The idea of the Postmodern has fundamentally changed the way we read

images. Access and discuss this contention with reference to four works of
art.

‘The beginning, the end, the dénouement: how to call the Postmodern?’ (Ruffel, 2005) is the
name of the conference Lionel Ruffel gave that introduced the semantic and conceptual complexity of
the term ‘Postmodern’. The problem lies in the prefix ‘post’. Indeed, the latter can be understood
either as, literally, ‘after’, thus referring to the period taking place after that of modernism. But it can
also be appreciated as ‘contra’, then frontally opposing modernism. Postmodernism can be considered
as a time period marker as much as it can be interchangeable with the idea of late capitalism,
consisting in a culture dominated by consumerism and post-industrial capital. Finally, the Postmodern
can refer to the ‘global village’ phenomenon, consisting in a general globalisation at the information
age. In the field of art, this term is predominantly used to deal with a movement that took place in the
Western world from the 1960’s on, broadly rejecting conventions and characterised by eclecticism
(Irvin, 2013).
The idea of the Postmodern is thus understood differently according to the reach of the field,
and, surprisingly, geographically as well. Indeed, if the term was more appreciated, in France, as an
end and even more as an ‘anti-‘; in the United States of America, its understanding favoured the ideas
of beginning and after. The evolution of art follows a path that can be considered as a ‘process of
constant subtraction’ (Helman, 1983, p.157), keeping on corroding traditional art. This process being
constant, one day should come when there will not be anything more to subtract. The abandonment of
any conventions witnessed in Postmodernism scared some art scholars, linking the birth of
Postmodernism to the broader idea of end, contemporarily to Fukuyama’s The End of History (1989).
With reason, Alicja Helman, highlights the apparently general pattern of an intuitive rejection of the
latest art productions, leading to reluctance in attributing the ‘art’ label because of the discomfort of
the unknown: ‘it differs from art, at least from all art until now’ (1983, p.156).
The emergence of the idea of the postmodern in art led to end-of-art theories, apparent sign of
a break with the past, with modernism. One may thus wonder if it is really possible to speak of a
fundamental change in history of art and art production through the transition from modernism to
postmodernism.



1
 The features of Postmodern art indeed appear to justify a definitive break with modernism,
radically changing the way we read images as much as the way art is produced. One of the main
principles stemming from Postmodernism in the field of art is the rejection of the artistic direction
imposed by modernism’s grand narratives. The most renowned leader of such narratives is Clement
Greenberg (1909-1994). In the 40s and 50s, he published several texts developing his vision of the
‘evolution of modernist art’ (Greenberg, 1958, p.226), understood as starting with Manet’s and
Cézanne’s oeuvres. According to him, one of the laws of modernism resides in the ‘process of auto
purification’ of any medium, whether it is painting, sculpture, music or literature. Modernism in art is
thus a process of autonomy gain of each art, excluding any figurative painting from his history of
modern art because it is interfered with illusionism and narration. Painting, according to him, must be
flat and auto-reflexive. Then, abstract art is the ‘best art of our time’ (Greenberg, 1954), as opposed to
the ‘kitsch’ and the vulgar, thus heading toward the perfect purity of art in line with the modern
prevailing concept of progress.
Postmodernism eradicates the frontiers between high art and low art, between the avant-garde
and the vulgar, and disrupts the conventions attached to genre with collages, fragmentation and
collision. A real decanonization is operated, characterised by a massive delegitimation of the society’s
mastercodes (Lyotard, 1984). Thus, more generally, Jean-François Lyotard defines Postmodernism as
follows: ‘simplifying to the extreme, I define the postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives’
(1984, p.26). Modernism’s conventions are replaced by postmodern ones. They adhere to three main
principles (Encyclopaedia of Art). First, the meaning of the work of art shall be instant. The
recognition quality of postmodern productions is well exemplified through pop art, with, for example,
Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup I (Index 1). Secondly, art is understood as being possibly made from
anything. This characteristic is in line with the form of art launched by Marcel Duchamp, the
readymades. The principle is to make unlikely manufactured materials become art, like Duchamp did
with a urinal for his Fountain (Index 2). Finally, the idea is considered as materring more than the
work itself. As opposed to Greenberg’s injunction of a pure finished work, the concept is then more
believed in than the visual result. It led to, for example, the awarding of the Turner prize to Martin
Creed in 2001 for his Work No 227: The Lights Going On and Off (2000, Index 3). His work consisted
in a perpetual cycle of darkness and light with the lights of an empty room. Moreover, parody, humour
and irony are widespread in postmodern works of art as a shield against revision and critique. The
artists posit themselves with such methods facing a world where no stance is stable and sincere.
Representation becomes ungrounded, ignoring the truths and mandates in a self-conscious process or
re-presenting previous forms in a derived manner. The vehicle then prevails over the message,
‘aesthetic form therefore draws attention to itself as a poem or a novel actually regardless of the
content which it is expressing.’ (Wheale, 1995, p.36). The mediums are multiplied, as the emergence
of installations and performance art show, along with the opening of the scope of subject matters. The

2
surface is indeed the mediator between the spectator and the artist; it is where the activity of art
happens. The relationship to the viewer is also changed. Indeed, he is more included into the work of
art. ‘A lot is awaited from him’ as he is the one who decides what meaning he grants to the painting
and the representation without having a referent (Ibid., p.48). The artist thus does not have to provide a
single voice or a single point of view. Postmodernism encourages diversity and multiplicity, partly
thanks to the fact that it grants the viewers the possibility and/or the task to decide of the reading of the
works. Postmodernism then seems to provide a further liberation. Painting first emancipated itself
from its ‘univocal semantic character’, from its relationship to an actual object and then from ‘any
fixed rules of communication’ (Helman, 1983, 159). According to Leo Steinberg, the flatbed picture
plane introduced by Rauschenberg (Index 4) marked this liberation concerning the picture plane’s
integrity, the acceptance of the flatness of the surface, the reject of the diktat of a single point of view
and of meaning and finally the possibility to present an unfinished work, abandoning the order of
homogeneity toward a unique illusionistic voice (1972). Hence Danto proclaiming the ‘end of art’
(1992). He means there the end of art, as we have known it until then. Through this ending can start a
new period of liberation of art, allowing for a new kind of art to emerge. Indeed, ‘everything was
permitted since nothing was historically mandated” (Ibid., p.9). It tolls the bell for formalist
modernism.
Nigel Wheale sums up the defining features of postmodern art as follows: ‘An all-purpose
postmodern item might be constructed like this: it uses eclecticism to generate parody and irony; its
style may owe something to schlock, kitsch or camp taste. It may be partly allegorical, certainly self-
reflexive and contain some kind of list. It will not be realistic’ (1995, p.42). The underlying ideas of
postmodern art are heading toward democratisation and social revolution. The possibility to make art
from anything, as well as the instant meaning that has to emanate from it, open the accessibility of art
for the viewer and the artist, multiplying both. The political position of Postmodernism acts by means
of blurred contours and vulgarisation of art. The boundaries between artist viewer, product and
process, home and studio, community values and individual integrity are indeed blurred, validating all
image-creation forms toward social empowerment (Alter-Muri and Klein, 2007). The common culture
is upraised through the refusal of the traditional valuations of a moral-aesthetic order (Varnedoe and
Gopnik, 1990). Indeed, ‘refinement, taste, discrimination and evaluation are the key terms of social
history of regulation’ (Wheale, 1995, p.35). It goes against the legitimate culture spread by the elites
that, since the 18th century, have been worried by the expansion of classes which constitute new
audiences with different interests and needs, perceived as a danger for refined values.

More than new conventions, postmodernism in art imposed the lightening of conventions,
their disappearance toward a liberalised practice of art, democratising its access. The reading of
images is changed in the extent to which the viewer, any viewer holds the meaning of the work of art,

3
whatever it is. Postmodernism is a reaction to modernism and its ‘popular fairy tale’ according to
which art would have developed linearly from Cézanne and Manet on, with the only goal of its quest
for autonomy (Joachimides, 1981, p.433).

Besides, Postmodernism in art is in line with more global changes happening at several levels,
directly linked to philosophical concerns. The concept of the self is common in a society; it is
constructed according to the latter in which the individual exists (Wilden, 1968). As this concept
changes, art must be a reflection of this change in order to remain relevant to the viewer and the artist
(Dunning, 1991). The concept of the self is different between Modernism and Postmodernism and this
difference is part and parcel of that between Modernism and Postmodernism in art. During the
Renaissance, the self was an external, public-oriented, construct, while after the Reformation the self
was marked by a new interiority. Descartes then introduced the concept of individual soul, proving,
with the notion of consciousness, the reality of the self. This Cartesian paradigm was accommodated
with by French and Italian painters with paintings that were self-centered, with a defined point of view
for the viewer through perspective. But Charles Sanders Peirce constitutive an alternative approach to
the Self stemming from three assumptions (2012). Human Beings neither have a power of
Introspection, nor of Intuition or of thinking without means of signs (Ibid.). The conclusion is that the
notion of Self cannot be intuited, the knowledge of the latter occurs externally through hypothesis and
inference. The Self in itself is thus an interpretation. In our pluralist society, the Cartesian viewer and
his notion of the Self lost relevance. The main influence of our society is indeed now more culture
than nature. These evolutions result in the perception of an environment dominated by several centres,
‘forcing the self into a subordinate position’ (Arnheim, 1983). The viewer is then more mobilised and
given multiple locations for his viewpoint. Braudy considers today’s viewer as ‘collage personalities
made up of fragments of public people (and other role models) who are, in turn, made up of fragments
themselves’ (1986, p.5). Multiple perspectives replaced single point perspective, along with the
multiplicity our societies witness, toward a global metisse society (Guillebaud, 2009).
The viewer faces a work of art from the point of view he choses, granting it the meaning he
choses. It results from the assessment of a world in which ‘order has collapsed’ (Deleuze, 2000,
p.111). For Deleuze, objectivity does not exist anymore but in the work of art, with the signifying
structures of the work in its style (Ibid.). Modern art is characterised by its nostalgia of an order of
things, in which reality can be lived as an harmonious entirety (Lyotard, 1984, p.81). The collapse of
this movement did not only lie in of the emergence of postmodernism. It is deeply connected to the
apparition of a critique of Reason, especially in post structuralism. Two recognised elements of the
Enlightenment doctrine were questioned: the ideas that the scientific investigation methods allow us to
develop an objective comprehension of the social and physical worlds; and that we can use our Reason
both to apprehend the direction our history is taking and to control it to a certain extent (Van Doren,

4
1997). It led to a political mood moulded by indifference and cynicism, reflecting historical
circumstances, both echoed in postmodern paintings (Ibid.). Briefly, we can remind the political
radicalism witnessed in the 60s-70s with student uprisings and mass strikes, the explosion of
inequalities and then 1989 and the theory of the end of history of Fukuyama that acquired resonance.
Uncertainty prevailed and the loss of referent gave a new dynamism to art, as the expression of a
common concern, that of our plural society.
In this instability, added to the Self, the society and thus arts, history of art was consequently
changed. ‘ We are living in a time when the single direction of the history of art has come to an end,
and we are inhabiting a kind of ‘moment of respite’ (Fernie, 1995, p.291). Modernist art history
constructed a historical model of its own, imposing an independent vision of progress in art. Both
understandings split, highlighting the fact that versions of development of art survive thanks to artists’
self understanding and to critics’ arguments (Belting, 1984). Postmodernism is characterized by an
interest in historicity, leading Belting to say that ‘today the artist joins the historian in rethinking the
function of art and challenging its traditional claim to aesthetic autonomy’ (Belting in Fernie, 1995,
p.294). He thus assumes that the emergence of a new art history can emerge; one that would heal the
rupture modernist understandings introduced.
In these circumstances, Postmodernism can be exemplified with Marina Abramovic’s oeuvre.
She engages with the viewer in a particular way in making him a whole part of her performances, her
absorption in her work is total and so should be that of the viewer. Thus in 2010 she presents ‘one of
her more famous and controversial pieces of performance art ever staged’, The Artist is Present’ (The
Guardian, 2014) (Index 5). She sat for 750 hours at the MoMA, waiting for viewers to come and sit in
front of her. The only medium is her body and she wants to accentuate the encounter with her public.
It is parallel to her previous performance of 1972 when she sat in front of a table covered with items of
any kind, including scissors and a hammer, inviting the viewer to use the latter in any way they
wanted. For Andrew Wilson, performance art, ‘in its more extreme forms, aimed at being a non-
mediated form… It didn’t so much document lived experience as become lived experience, in the
process of breaking down the barrier between the audience and the artist’. Besides, Sherrie Levine is a
postmodern artist par excellence with, for instance, her After Walker Evans #7 (1981, Index 6). For the
latter, she photographed one of Evans. By doing so, she questions women’s place in art history, she
questions the role of photography as compared to the dominance of painting and she also render access
to certain images possible to those in the incapacity of travelling. The challenges she poses with this
method are in line with the opening of art under Postmodernism and its subversive character. Damien
Hirst, for his part, dedicated a lot of his work to the perception of death. With For the Love of God
(Index 6, 2007), an 18th century skull he set of diamonds, he tackles the issue of disguise and decorum.
‘You don’t like it, so you disguise it or you decorate it to make it look like something bearable – to
such an extent that it becomes something else’ (Hirst in Burn, 2008). To highlight the idea of making a

5
skull ‘bearable’, he chose the diamonds because of their inherent worth, questioning these stones’
industry and more broadly the capitalist society that participates to the ruthless nature of its trade.

‘It has been said that the very notion of a work of art and, worse yet, the existence of a work of
art as a definite material object of a certain type has been threatened with destruction in its basic,
innermost features’ (Helman, 1983, p.158). The introduction, in art, of mechanical reproduction and,
therefor, of mass production took away art’s expositional qualities and rituals while, in the mean time,
providing it with ideological and political functions (Benjamin, 1963). The danger is the removal of
the self-expression motivation for the creation of a work of art, replaced by the satisfaction of the art
market defined needs. Immediacy is a characteristic of postmodern times, and instant consumption
may prevail over the desire to produce for eternity or future generations. Another issue is that of value.
Consequently to the vulgarisation of art, the unique character of a work of art, from which value
stemmed, is rarefied, along with its lasting character and its connected permanence quality. ‘We are in
contact with works which appear and disappear and are not materialized in objects’ (Helman, 1983,
p.161).
Otherwise, the opposition between modernism and postmodernism can be nuanced. The
chronological evolution of Postmodernism challenges its asserted opposition to Modernism. It actually
has several starting points. Some indeed date Postmodernism to Marcel Duchamp in the 1920, while
others see its emergence in the 1960’s with Pop Art. In the 1960s, when the concept emerged, it
referred to aesthetic practices seemingly related to Modernism but which yet had moved beyond
Modernist practices. In the beginning of the 80s, however, a shift in thought was operated and the term
designated certain pervasive cynicism regarding modernity’s progressivist ideals (Waugh, 1997).
Postmodernism thus was at first deeply embedded in Modernism. Hence Postmodern artists first
considered as modern. Moreover, scholars underlined the fact that both come from the same origin,
German Romanticism (see Schechter), as ‘another mutation of the original stock’ (Larrisy, 1999, p.1).
But the goal of Postmodernism was to operate a rupture with modernism, while modernism is based
on the idea of rupture - at least for the avant-gardes. Postmodernism would break with the break. It
seems to be the ending of a period and the opening of another one. Postmodernism would
consequently be the end and then the beginning; this means that it would be lead by a modernist
dynamic while contesting it. ‘Modernism and postmodernism are not separated by an Iron curtain or
Chinese Wall; for history is a palimsest, and culture is permeable to time past, time present, and time
future’ (Hassan, 1982, p.259). In the end, Postmodernism is more of a look on history than a period in
itself. A middle way between Modernism and Postmodernism could be illustrated by John Armleder’s
work. He makes ‘Furtiture Sculptures’, sole geometrical motifs painted on the surface of the furniture.
He thus evolves between postmodern origins with the readymades of Duchamps and the cold
abstraction of the paintings. In (FS 30), he transforms an Oriental carpet into an abstract work of art by

6
painting a white diagonal and a square of the same colour on it, he fusions oriental and occidental
traditions. Armelder’s work is postmodern more in the procedures he develops and the dialogue he
established between ready-made and abstraction than in the form. Contrarily to the modernist rejection
to any reference to our everyday visual environment, Armleder creates a dialogue between art and
life, in the filiation of Marcel Duchamps. As Robert Filliou puts it, ‘art is what makes life more
interesting than life’ (1970). His relation to history, not based on the idea of rupture, proper to
modernism makes him a postmodern. Paradoxically, because he contemplates his links to the past in a
positive way, by recognising his filiation and by creating new connections between artistic styles of
the past, he breaks with modernism.
Ihab Hassan wrote that ‘we are all, I suspect, a little Victorian, Modern and Postmodern at
once’ (1987, p.88). As he underlined it, history evolves in the mean time in continuous and
discontinuous ways (1982). The current prominence of Postmodernism should not imply that past
institutions or ideas ceased to shape the present.



Postmodernism emerged as a questioning of the ground ideas and methods of formalist

Modernism in times of uncertainty. In the end, one can’t help but notice than certain continuity exists
between the two movements, differing consequently to a particular look on the world and its
evolution. Societal changes led to cultural changes and thus artistic ones. Postmodernism remains a
controversial concept and its existence is nowadays challenged by scholars like Alan Kirby that
Postmodernism is actually dead and replaced by a new paradigm of knowledge and authority built as a
consequence of social contemporary forces and new technologies (2006). For his part, Nicolas
Bourillaud now uses the term ‘Altermodernism’ after which he named the Tate Triennial of 2009. He
considers a new culture has been formed in the 21 st century (2009). Postmodernism anyway gave a
new dynamism to art in line with its times and addressing the questions of its society. However, its
complexity led to many debates which utility has been critiqued. ‘At this point, the term becomes
inflected with a kaleidoscope of meanings drawn from those human sciences variously engaged in the
production of a theoretical palimpsest where the specific aesthetic origins of the term are almost
entirely obscured’ (Waugh, 1997, p.4-5).



7
8
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Alter-Muri, S., & Klein, L. (2007). Dissolving the boundaries: Postmodern art and Art
Therapy. Art Therapy, 24(2), 82-86.

 Arnheim, R. (1983). The power of the center: A study of composition in the

visual arts. Univ of California Press.
 Benjamin, W. (1979). On Language as Such and on the Language of Man in One Way Street
and Other Writings. London: NLB.

 Belting, H. (2003). The End of the History of Art? 1984. S. 291-295 in: Art
history and its methods. A critical anthology. Selection and commentary by Eric
Fernie.

 Bourdieu, P. (1979). La distinction: critique sociale du jugement. Chicago

 Braudy, L. (1986). The frenzy of renown: Fame & its history. Oxford

University Press, USA.
 Callinicos, A. Postmodernisme: un diagnostic critique.

 Danto, A. C. (1992). Beyond the Brillo box: The visual arts in post-historical

perspective. Univ of California Press.

 Deleuze, G. (2000). Proust and signs: the complete text (Vol. 17). U of

Minnesota Press.
 Dunning, W. V. (1991). The Concept of Self and Postmodern Painting: Constructing a Post-
Cartesian Viewer. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 331-336.
 Fernie, E. C. (1995). Art history and its methods: A critical anthology. Phaidon Press.
 Robert Filliou (1970) 'Interview', quoted in Robert Filliou: Génie sans talent.

 Guillebaud, J. C. (2009). Le commencement d'un monde: vers une modernité

métisse. Seuil.
 Greenberg, C. (1948). The crisis of the easel picture. Partisan Review, 15, 481-84.

 Greenberg, C. (1955). Peinture à l’américaine. op. cit, 226.

 Hassan, I. (1987). The Postmodern Turn Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture.
 Hassan, I. H. (1982). The dismemberment of Orpheus: toward a postmodern literature. Univ
of Wisconsin Press.

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  Helman, A. (1983). ‘The Present-Day Meaning of a Work of Art’, Atribus et Historia, Vol. 4,
No. 8 (1983), pp.155-164.

 Lacan, J., & Wilden, A. T. (1968). The language of the self: The function of
language in psychoanalysis. Johns Hopkins University Press.
 Irvin, M. (2013), ‘ “The Postmodern, Postmodernism, Postmodernity”.
Web: faculty.goergestown.edu /irvinem/theory/pomo.html
 Larrisy 1998: E. Larrisy, Romanticism and Postmodernism, Cambridge 1998.

 Lyotard, J. F. (1984). the Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoff Bennington and

Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 6.
 Peirce, C. S. (2012). Philosophical writings of Peirce. Courier Corporation.
 Panofsky, E. (1959). Style and Medium in the Motion Picture, Film: An
Anthology (Doctoral dissertation, ed. D. Talbot, New York).
 Steinberg, L. (1972). Other criteria. New York: Oxford.

 Varnedoe, Kirk, and Adam Gopnik. "High and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art." New
York: Museum of Modern Art (1990).
 Waugh 1997: P. Waugh, Practicing Postmodernism Reading Modernism, London and New
York 1997 (1992)
 Wheale, N. (1995). The postmodern arts: an introductory reader. Psychology Press.

 Websites

 http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/postmodernism.aspx (23/12/15)

 http://www.fabula.org/colloques/document775.php (18/12/15)
Ruffel, L. (2005). ‘Le début, la fin, le dénouement : comment nommer le postmoderne ?
(France-États-Unis). Le début, la Fin. Une relation critique.
 http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/12/marina-abramovic-ready-to-die-
serpentine-gallery-512-hours (20/12/15)
 https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond (18/12/15)
Kirby, A. (2006). ‘The Death of Postmodernism and beyond’
 http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/altermodern/explain-
altermodern/altermodern-explained-manifesto (23/12/15)
Bourillaud, N. (2009). Altermodern explained: manifesto

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 Index

 1: Campbell’s Soup I (Tomato)

Andy Warhol, 1968

11
 2: Fountain
Marcel Duchamp, 1917
Photographed by Alfred Stieglitz in 1917

 3: The Lights Going on and off

Martin Creed, 2000

12
 4: Bed
Rauschenberg, 1955

 5: The Artist is Present

Marina Abramovic, 2010

13
 6: After Walker Evans #7
Sherrie Levine, 1981

 7: Mother of God
Damien Hirst, 2007

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