MODERNISM

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MODERNISM and postmodernism
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Modernism
Approx. 1880s to WWII
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General Tenets of Modernism

• Challenged tradition
• Stylistic experimentation
• Critique of mimesis or realism in how we
  represent the world
• Experiments in perception and representation

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The Treachery of Images (1929)
RENÉ MAGRITTE
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Tenets of Modernism

• Abandonment of traditional rules for creating
  art, music, and literature

MARC CHAGALL I and the Village (1911)
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Tenets of Modernism

• Fragmented representations of time, meaning, and
  human nature

VINCENT VAN GOGH The Starry Night (1889)
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PABLO PICASSO Les Demoiselles dAvignon (1907)
MARCEL DUCHAMP Nude Descending a Staircase, No.
2 (1912)
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Tenets of Modernism

• Sense of loss, alienation, abandonment, and
  disillusionment

EDVARD MUNCH Evening on Karl Johan (1892)
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• Tenets of Modernism
• Subjectivity, the importance of I, of my
  thoughts and feelings and experiences

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• Tenets of Modernism
• Urge toward nostalgia longing for some better
  time, the good old days

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• CATALYSTS OF MODERNISM
• Modernism was largely brought about by the
  convergence of several factors
• WAR - The devastation caused in Europe after
  World War I, when the most enlightened and
  advanced nations on the earth came together to
  kill each other in staggering numbers.

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Karl Marx

• Asserted that human moral, cultural, and
  religious values were caused not by any inherent
  sense of good or evil but by the requirements of
  a particular (economic) system.

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Charles Darwin

• Discovered that the evolution of species was the
  result of natural selection and competition
  rather than through any special act of purposeful
  creation (vs. G-d).

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Friedrich Nietzsche

• Identified the moral and cultural crises facing
  Western civilization.
• Viewed artists as purveyors of culture.
• Dismissed Christian morality (God is dead) and
  profferred the morality of the Superman and the
  Slave.
• Warned of the dangers of embracing nihilism.

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Sigmund Freud

• Asserted that most elements of the human
  personality were the result of various
  psycho-sexual traumas experienced in infancy and
  early childhood and stored in the subconscious
  mind.

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• In literature
• Authors made the interior their stage ?
  emphasized the individual and the subjectivity of
  perception.
• Experimented with new uses of language and
  imagery and new narrative structures
• stream-of-consciousness narration
• multiple points of view
• fragmented, non-sequential plots.

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Introducing
POSTMODERNISM
POSTMODERNISM
Everything is beautiful. Pop is everything. Andy
Warhol
POSTMODERNISM
MARILYN MONROE Andy Warhol (1962)
POSTMODERNISM
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Modernity Postmodernity
The alienation of the I ? subjectivity Multiculturalism (voice ofthe Other)
Serious, idealistic?change the world through art Cynical, mocking?no hope, so we might as well laugh at the horror
Age of Literacy Image culture / Society of the spectacle
Elitist, formal Breakdown between high and lowart
Belief in meta-narrative Disconnect from myth/ meta-narrative
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Tenets of Postmodernism

• Extreme self-reflexivity
• objectification of structure artist/author
  reflects upon own processes of creation
• pomos more so than mods
• more playful, irreverant ?
• Examples The Scream series of movies has
  characters debating the generic rules behind the
  horror film.

Frank Gehry, Nationale-Nederlanden Building
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Tenets of Postmodernism

• Irony and parody ? sense of playfulness ironic
  interfacing between character(s) and author

DROWNING GIRL Roy Lichtenstein (1963)
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Tenets of Postmodernism

• A breakdown between high and low cultural forms.
  
• Modernism focus upon high art
• Pomo embraces both high and low arts (like
  comic books)
• Pomos often employ pop and mass-produced objects
  in more immediately understandable ways, even if
  their goals are still often complex (eg. Andy
  Warhol's commentary on mass production and on the
  commercial aspects of "high" art through the
  exact reproduction of a set of Cambell's Soup
  cans ?).

200 Campbells Soup Cans Andy Warhol (1962)
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Tenets of Postmodernism

• Nostalgia as pastiche
• - Fascination with styles and fashions from the
  past, but often used completely out of their
  original context, and in juxtaposition
  (pastiche).
• - Examples recycled TV shows of the past that
  are then given new life on the big screen
  (Scooby-Doo, Charlie's Angels, and so on).
• - May be a symptom of our loss of a connection
  with the past.

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Tenets of Postmodernism
Visuality (visuals, pictures) vs. temporality
(linear time)

• - Gravitation towards visual forms, as in
  "cartoons and animated films.
• - A general breakdown in narrative linearity and
  temporality. Many point to the style of MTV
  videos as a good example.

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The Treachery of Images (1929)
RENÉ MAGRITTE
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Tenets of Postmodernism
Secondary Orality reliance of a largely
functionally illiterate society upon oral media
sources for information (TV, radio, film,
etc.) ? reversal literacy rates had been rising
steadily from the introduction of print through
the modern period, but postmodern society has
seen a drastic reversal in this trend --? pomo
culture still relies on print to create these
media outlets (hence the term secondary orality)
however, increasingly only a professional,
well-educated class has access to full print- and
computer-literacy. An ever larger percentage of
the population merely ingests orally the media
that is being produced (passive response).
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Tenets of Postmodernism
Sense of fragmentation and decentered self 
multiple, conflicting identities.
Sense of disillusionment
Illusions of individuality
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Tenets of Postmodernism
Its Pomo You know, Post-modern Weird for the
sake of weird. (Episode Homer the Moe)

• Questions of truth and subjectivity first
  proposed in Modernism, gave rise to the belief in
  multiple truths and multiple subjectivities in
  Postmodernism.

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Tenets of Postmodernism

• Disorientation
• Pomo works attempt to disorient the subject in
  time and space.
• ? alternating narrators (Faulkner)
• ? fragmented chronology (Vonnegut)

Dr. Who
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Tenets of Postmodernism

• Intertextuality (in both mod and pomo)
  references within one work to outside texts

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Tenets of Postmodernism

• Late capitalism a general sense that the world
  has been so taken over by the values of
  capitalist acquisition that alternatives no
  longer exist. ? paranoia narratives .

Minority Report