Wednesday 12 October 2011

Postmodernity Week 4 Lecture notes

Scream (and scream again) the avant garde is dead


  • Tarantino - Mosaic- wikipedia of references, hyperlink culture
  • Edvard Munch Scream and Ghost Face - same iconic visual
  • Linear in structure, traditional but postmodern
  • Avant Garde - hallmark of modernism as distinct from post modern
  • French word for vanguard - innovative or inventive on one or more levels, pushes known boundaries
  • magnificant destiny of the arts - positive power transforming, bring people from the darkness to the light
  • Paris Saloon, 1861
  • An unmade Bed can be art in our minds today
  • William Adolphe Bougereau - decorative pretty artwork telling stories to be hang on wall
  • Edouard Manet - controversial art - wasn't an existing story of what's out there, created confusion and broke tradition
  • Gustave Courbet - real life depicted - avant garde
  • Paul Cezanne - picture plane flatter, paint movement not about reflecting the real world it self
  • Claude Monet - more of a document of the world, how light breaks world apart
  • Edvard Munch - expression, depicting inner life, reflects the mood of what 'The Scream' is
  • Picasso - world made of different angles, canvas a place of experimentation
  • Kasmir Malevich - emptied of content, transparent, pure, objective, arriving at something final

  • avant garde artist/ poet tries to immitate god
  • something valid solely in it's own terms
  • 'Art for Art's' sake - revolutionary, power
  • Marcel Duchamp 'Fountain' - doesn't have to have craft - man-made, art not tied down to tradition
  • CHOOQ - taking something iconic such as Mona Lisa postcard
  • Pastiche - cultural artifact composed elements of original work - characteristic feature of post modernism
  • Appropiation - direct duplication of image/ object from identified source of an artist who represents it in different context
  • Andy Warhol - 'Campbell's Soup can' - mass produced can
  • Jeff Koons - making a cheap - looking object lavish as a piece of art
  • Irony - something different from and often opposite to literal meaning e.g Mulholland Drive - Betty typical ambious actress stereotype
  • distinction of high culture and so called mass of popular culture
  • Richard Prince - look like a filmic photo but taking existing images and choosing composition - reframing our interpretation
  • Sherrie Levine - rephotographed Walker Evan's original 'Tennet Farmer' and Duchamps 'Fountain', gold plate toilet and representing original idea - art has become expensive
  • creates doubt and uncertainty, avoids absolute meaning
  • Dorothea Lange - depicts great depression
  • Kathy Groove given sheen of vogue cover
  • Golf GTI - singing in the Rain - appropiated, took text, visuals and bent it to suit advert


  • Failure of new, imprisonment of the past
  • 'pursuit of the new' - M+S - Christmas Belles
  • La Mode retro - 'Nostalgia Mode' = always looking back
  • Star wars has no original bone - connected to the past
  • Ghost face - slasher movie that made it all a postmodernist idea
  • Fourth Scream making a joke that is pastiaging 1970 and original film
  • Psycho - emphasis of the murder catastrophy
  • Halloween - stalked by a killer, The final girl virginal sensible - too boring to kill
  • Michael Myers - no motivation, evil personified
  • Friday the 13th - group of teens - serial killer killing them one by one until final girl facing off murderer
  • Formula - idea = tired and over used
  • Scream rewrote the rules, characters know them to start to shift and bend them
  • poking fun at typical trappings
  • Two screams  Modern - to break away from the past Postmodern - everything been used up so can only reframe what has already been done creatively
  • self reflected circle

No comments:

Post a Comment