WEEK TEN: POSTMODERNISM

This time for class, instead of all of the members reading the entire collection of assigned work, we each had a single article to read and present to the class. My article was by Michael Fried and it was his "Art and Objecthood" piece written in 1967. Link below if anyone wants to read it for themselves.
(http://atc.berkeley.edu/201/readings/FriedObjcthd.pdf)

The article was cut up into sections so I tried to take notes based on the individual parts of the article. My presentation probably wasn't as clear and understandable as I had hoped.

• I. 
  • Minimal Art, ABC art, primary structure, specific objects: ideological
    • declares and occupies a position (which can be formulated in words). Most have been by its leading practitioners.
      • this distinguishes it modernist art. Also sets differences between Minimal art (literal art), pop and op art. 
        • literalist art is more than an slice of the history of taste. belongs to natural history(of sensibility)
          • not isolated. expression of general and pervasive conditions in history.
          • defines or locates its position that is aspires to occupy.
          • literalist art conceives of itself not as what it aspires or what it is. 
            • motivated by specific reservations, or what it aspires to be
      • wants to be independent art
    • literalist case in painting: rests on two accounts
      • relational character of almost all painting
      • the ubiquitousness, virtual inescapability (pictoral illusion) of painting
    • the more important the shape of support becomes (as in modernist painting) the tighter the situation. 
      • the use of shaped supports like Stella is only prolinging the death
      • should move from the single plane to 3-dimensions
    • literalist POV on sculpture is more ambiguous. Judd calls Specific Objects as more than sculpture. Robert Morris: has own literalist work of lapsed traditions of Constructivist sculpture
      • only few disagreements, mostly agree. EX: opposed to sculpture that is like painting "made part by part and addition". Judd associates it with anthropomorphism, multi-spaced and inflected
      • they have value of wholeness, singleness, indivisibilty of work's being. Single Specific object
        • critical factor for both is SHAPE. shape of object secures its wholeness. emphasis on shape for the impression that most of judds and morris's pieces are hollow
• II.
  • shape also important in paintings of past years. Shape as fundamentary property VS medium of painting.
  • success of painting depends on ability to to hold a convincing shape- to stave off questions of whether or not it does so
    • question comes if paintings (things in question) are experienced as paintings or as objects
    • modernist painting: must defeat its own objecthood, crucial factor is shape that must belong to a painting. Must be pictorial but not literal.
    • all about presence: size or look of non-art. Non-art is sought in 3D where sculpture was and where everything material was not art. Greenberg. Flatness appreciated
    • objecthood = condition of non-art
    • contrast btwn literalist objecthood VS modernist paintings self-imposes imperitave that it could suspend own objecthood through medium of shape
• III.
  • answer proposed? Literalist espousal of objecthood amounts to nothing  other than plea of new genre of theatre: which is now negation of art.
    • theatrical because literalist art more concerned with circumstances which beholder experiences literalist work
    • Morris's theatricality obvious: the physical distance and largness and psychically distanced. whats the subject into question, object.
• IV.
  • stage presence to literalist art. Theatrical quality
    • function, obtrusiveness, aggressiveness of literal work, the complexity extorts from the viewer a complicity
• V.
• latent or hidden naturalist, indeed anthropomorphic is at core of literalist theory and practice
• Tony Smith unfinished highway

I also took notes on the articles my classmates presented. 

• Krauss, Sculpture and the Expanded Field
• Robert Morris, Smithson, Christo, bruce "running corridors"
• Discussion of history of sculpture, almost synomous with monument
• site-construction
• marked sites
• sculpture 
• semiotic background. her diagram deals with that
• negation between landscape, architecture, sculpture
• not-landscape becomes landscape in sculpture (alice allcot. etc)
• move out of idea of based within a certain site or
• expanded field. new terms. new categories she pushes under Post-modernism
• critic talking, not really making anything
• post-modernism is the medium itself, possible argument of hers. 
• Craig Owens responds to this and thinks she is wrong. Earth Words was his response. Post-modernism isnt making up new categories he argues. 
• Craig Owens, Allegorical Impulse
• allegory: general idea- what it represents. Attitude as well as technique. Occurs when one text is doubled by another. Stories that want to convey meaning: usually have moral meaning, religious overtones, social messages
• why does he start with impulse?
• being revived in art. that is disappeared in moderism and is coming back in post-modernism
• allegorical imagery as appropriation
• sherry levine, EX. 
• hybridity
• site-specificity
• opening up a field of criticism for it. Look at what the thing is doing in critical realm rather than try to make new categories. How does it operate, how do we interact with it
• you could use this on objects other than art. literature. theatre. etc
• allegory and symbol
• tries to differentiate them but also relate them 
• allegory is a separate thing. 
• symbols are a part of the whole, 
• saying that post-modernism really isnt a new thing. he is arguing that allegory can be there as long as we re-argue what it is. 
• allegory is a closed system. goldilocks the story, and its meaning. what happens when you take away its meaning? can you? does it make it different. becomes the appropriation of goldilocks. itself a text.
• allegory is trying to account for post-modernism
• Boudriard
• Bourjes, poet. made a map so detail and big that it covered the land. changes depending on territory so people live on the map, eventually fraying and ruining it, becoming part of the land. people confused the map for the actual land
• similkra: copy for which there is no original   
• difficulty deciding what is reality and what is simulation
• illness: pretend to be ill and lay in bed all day. cough a lot
• nothing is real anymore?
• Simulations in our lives
• Religion:
• divinity revealed in icon: visible incarnation? authority? powerful and fascinating but are they actually god or the representation of god?
• if icons are just representations, is God just a simulation of something?
• define things by negating: describe things by what they are not
• Disneyland
• perfect model of all the entangled order of simulation. play at all worlds. Crowds drawn to minituratized.
• cycle of power in simmulation. either helps the simulation of power or the simulation falls apart and then makes a new power
• part one
• part two 
• Jameson
• main works: Van Gogh Peasant Shoes, Warhol Diamond Dust Shoes
• deconstruction of content
• uses Edward Munch's Scream to approach his point
• embodiment of the issues of human nature
• emotion projected out in desperate communication. lack of ears?
• expressive concept. modernist concept. separation of self, feeling of alientation in society of anxiety
• form identity 
• waning of affect. 
• commonification of human figure
• feelings in post-modern is 
• depth replaced with surface in post-modern 
• focus on raw material and content
• "like so many turnips, shorn from their earlier life world" the diamond dust shoes have no deeper meaning or place for the viewer
• Krimp /Hohoster
• Habermaus
• aethetic modernity
• no thingn such as post moderism. we live in a post modern culture but modernism is not yet complete
• 18th art institutes normal like, 19th art for arts sake, surrealists
• how we mimght be able to make it out of modernism. 
• problem is everyday expert.
• bourgeious and expectations viewers want from it. laymen people can see it and through education want to become experts on it
• competent consumer
• Leotard:
• anything goes: realism of money
• knowledge is the stuff of TV game shows