| |
Postmodernism
supposedly kicked out the 20th Century with a plurality of bangs.
Characterized by hybrid expressions, historical references, debates
of linear tradition, and double meanings, Postmodernism was positioned
as a late 20th Century phenomenon with a nascence around 1960
to 1980, depending upon the author. The general theme is that
Postmodernism developed from a natural disintegration of and opposition
toward Modernism. This lineage suggests that as society became
more culturally diverse and deconstruction defined content, the
Postmodern condition was inevitable. Instead of struggling to
create an original transcendent work, the Postmodern artist is
free to break standard conventions: Plates are applied to the
surface of a painting, rap musicians sample the works of each
other's songs, re-photographs of art photography are said to be
originals, novels lack a linear narrative. The new is now replaced
by the even newer. Artistic invention is replaced not by necessarily
better art but by this year's model.
In the 19th Century,
Nietzsche described a society in the throes of Postmodernism, a
society plagued with an excess of historical consciousness that
he termed a sickness. The Philosopher Gianni Vattimo has suggested
this sickness manifested itself in a European society unable to
develop a style of its own. Instead its art, architecture, and fashion
were derived from the vast warehouses containing memories of the
past and works of other cultures. Examples abound in every form
of art, from the influence of Orientalism upon Impressionism, the
use of folk themes in classical musical compositions, the desire
to re-create Greek plays in early Baroque opera, and so on.
The Modernist
artist, working under the umbrella of uniqueness, originality, transcendence,
and lack of political content, would have expressed disdain for
the explicit manner in which these influences manifested themselves
in the works of art during that period. However, these concepts
are the natural state of creating art. Those who have failed to
account for this have demonstrated a historical blindness. Modernism
is the anomaly, characterized by excessively narrow criteria and
sensibility, while the majority of art works throughout history
fulfill all the definitions of a Postmodern art.
Documentation
arises with the invention of the novel. Baptist preacher John Bunyan
published his 1678 Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which
Is to Come. It is often considered the first true novel because
of its use of the extended narrative to portray a particular human
character. At the time the novel was published, those in England
who owned one book owned the Bible. Those who owned two books owned
the Bible and Bunyan's novel. But Pilgrim's Progress was not wholly
original, it was a retelling of the Bible with an Evangelical Protestantism
viewpoint. It attained a wide popularity because it enlightened
some of the dense allegorical stories found in the Bible. Pilgrim's
Progress is an original work and at the same time it functions as
a work both derivative of and referential to another text. Puritanical
English readers would have understood the Biblical references of
Bunyan; the reading creating a duality in meaning.
Turn-of-the-century
authors who wrote in the novelistic form clearly demonstrated Nietzsche's
historical awareness in their works as they introduced literary
references, toyed with structural conventions, and introduced political
assertions. In Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe represented the allegorical
fall and discovery, a continuing of the puritanical spiritual journey
to redemption as found in Bunyan. When Friday appears, Crusoe lectures
him on the political structure of a mercenary England. Defoe wasn't
working in a vacuum either. He referenced other literary works--most
frequently cited is the account of Alexander Selkirk's four-year
stranding on the island of Juan Fernandez--proving that a minor
literary account and a popular news event were allowed to influence
high art. The Modernist necessity of a completely original form
had not come into being. In a final Postmodern position, Defoe claimed
his books were not fictitious at all but strict fact.
The novel was
a full-blown literary and Postmodern form by the time of Henry Fielding.
Postmodern characteristics invade his major work, Tom Jones, in
its ability to address the reader directly, the self referential
essays on the nature of the novel as an art form, the attacks on
critics who would dare dislike the book--basically a questioning
of judgmental power and criteria. His dear readers' approach was
to predate by more than two hundred years the same Postmodern address
found with authors such as Italo Calvino.
The pinnacle
of the Postmodern novel writing is found with Laurence Sterne's
Tristram Shandy. Shandy, in Yorkshire slang of the period, meant
"pixilated," a word entirely appropriate to describe the plurality
found in contemporary society. A whole range of Postmodern characteristics
are used: the main character is killed off about twenty pages in,
references to other authors and their works abound, the reader is
addressed in a multitude of voices, narratives are left uncompleted,
chapters do not develop in any linear order, the reader is told
that a complete page of ink or squiggly senseless diagrams hold
particular meaning. The narrator's consciousness of his own inability
to relate adequately the story of his upbringing causes him despair
because he realizes he lives faster than he can write. Double codings
of signs and language abound, a nose is read as a sexual innuendo
by the context of the sentences even as the author admonishes the
reader for perhaps jumping to the conclusion he discusses anything
but a nose.
Once the attitude
of positioning art as a continual progression of originality is
rejected it is easy to see that art has been nothing but Postmodern
in form and content. The attitude that a history of art documents
new styles overcoming outdated styles remains a narrow Modernist
idea. The question of why history narrowed down the broad, flexible,
and Postmodern methods of creating to the constricted parameters
labelled Modernism is valid. Its acceptance as the force at the
apex of the 20th Century has been well explored by those who cite
powerful critics, the market, United States jingoism, and cold war
propaganda as among the reasons for its success. Modernism's life
span was short not because Postmodernism overcame it; rather, the
nature of creating once more settled back into its normal Postmodern
condition.
Copyright
© 2000 Christopher Willard All Rights Reserved
Christopher
Willard is a painter, writer, and adjunct professor at Hunter
College. He has published over 50 articles in art magazines, journals,
and books, including "American Artist" where he has a monthly
column on methods and materials, "color Research and Application,"
and others. He has a book coming out in June on a twelve hue method
of color mixing, published by Rockport Press.
comment?
discuss this article on our discussion
board
|
