POSTMODERNISM: STYLE AND SUBVERSION at the Victoria & Albert Museum
POSTMODERNISM: STYLE AND SUBVERSION at the Victoria & Albert Museum
The curators of Postmodernism have traced the origins of the so-called Postmodern movement back to the '60s, to the work of Ettore Sottsas (1917-2007) and Alessandro Mendini (1931- ). The focus on radical design and dystopian possiblities is reminiscent of some of the typical movements of the former part of the 20th century and Postmodernism does seem to be an outcrop (or a barren outcrop) of both Surrealism and Futurism (which also originated in Italy). The exhibition binds a host of diverse artists, architects, alternate movements to it's thesis that Postmodernism was a driving force in culture from the 60s onwards, eventually feeding into the mass culture of the 1980s before ultimately dissipating.
Postmodernism is presented as binding together different cultural possibilities such as the typifying admixture of high art, classicism and pop culture owing aesthetic loyalty only to the next hollow cliche to be circumvented. In its earliest format it tended to sweep away the still-persisting Modernists in cultural wars generally more bitterly fought out than the ones concurrently happening between Capitalists and Communists in the Cold War. Postmodernism was quintessentially the artwork of the bricoleur. The social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss defined bricolage as 'oddments left over from human endeavours'. Postmodernism is a cultural lego kit built out of bricolage, pastiche, irony and homage, even homage of a sneering, elitest, condescending kind. The movement was internationalised incorporating figures as diverse as the archtiect Frank O'Gehry (b 1929 - ), Tudanori Yokoo (b 1931 - ) and Pieter de Bruyne (1931-87). Eventually Postmodernism modulated through a series of re-inventions: firstly as Strada Novissima, which speaks for itself, Studio Alchymia (Milan: 1978) and Memphis (1981) who's potent image was of founder member artists in a boxing ring. It was defined by its critics as an 'avante garde of reversed fronts' (Jurgen Habermas).
The Postmodern objects themselves deserve some attention. There are toys with abstract planes and block colours, toasters and vacuum cleaner prototypes. There's a Madonna with jigsaw puzzle colouring but the colours dwell upon the varying planes that logically, unerringly bind the eye into the image. There's a surreal metallic object with a copy of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream scrawled on the side as a kind of afterthought saying perhaps that abject neurosis can be a fashion too. There's also a pontillist chair which intimates camouflage within a previous, defunct aesthetic. The names allied to these objects are Bernhard Schobinger (b1946), Gaetano Pesce (b 1939), Danny Lune (b 1955), Heinz Landers (b 1961), Cinzia Ruggeri (b 1945), Michele de Lucchi (b 1945), Nathalie du Pasquier (b 1957) and George Sowden (b 1942) one of the few British artists to be included in the exhibition.
Surprisingly film is mentioned rather than foregrounded. Ridley Scott's Bladerunner which presents a dystopian future, borrowings from earlier films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis a slick aesthetic of decaying cities, replicants, empathy testing and androids all lifted from the original Phillip K Dick novel. Two clips emerge from the film, the opening sequence where the surface of a city is adumbrated distinctly like the surface of the moon and, a later sequence, the death of Zhora, who crashes bloodily through sets of glass and multitudinious mannequins. Bladerunner is a Postmodern re-boot of Fritz Lang's original film Metropolis with the android Zhora replacing the robotic woman Maria, it represents the triumph of style over substance. The death of Zhora typifies the film as the mannequins imply the androids, seeming human beings devoid of life, of actual empathy.
The exhibition ultimately dwells upon pop music as the vehicle of Postmodernism. Some graphic artists and pop musicians sought to incorporate the European avante garde of the early part of the 20th century. Wassily Kandinsky's incorporation of music in art adorned the cover of The Damned's album Music for Pleasure, for instance. Although the exhibition claims that Postmodernism dissolved the boundaries between the avante-garde and mass culture the truth is that the avante garde is only referenced when it had been safely dead for a long time. Music critics of the era focussed on Postmodernism as a sterile confession of defunct creativity, a confession of creative paralysis, a criticism that became more common and plaintive as the movement progressed.
Other artists referenced are Klaus Nomi and the video of his song Lightning Strikes. Wonderful, undoubtedly bizarre as Nomi's opera singing training manages to combine a pop music idiom with a science fiction aesthetic, an undoubtedly mad suit of glossy plastic fabric, a plastic bow tie and excessive make up combining to create another hollow Postmodern conundrum. There's David Byrne's big suit from Talking Heads Stop Making Sense tour, videos of Devo's Whip it and Laurie Anderson's synth music on O Superman sounding the artist's earliest experiences. The exhibition dwells on Grace Jones seemingly futuristic or neo-fascist slant on black power combined with androgyny and an amazing bodily transformation into a plastic sculpture which is jarring, grotesque, seeming to confirm stereotypes rather than challenging them. As a witty, final Postmodern conundrum Jones is the finale of the exhibition and Postmodernism itself, the trend of yesterday now labelled, catalogued as a museum exhibit.
We might surmise that Postmodernism was a bold attempt to stave off change with daring brands of incorporation. It seemed to be bold, daring, imaginative, new, avante garde but it also resembled an artifical attempt to resucitate capitalist culture at a point when it seemed to have become vapid, lifeless and exhausted. This false optimism is something that the exhibition expertly comments on as a running critique accompanies the many and varied exhibits that complete this amazing exhibition.
Paul Murphy, The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, October 2011
The curators of Postmodernism have traced the origins of the so-called Postmodern movement back to the '60s, to the work of Ettore Sottsas (1917-2007) and Alessandro Mendini (1931- ). The focus on radical design and dystopian possiblities is reminiscent of some of the typical movements of the former part of the 20th century and Postmodernism does seem to be an outcrop (or a barren outcrop) of both Surrealism and Futurism (which also originated in Italy). The exhibition binds a host of diverse artists, architects, alternate movements to it's thesis that Postmodernism was a driving force in culture from the 60s onwards, eventually feeding into the mass culture of the 1980s before ultimately dissipating.
Postmodernism is presented as binding together different cultural possibilities such as the typifying admixture of high art, classicism and pop culture owing aesthetic loyalty only to the next hollow cliche to be circumvented. In its earliest format it tended to sweep away the still-persisting Modernists in cultural wars generally more bitterly fought out than the ones concurrently happening between Capitalists and Communists in the Cold War. Postmodernism was quintessentially the artwork of the bricoleur. The social anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss defined bricolage as 'oddments left over from human endeavours'. Postmodernism is a cultural lego kit built out of bricolage, pastiche, irony and homage, even homage of a sneering, elitest, condescending kind. The movement was internationalised incorporating figures as diverse as the archtiect Frank O'Gehry (b 1929 - ), Tudanori Yokoo (b 1931 - ) and Pieter de Bruyne (1931-87). Eventually Postmodernism modulated through a series of re-inventions: firstly as Strada Novissima, which speaks for itself, Studio Alchymia (Milan: 1978) and Memphis (1981) who's potent image was of founder member artists in a boxing ring. It was defined by its critics as an 'avante garde of reversed fronts' (Jurgen Habermas).
The Postmodern objects themselves deserve some attention. There are toys with abstract planes and block colours, toasters and vacuum cleaner prototypes. There's a Madonna with jigsaw puzzle colouring but the colours dwell upon the varying planes that logically, unerringly bind the eye into the image. There's a surreal metallic object with a copy of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream scrawled on the side as a kind of afterthought saying perhaps that abject neurosis can be a fashion too. There's also a pontillist chair which intimates camouflage within a previous, defunct aesthetic. The names allied to these objects are Bernhard Schobinger (b1946), Gaetano Pesce (b 1939), Danny Lune (b 1955), Heinz Landers (b 1961), Cinzia Ruggeri (b 1945), Michele de Lucchi (b 1945), Nathalie du Pasquier (b 1957) and George Sowden (b 1942) one of the few British artists to be included in the exhibition.
Surprisingly film is mentioned rather than foregrounded. Ridley Scott's Bladerunner which presents a dystopian future, borrowings from earlier films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis a slick aesthetic of decaying cities, replicants, empathy testing and androids all lifted from the original Phillip K Dick novel. Two clips emerge from the film, the opening sequence where the surface of a city is adumbrated distinctly like the surface of the moon and, a later sequence, the death of Zhora, who crashes bloodily through sets of glass and multitudinious mannequins. Bladerunner is a Postmodern re-boot of Fritz Lang's original film Metropolis with the android Zhora replacing the robotic woman Maria, it represents the triumph of style over substance. The death of Zhora typifies the film as the mannequins imply the androids, seeming human beings devoid of life, of actual empathy.
The exhibition ultimately dwells upon pop music as the vehicle of Postmodernism. Some graphic artists and pop musicians sought to incorporate the European avante garde of the early part of the 20th century. Wassily Kandinsky's incorporation of music in art adorned the cover of The Damned's album Music for Pleasure, for instance. Although the exhibition claims that Postmodernism dissolved the boundaries between the avante-garde and mass culture the truth is that the avante garde is only referenced when it had been safely dead for a long time. Music critics of the era focussed on Postmodernism as a sterile confession of defunct creativity, a confession of creative paralysis, a criticism that became more common and plaintive as the movement progressed.
Other artists referenced are Klaus Nomi and the video of his song Lightning Strikes. Wonderful, undoubtedly bizarre as Nomi's opera singing training manages to combine a pop music idiom with a science fiction aesthetic, an undoubtedly mad suit of glossy plastic fabric, a plastic bow tie and excessive make up combining to create another hollow Postmodern conundrum. There's David Byrne's big suit from Talking Heads Stop Making Sense tour, videos of Devo's Whip it and Laurie Anderson's synth music on O Superman sounding the artist's earliest experiences. The exhibition dwells on Grace Jones seemingly futuristic or neo-fascist slant on black power combined with androgyny and an amazing bodily transformation into a plastic sculpture which is jarring, grotesque, seeming to confirm stereotypes rather than challenging them. As a witty, final Postmodern conundrum Jones is the finale of the exhibition and Postmodernism itself, the trend of yesterday now labelled, catalogued as a museum exhibit.
We might surmise that Postmodernism was a bold attempt to stave off change with daring brands of incorporation. It seemed to be bold, daring, imaginative, new, avante garde but it also resembled an artifical attempt to resucitate capitalist culture at a point when it seemed to have become vapid, lifeless and exhausted. This false optimism is something that the exhibition expertly comments on as a running critique accompanies the many and varied exhibits that complete this amazing exhibition.
Paul Murphy, The Victoria & Albert Museum, London, October 2011
Comments