MODERN ART THEORY - POSTMODERNISM

MODERN ART THEORY - POSTMODERNISM

INTRODUCTION TO POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism refers more to a broad collection of ideas and cultural trends than an actual artistic movement. Critics and theorists over the past four decades have offered differing views on when postmodernism began, and some have even argued that it is simply a groundless concept concocted by academics. In the realm of art theory, postmodernism animates two schools of thought, one holding that modernism as a whole is over (Deconstructive Postmodernism), the other that modernism requires extensive revision (Constructive Postmodernism).

THE EMERGENCE OF POSTMODERN ART AND THEORY

When Abstract Expressionism reigned supreme, the key debate among critics was between those who emphasized art's formal elements and those who focused on the artist's emotional response to the canvas. Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, when Abstract Expressionism had already been falling out of public favor for some time, many artists turned increasingly toward mixed-media art forms, such as Conceptualism, Super-Realism and Neo-Expressionism, which were precursors to Postmodern art. This shift compelled critics to reconsider the factors that determined an artwork's intrinsic value. In these new styles, critics noted an unprecedented degree of self-awareness on the part of the artists, as well as a rejection of Modern art's emotional and spiritual detachment from society. This gave rise to the two distinct schools of Postmodern art theory.

DECONSTRUCTIVE POSTMODERNISM

Theorists from this school seek to refute, or perhaps overcome, all that was prevalent during the Modern era of art. They view the key ideas and values of modernist art as equality, personal freedom, natural beauty, capitalism and a general bourgeois sensibility. Deconstructive Postmodernists argue that such values are baseless because they rest on certain confident assumptions about the way the world is, whereas in fact nothing in the world is knowable or understandable. Consequently, many have argued that Deconstructive Postmodernism is nihilistic in nature.

CONSTRUCTIVE POSTMODERNISM

This more proactive theoretical approach does not reject modernism but rather seeks to revise its ideas and values. It is in many respects a call to return to pre-modern values according to which matters of aesthetics, spirituality, science and ethics were understood to be united, so that, for example, artists did not consciously differentiate between what was aesthetically pleasing and spiritually profound. Constructive Postmodernist criticism is deliberately vague due to its fundamental suspicion of modernism's fondness for categorization and classification.

MAJOR POSTMODERNIST ART THEORISTS:

	LEO STEINBERG While teaching art history at Hunter College in New York in the late 1950s, Steinberg made a name for himself by arguing that Abstract Expressionism - both the style itself and its greater cultural significance - was finished. According to Steinberg, AbEx and similar modern styles had proven themselves valueless art forms, and the art world was hungry for art with social meaning and historical context, produced by artists who made their motivations clear. Steinberg was himself an outspoken proponent of placing art within both an historical frame and the context of an artist's personal life. His most famous argument was that it would be necessary in the post-AbEx era to examine art using "other criteria." This process entailed asking questions like 'Why does one become an artist in the first place?' and 'What is the artist communicating to the public with this painting?' Having discarded the analytical approaches of Greenberg and Rosenberg, Steinberg emphasized instead the centrality of such practical questions to understanding modern art.  Learn More
	ROBERT ROSENBLUM Rosenblum was one of the more outspoken anti-formalist art critics and teachers of his day. Of all his contributions, arguably the most significant was his serving as curator for several exhibitions of modern art that attempted to redefine - but not reject - the modern canon. In this respect, Rosenblum was very much a Constructive Postmodernist. Rosenblum maintained that modern art consisted not of a sequence of styles, but rather of any and all art forms dating back to the early 18th century that dared to experiment with perspective and objectivity.  Learn More
	ROBERT HUGHES Hughes argued that following the suicide of Mark Rothko and the ensuing court battle over Rothko's estate (and the monetary value of his paintings), Abstract Expressionism had been struck down for good. Art in all its forms, Hughes conceded, had always been a commodity of sorts. But he contended that with the lifework of one of Abstract Expressionist's greatest figures reduced to courtroom squabbles over dollar value, the creative and spiritual freedom that defined AbEx (arguably the zenith of the Modern artistic era) had reached a definitive end.  Learn More
	JOHN RUSSELL Russell argued in his criticism that everything was connected. He believed that styles as seemingly opposed as Action Painting and Land Art were in fact cogs in the same artistic wheel. While Russell's criticism was never formally categorized as Postmodern, his accepting attitude towards modern art in nearly all its forms makes him, in retrospect, a Constructive Postmodernist. While celebrating new Post-AbEx styles like Installation, Minimalism and Land Art, he regarded them not as superior to any previous style or medium, but simply as new forms of artistic experimentation and affirmations of the world's ability to reinvent itself.  Learn More
	ROSALIND KRAUSS Originally a formalist critic in the tradition of Clement Greenberg, Krauss shifted her perspective in the mid-1970s and became something of a Deconstructive Postmodernist. In her arts and culture journal October, Krauss created an open forum free from all formalist art theory in which she celebrated the writings and theories of the French philosophers commonly referred to as the "Deconstructionists." These theorists held that there existed no universal truth in archetypes and symbolism, and that it was therefore incorrect to base art criticism on this assumption.  Learn More

- See more at: http://www.theartstory.org/section_theory_postmodernism.htm#sthash.iJKvQL6c.dpuf

Rosalind Krauss -Art Critic and Art Historian

Rosalind Krauss was a critic and contributing editor for Artforum and one of the founders of the quarterly art theory journal October. She has been a highly influential critic and theorist in the post-Abstract Expressionist era. Originally a disciple of the formalist Clement Greenberg, Krauss later became enthralled with newer artistic movements that she believed required a different theoretical approach, which focused less on the aesthetic purity of an art form (prevalent in Greenberg's criticism), and more on aesthetics that captured a theme or historical and/or cultural issue. Krauss still teaches Art History at Columbia University in New York. 

KEY IDEAS / INFORMATION

• Krauss viewed Abstract Expressionism as a singular movement whose practitioners adhered to strict standards of medium purity and anti-commercialism.
• With the arrival of new artistic styles in the 1960 and 70s, Krauss observed a variety of young artists experimenting with radically new perceptions of art and space. In her writing, Krauss placed a particular emphasis on artists who worked in sculpture and artwork that occupied the three dimensional plane.
• As a critic and art historian, Krauss celebrated innovative post-AbEx styles as part of a new enlightenment in the history of Modernism; she deemphasized the importance of medium purity in art, and directed her attention toward matters of feminism, post-structuralism and post-minimalism.

CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION

Rosalind Epstein Krauss was born to Matthew M. Epstein, an attorney, and Bertha Luber. Her father instilled in Rosalind a love for the arts, and would frequently take her to museums in the Washington, D.C. area. 

Rosalind earned her Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Wellesley College in 1962, the same year she became married to the architect, Richard I. Krauss. Immediately after graduating from Wellesley, Krauss was accepted into Harvard University’s Department of Fine Arts (now the Department of History of Art and Architecture), where she received her Ph.D. in Art History. Her dissertation was on the work of American sculptor David Smith, who had passed away in 1965. If it had not been for Smith’s passing, and as a direct consequence, posthumous fame, it is doubtful Harvard would have allowed Krauss to write about a contemporary artist like Smith. 

One of Krauss’ classmates at Harvard was the art critic and historian Michael Fried, with whom she shared an early affinity for the theories and writings of Clement Greenberg. Krauss and Fried soon developed opposing views on the direction taken by Modern art in the post-Abstract Expressionist era. While Fried celebrated the Post-Painterly Abstractions of artists like Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski, Krauss was a fan of the Minimalists, such as Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. 

Krauss earned her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1969, but she had been writing art criticism for the journal Artforum since 1966. In her first year of writing for the magazine, Krauss published a well-received article entitled “Allusion and Illusion in Donald Judd.” 

WORK AS CRITIC AND PROFESSOR

After graduating from Harvard, Krauss became an associate professor of Art History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and quickly rose to the position of full professor within two years. 

In 1971 Krauss was promoted to contributing editor for Artforum. That same year, she divorced her husband and published her first book, an expanded version of her Harvard dissertation, entitled Terminal Iron Works: The Sculpture of David Smith. 

The following year, Krauss published in the pages of Artforum what is arguably her seminal essay, “A View of Modernism,” in which she began to criticize Greenbergian art criticism for largely ignoring content and feeling. She also condemned a form of Rosenbergian criticism in writing: “In the 50s we had been alternately tyrannized and depressed by the psychologizing whine of `Existentialist’ criticism.” Krauss’ view of Modernism was evidently still developing in these pages, as she devoted more time to pinpointing faults with art criticism rather than elaborating a new strategy for examining art. 

In 1972 Krauss left M.I.T. to take a position at Princeton University, where she lectured regularly and directed their visual arts program. 

In 1975 Krauss left Princeton and became an associate professor of Hunter College in New York City. The following year, Krauss left Artforum (considered a rash decision at the time, given the magazine’s high profile and favorable reputation) and together with her former Harvard classmate, Annette Michelson, started the arts and culture quarterly journal October. The journal’s namesake came from the 1927 Sergei Eisenstein film, October: Ten Days That Shook the World, based on the Bolshevik October revolution. 

THE “OCTOBERISTS”

The “Octoberists,” as the journal’s founders were called (including Krauss, Michelson and the artist Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe), founded the publication in New York City, and appointed Krauss as its founding editor. October was formed as a politically-charged journal that introduced American readers to the ideas of French post-structural theory, made popular by Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes. October also became a popular forum for postmodern art theory. 

Krauss used October as a way to publish essays on her emergent ideas on post-structuralist art theory, Deconstructionist theory, psychoanalysis, postmodernism and feminism. More importantly, October was significant for revisiting and stressing the historical importance of early modes of 20th-century avant-garde art, such as Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism. She currently continues to edit and write for October. 

LEGACY

Krauss is one of the 20th-century’s foremost art critics and theorists on Modern and postmodern art, having written in-depth analyses of individual artists like Picasso, Giacometti and Pollock, and broader conceptual studies of artistic movements like Minimalism and Conceptualism. Her greatest contribution to art criticism came when she broke from formalist Greenbergian theory (which prioritized medium as an artwork’s most expressive feature) and offered a new idea that, by the 1970s, the art world had entered the “post-medium” age, wherein artistic media had ceased to be important. According to Krauss, “post-medium” forms of art (or what many think of as postmodern or post-structuralist) did not try to engage people via a pure and discrete artistic medium, nor did they represent a means of protest to commercialism and commodification. Artists in the post-medium age could still strive for purity in their art, Krauss argued, but this effort had less to do with any form of media and everything to do with the work’s expressive power and historical contextualization. 

THEORY SECTION:

EARLY IDEAS ON MODERNISM

Rosalind Krauss’ early writings from the mid-1960s were informed by the perspectives of critics like Greenberg and the young Michael Fried, who believed that technically-proficient modes of painterly abstraction were the greatest artistic achievements of the Modern era. “With `modernism,’” Krauss wrote in “A View of Modernism” in 1972, “…it was precisely its methodology that was important to a lot of us who began to write about art in the early 1960s. That method demanded lucidity. It demanded that one not talk about anything in a work of art that one could not point to. It involved tying back one’s perceptions about art in the present to what one knew about the art of the past.” Krauss admittedly adhered to these standards of art writing, adopting the Greenbergian formalist approach of considering solely what one can see with one’s own eyes. 

BREAKS FROM GREENBERGIAN FORMALISM

Krauss’ perspective, however, eventually diverged from Greenberg. Whereas Greenberg had concluded that abstract painting of the 1950s and 60s represented the pinnacle of Modern artistic achievement, Krauss came to believe that Greenberg’s approach was too limited in scope. She began to consider the more elusive qualities of an artwork; the things one could not point to in a painting or sculpture. This eventually led her to conclude that purity, while still an important quality in art, had little to do with style or medium and more to do with the artist’s intentions. 

According to Krauss, the responsibility of the Modern avant-garde artist was to continually challenge the artistic standards established by history. Consequently, the critic’s job was to recognize these challenges, whether or not they constituted something notable. Krauss wrote in 1972, “We can no longer fail to notice that if we make up schemas of meaning based on history, we are playing into systems of control and censure. We are no longer innocent. `For if the norms of the past serve to measure the present, they also serve to construct it.’” Krauss’ goal in writing this was to free both artist and critic from succumbing to certain expectations. 

INFLUENCE OF CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PHILOSOPHY

When Krauss left Artforum to establish the quarterly October, she set out to create an open forum for art and cultural criticism to exist virtually free from the confines of traditional art theory. This was heavily informed by the writings of French philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. Commonly referred to as post-structuralists or Deconstructionists, they proposed that there existed no universal meaning or symbolism, no common archetypal symbols; therefore, it was irresponsible to critique any form of art based on this understanding. 

This new post-structuralist theory was a significant break from early Abstract Expressionist theory, which took as its influence the ideas of Existentialism, psychoanalysis and Eastern philosophy, all of which stressed the existence and importance of mutually shared experience, universal symbols and shapes. In adopting post-structuralist theory, Krauss revisited the work of early-20th-century artists like Duchamp and Ray, and early uses of photography, in order to stress that these artworks were not bound by a supposed universal symbolism. 

ARTISTIC INFLUENCES

Below are Rosalind Krauss' major influences, and the people and ideas that she influenced in turn. 

ARTISTS

Marcel Duchamp

Alberto Giacometti

David Smith

Donald Judd

Dan Flavin

CRITICS/FRIENDS

Clement Greenberg

Michael Fried

Leo Steinberg

Georges Bataille

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

MOVEMENTS

Cubism

Surrealism

Existentialism

Abstract Expressionism

Happenings

Rosalind Krauss

Years Worked: 1966 - present

ARTISTS

Allan Kaprow

Richard Serra

Robert Morris

Sol LeWitt

William Kentridge

CRITICS/FRIENDS

Michael Fried

Annette Michelson

Barbara Rose

Peter Schjeldahl

Hal Foster

MOVEMENTS

Conceptual Art

Installation Art

Minimalism

Photorealism

post_modernism

 

QUOTES

“Obviously modernism is a sensibility – one that reaches out past that small band of art critics of which I was a part, to include a great deal more than, and ultimately to criticize, what I stood for.” 

“Almost everyone is agreed about `70s art. It is diversified, split, factionalized. Unlike the art of the last several decades, its energy does not seem to flow through a single channel for which a synthetic term, like Abstract Expressionism, or Minimalism, might be found.” 

- See more at: http://www.theartstory.org/critic-krauss-rosalind.htm#sthash.Mnk6zPr9.dpuf

Secret of Roman Concrete that allowed it to endure for over 2000 yrs.......

18 DECEMBER, 2014 - 22:21 MARK MILLER

Researchers discover secret recipe of Roman concrete that allowed it to endure for over 2,000 years

Ancient Rome’s concrete recipe is an impressive feat in architectural history. Some Roman buildings are so spectacular in their construction and beauty that modern builders would never attempt something similar, even with today’s technology. Now engineers are beginning to understand why ancient Roman concrete was so revolutionary.

Rome built many of its buildings and monuments with concrete made of lime, volcanic sand, and volcanic rock. The ancient Romans’ buildings and structures, some of the most spectacular in the world, have withstood chemical and physical onslaught for 2,000 years and are still standing.

An advanced concrete recipe allowed the Romans to constructed magnificent structures that no builder would dare to attempt today. Source: BigStockPhoto

Previous research has already found that Roman concrete was far superior to our own modern concrete, which is made to endure about 120 years.

It’s been known for a while that the volcanic sand used in Roman concrete and mortar made their buildings last for so long.  Now a new study by a group of engineers and engineering researchers has discovered the precise recipe that made the Roman concrete endure much longer than concrete used today.

The researchers used an ancient recipe written down by Roman architect Vitruvius to mix a batch of mortar. The engineers let it harden for six months and looked at it with microscopes. They found that clusters of a dense mineral form through the Roman process. These strätlingite crystals, formed by the volcanic sand as it binds with limestone, prevented the spread of cracks by reinforcing interfacial zones. Interfacial zones are weak links inside the concrete.

A magnified piece of Roman concrete consisting of lime, volcanic sand, and rock (Wikimedia Commons)

It isn’t just that Roman concrete is more lasting. It is also not as bad for the environment in the manufacturing of it because the mix only needed to be heated to 900 Celsius as opposed to the 1,450 of modern concrete.

“Stronger, longer-lasting modern concrete, made with less fuel and less release of carbon into the atmosphere, may be the legacy of a deeper understanding of how the Romans made their incomparable concrete,” Ancient-Origins.net wrote in 2013. Heating the limestone in 19 billion tons of Portland cement made annually accounts for 7 percent of human-released carbon into the atmosphere, according to the new study.

Ceiling in the Pantheon, made entirely from Roman concrete. Credit: Giulio Menna / flickr

Rome is situated between two volcanic regions, Monti Sabatini to the north and the Alban Hills to the south. When Augustus became the first emperor of Rome in 27 AD, he initiated a building campaign. After builders settled on using Pozzolonic ash from the Alban Hills’ Pozzolane Rosse ash flow, Augustus decreed that Pozzolonic  mortar be the standard in Roman buildings. That decision cemented Rome’s enduring architectural legacy. Roman architects found that this mortar substantially improved the margin of safety in buildings, which were becoming more daring in their design.

The prototypical example of this may be the awe-inspiring Roman Pantheon, a huge concrete building capped by 142-foot dome. It was built in the second century AD.

The Roman Panethon, a huge concrete building that has endured for nearly 2,000 years. Source: BigStockPhoto

“Made entirely out of concrete, without the reinforcing support of structural steel, no modern engineer would dare attempt such a feat, says David Moore, author of The Roman Pantheon: The Triumph of Concrete. ‘Modern codes of engineering practice would not permit such mischief,’” Smithsonian.com says.

Read more: http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/researchers-discover-secret-recipe-roman-concrete-020141#ixzz3ZwotA5j9
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Writing TIPS ....... Stealing like an Artist- ART IS 99% ROBBERY

If you have a long writing project to undertake, give this a read beforehand. I really really really wish I’d read chapter 3 (“A Mountain With Stairs”) before starting work on my most recent book. So many of the structural problems I ran into this time around would’ve been prevented.

The big idea of The Clockwork Muse is not much different than the “Be Boring” chapter ofSteal Like An Artist: a routine, methodical approach to writing will produce more work in the long term, and taking things slow yet steady over time will get you through big projects better than short bursts of inspired, frenzied work.

Some favorite ideas, below.

Pick a good time of day.

Henry Miller wrote in the morning, Anthony Burgess wrote in the afternoon, James Baldwin wrote at night. Doesn’t matter when you work, you just have to identify what times you’re more likely to cook.

Stick to an outline until you’re between drafts.

This, this, THIS:

You should make…major structural changes in your manuscript only between drafts, when you are not actually writing. Within each draft it is better to stick to the same outline even when you realize that it is just a provisional blueprint that may still change many times later on…if you constantly keep “reshuffling” your ideas, you will never get to complete writing anything!

“First drafts are for learning what your [book] is about.” —Bernard Malamud

Shitty. First. Drafts. The shitty first draft is crucial, because “much of our thinking actually takes place while we are writing!” First drafts aren’t worth showing to anybody. Write the first draft, then write a new one.

Re-type each draft.

Re-typing each draft means you go over every single sentence, and each sentence gets improved.

Save the introduction for last.

As the book changes, I’m always tempted to rewrite the introduction. Bad, bad idea. Backtracking always means you end up spinning your wheels.

Underpromise and overdeliver.

Build “shock absorbers” into your writing process—overestimate the amount of work you have to do and underestimate your ability to do it. Ambition often leads to disappointment. “Our sense of accomplishment is a function of not only how well we actually do but also what our initial expectations were.”

Working slow doesn’t mean you can’t be prolific.

“Writing is cumulative.” It adds up. A page a day = 365 pages a year. E.L. Doctorow said one page a day made him happy, two pages were extraordinary. Philip Roth said, “I work…just about every day. If I sit there like that for two or three years, at the end I have a book.”

Filed under: writing, my reading year 2013