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Postmodernism art essays
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Postmodern aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of what is considered beauty at the specific time/era.1 For example, during the Renaissance, women that were to be considered beautiful and sexy would have to have curves and voluptuous bodies as opposed to today’s size 0 beauty standards. This shows that points of view, perception and aesthetics change with each era. Etymologically, the word aesthetic comes from the greek verb αισθάνομαι, which means I perceive, I feel. One key feature of postmodern aesthetics is the ideology and theory that the author is dead and that his intentions should not be considered the most important thing of his work, but how others interpret his work. The main person that discusses this theory is French literacy critic and theorist Roland Barthes in his essay "The Death of the Author" (1967). In his text, the traditional notions of authorship are being challenged and, by doing so, challenging the writers/authors control over their own text. For example, many postmodern critics including Roland Barthes would argue that what the reader brings to a text has as much to do with how a reader interprets a text as what the author writes and intends. Equivelantely, social constructionists argue that authors themselves are written by their cultures and societies, authorship is a social construct and is granted by various communities, such as academic and professional groups. After reading Rolands text, I believe he is right about the authors intention not being the only way of interpreting a piece of art , text, or even music (song), since each individual viewing a specific piece has their own set of values, morals and l... ... middle of paper ... ...hem and their work.21 This relates greatly to what Barthes talks about in his text, because if it is not the author/artist himself that produces a body of work but a "muse/genius", then we cannot entirelly believe that the author/artist should have any say in what their work is about. In addition, it is clear within the fashion and music industry that things repeat themselves after a certain amount of time. Therefore, their is not much originallity left in the world since everyone is "inspired" by someone in the past to help them produce their work. All in all, I strongly believe that Roland Barthes is correct with his ideology that the artist in general, is progressivelly losing their authority over their creations, because if they were not and we had to thank everyone who contributed into a body of work they produced in any way, we would be dead before we finished.
He clarifies his interpretation of aesthetic value, rejecting the traditionally narrow notions regarding beauty and composition, and expands his view to include insights and emotions expressed through the medium. Explaining that he views overall value as an all-things-considered judgement, he asserts the ethicist’s duty to contrast the aesthetic with the ethical and determine the extent to which one outweighs the other. Gaut calls on readers to defy the popular paradigm equating beauty with goodness and ugly with evil, allowing for great, yet flawed pieces of
Before you begin reading this paper, look through the appendix. Are you shocked? Disgusted? Intrigued? Viewers of such controversial artwork often experience a wide spectrum of reactions ranging from the petrified to the pleased. Questions may arise within the viewer regarding the artistic merit and legitimacy of this unorthodox artwork. However, art's primary purpose, according to Maya Angelou, “is to serve humanity. Art that does not increase our understanding of this particular journey or our ability to withstand this particular journey, which is life, is an exercise in futile indulgence” (Buchwalter 27). To expand on Angelou's analogy, because everyone experiences a different life journey, art is different to everyone. In other words, art is subjective to the viewer. The viewer creates his own definition of what is art and what is not art. Some may recognize the artistic value of a piece of artwork, while others may find it obscene. Some may praise the artwork, while others will protest it. Censorship is derived from these differing perspectives on artwork. Through censorship, communities seek to establish boundaries and criteria that limit an artist's ability to produce “proper” artwork. However, some artists choose to ignore these boundaries in order to expand the scope of art and, in their view, better serve humanity.
In existential thought it is often questioned who decides what is right and what is wrong. Our everyday beliefs based on the assumption that not everything we are told may be true. This questioning has given light to the subjective perspective. This means that there is a lack of a singular view that is entirely devoid of predetermined values. These predetermined values are instilled upon society by various sources such as family to the media. On a societal level this has given rise to the philosophy of social hype. The idea of hype lies in society as the valuation of something purely off someone or some group of people valuing it. Hype has become one of the main driving forces behind what society considers to be good art and how successful artists can become while being the main component that leads to a wide spread belief, followed by its integration into subjective views. Its presence in the art world propagates trends, fads, and limits what we find to be good art. Our subjective outlook on art is powered by society’s feedback upon itself. The art world, high and low, is exploited by this social construction. Even when objective critique is the goal subjective remnants can still seep through and influence an opinion. Subjective thought in the art world has been self perpetuated through regulated museums, idolization of the author, and general social construction because of hype.
Post-Modernism, the absence of any certainty, discredits the values of modernism, opposing the fixed principles of meaning and value. It is built on countless theories about society, the media and knowledge of the world, but it is also aware that there is no ultimate way of making sense of humanity. Ondaatje embraces aspects of post-modernism, by creating a novel that breaks away from the traditional narrative, thereby giving readers a greater perspective on the novel. One learns that any story is simply a storyteller's construction, and is never unbiased.
Questioning Marxist aesthetics is essential to an understanding of the enlightenment movements. Art, in its nearly infinite forms, is the vehicle for knowledge of a subjective kind. Through visual, linguistic, audio, or dance any number of messages and ideas may be conveyed, and these ideas may then be interoperated. The aesthetic form is what constitutes good or great art. It puts forth a structure by which one can judge a piece beyond the mere technical skill that is presented in it, though that is an important issue. The aesthetic form puts forth the notion that art sublimates reality, creating another reality that brings into question this one. Creating this fictional reality is the responsibility of art. According to Marcuse “renunciation of the aesthetic form is abdication
The aesthetic movement was an artistic and literary movement that was centered on the saying “art for art’s sake” and arguing that art was not to be utilitarian or practical. The movement wanted art to exist for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it did not need to serve any political or didactic purpose. The pieces of art created by the artists in the movement did not tell stories or sermons; their art was visual, delightful, hinting at sensual desires; their poetry was pure. The proponents of the movement say that the experience of art is the most intense experience available in life and that nothing should be allowed to restrict it. The intensity of the aesthetic experience is the dominant goal in human life. If there are morally unwanted things of art, they do not really matter in contrast to this all-important experience which art can give.
Aestheticism was a popular dogma in the late 1800s that centered on the belief that art should exist for beauty alone. This doctrine is defined as an “exaggerated devotion to art, music, or poetry, with indifference to practical matters” and “the acceptance of artistic beauty and taste as a fundamental standard, ethical and other standards being secondary” (“Aestheticism,” def. 1 and 2). In Oscar Wilde’s sole novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, aestheticism is a fashionable belief accepted by society at the time. Oscar Wilde uses the moral deterioration and ultimate destruction of Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray to emphasize the negative effects of society’s preoccupation with aesthetics and offer a moral for the reader.
Philosophies of Art and Beauty Edited by Hofstadter and Kuhns, (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1976) chapters one and two for an overview of the aesthetics of Plato and Aristotle.
The word “postmodernism” first surfaced in architecture and the fine arts, perhaps in the 1950’s, referring to a new style. Later it acquired a meaning in the world of literature as well. It is not a theory or a creed: it is more like an attitude or a way of looking at things. Postmodernism is essentially a philosophy, which declares there is no absolute truth or objective truth particularly in the realm of spirituality or religion. Often times when a postmodern is confronted with an individual claiming an objective or absolute truth you would here them say the common phrase, “That may be true for you, but it is not for me.” One could easily utilize this phrase in more arbitrary and less important matters of our every day life (ex. Food, clothing choices) though this is a difficult course to navigate because it confuses matters of opinion with matter of truth.
The late 19th and 20th centuries were full of various technological innovations and major social upheavals. From the conflicts brought by a world at war to the booming revolutions of industry, civilization had gotten quite a boost. This led to new ways of creative expression, in both visual art and literature, that broke the binds of tradition and classical design. The term Modernism can characterize a broad array of styles and techniques, but it encompasses the same core ideals and principals that allows a piece to be easily identified as a Modernist work.
In the 1950s, authors tended to follow common themes, these themes were summed up in an art called postmodernism. Postmodernism took place after the Cold War, themes changed drastically, and boundaries were broken down. Postmodern authors defined themselves by “avoiding traditional closure of themes or situations” (Postmodernism). Postmodernism tends to play with the mind, and give a new meaning to things, “Postmodern art often makes it a point of demonstrating in an obvious way the instability of meaning (Clayton)”. What makes postmodernism most unique is its unpredictable nature and “think o...
Postmodern literary criticism asserts that art, author, and audience can only be approached through a series of mediating contexts. "Novels, poems, and plays are neither timeless nor transcendent" (Jehlen 264). Even questions of canon must be considered within a such contexts. "Literature is not only a question of what we read but of who reads and who writes, and in what social circumstances...The canon itself is an historical event; it belongs to the history of the school" (Guillory 238,44).
Post impressionism is a term that is used to describe a group of late-19th century and early-20th century artists whose work helped art transition into a new era. These artist defied the naturalism of the Impressionist to explore color, line, and form. This rebellion led to the development of Expressionism. Generally, the approaches were so varied that it is difficult just to focus on one artist and their technique.
Jencks briefly explains post-modern aesthetics from their modernist predecessors’ and pinpoints the instant of modernism’s death, writing “Happily, we can date the death of Modern Architecture to a precise moment in time… Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts)...” (23). Unlike Jencks, literary scholars talk about the first, most original or famous representatives of modernism, but they completely avoid pinpointing an ultimate end to the movement. Due to architecture’s visual character and Jencks’ early, authoritative, and internationally read scholarship, the differences between modern and post-modern aesthetics are often clearer in architecture than in literature. Architecture provides a helpful visual counterpoint for modern and post-modern aesthetics in literature. According to him, architectural post-modernism favours pluralism, complexity, double coding, and historical contextualism.
Whenever we try to imagine the feelings or motives of a writer, we impose our own thoughts and ideas, our own biases, onto that person and their work. Perhaps in order to justify our choices or legitimate the philosophies that we hold dear, we interpret texts so that they fall into place in our own ideological frameworks. Literature, because it engages with the most important and passionate questions in life, evokes responses in readers that emanate not only from the mind but also from the subconscious and from the deepest places in the heart. Writers like Virginia Woolf ask, and sometimes answer, questions about life's meaning, about the nature and importance of relationships, about spirituality, work, family, identity and so on. It is what makes writing fascinating and the critiquing of writing something more than an intellectual exercise.