Term Paper
1500 words
The Modern period continued to change the society until the late 20th century, where a new artistic era began and continued up to this day; the 21st century eventually became the Post-Modern Period and many radical changes brought by the Modernism is adopted by the new art styles to the point of it is hard to discern what Post-Modernism is all about. If Modernism concentrated on the preservation of ideal pure art, Post Modernism welcomed changes by using eccentric methods to produce contemporary art found in Modern Museums. The 21st century is currently covered by postmodern epoch which thrives on the combined commercial artworks with secular themes often done without regards for tradition. The postmodern trend gradually changed in this century as ideologies shifted, so is the art. The art today is more secular than in the past; artists used their tools to create a unique non-verbal communication between him and the audiences.1 Altogether, the whole gist of postmodern arts revolves around the notion of what is important or needed. The arts became the crafts and the crafts became the artworks displayed today in modern museums. The notion of fundamentalism and combined expressionist culture, the post-modern art is the corrupt version of the pure Modern utopian ideology.2
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1 F.S. Kleiner, Gardner's Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective, 13th edn, vol. 2, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010, p. 763, Google Book, [https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=UK_jTggtYl8C&pg=PT428&lpg=PT428&dq=What+did+postmodernism+mean+for+artists+and+sculptors?+Use+Anselm+Kiefer%E2%80%99s+painting&source=bl&ots=i1tXo9h44s&sig=yYqqYRRtxEir1aNwUAb2iSKSW0A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHl7vz-4vNAhVEkJQKHQEPC14Q6AEIQDAG#v=onepage&q=What%20did%20postmodernism%20mean%20for%20artists%20and%20sculptors%3F%20Use%20Anselm%20Kiefer%E2%80%99s%20painting&f=false], accessed 30 May 2016.
2 J.J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization: A Brief History, 4th edn, Thomson Wadsworth/Cengage, 2010, p. 578, Google Book [https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=xWg5Z5lUA0sC&pg=PA578&lpg=PA578&dq=What+did+postmodernism+mean+for+artists+and+sculptors?+Use+Anselm+Kiefer%E2%80%99s+painting&source=bl&ots=8smY-LYrj5&sig=kjxW7vIa2tYecPuYssY7yWV_E3s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHl7vz-4vNAhVEkJQKHQEPC14Q6AEIQzAH#v=onepage&q=What%20did%20postmodernism%20mean%20for%20artists%20and%20sculptors%3F%20Use%20Anselm%20Kiefer%E2%80%99s%20painting&f=false] , accessed 30 May 2016.
As a carte blanche, the impact of Modernism and Post-Modernism on art will be analyzed through the three works of art from the period. The paintings to be analyzed are as follows: Anselm Kiefer’s Painting=Burning, Mary Frank’s Persephone, and Gerhard Marck’s The Cats. The goal of the essay is to illustrate the Post-Modernist era based from the contemporary paintings available backed with scholastic research to present the idea that Post-Modernism was the deconstruction of the old Modernist era; a trend towards the coming of the new age as a vibrant, messy, and queer era full of iconographies that Modernists will surely reject to see. Post-Modern is similar in Modernism in many aspects. First, both two arts popularized the use of new materials as opposed to the traditional ones used in the antiquities. Instead of focusing on the aesthetic appearance alone, Modernists promoted the use of scientific enquiry and mathematical calculations to produce a balanced work. On their works whether it was in the field of art, architecture, or literature, Modernists’ tend to exhibit formality; however, Post-Modernist eventually became distorted, playful, reversed, and instead of concentrating on the materials prevalent in the modern period, artists became conscious of their individuality and created works that captured attention and preserved their identity to the public.
For many years, scholars and art critics have been debated about the two art styles and whether postmodernism should be regarded on par with modernism. In fact, according to scholars, postmodernism is the antagonist of modernism to which Hutcheon believes as the parody of modernism, an outright rejection to the somewhat elitist works of the Modernists which only focused in achieving the utopian idealism.3 In the Modernist years, paintings and artworks, although revolutionary and produced with new materials and techniques, still embodied a sense of abstraction in them. However, in the post-modernist period, the artists became enamored again to rekindle the once despised realism and integrated the right human anatomical figures in their paintings and sculptures.4 Anselm Kiefer, a German artist or his eccentric methods of painting shocked the world when he presented to the public his masterpiece; a burnt canvas consisting of ripped surface, charcoal and rusty colors with occasional hints of greyish pigments. What this painting shows is the ultimate degradation of painting subjects that instead of illustrating themes that might be recognized by the majority, the artist chose to portray a subjective and implied scenario which engages the audiences to discern its distorted and messy iconography. The majority of Kiefer’s paintings involved burnt surfaces which mimics one of the destructive elements of nature: fire. Gilmour argued in his essay, that in spite of the violent and abstract iconography, Kiefer’s work actually explores the ancient mythological stories, natural setting, with a dash of historical references.5
“When we consider, for example, numerous landscape settings revealing blackened spaces where fire or some other destructive force has been unleashed, his cruel exposure of historical forces seems more to the point than presenting a scene from nature.”6
In some ways, Kiefer’s painting Burning Rods (ca.1984-1987) seems to be a reference to the history of human civilization, the blackened surroundings indicate the environment’s total destruction and the force that incites destruction is fire.
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3 L. Hutcheon, ‘The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History’, Cultural Critique, No. 5, Modernity and Modernism, Postmodernity and Postmodernism, 1986-1987, pp. 179-182, JSTOR [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354361], accessed 30 May 2016.
4 S.E. Grace, Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism, University of Toronto Press, 1989, p. 244, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt2tv3g5.16], accessed 30 May 2016.
5 J.C. Gilmour, ‘Original Representation and Anselm Kiefer's Postmodernism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 46, no. 3, 1988, p. 342, JSTOR [http://www.jstor.org/stable/431105], accessed 30 May 2016.
6 Gilmour, Loc. cit.
A fire brought by the Industrial Revolution which sparked the growth of small towns to big cities. What his painting truly and implicitly implies is the message that for every growth there is a price to pay and that is the destruction of nature under the hands of man. The burning rods served as the catalyst for that. Furthermore, postmodernist artists also rejected the idea of illusionism, a trait prevalent in the styles of the Renaissance, Baroque, and the Romantic period. For the modernists, incorporating illusion on art was a prized skill, but for postmodernists, this trait was only meant to fool around and a symbol of hierarchical divide. The role of illusion in art gives way for depth; audiences can appreciate art with its ability to become ‘moving pictures’ that seem to go beyond within the painting. In Kiefer’s painting, the iconography was abstract and totally indiscernible. The surface is flat which means no depth included. Both Modernists and Postmodernists believed in the rejection of excessive designs and resorted to abstraction of iconography as limited to lines, shapes, colors, and other elements of art to create the flat surface which correspond to the truth.7 Mary Frank’s Persephone (ca.1989) is the best example of why postmodernism is the anti-thesis of modernism. The terracotta sculpture of Persephone, the Greek goddess of the Underworld and the wife of Hades lay broken into separate pieces with limbs detached from the body or entirely missing. However, one must note that the sculptor took into the detail of studying the accurate human anatomy through the realistic rendering of the naked female image onto the terracotta. In the previous era, sculptors achieve their fame by how they managed to create dramatic and intense depth in their works to create depth in order to make it appear human-like. But what this sculpture symbolizes is the important core of postmodernism. A woman lying asleep with face as peaceful like she was in death; her limbs mutilated, yet, her bosom still breathed life. In other words, despite the destruction of the rest of the body, the human figure of the woman rose from the scattered pieces as if desperate to become whole again. The same way postmodernists attempts to rediscover their fascination with realistic human figures in their painting wherein they mixed realism with abstract iconography which is a very incredible feat in visual arts. Another work was Gerhard Marck’s The Cats (1920) which is exemplifies the simplification of figures of animals. Whereas other artists decided to paint humans or the landscapes, Marck focused on illustrating the animals such as cats as his main theme.
“How did I happen to sculpture animals? Animals were my first friends and models, so to speakThe more I loved animals, the greater the danger of hating the human beings who stood in crowds before the cages and seemed to me to cut such sorry figures in contrast to the nobility of the imprisoned lion I saw them now exactly in correspondence to ourselves, often cruelly deformed by slavery.”8
In the woodcut titled The Cats, the figures of the two cats silently roaming around the narrow staircase to gather food was quite similar with the styles of the popular art. Thick black lines outline the contours of the bodies of the two cats depicted only using monochrome colors. The iconography looks like cartoonish but despite the unrealistic image, audiences can still see the form of the cats walking side-by-side with each other as they hunt for food. The background is plain white and combined with crosshatching of lines.
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7 N. Carroll, ‘Anti-Illusionism in Modern and Postmodern Art’, Leonardo, vol. 21, no. 3, 1988, p. 297, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1578659], accessed 31 May 2016.
8 R. Hausammann, R. Hauser, P. Heller, H.A. Lea, & Gerhard Marcks, ‘Gerhard Marcks on His Life and Work’, The Massachusetts Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 1961, p. 519, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/25086707], accessed 31 May 2016.
The postmodern period became so commercialized that many people think that the modern museums of the 21st century consists only of junks created with less effort unlike in the previous generations. Even Gitlin remarked that the art of the postmodern period is already lost that anyone can feel the sense of nothingness wherein objects do not respond to their places unlike old artworks do. Sculptures experience the homelessness while paintings become nothing as more than a splatter of messy color onto the pristine white canvas.9 On the other hand, “postmodernism is the most controversial” due to its style, where artists freely experimented with the things they liked and come up with eccentric objects for museums. “An unstable mix of theatrical and theoretical” styles derived from other eras.10 As Seidmann explained, postmodern period is the collapse of the hierarchy of the old world.11 Its new style reflects the dawn of the new era of artistic experience. Postmodern era combines the elements of other periods to create new art.
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9 T. Gitlin, The Intellectuals and the Flag, Columbia University Press, 2006, p. 74, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/gitl12492.9], accessed 31 May 2016.
10 T. Di Carlo, ‘Postmodern Modernism’, Log, no. 24, 2012, p. 81, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/41765472], accessed 31 May 2016.
11 S. Seidman, ‘Substantive Debates’, in J.C. Alexander and S. Seidman (eds.) Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, New York, 1990, p.231, [https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=fwKvaCpvyG8C&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=postmodernism+as+a+reconstruction+of+modernism+in+art&source=bl&ots=AIplOt96x-&sig=lXw8AZW_cgp2xlBIY1D_fd2oEUI&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiQ2ZvXh4zNAhUoiKYKHUW-Db8Q6AEITjAJ#v=onepage&q=postmodernism%20as%20a%20reconstruction%20of%20modernism%20in%20art&f=false], accessed 31 May 2016.
Annotated Bibliography
Carroll, N., ‘Anti-Illusionism in Modern and Postmodern Art’, Leonardo, vol. 21, no. 3, 1988, pp. 297-304, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1578659], accessed 31 May 2016.
-This journal explores the role of anti-illusionism in making modern and post-modern art unique with examples from paintings from the two periods.
Di Carlo, T., ‘Postmodern Modernism’, Log, no. 24, 2012, pp. 81-85, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/41765472], accessed 31 May 2016.
-In this essay, the author incorporates how postmodernist era became the era of consumerism based from scholastic research and the styles prevalent in the contemporary era.
Grace, S.E. Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism, University of Toronto Press, 1989, p. 244, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt2tv3g5.16], accessed 30 May 2016.
-This journal is more on postmodernism in literature but occasionally tackles the impact of the new art movement in visual culture with insightful pointers for the readers.
Gilmour, J.C. ‘Original Representation and Anselm Kiefer's Postmodernism’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 46, no. 3, 1988, pp. 341-350, JSTOR [http://www.jstor.org/stable/431105], accessed 30 May 2016.
-This journal explores the works of Anselm Kiefer and how he became a postmodernist artist with helpful pointers in understanding the abstract nature of his painting and the process of doing it in his studio.
Gitlin, T., The Intellectuals and the Flag, Columbia University Press, 2006, p. 74, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/gitl12492.9], accessed 31 May 2016.
-The author presents the issue of postmodernism as a question to engage the readers to know the nature of the style. However, this document holds chockfull of good information regarding the history of conflict between modernism and postmodernism and how these opposites affects the 21st century.
Hausammann, R., R. Hauser, P. Heller, H.A. Lea, & Gerhard Marcks, ‘Gerhard Marcks on His Life and Work’, The Massachusetts Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 1961, pp. 518-538, JSTOR, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/25086707], accessed 31 May 2016.
-Another important journal explaining why Marck became a painter that focuses on animals. This short autobiographical journal is the key to understand the origins of postmodernism.
Hutcheon, L., ‘The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History’, Cultural Critique, No. 5, Modernity and Modernism, Postmodernity and Postmodernism, 1986-1987, pp. 179-207, JSTOR [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1354361], accessed 30 May 2016.
-Hutcheon explores the theme of modernist parody through critical analysis of how and why postmodernism ever occurred based on historical events and facts.
Kleiner, F.S., Gardner's Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective, 13th edn, vol. 2, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010, p. 763, Google Book, [https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=UK_jTggtYl8C&pg=PT428&lpg=PT428&dq=What+did+postmodernism+mean+for+artists+and+sculptors?+Use+Anselm+Kiefer%E2%80%99s+painting&source=bl&ots=i1tXo9h44s&sig=yYqqYRRtxEir1aNwUAb2iSKSW0A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHl7vz-4vNAhVEkJQKHQEPC14Q6AEIQDAG#v=onepage&q=What%20did%20postmodernism%20mean%20for%20artists%20and%20sculptors%3F%20Use%20Anselm%20Kiefer%E2%80%99s%20painting&f=false], accessed 30 May 2016.
-One of the most important book especially for art beginners. Kleiner explains the smallest detail of the topic in a clear and concise language. It is a comprehensive book in Art that covers all aspects of Art, History, Culture, Architecture, and Civilization.
Spielvogel, J.J., Western Civilization: A Brief History, 4th edn, Thomson Wadsworth/Cengage, 2010, p. 578, Google Book [https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=xWg5Z5lUA0sC&pg=PA578&lpg=PA578&dq=What+did+postmodernism+mean+for+artists+and+sculptors?+Use+Anselm+Kiefer%E2%80%99s+painting&source=bl&ots=8smY-LYrj5&sig=kjxW7vIa2tYecPuYssY7yWV_E3s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHl7vz-4vNAhVEkJQKHQEPC14Q6AEIQzAH#v=onepage&q=What%20did%20postmodernism%20mean%20for%20artists%20and%20sculptors%3F%20Use%20Anselm%20Kiefer%E2%80%99s%20painting&f=false] , accessed 30 May 2016.
-A similar book like Kleiner but this version is more on to textual analysis rather than visual; however, there are a lot of interesting points to learn from this book.
Seidman, S., ‘Substantive Debates’, in J.C. Alexander and S. Seidman (eds.) Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, New York, 1990, p. 231, [https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=fwKvaCpvyG8C&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=postmodernism+as+a+reconstruction+of+modernism+in+art&source=bl&ots=AIplOt96x-&sig=lXw8AZW_cgp2xlBIY1D_fd2oEUI&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiQ2ZvXh4zNAhUoiKYKHUW-Db8Q6AEITjAJ#v=onepage&q=postmodernism%20as%20a%20reconstruction%20of%20modernism%20in%20art&f=false], accessed 31 May 2016.
-This book holds the critical debate essays published by scholars of art which attempts to explain modernism and post-modernism in a philosophical manner.
