Emigrants, especially in Colonial times, preferred to characterize themselves as outside the European tradition. However, while the content occasionally differed, American art generally reflected European trends and styles and became a denominator of wealth, status and political power. During the nineteenth century, a number of American artists relocated to Europe in order to study painting and sculpture. With the coming of the twentieth century, heralded by such events as the New York Armory Show of1913, as well as the influence of waves of artists emigrating to escape World War One ( and later World War Two), a much more radical thinking began to alter the American art world. Even the outpouring of African-American literature, painting, music and dance which emerged during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's, though more public, remained on the fringes of American culture. It was not until the 1960's that a concentrated multi-ethnic and multi-cultural movement challenged the prevailing racism, class and gender bias, marginalization, invisibility, lack of access and recognition which was the daily bread of women and "people of color."
The artforms of marginalized ethnicities often takes forms other than painting, drawing, sculpture or architecture. A discussion about "core ethnicities" must acknowledge that all sorts of ethnic, religious and artisan-based affinity groups contribute to a wide variety of themes, ideas, materials and images. Much of the art history of these very diverse marginalized groups was not compiled until after the 1960's, so it does not fall within the scope of this supplement. Lucy Lippard points out that: "African American and Latino American artists have been waiting in the wings since the 1960's when political movements nurtured a new consciousness. Only in the 80's have they been invited again, provisionally, to say their pieces on the national stage. In the early 80's the presence of Asian Americans as artists was acknowledged, although they too had been organizing since the early 70's. Ironically, the last to receive commercial and institu-tional attention in the urban artworlds have been the 'first Americans' whose land and art have both been colonized and excluded from the realms of 'high art' despite their cultures' profound contributions to it. " 14
Between the 1950's and mid-70's the American art world underwent a fundamental rethinking about many of the very issues and inequities discussed in this reader. Theorists reframed the time-honored question "What is art and who gets to decide?" within a radical format which included feminist-Marxist ideology, cultural relativism, and anti-assimilationist thinking. As Professor Lippard explains, a much broader contextual and temporal definition of art, culture and meaning has developed: "Post Modern analysis has raised questions about power, desire and meaning that are applicable to cross-cultural exchange. The most crucial of these insights is the necessity to avoid thinking of other cultures as existing exclusively in the past, while the present is the property of an active 'Western civilization'." 15
Post Modernism is defined as standing in opposition to Modernism. Post Modernism is also discussed as a continuation of Modernism, flowing out of Modernism. In addition, Post Modernism is seen as a repudiation of Modernism. There is a clear distinction between the two, there is no distinction between the two. In Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, editor Brean Wallis points out that "As a cultural term, Post modernism has been used to describe everything from a broad cultural shift to new directions in rock music." 16 An arguably ubiquitous and vague term, Post Modernism nevertheless represents a tremendous evolution in cultural consciousness. But in order to comprehend the relevance of Post Modernism, it is necessary to understand Modernism.
Art historical time-periods do not begin on one date and end on another. In the nineteenth century, Impressionism flowed into Post-Impressionism. Then Expressionism and Symbolism burgeoned into Modernism which exploded during the early twentieth century, as the effects of the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution with its concurrent political and psychological ideologies swept Western Europe. Modernism is characterized by Brean Wallis as the "great dream of industrial capitalism, an idealistic ideology which placed its faith in progress and sought to create a new order. A self-consciously experimental movement..."17Concerned as it was with "innovation, novelty and dynamism," 18 Modernist painting concentrated on "formal" qualities: color, flatness, paint application, scale, newness, and was less concerned with narrative, figuration, content, history or the descriptive. "The modernist aim was to critique the social and aesthetic order-in the case of the visual arts-state sanctioned aestheticism-by embracing an imagined primitiveness whose authenticity they opposed to a "decadent" West, an attitude steeped in Enlightenment tradition. For them, Islamic, Oceanic and African art offered visual models of simplification and ornament representing authentic primitive expressions of thought and feeling." 19
In the nineteenth century, the proliferation of the camera freed artists from slavish representation, and allowed them to rethink medium (form) and message (content and context). "L'art pour l'art"(Art for art's sake) was the revolutionary cry of the Impressionists, Expressionists, Surrealists-the Avant garde. As Marcel Duchamp asserted, "This is a work of art because I say it is." According to Modernists, art has universal significance and needs no text or context. Art can stand alone; art is its own reason for being. And, of course anyone with the right sensibility can appreciate art.
Brean Wallis defines Modernism as the "sine qua non" of an Anglo-Saxon white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal system: an "oppressive progression of great ideas and great masters" 20 which emphasized the cult of the individual. Tending as it did to romanticize easel painting as the high-water-mark of achievement and to value the work of Caucasian males over all other ethnicities and women. Modernism turned inward on itself and became increasingly reductionist and inaccessible to the average museum goer and sometimes to individuals working within the movement itself.
Modernism's narrowed parameters and movement inward was greatly influenced by the writings of art critic Clement Greenberg. By the second half of the twentieth century, pure Modernism found a champion who emphasized the separation of the pure aesthetics of abstraction from social and political content or context. In Greenberg's view, "painterly" paintings, in which there existed evidence of the painters' "hand" ( elements such as texture, shading, and the illusion of depth) were remnants of the past and should be replaced by what came to be referred-to as "post-painterly abstraction"or Formalism: Formalism decreed a narrowly linear progress in modernism toward a relentless purification. Only optical facts (that which was verifiably visible) were significant in the discussion of painting. Subject matter was irrelevant, illusion forbidden, and anything that did not fit Greenberg's logic was dropped from his definition of modernism as if it never existed. 21
Greenberg's Modernism worshipped newness and originality, but it bogged down in rule making and a critical attitude which was translated into an esoteric and formalist language of abstraction. The tendency toward self-referring disinterest in the outside world, toward the cult of the cognoscenti (those in the know), to artistic and cultural elitism could not have come at a less advantageous time for the Modernists. Painting was reduced to fundamental Minimalist parameters: "reductive and austere. Its purity came to seem puritanica,l"22 and finally to theory. With the Conceptual Art movement, in which the object itself was superceded by the idea or concept of art, Modernism painted itself into a corner. When it turned to look out upon the world, the world was no longer paying any attention. Modernism, which purported to be intrigued by newness, progress and technology had been co-opted. The world was watching TV! Post Modernism had arrived.
In the essay, "Post modernism/Post colonialism" which appears in Critical Terms for Art History, art historian and critic Homi K. Bhabha attempts to frame the complexities of Post Modernist discourse: "The discussion of post modernism is at once a post mortem report on the end(s) of modernity and a postpartum report on the origins of the present, our own epoch, still struggling to be born." 23
But it is in an excerpt from the introduction to The Order of Things, 24 in which Michel Foucault, describes his response to J.L. Borges' translation of a Chinese Encyclopedia that the semiotic basis for Post Modernism is elucidated:
...it is written that animals are divided into: a) belonging to the Emperor, b) embalmed, c) tame, d) sucking pigs, e) sirens, f) fabulous, g) stray dogs, h) included in the present classification, i) frenzied, j) innumerable, k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, l) et cetera, m) having just broken the water pitcher, n) that from a long way off look like flies...the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought. 25
Foucault, often considered to be the father of Post Modernism, realized a moment of ecstatic clarity, coupled with a recognition of the pathos of the human being in a world of indecipherable signs and symbols, each meaning something different to every individual: a bona fide tower of Babel. Realizing the ultimate failure of theories about the universality of communication, Foucault's laughter was the only truly appropriate response. Foucault recognized that representations (words or images) are always mediated by the historical and linguistic (symbolic) environment in which they arise. In other words, in the case of the Chinese Encyclopedia, Foucault, the Frenchman, would never understand the logic of such an "Oriental" grouping. Foucault's laughter wasn't derisive, it was the "aha" response to the penetration of a great mystery: there is no such thing as a perfect communication or objectivity.
Modernism contended that communication through imagery alone or, in the case of writing, through text was a "thing in itself." Words (or imagery) are pure and have universal significance: their cultural context is unimportant. Foucault's laughter is Post Modernism at its most distilled: a metaphor for a more "now7quot; response to our incomparably complex world. Post Modernism is spontaneous, seemingly irrational- the moment of "aha." Foucault's laughter is the laughter of a man who just got the joke.
Major technological and cultural changes came to fruition in America and the rest of the world during the mid-twentieth century. These included the burgeoning of visual media, its effect on popular culture, the advent of computer technology, the restructuring of capitalism, and decline of Stalinist Marxism. The emergence of decolonized "Third World" countries into the international marketplace, the growing popularity of feminist thinking, and especially the Civil Rights movement affected American perceptions and values. In the ensuing political and cultural crises, ethical attitudes and aesthetic certainties no longer remained stable or universal. During the 1970's, an "interdisciplinary examination of the dynamics of representation and the function of cultural myths within social systems" 26 took place. New theories in anthropology, archaeology, feminism and socio-political thought demanded a "radical democracy beyond Marxism." 27 It all rained down on America: Vietnam, terrorism, famines, racism, assassinations, media exposure of the hidden problem of violence against women and children, coups, serial killers, Government cover-ups (Watergate), CIA gun-for-drug-involvement, the destruction of the environment, all in the name of progress, of Modernity.
Contemporary society found itself in the Modernist version of Hieronymous Bosch: a phantasmagorical and hallucinatory vision of confused images and symbols, double meanings, hidden agendas. Pathos replaced enthusiasm. There could never be "enough.7quot; Progress-Modernity's Pied Piper -whether in the guise of the newest and most non-toxic poison weed spray or as a safe non-toxic nuclear waste dump, could no longer provide a quick fix or magic bullet. Anglo-Saxon patriarchal systems, with their imperialist, colonizing politics of power and opposition, broadcast equally across classes via television, could not serve the needs of the diverse populations who demanded to be recognized, respected and included. Modernism, in the sense that it represented a religion of progress and endless new frontiers was proving to be a god with feet of clay. A new way of thinking about the world would have to evolve-but what can follow the "cult of the new"?
Because Post Modernism is, by definition, in a constant state of redefinition, it avoids dogma and doctrine. This makes it very difficult to talk about! Post Modernism is not "anti-Modernism"and does not propose a conventional response to the complexities of our world. Post Modernism is an unabashedly delightful yeowl back at an increasingly unpredictable and unfathomable world. Foucault's laughter came out of a profound moment of illumination: " a sense of ending, advent of something new..." 28 With Foucault's laughter as psychic fuel, Post Modernism has navigated the ship of art to new destinations and invited those previously excluded along for the ride.
Post Modernism says: No need to reject the past, let's reinvent it: no need to reject media, let's appropriate it. Art can be anything, it can be infused with deep spiritual meaning or have no meaning whatsoever, or it can be both-simultaneously! It can be a reproduction of a reproduction or it can be graffiti. The work of the lone white male artist no longer represents sublime achievement. Group efforts and collaborations are also valid. Women and non-white ethnicities also deserve an equal place and a voice in the American cultural dialog. With Post Modernism, a way began to open for those who were previously marginalized.
In the Introduction to Post Modern Theory: Critical Interrogations, editors Stephen Best and Douglas Kellner explain Post Modernist theoretical scuffles:
Post modernism has been challenged as relativistic, irrational and nihilistic. No less an historian than Arnold Toynbee refuted Post modernism's free-for-all multidisciplinary embracing of styles, interpretations and questions as a fundamental break with history as we know it. Post modernism's proponents argue that it is a philosophy of multiplicity, plurality, and yes, fragmentation and indeterminacy, but that those qualities are a necessary part of any theory which intends to 'close the gap between art, the audience, the critic and the layperson'. 29
Post Modernism decries Modernist isolation and elitism and so challenges the foundations of Western European ideology. Ethnocentrism is stripped of its moral authority in a pluralistic world. Post Modernism is a repudiation of Anglo-Saxonist Eurocentric cultural systems and their global hegemony. Post Modernism addresses the pathos of the present with the laughter of enlightenment, and in that moment of realization, points the way to the possibility of a much more complex, accessible world for artists, critics, audiences and laypersons.
Does this mean that we will no longer adhere to an aesthetic? That there is no longer a need for "formal" critiques of art. That "anything goes"? Is the marketplace the final arbiter of everything, and in this cultural free-for-all, have we not returned to the very "It's art because I say it is" of Duchamp? Do Modernist cultural objectives still apply? Is the easel painting valid? Should white men make art? If everything is art, then why say anything is art?
The underlying issue is really about power: what is art and who controls the definition? Is it the gallery owner or museum curator, the critic or the scholar, the teacher or the artist him-or-herself, or is it the consumer whose money provides fuel for aesthetic enterprises? "Post modernism is impure. It knows about shortages. It knows about inflation and devaluation...its method is synthesis rather than analysis. It is style-free and free-style. Playful and full of doubt, it denies nothing...structured by time rather than form, concerned with context instead of style, it uses memory, research, confession, fiction-with irony, whimsy, and disbelief.""30
Whatever may be said by its critics, Post Modernism opened cultural floodgates, admitting marginalized artists of every ethnicity and cultural persuasion and provided the political and theoretical basis for acknowledging the present multiplicity of artforms and expressions.