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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

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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 />

20


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

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