We went to the V&A exhibition on postmodernism

In the departure from modernism's utopian vision, postmodernism questions what can arise from the ashes when the ideals burn. Postmodernism defies definition, explores the theatrical and the theoretical and presents a self awareness about style itself.

Postmodernism is often described as a broken mirror, presenting life through a fragmented surface.

Techniques and subjects the exhibition addressed that were of particular interest to us were bricolage (cut and paste technique), appropriation and performance. Below are some examples of artists and what we enjoyed about their work:

Tadanori Yokoo


Yokoo played with appropriation and bricolage. His work is said to have little regard for cognitive clarity or message. We were drawn to the strong rich aesthetic and the vibrant colours.

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Two artists who emerged from Las Vegas that we were particularly drawn to were the couple Venturi and Scott Brown. Much of the work that came out of Las Vegas explore using 'low' popular culture as an ingredient for postmodernism. In his architecture, Venturi claims to prioritise "messy vitality over obvious unity". 

Postmodern architecture has been accused of being pastiche or merely ironic however this exhibition explored the buildings as "more than a series of arch jokes at history's expense" and questioned whether they are actually radically expansive and hugely optimistic. 

Venturi and Scott Brown's work takes an obvious delight in popular culture, rather than shying away from it- this is something we  would like to explore whilst devising our work.

Some of the messages explored in postmodern architecture also appealed to us, particularly depicted in these two quotes:

"[the architecture has an] elegiac sense if past that modernism excluded"

"[it] replaces monolithic idiom with a plurality of competing ideas and styles" 

We plan to read Venturi's 'Learning from Las Vegas' (1972), and maybe re-create this picture

Here's some of their work

Giulo Paolini's l'altra figura

George particularly liked this statue. It shows the melancholy of postmodernism's regard for the past. It is an appropriation, which opened our eyes to the power available in using existing images

Brodsky, Utkin - 'the paper architects'

George particularly liked these drawings, plans of buildings that were never built. The pictures explore the failure of the Soviet Union and how that is a failing of a utopian ideal. They explore the melancholy, nostalgia and antique. They are explicitly critical of an ideology of progress. 

Bricolage

Although often used to describe pieces of art, the term bricolage wasn't defined til later on in the exhibition.  It is the cut and paste technique, described by Levi-Strauss as "oddments left over from human endeavors". They embrace the full diversity of the world and synthesis all found components. We would like to have ago at bricolage!

Derek Jarman 

In the exhibition was a segment of Jarman's The Last of England. The video showed Britain decaying into chaos. Here's a scene featuring Tilda Swinton (who we also love)

MEMPHIS

A design collective with the 'obvious leader' of the Ettore Sottsass. Sottsass also featured solo in the exhibition for his buildings designed to function as 'super-instruments' to take drugs in, have sex in and listen to music in. He is interested in ritual and popular culture, in creating objects for a pleasure filled counter culture lifestyle. 

Sottsass said about MEMPHIS that "it can only live with very intense people". They were described as a bunch of like-minded 'enfant-terribles'.

The collective were hailed as creating a new international style, employing a new kind of commercial practice.They crossed boundaries of craft and industrial manufacture.

New Wave/1980s

Postmodernism was suddenly the dominant designer style! It was a decade of theatricality, exaggeration and vivid colours. There was a strong desire to combine subversive statements with commercial appeal. They were the years when image was everything.

Amid the new wave came certain styles of performance art; where performers deconstructed and reconstructed themselves, used a strong language of pastiches and worked completely through mixed media. 

Music videos began a strong medium for postmodernism.

 

Laurie Anderson

Perhaps my favourite part of the exhibition was Laurie Anderson's video. An excerpt from the South Bank Show in 1982. I was particularly drawn to the rhythmic beautiful voice and the elusive persona created. Anderson uses fragments (childlike, deadpan media, electronic persuasive) to create a unified artistic vision.

Appropriation

We are interested in making a magazine featuring pages from our diaries and notes on our progression. It will include photographs, pieces of creative writing and references to those who have influenced us. We are interested in exploring appropriation of images, in particular the work of Peter Saville and Richard Prince, because it is a mode of including "emotion without veering towards sentimentality". Appropriation can simultaneously evoke and undermine modernism. It also works with the idea that there is no space between commercial and avant-garde spheres

Helmut Newton

Under the new wave information was a picture by Newton that caught my eye. Newton's fashion photography is another example of the postmodern in mainstream. 

Jenny Holzer

The final room of the exhibition showed the decline of postmodernism under the weight of its own success. It explored the art movement's fatal encounter with money. As the world turned greedy (Margret Thatcher's Britain) and became a culture obsessed with wealth, postmodernism joined in. 

Embossed on the wall was a quote from the postmodern author Martin Amis: Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.

In the shown piece of Holzer's work, she critically reflects on desire and greed. The billboard in times square lit with the words 'protect me from what I want', surrounded by the rush of the commercial world, questions the viewers associations and priorities. 

I was so attracted to this image I researched further into Holzer's work. She grew as a feminist artist, practicing through a variety of mediums usually not associated with displaying strong messages. Her use of text and playful, angry and subversive use of canvas for it really excites me. 

Godfrey Reggio

George was drawn to Reggio's film koyaanisqatsi. A 'postmodern denunciation of the culture of postmodernism', the film shows a city as a dehumanised and alienating entity. Reggio says about the films lack of dialogue; it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.   

This is an interesting idea we will discuss further!