Technology and the Postmodern

<< Continued from yesterday

The Postmodernist as Cynic

Postmodernism, while useful in its deflating of overblown Modernist cant (Robert Irwin referring to certain Modernist site-specific work (certainly Richard Serra's) as 'the turd in the plaza'), also was laced with an ironic, self-knowing, self-congratulatory streak - 'to knowingly and ironically work.'

The vague cynicism inherent in Postmodernist thought appears as part of a shallow perception that the Postmodern era is so important as to recognize in itself the ending and beginning of hugely opposed intervals of human existence, as though no other endings or beginnings carried as much relevance. Ironically, Peter Dale in 'A Survivor's Guide to Twentieth Century Music,' makes a similar charge about Modernism. Perhaps it is built-in, that those in most eras see themselves not just as liberators from the old ways, but as adventurers at the threshold of humanity-shaking times. It is hard to think otherwise regarding the Digital Age.

But cynicism in Postmodern thought runs deeper. Postmodern thought, tracing the use of the 'hyper-real,' cannot allow for the real, and in so doing must assume and accept art out of assemblage; not art out of creativity of the genius of the unseen/unknown. That this is to be discluded seems a gigantic forfeit, a caving in to dispirited socialist leanings that have lost the economic war, so will at least continue the intellectual war at high pitch. Supported by democratic egalitarian dogma, anyone, with or without any training of any sort, may be an artist by simple declaration. Thankfully this practice has not spread to the medical profession yet. Recently a very well-known art critic was overheard saying, 'quality, whatever that is.'

Returning to past ages we find assemblage as a ready component of previous art. Mozart, who strung together fragments of dance forms, lyric themes and operatic gestures within a dozen or so bars of a sonata-allegro movement, was a proto-postmodernist. Yet his creative role, beyond the elemental role of assemblage, was capable only through bringing to bear the forces of his genius on the real as he determined it. Disparity of materials in Mozart led to synthesis and a profound relation of opposing ideas. This is the law of genius, a concept increasingly foreign to those entrenched in misunderstood ideals of egalitarian society - be they communist or democratic.

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Copyright © 27 February 2000 Jeff Talman, Saratoga Springs, NY, USA