FAS 202: Humanities through the Ages

Module 5

Postmodernism and the 21st Century

Tulips, 1995-2004, by Jeff Koons

Learning Outcomes
After completing this module, you'll be able to:
1. Understand ways in which digital art has enabled new possibilities for postmodern artists
2. Describe an experience of digital art
3. Discuss the ongoing nature of postmodernism art and mention a few of its notable movements
(Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop Art, and Robert Rauschenberg)
4. Recognize elements of postmodern influence in architectural design
5. Explain the ongoing discussion regarding postmodernism in literature
6. Describe the characteristics of postmodern music compilation

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Timeline: Postmodernism and the 21st Century

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Postmodernism
As with some other artistic designators, postmodernism can refer to both a time period and a style of
creating art. The postmodern period is thought to have started in the late 50s as awareness of the
shortcomings of modernist techniques and ideals came to the fore.
However, techniques that mark the postmodern style can
be traced back much earlier, to the Dada movement or
even to Nietzsche's work in the late 1800s.
Pictured: Duchamp's Fountain, 1919. Photograph by
Uilton Dutra (CC BY-SA 2.0). Nietzsche. Photograph by F.
Hartman.

Regardless of when it started, postmodernism came after

modernism and in response to it. Postmodern critics of
modernism such as Jean-Francois Lyotard claim that the
Enlightenment thinking has led culture to strive toward
reason and order too much.
Pictured: Photograph by Bracha L. Ettinger (CC-BY-SA
2.5).

They accuse modernist thinkers of desiring to have a

unified theory that applies to all people and things,
ignoring material differences in location, culture, and
other factors.
Pictured: Leonardo DaVinci's Vitruvian Man, which
illustrates Western philosophy's desire to portray the
perfect human.

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Modernism's one-size-fits all thinking is illustrated best,
according to postmodern architects by the clean, neat
glass box skyscraper that came to signify the
culmination of modern technological success. And
postmodernism's answer comes, for example, in the form
of Michael Graves's Humana Building, the pink building
to the left in this image.
Pictured: Photograph by Justin Cozart (CC-BY 2.0)

According to critic Blair Kamin, while the modernist

glass box building behind it could be placed anywhere,
the postmodern Humana building was created to fit its
context in Louisville, Kentucky. The steel trusses that
point up to the observation deck mimic the trusses of the
bridges over the neighboring Ohio River.
Pictured: Photograph by David Alan Kidd (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

While many buildings of the modern style have a large

plaza in front and recede from the street, the Humana
building has a loggiaa pedestrian walkwaythat
extends from the main segment of the building to the
street so that the faade lines up with other buildings on
the street, and fits in with the general aesthetic for the
first eight stories.

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Finally, the building is designed to be striking, with pink
granite and gold leaf, materials that stand out from the
utilitarian glass, steel, and concrete of modernist
buildings. While modernist art aims to reassure people
that everything is orderly, uniform, and understandable,
postmodern art mixes old with new and aims to consider
the particulars, even if the totality of what is created
seems disjointed at first.

Postmodernist thinkers believe that representations of

coherence and uniformity are not only illusory, but also
harmful if the uniform principles don't take into account
real and important differences. The goal of public
education has been to help socialize individuals into a
common culture and help them learn to relate to their
world. But what if the common culture isn't necessarily
the culture you would pick for yourself?

In the writer Jamaica Kincaid's book, Lucy, a girl from

the West Indies comes to stay in America to be a live-in
nanny with a well-off white family, and comes to terms
with what it means to be a postcolonial subjectsomeone
from a country that used to be a territory of another
country. In this case, the country that Lucy is from used
to be a colony of England.

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Even though Lucy has affection for Mariah, her
employer, who comes to take on the role of a motherfigure, Lucy finds herself unsettled and annoyed when
Mariah brings her to a field of daffodils. Lucy says:
Mariah, do you realize that at ten years of age I had to
learn by heart a long poem about some flowers I would
not see in real life until I was nineteen?
Pictured: Photograph by Flickr user Dark Dwarf (CC-BYND 2.0).

Lucy was lamenting her colonial education and

expressing a feeling common to postmodern thought:
that bodies with power over peoplelike the
governmentcan't force a unified culture on people. If
they do, that culture will be inauthentic, and the people
can only feel a false sense of appreciation for it.
Pictured: Photograph by Flickr user audio-luci-store.it
(CC-BY 2.0).

The book Lucy also exhibits a technique common in

postmodern art: references to other pieces. In Lucy,
Kincaid references the cheerful sociability that William
Wordsworth associates with Daffodils in his poem
Daffodils and she shows how this poem, when used as a
tool to inculcate colonial subjects into European culture,
could create a reaction opposite to the one Wordsworth
intended.
Pictured: Photograph by William Shuter

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Critics of the changes that postmodernism has brought
include Frederic Jameson, who argues that the
postmodernist style of referencing, which he calls
pastiche has led to the mingling of high culture with
popular culture, which leads to art that isn't quite as
aesthetically rewarding or politically challenging in the
ways that art lovers have been accustomed to.
Pictured: Image by Banksy

Others, such as Linda Hutcheon, who calls herself

intellectually promiscuous because she crosses
disciplines in her work, believe that the only way to
change a system is from within. She believes that
parody is a legitimate technique for making an artistic
statement. She suggests that artists should take an
opportunistic approach by making meaning with
whatever tools they can.
Pictured: Image by Banksy.

Critics argue that because postmodernist thinkers abhor

unified cultural assumptions, relativism wins out, and what we
have held dear in the past becomes meaningless.
Postmodernists agree, but argue that these cultural
assumptions were not worth saving because they falsely
presented a constructed idea as truth and left out the interests
of women and minorities.
Pictured: The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar, 1972
Betye Saar (b.1926), The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972,
mixed media assemblage, 11 x 8 x 2 , signed.
Credit Line: Collection of University of California, Berkeley Art
Museum; purchased with the aid of funds from the National
Endowment for the Arts (selected by The Committee for the
Acquisition of Afro-American Art). Courtesy of Michael
Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY.

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Finally, some argue that postmodernism once had power
to make a statement, but it no longer does because it is no
longer shocking, just repetitive and cynical.

Postmodern Art
Postmodern art doesn't have a "canon" of important works in the way that Impressionism, Realism, or
other movements do. In fact postmodernist artists would most likely argue that identifying a canon of
any type of art is useless because it would favor specific representations of reality as more "true" than
others.
Below are a few artists and works that have become part of the conversation about postmodern art.

Robert Rauschenbergs Untitled and Canyon

In his untitled 1963 painting from the "Red Painting" series, Robert Rauschenberg uses a collage
technique. He applies paint and other materials such as newspaper to a canvas to create a multilayered
piece. He would later create more involved collages, which he called "combines." For these pieces, he
would layer different materials, sometimes trash or other found objects on the painting. In his "Canyon,"
1959, you can see layers of paint along with a stuffed bird.

Jeff Koonss Tulips and Rabbit

Jeff Koons's Tulips located outside of the
Guggenheim Bilbao and Rabbit, 1986 were
sculpted in highly polished stainless steel. The
media Koons uses makes his art look like
machine-made consumer items, a common feature
of postmodern art.

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Chuck Closes Mark

Chuck Close's Mark uses a laborious airbrushing process to create layers upon layers until the painting
as a whole is complete. This process mimics professional printing processes in which one color is
applied at a time. This attention to the process of creating establishes Close as a postmodernist artist.

Duane Hansons Tourists II

Duane Hanson created his Tourists II, 1988 in a hyperrealist style. He uses polyester resin, fiberglass,
polychromed oil paint with clothes and other accessories to make his life-sized portraits look realistic,
even up close. This attention to presenting reality and parodying tourists (he lives in South Florida)
marks him as a postmodern artist.

Betye Saars Liberation of Aunt Jemina

Betye Saar, a collage artist who makes art out of "assemblages" of found objects, attacks cultural, racial,
and gender stereotypes in her work. The Liberation of Aunt Jemima uses the image of Aunt Jemima, the
namesake of a pancake mix, to make a statement about the portrayal of black womanhood. Her use of
this commercial image along with the assemblage of different types of media to make a statement about
how black women have been perceived makes this work
postmodern.

Claes Oldenburgs Giant Three-Way Plug (Cube Tap)

Claes Oldenburg is known for his sculptures of everyday objects at
large scale. He also creates "soft" versions of everyday objects such
as tubs or toilets. He became known for his "happenings" in which
he presents conceptual art at a specific time and place in order to
create an experience for his viewers. For example, in 1961, he
rented a store in New York to show several sculptures designed to
represent consumer goods.

Christo and Jean-Claudes The Gates

The Gates was environmental art placed in New York's Central Park for two weeks in February of 2005.
The artists, Christo and Jean-Claude, made the gates of saffron-colored fabric, vinyl, and steel. The
sculpture was reminiscent of a Japanese shrine in Kyoto that helps those walking through it meditate on
their path. The translation of this concept to a New York path was designed to help Central Park visitors
be more mindful of their use of the park.

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Mariko Moris Pureland and Dream Temple

Mariko Mori uses technology to create images and sculptures designed to promote spiritual
enlightenment. Her works generally show her dressed up as a Shinto god with a futuristic twist,
and Pureland. She creates elaborate backgrounds that emanate harmony and enlightenment through
digital technology and photography. She also creates objects, such as in Dream Temple, a shrine created
from fabric, that are both futuristic and beautiful.
Mori says about her work: "I feel that technology has represented people's hope for improvement for
much of this century...The imagery I create is sometimes taken to be very utopian. But what I am really
trying to do is point out where technology should go in the future, which I think is to coexist with
nature." 1

The work of Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman blends performance art with set design and photography to create new identities for
herself in her art. Like Mariko Mori, she fashions herself into the star of her work. But rather than
creating images of enlightenment, Sherman creates images that exude emotion and function as an
exploration of the stereotypes we recognize in society.

Chris Ofilis The Holy Virgin Mary

Chris Ofili explores his African roots in his controversial Holy Virgin Mary (1996), which has intrigued
some audiences and angered others. New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani described the Ofili painting as
"sick," and while Hillary Clinton defended its display on grounds of freedom of expression, she called it
"deeply offensive."
For this painting, he draws on traditional pieces that feature Mary in blue. He also uses the traditional
framing of Mary as a triangle that is raised off the ground to show her saintly nature. But Ofili wanted to
juxtapose this concept of beauty with the African association of elephant dung with regeneration. Ofili
says of his use of dung in his paintings: "I'm interested in ideas of beauty...And elephant dung in itself is
quite a beautiful object. But a different sort of beauty. And I want to bring the kind of beauty and
decorativeness of the paintings together with the apparent concept of ugliness of the shit and put them
together and try and make them exist." 2

Nevillle Wakefield, "Momentous Mori," Interview, June 1999, 109.

Benjamin Ivry, "'Modern Art is a load of bullshit': Why Can't the Art World Accept Social Satire from a Black Artist?"
Salon, 10 February 1999."

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Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture took issue with modernism's
uniformity. Robert Venturi created the Vanna Venturi
house for his mother in 1962, in reaction to the clean
shapes and what he perceived to be the lifelessness of
modern architecture. The design of the pitched roof
resists the modernist tradition of having a flat roof, and
has as split in the middle, which defies functionality,
another precept of modern architecture. The house's
design references older Italian structures, and this type
of reference to older styles becomes common in
postmodern architecture.
Pictured: Vanna Venturi house by Robert Venturi

Postmodern architecture mixed and combined elements

from previous architectural styles that had been
abandoned by modern architecture. Among these
elements was renewed interest in Classical architectural
styles such as columns and arches. The Auditorio de
Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, designed by Santiago
Calatrava Valls is built around a series of arches. The
main entrance and its progressive layers are all different
types of arches. The overarching curve that extends up
into the sky is essentially an unfinished arch, but it
evokes the appearance of an ocean wave, which is fitting
for this auditorium on the sea. Finally the stairs that lead
up to the building form an arch-like shape. The mixture
of Classical elements with abstract form is representative
of the postmodern style.
Pictured: Auditorio de Tenerife by Santiago Calatrava
Valls

Postmodern architecture incorporated colors and shapes

in novel ways. The Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart designed
by James Stirling (1984) revitalized the old German
museum and housed modern art. Gabled roofs, having a
triangular design, traditionally served the practical
purpose of shedding water and snow from the structure.
But despite their practical purpose, gabled roofs were
generally absent from most modernist structures, which
opted for flat-top roofs instead of gabled roofs. The
gabled roof of this structure is common in postmodern
buildings.
Pictured: Neue Staatsgalerie Stuttgart by James Stirling

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McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois
Institute of Technology was designed by Rem Koolhaus
in 2003. The slanting slope and oval tube give a sense of
ambiguity to the building and abstraction to the building.
The slanted slope of the building itself includes the use of
high ceilings, a common element in postmodernist
architecture. Though the building looks futuristic, the
aluminum tube serves the purpose of limiting noise and
vibration from passing trains.
Pictured: McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the
Illinois Institute of Technology by Rem Koolhaus

The lack of a cohesive design theme is what makes the San

Antonio Public Library a postmodern structure. Not only do
some of its features such as the series of spheres serve no
practical or functional purpose, the design and layout of the
building is fragmented. The structure is a combination of
spherical, triangular, and rectangular shapes which give the
building a fragmented appearance that is typical of
postmodernist architecture.
Pictured: San Antonio Public Library

Image Credits
Vanna Venturi House in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph by Carol Highsmith
(PD).
Auditorio de Tenerife. Photograph by Wikipedia user Wladyslaw (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Front of the Neue Staatgalerie Stuttgart, 1984. Photograph by Wikipedia user Mussklprozz (CC BYSA 3.0).
The McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL.
Photograph Jeremy Atherton, 2006 (CC BY-SA 2.5).
MIT Stata Centre by Frank Gehry, 2004. Photograph by Rory Hyde (CC BY-SA 2.0).
San Antonio Public Library. Photograph by Wikipedia user Zereshk (CC BY 3.0).
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Digital Arts
Digital art is a broad term for artworks and techniques centered around the use of digital technologies
during the creative process, connected to and sometimes considered a subsection of new media art. New
media art is primarily concerned with nontraditional, modern mediums, including computer graphics,
Internet art, robotics, video games, and other virtual forms; there is also an emphasis on the interaction
between audiences or viewers and the artworks and artists themselves.
While new media art's theoretical roots are indebted
in part to postmodern philosophy and the 1960s
writings of media theorists such as Marshall
McLuhan, the pioneering works of digital art were
created during the 1970s. Laurence Gartel, referred
to by many as the "father of digital art," began his
experimentation with digital imaging while at Media
Study/Buffalo in New York, an experimental
organization funded by the National Endowment for
the Arts. Among Gartel and his contemporaries, the
long-standing association and overlap between
digital images and other digital mediums, such as
video and electronically-produced sound, was first
established.

Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway (1995).

Korean-born artist Nam June Paik created Electronic
Superhighway from neon, metal, and televisions
broadcasting recorded video. Nam June Paik was the first
to use the term "electronic superhighway" to suggest that
media now gives us the opportunity to connect with
distant neighbors. Photograph by Cea.

During the 1970s and 1980s, advancements in

graphics technology encouraged more and more
artistsand programmersto experiment with computer art. Notable computer artists include the
German-born Manfred Mohr, who generated visual interpretations of algorithms generated by his own
simple programs, as well as Joseph Nechvatal, whose surreal robotic-assisted acrylic paintings are
inspired by computer viruses and the "post-human" aesthetic. In 1985, the legendary pop artist Andy
Warhol created a portrait of Blondie singer Debbie Harry using a Commodore Amiga for that pioneering
PC model's public release at New York's Lincoln Center.
Throughout the 1990s, the growing popularity of the World Wide Web resulted in the emergence of
Internet (or net) art, characterized by its easy online availability (circumventing the traditional route of
artistic displays at museums and galleries) and, often but not always, its interactivity and use of multiple
mediums. Internet art dissects and integrates a range of material and concepts, ranging from search
engine results and other forms of data, e-mails, chat room transcripts, and ASCII (American Standard
Code for Information Interchange) characters. Serbian-born Vuk osi is known for his ASCII art and
"remixes" of other popular experimental artworks. The two-person collective of Internet artists known as
JodiJoan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmansfocuses on artistic computer game modification. Russianborn Olia Lialina's website includes the original and "remixed" versions of her works, including "My
Boyfriend Came Back From The War," a series of pages that tell a story. It has since been transformed
into a playable game, a t-shirt, and a PowerPoint presentation, just to name a few alternative media
translations.
In the last decade, digital art has been realized in a range of new or repurposed forms, including largescale public installations, data visualizations, animation, and widespread collaboration with the aid of
creative commons licensing and innovations in sharing technologies. Its adoption and popularity can be
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seen throughout society: in the form of the computer-generated graphics and special effects used in film;
in print and video advertisements; in console and computer games. Technological improvements and
shrinking price tags not only make it easier for artists to acquire the equipment needed to produce digital
worksthese developments also provide them with social, promotional, and collaborative tools all at
very low costs. The era of digital art has allowed artists and the members of their audiences to impact
and interact with one another in a personal, meaningful way that perhaps was never fully realized until
modern technology allowed for it.

Digital Art and Postmodernism

Computer technologies have developed alongside art in the late 20th and early 21st century, and artists
have taken advantage of a few possibilities that digital tools open up:
Advantage

Benefit for postmodern art

Technology facilitates the creation of new realities

using computer animation and video and has
allowed for realities never expressible as a visual
image before to become possible to be seen and
shared with an audience.

Since postmodern artists are concerned about how

representations of our world come to be taken as
reality, the ability to create "virtual reality" allows
artists to explore the meaning of reality.

Technology allows designers to create art that is

interactive.

Postmodern thinkers believe there is no single

reality and that individual experience is worth as
much as group identity. Interactive art honors this
belief by creating an experience that responds to
the specific viewer.

Advances in technology have lowered the price for

consumer-grade devices such as still and video
cameras, computers, and software to process
audiovisual media.

Postmodern thinkers are concerned with the ability

of those with power to dominate the reality of
people with less power by creating master
narratives that others must simply accept.
Previously, artistic endeavors could only be
undertaken by those who could afford to buy
expensive materials or have them paid for by a
benefactor. The availability of technology to
individuals (whether owned or borrowed from a
school or a library) allows "the little guy" to make
art even though he or she may not have access to
financial resources. This allows for more equality
when it comes to creating art.

Digital media allows for the networking of data,

data processing, and the artwork itself.

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Postmodern thinkers believe that power and

information should not be centralized but shared
across individuals. Networks allow information to
be dispersed across many individuals. The Internet
brings artists a wide range of information and
experience. In addition, it allows artists to release
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their work broadly, which frees artists from the
formal and rigid networks of the past that kept
innovative art from being displayed and enjoyed.
In addition, networks can facilitate the
involvement of multiple individuals joining
together to create a piece of art.

Digital media allows artists to update and modify

their work, creating copies rather than presenting a
final version in a fixed form.

Postmodern thinkers believe that ideas are stronger

when they are flexible and adaptive to new
contexts. A piece of art such as a painting or a
sculpture is difficult to change, and value comes
from the uniqueness of the object. Digital media
can be created on one machine and played on
many; artists can update the piece easily.

Postmodern Literature
What is the philosophical and literary movement known as Postmodernism? According to the PBS
"Faith and Reason" program, it can be defined in the following way:
Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to
explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in
human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own
particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations
which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the
relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything;
reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us
individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing
always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather
than certain and universal.
Postmodernism is "post" because it denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks
the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain
everything for everybodya characteristic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the
postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must
realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philosopher Richard
Tarnas states, postmodernism "cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more
than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined
itself."
Many scholars argue that Postmodernism*an artistic reaction to Modernismstarted almost
immediately after World War II and lasted until at least the end of the 20th century if not beyond. Some
critics believe that the 21st century is still defined by Postmodernism; others argue that it is governed by
a new mode of thought such as Metamodernism*.
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Postmodernists followed in the Modernist tradition of rejecting authority and experimenting with
radically new ways of creating and presenting art, including surrealism and parody*. Postmodernism
however differed from Modernism in its characteristic embrace of irony and refusal to accept objective
truth or cultural standards (with a strong nod to multiculturalism*).

Postmodern Authors
In the aftermath of World War II, authors and poets began to weave Postmodern themes into their work
and Western literature started on its postmodern path. While precise definitions of what is Postmodern
literature are hard to come by, there are several literary techniques that have emerged: the use of parody
and irony, an experimentation with metafiction, the reuse and refashioning of elements of popular
culture, a fascination with technoculture, and a focus on the absurd.
Some of the authors identified with Postmodernism include Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five),
Joseph Heller (Catch-22), William Gaddis (The Recognitions), Don DeLillo (White Noise), Jorges Luis
Borges (Labyrinths), Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest).

Joseph Heller
Catch-22 (1961)
Catch-22s protagonist is Captain John Yossarian, a World War II bombardier who believes that his
foolish and ambitious commanding officers are more dangerous than the enemy. In order to avoid flying
more missions, Yossarian fakes illness and tries, and fails, to get himself declared insane. The phrase
Catch-22 refers to the paradox that seeking to be declared unfit to fly and avoid dangerous missions
only confirms one's sanity (Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.) The novel
has been praised for its comic, satiric world view and for illustrating the dehumanizing effects of war.
From the novel: The enemy is anybodys whos going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.

Jorge Luis Borges

Labyrinths (1962)
A collection of short stories and essays, Labyrinths highlights Borges' postmodern magical realism.
Considered Latin America's finest writer of the 20th century, Borges wrote in a densely layered and
imagistic style, dealing with themes of the nature of time, the power of language and of dreams, and the
way ideas influence reality.
From the short story Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: Ten years ago, any symmetrical system
whatsoever which gave the appearance of order dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazismwas
enough to fascinate men. Why not fall under the spell of Tln and submit to the minute and vast evidence
of an ordered planet? Useless to reply that reality, too is ordered.

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Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Childrens Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969)
Slaughterhouse-Five is explicitly a postmodern, meta-fictional novel (metafiction refers to fiction that
breaks the suspension of disbelief and emphasizes the fact that it's fabricated): the book begins All this
happened, more or less, and Vonnegut, in the first person, explains how he came to write the novel and
why. Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an American soldier who is captured by the
Germans and lives through the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945. Pilgrim is also kidnapped by an alien
race, Tralfamadorians, and travels through time, recounting his life experiences. Vonnegut deals with
themes of fate and free will, the destructive absurdity of war, and the nature of literature.
From the novel: There are no characters in this story and almost no dramatic confrontations, because
most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the
main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

Thomas Pynchon
Gravitys Rainbow (1973)
Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon experiments with the traditional elements of plot and character
development, employing some 400 characters and numerous narrative voices. While the novel focuses
on the German V-1 rockets of World War II, it ranges across historic, artistic, scientific, and
philosophical topics. Pynchon addresses themes of sexuality, free will and predestination, death,
paranoia, and search for identity.
From the novel: You are off on a winding and difficult road, which you conceive to be wide and
straight, an Autobahn you can travel at your ease. Is it any use for me to tell you that all you believe real
is illusion? I don't know whether you'll listen, or ignore it. You only want to know about your path, your
Autobahn.

Don DeLillo
White Noise (1985)
DeLillo's dense and lyrical novel tells the black humor story of Jack Gladney, a college professor in a
small town, who chairs the department of Hitler Studies. DeLillo illuminates the contradictions of
modern American life and touches upon themes of consumerism, conspiracy theories, the pervasiveness
of modern technology, the absurdity of academic life, and the fear of death.
From the novel: For most people, there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV
set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is.

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David Foster Wallace

Infinite Jest (1985)
Wallace's satiric and lengthy novel takes place in a dystopian North America, where the US, Canada,
and Mexico are one political entity and the calendar has been commercialized (the Year of the Whopper,
the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment). Relying on a nonlinear narrative, Wallace addresses
themes of addiction and denial, national identity, subjectivity versus objectivity, and popular
entertainment.
From the novel: I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about.
I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get
together on this issue, he and I....

Postmodern Music
As with other aspects of Postmodernism, it isn't clear cut exactly what music should be considered
Postmodern and what should not. In some ways it breaks from Modernist musicby moving away from
atonality* and harshnessand in other ways it extends it through innovation and experimentation.
One critic, Harvard professor Daniel Albright, argues that Postmodern music can be characterized by:
1) bricolage* (the use of found objects as instruments, such as pots and pans as drums)
2) polystylism* (the use of multiple styles or techniques) and 3) randomness (where elements of the
composition or performed work is left to chance). 3
Others maintain that any music created in the last decades of the 20th century or in the 21st century
should be regarded as Postmodern.
The definition of Postmodern music is fluid, then. Some composers categorized as Postmodern include
the Minimalists (Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass), John Adams, John Cage,
Gyorgy Ligetzi, John Corigliano, and Tan Dun.
Some critics will also include more popular musical artists, such as David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, and
David Byrne.

Indeterminancy and John Cage

The American composer John Cage was a leading proponent of indeterminacy in musicwhere aspects
of the performance are chosen by chance or performers are left to improvise.
Cage noted to the Observer magazine in 1982: "I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg
thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, 'You'll come to a wall you
won't be able to get through.' I said, 'Well then, I'll beat my head against that wall.' I quite literally began
hitting things, and developed a music of percussion that involved noises."

Daniel Albright, Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). pg. 14

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Cage's 1952 composition 4'33 had three movements that were performed without a single note being
played.

Minimalism
Musical Minimalism relies on stripped-down compositions with the goal of creating the maximum
impact with the fewest, and simplest, elements. Minimalism features repetitiveness, iteration, and
somewhat of an appeal to emotion. Four American composers LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Steve
Reich and Philip Glasshave led this movement.
Critic Kiran Sande has noted: "The minimalist impulse was American through and through, and Steve
Reich, rarely seen without a baseball cap atop his head, was volubly keen to find a new musical
language that truthfully reflected, as he put it, 'the real context of tail fins, Chuck Berry, and millions of
burgers sold.'" 4
Philip Glass's piece Mad Rush reflects the tenets of Minimalism in its sparseness and use of repetition.

Performance Art
Performance art is a special type of art that became popular in the postmodern era.
Originally Performance Art* was an "art event," a theatrical exhibition of several thematically-related
art works, conceived in a variety of media, and presented to an audience either simultaneously or
sequentially. Performance art is associated with the avant-garde*, experimental theater that is on the
vanguard of unconventional forms. More recently, dramatic performance art has become an
autobiographical monologue*, written and presented by a solo performer, sometimes incorporating
elements of dance, music and the visual arts.
Renowned Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovi explains what differentiates performance art
from theater and from other visual arts:
"[Performance art] is not theater. Theater you repeat; theater you play someone
else...Performance [art] is real...In the theater, you can cut with a knife, and there is blood. The
knife is not real and the blood is not real. In performance, the blood and the knife and the body of
the performer is real...[In theater], you never change. It's always in the same pattern and
everything is happening the same way again and again...Performance is the unique form of art
because it is very temporary and comes and goes" (MOMA, 2010).5

Sande, K. (2013, February 2). Less Is More: A Brief Survey of Minimalism. Red Bull Music Academy.
Museum of Modern Art (2010, March 31). Marina Abramovic: What is performance art? (Video file). Retrieved from
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcyYynulogY
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Postmodernism and its Critics

Because central postmodern themes include the denial of any objective and absolute truth, a rejection of
the principles of modernism, and (sometimes) the playful use of language and images, it has attracted
criticism from those who see it as a challenge to Enlightenment values and what they define as
rationality, progress, and modern culture.
Florida International University professor Steven Mizrach has noted: "Critics of postmodernism come
mainly from the Marxist camp. They feel that postmodernism is a diversionary tactic, the last ditch of a
late capitalism in the process of dying. They dislike fervently the way that postmodern aesthetics rejects
socialist realismand, for that matter, epistemological realism." Mizrach has also argued: "Other critics
of postmodernism feel it is trying to have its cake and eat it too. From the modern world, it wants to take
McLuhan's electronic technology and the 'global village' it allows while ditching other parts of
modernity; without acknowledging that, sans modernity, such communication would not be possible." 6
Noam Chomsky, a left-of-center academic and political philosopher has criticized the difficult and often
obscure language employed by postmodernism: "If something can be said simply, say it simply, so that
the carpenter next door can understand you. Anything that is at all well understood about human affairs
is pretty simple." 7
Intellectuals on the right have also objected to postmodernism. Charles Murray, a sociologist and author
has written: "By contemporary intellectual fashion, I am referring to the constellation of views that come
to mind when one hears the words multicultural, gender, deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead
White Males. In a broader sense, contemporary intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread
disdain in certain circles for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set is hostility
to the idea that discriminating judgments are appropriate in assessing art and literature, to the idea that
hierarchies of value exist, hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the
overarching label that is attached to this perspective." 8
There have been aesthetic criticisms of postmodernism as well. Critic Edwin Heathcote has written:
"Once a movement is named 'postmodernism' it kills everything that follows it. Even old modernism,
pure, white and minimal, after postmodernism becomes just another style, an attitude. Is postmodernism
the movement at the end of culture?" 9
Professor Donald Kuspit has criticized postmodern art on the grounds that it is too derivative and boring:
"...the authentic is turned into the inauthentic by being treated as no more than a linguistic sign of
something that does not existthe authentic self, authentic artexcept as a sociolinguistic mirage. It is
because of the absence of any belief in let alone idea of the authentic that postmodern art is boring and
depressing." 10

Steven Mizrach, "Talking pomo: An analysis of the postmodern movement"

Noam Chomsky interviewd by an anonymous interviewer, "The Dominion and The Intellectuals," on Chomsky.info, 2003.
8
Charles Murray, "The Idea of Progress: Once Again, with Feeling," in Hoover Digest 2001 no. 3.
9
Edwin Heathcote, "Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990, V&A, London" in the Financial Times, September
21, 2011.
10
Donald Kuspit, "The Semiotic Anti-Subject," third of three Getty lectures delivered at the School of Fine Arts at the
University of Southern California on Apr. 4, 6 and 10, 2000.
7

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Novelist David Guterson has argued: "Post-modernism is dead because it didn't address human needs.
The conventional story endures because it does." 11
Others maintain that while postmodernism has lost much of its allure, it still retains significant cultural
importance. Novelist Edward Docx has claimed that "...we are all, and will forever be, children of
postmodernism. (This in itself is, of course, a postmodern idea.) All [artistic] movements subtly inform
our imaginations and the way we discuss, create, react and interact. But, more and more, postmodernism
is becoming "just" another one of the colours we might use. (Lady Gaga uses it, for example; but Adele
does not.) Or, to switch metaphor, just another tool in the artist's kit. Why? Because we are all becoming
more comfortable with the idea of holding two irreconcilable ideas in our heads: that no system of
meaning can have a monopoly on the truth, but that we still have to render the truth through our chosen
system of meaning. So the postmodern challenge, while no less radical, somehow feels less powerful to
us. We are learning to live with it." 12

Module Vocabulary
TERM

DEFINITION

Musical
Minimalism

The practice of using stripped-down compositions with the goal of creating the
maximum impact with the fewest, and simplest, elements.

Metamodernism

A theoretical movement that some believe has succeeded postmodernism.

Monologue

A theatrical event performed by one person.

Multiculturalism

The existence or representation of multiple cultures in a certain society.

Avant-garde

An artistic movement (and those artists involved in it) that breaks with tradition
and is radically new or original.

Parody

A work that mimics the content or style of an existing work for a comic or critical
effect.

Performance Art

A type of experimental theater that bridges the disciplines of theater and the visual
arts.

Atonality

A type of experimental theater that bridges the disciplines of theater and the visual
arts.

Postmodernism

A term for the artistic and literary movement that developed as a reaction against
principles and practices of established modernism.

Bricolage

The use of found objects as instruments for art, music, or literature.

Polystylism

The use of multiple styles or techniques.

11
12

David Guterson quoted in an interview with Ellen Kanner, "A Wonderful Irony," on BookPage January 1996.
Edward Docx, "Postmodernism is dead," in Prospect, July 20, 2011.

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