The All-New STYLUS.

It's just that postmodern is one of those words that is mainly used by people who have no idea whatsoever what it means, so I get a bit defensive sometimes. When it comes to visual art, it helps to think of postmodernism, pretty much as a reaction to Clement Greenberg.

Well, after reading Nuttall, I half-knew what it was. This led to a slightly unfair use of the word, as seen above. Hopefully the more of the Harvey I read, the more secure I'll become in my definition.

Didn't someone describe it as 'an incredulity towards narrative' or something?

Loveless debunkery shocker.

-- James Redd and the Blecchs, Friday, January 4, 2008 4:17 PM

If it's too easy for you, we've got a defense of R.E.M.'s Around the Sun in the works...

an incredulity towards narrative'

not sure i know that quote, but I would say it had an incredulity towards the linear progressions of traditional art history and Greenbergs attempt to flatten them further. Postmodernism takes on a more poststructuralist model of exploding history and seeing it in its atomised form. Its important to see that with every great art movement and great artist book, that there was a whole world, ideas lost, ideas embraced artists who gained success, became obscured, and that it didn't just follow a preordained line of reasoning as traditional criticism would have us believe.

Didn't someone describe it as 'an incredulity towards narrative' or something?

"Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements--narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on [...] Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?"

Lyotard.

Postmodernism takes on a more poststructuralist model of exploding history and seeing it in its atomised form.

ah, so you're doing the "seeing", but the evil narrative guys are doing the "constructing".

the ironing here is that it's an uber-simple flattened narrative that sees greenberg as anything other than a d-bag to be ignored. aren't you ceding a whole lot more than you need to here, letting him get under your skin?

xpost That's a really great quote, i've never read any lyotard and I'm thinking that's a big mistake.

No, because he said a lot of things of worth, and at least he represents a stop sign, a harbinger of where things were possibly going

Also his understanding of what he wrote about were amazing, its just that he turned his taste into value judgements and mixed them up with real theoretical investigation making his oeuvre a pretty tangled mess and marring his genius with his folly essentially

God, I sound really retarded in this thread.

No, because he said a lot of things of worth, and at least he represents a stop sign, a harbinger of where things were possibly going

-- I know, right?, Friday, January 4, 2008 9:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

sounds teleological to me amirite.

I'm not sure I know what you mean by that but I would be interested in you clarifying please.

wait i get it

yeah.

Because I think his ideas highlighted the problems people had with modernism, the myth of the artist, the ideal of formal perfection, the grand yawning self important.

Am I just yammering on for the sake of it now? I think everyone else is pretty bored of me.

if everything is "atomized" why read or waste time arguing with ghosts? ghosts who got it wrong. especially if there was "a whole world, ideas lost, ideas embraced, artists [and art critics] who gained success, became obscured"?

i think ya boy clem formalized a ridic version of modernism that sells well to tourists 20-30 years after it was interesting anyway -- modernism wasn't a coherent self-conscious movement like that anyway blah blah. and again if it's all atomized and whatnot why do we even care?

because saying someone got it wrong goes against the grain of postmodernism, and you're right, cg did invent his version of modernism and made it cohere, but he did show up ideas of pure form for what they were. It was because his writing was so realised that it forced a realisation of what those modes of thinking could lead to

And anyway, postmodernism is coughing up its death rattle so its difficult to know what is going to happen next.

love the new look, nick, keep up the good work.

This discussion ought to do wonders for my 1979-present day paper.

History as a series of 'unrelated present moments', discuss. Also, was Andy Warhol as big a charlatan as he seems?

It's funny how one of the fallouts of postmodernism is that it actually fractured the art world geographically, now there seems to be no centre for "scenes" in the same way there once was at least in theory.

The most exciting artists I can think of are based all around the world and not New York or London or Paris.

Also, Warhol is incredible.

History as a series of 'unrelated present moments', discuss.

rong

wouldn't touch warhol=charlatan discussion with yours. it'll get into OH BUT THAT'S THE POINT-ness. of course he's a dick.

real pop-art gs are the english dudes.

History as a series of 'unrelated present moments', discuss.

srsly if it's all construction -- why choose this construction? to what end? serves conservative political projects on the whole.

Postmodernism hates fixity of genre, doesn't it? I feel that this is where it and I may find some common ground.

That thing about history was merely something raised by a philosopher guy in this book I'm reading. I don't agree with it either. And yeah, "we are living in the now" = reason why capitalist society will lead earth to shit circa 2050.

xpost read the archeology of history by foucault, seriously it is beautiful

Warhol undermined ideas of the artist as a mythical creative force and embodied foucault's idea of the author as an intersecting point for ideas and not the genesis of them. Read his essay "what is an author?"

Well, one thing becoming clear (partially from the dreaded and RONG deconstructionists) is that postmodernism regards the creative act as a weaving-together of already-established threads, each of which has a radically different meaning from the author's intention, and thus does the reading of the text, the understanding of these threads, constitute its creation. Bit weird if you ask me but hey-ho.

real pop-art gs are the english dudes.

RONG!

I'll go with you on Hockney but who else? Blake pf!

btw foucault's "Discipline and Punish" is on the reading-pile, fun fun.

serves conservative political projects on the whole.

You are not just slipping that in there without also explaining it ie admitting that it is basically a subliminal message

xpost, I'd like to read that, but it's so far off

I mean, I have to read way more Benjamin first.

Well, I'm gonna plunge in headlong at some point, I'll let you know (probably here) what I make of it.

The good thing about foucault is, he's just an unbelievable writer, and you just want to read every sentece twice. So elegant.

It takes way longer to read that way though!

It sits there forebodingly, thick, dark, and with big capital-letter font. Shudder.

Great thread

you wanna contribute or are you all "LOL ponces"

Just leave it Louis!

For now!

poor stylus

I really liked stylus I read it all the time. My favourite piece ever though was one of the last pieces ever written. It was about Lovely Music Ltd.

xpost read the archeology of history by foucault, seriously it is beautiful

"beautiful" not always "truthful", bro.

Warhol undermined ideas of the artist as a mythical creative force and embodied foucault's idea of the author as an intersecting point for ideas and not the genesis of them. Read his essay "what is an author?"

-- I know, right?, Friday, January 4, 2008 9:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol no. i wonder if that even *is* foucault's idea -- i'm familiar with the essay -- it seems fairly, well, basic. and also cover for the fact that warhol was a big ol' thief really, though the idea obviously had a lot going for it. of course it applies to foucault too i guess so it isn't "his" idea lol but shit i guess he got paid for it.

"ideas of the artist as a mythical creative force" is typical po-mo straw-manism isn't it? show me where this idea appears. older i get the more convincing i find it anyway since the best stuff really does seem to be more than bricolage -- there is something going on beyond piecing together. that or the piecing together is finely done, it doesn't really matter. i guess with second-raters like warhol it works...

We've come a long way from Stylus!

I miss Stylus. What's that new post-Stylus project again?

It's a blog that's a bit like that thing in the Guardian last year everyone laughed at.

You know, when they had Julian Cope or whoever handwringing and going 'but the Arcade Fire aren't that good!'

"ideas of the artist as a mythical creative force" is typical po-mo straw-manism isn't it? show me where this idea appears. older i get the more convincing i find it anyway since the best stuff really does seem to be more than bricolage -- there is something going on beyond piecing together. that or the piecing together is finely done, it doesn't really matter. i guess with second-raters like warhol it works...

Strawman my arse, look at Abstract expressionism and almost every scrap of rhetoric that went with it. Look at Barnett Newman in particular and Robert Motherwell.

Beauty = Truth (apt since we're talking about aesthetics)

So much art just looks like what art is supposed to look like and that's what bothers me.

hey guys, I have a question.
I'm interested in reading stuff that argues along the lines of structuralism/post-struc and semiotic problems with those as well as "what came before" or whatever you would call it, regarding the inadequacy of language to describe the sign-user in a meaningful, consistent fashion and whether this is a consequence of language's limited usefulness (instructive, descriptive tool, strictly for passing knowledge about the world) or a consequence of the self being strictly defined by circumstances in a given situation (circumstances that language CAN describe) so is the concept of self useful at all, and if we say it isn't, how do we act, and so forth

because I'm normally not interested but Walker Percy made me think maybe I should read some more about it