<br />
conception of Intermedia is<br />
connected to the growth of<br />
multimedia digital practice such as<br />
immersive virtual reality, digital art<br />
and computer art.<br />
Telematic <strong>Art</strong><br />
Telematic art is a descriptive of art<br />
projects using computer mediated<br />
telecommunications networks as<br />
their medium. Telematic art<br />
challenges the traditional<br />
relationship between active<br />
viewing subjects and passive art<br />
objects by creating interactive,<br />
behavioural contexts for remote<br />
aesthetic encounters. Roy Ascott<br />
sees the telematic art form as the<br />
transformation of the viewer into<br />
an active participator of creating<br />
the artwork which remains in<br />
process throughout its duration.<br />
Ascott has been at the forefront of<br />
the theory and practice of<br />
telematic art since 1978 when he<br />
went online for the first time,<br />
organizing different collaborative<br />
online projects.<br />
Appropriation art and neoconceptual<br />
art<br />
In his 1980 essay The Allegorical<br />
Impulse: Toward a Theory of<br />
Postmodernism,
Craig Owens identifies the reemergence<br />
of an allegorical<br />
impulse as characteristic of<br />
postmodern art. This impulse can<br />
be seen in the appropriation art of<br />
artists such as Sherrie Levine and<br />
Robert Longo because, "Allegorical<br />
imagery is appropriated imagery."<br />
Appropriation art debunks<br />
modernist notions of artistic<br />
genius and originality and is more<br />
ambivalent and contradictory than<br />
modern art, simultaneously<br />
installing and subverting ideologies,<br />
"being both critical and complicit."<br />
Neo-expressionism and painting<br />
The return to the traditional art<br />
forms of sculpture and painting in<br />
the late 1970s and early 1980s<br />
seen in the work of Neoexpressionist<br />
artists such as Georg<br />
Baselitz and Julian Schnabel has<br />
been described as a postmodern<br />
tendency, and one of the first<br />
coherent movements to emerge<br />
in the postmodern era. Its strong<br />
links with the commercial art<br />
market has raised questions,<br />
however, both about its status as<br />
a postmodern movement and the<br />
definition of postmodernism itself.<br />
Hal Foster states that neoexpressionism<br />
was complicit with<br />
the conservative cultural politics of<br />
the Reagan-Bush era in the U.S.Félix<br />
Guattari disregards the "large<br />
promotional operations dubbed<br />
'neo-expressionism' in Germany,"<br />
as a too easy way for him "to<br />
demonstrate that postmodernism is<br />
nothing but the last gasp of<br />
modernism."These critiques of neoexpressionism<br />
reveal that money<br />
and public relations really sustained<br />
contemporary art world credibility<br />
in America during the same period<br />
that conceptual artists, and<br />
practices of women artists<br />
including painters and feminist<br />
theorists like<br />
Griselda Pollock,were<br />
systematically reevaluating modern<br />
art. Brian Massumi claims that<br />
Deleuze and Guattari open the<br />
horizon of new definitions of<br />
Beauty in postmodern art. For Jean-<br />
François Lyotard, it was painting of<br />
the artists Valerio Adami, Daniel<br />
Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Bracha<br />
Ettinger, and Barnett Newman that,<br />
after the avant-garde's time and<br />
the painting of Paul Cézanne and<br />
Wassily Kandinsky, was the vehicle<br />
for new ideas of the sublime in<br />
contemporary art.
Institutional critique<br />
Critiques on the institutions of art (principally museums and galleries)<br />
are made in the work of Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel<br />
Buren and Hans Haacke
Ricky Swallow is an Australian sculptor (born in San Remo, Victoria in<br />
1974), who lives and works in Los Angeles.He creates detailed pieces and<br />
installations in a variety of media, often utilising objects of everyday life<br />
as well as the body (bones etc.). He studied at the Victorian College of<br />
the <strong>Art</strong>s.He won the Contempora 5 Prize in Melbourne at the age of 25<br />
in 1999. He was later selected to be the Australian representative at the<br />
2005 Venice Biennale with This Time Another Year.<br />
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Abdulnasser Gharem (born 4 <strong>June</strong> 1973) is a Saudi Arabian artist and<br />
also a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Arabian army. In April 2011, his<br />
installation Message/Messenger sold for a world record price at auction<br />
in Dubai.<br />
Gharem's work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Victoria<br />
& Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of <strong>Art</strong> and the Saudi<br />
Arabian Ministry of Culture and Information, His artwork is<br />
characterized by innovative use of materials,including rubber stamps, a<br />
collapsed bridge, and an invasive tree.<br />
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http://www.aziz-anzabi.com