3
PEDIGREES OF POST-MODERNISM
→ Art
→ Theory
→ History
Baroque
The crisis of representation:
Technological innovation in the
infrastructure (the economic sphere of productive activities that supports/subvert
superstructure Marx) had outstripped
the superstructure traditions of visual art. Mass production (photo) replaced
handcrafted originality (art).
The deeper question: realism depends on a “mirror theory” of knowledge
essentially that the mind is the mirror of reality. This view is challenged by
painters such as Cézanne (cylinders, spheres, cones → take ahead by Picasso)
and Monet who painted not
reality but the
effect of perceiving it.
Photography merely reproduces
reality, while art took a leap in the new Cubist direction. Cubism rescued art
from obsolescence and re-established its authority to represent reality in a
way that photography could not.
But photography threatened both
traditional and avant-garde art in another sense not recognized until 1936
(Benjamin).
The work of art in the age of
mechanical reproduction = Therefore uniqueness/irreplaceability/ irreproducible.
The authority of original works derives from theory that classes them as
priceless, irreplaceable objects of art. Benjamin argued that the mechanical
reproducibility of original art must have a disintegrating effect on the
original itself. Mass reproduction makes it trivial.
From Modern to Postmodern: the
modern is always historically at war with what comes immediately before it. The
Modern ends up being at war with itself and must become Postmodern. (Modo =
now/ Postmodern = after just now) in that sense, Modern is always Postmodern.
