Contemporary Art Essays -- Post-Modernity Post Modernity

Contemporary Art: Dealing with Post-Modernity − †Art worlds consist of all the people whose activities are necessary to the production of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, define as art. †¦ By observing how an art world makes those distinctions rather than trying to make them ourselves we can understand much of what goes on in that world.... The basic unit of analysis, then, is an art world.† - Howard Becker (Art Worlds) Postmodernism deconstructs Modernism like Modernism deconstructed art Like the Simpson's episode that explained Po-Mo as â€Å"weird for the sake of weird†, Postmodernism accepted the philosophy â€Å"art for the sake of art†. A very free and democratic practice, a natural response to the inhibiting Modernist intelligentsia. So radical is this notion that it was banned in China during the Mao rule. Art after Modernism became free to reference anything or nothing at all. It no longer needed a meaning or idea. It does not mean, however, that Postmodernism itself is free of Ideology. It is a reaction to Modernism. It analyses and comments on it. Postmodernism rejects meta-narratives of history, culture, and national identity that were present in Modernist art. It rejects totalizing theories that are to explain the way people act and the way the universe works, like the Freudian or Marxist views that science can explain society. It rejects the concept of cultural unity, of equality, and the view that one person can speak on behalf of humanity. Postmodernist art is skeptical of late capitalism and the technological industrial progression. It critiques the concept of â€Å"individualism†, and encourages people to consider multiple identities. It embraces the concept of mul... ... the linear narrative of art history. Works Cited: Baudillard, Jean. â€Å"The Precession of Simulacra†. Translated by Paul Foss and Paul Patton. New York: 1983. Danto, Arthur. â€Å"The Journal of Philosophy†. Vol. 61, No. 19. American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-First Annual Meeting. (Oct. 15, 1964). pp. 571- 584. Accessed online, 05/10/08. Howard Becker. â€Å"Art Worlds†. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1982 Irvine, Martin. â€Å"Lectures, Essays, and Seminar Notes†. Georgetown University. Accessed online, 05/11/08. Jameson, Frederick. "Marxism and the Historicity of Theory." New Literary History Accessed online, 05/12/08. /StructuralistMarxism/Jameson/Jameson.htm>