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Movements in Modern Art
Postmodernism
This volume is an introduction to the intellectual movement known as Postmodernism and its impact on the visual arts. In clear, jargon-free language, Eleanor Heartney situates Postmodernism historically, showing how it developed both in reaction to and as a result of some of the fundamental beliefs underlying Modernism, especially its positivist, universalizing aspects. She then analyzes paradigmatic Postmodern works of art by artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Koons and Robert Mapplethorpe. Postmodernism provides a concise and articulate overview of the Postmodern phenomenon. Eleanor Heartney is a contributing editor for Art in America, New Art Examiner, and Art Press. In 1991, she was the recipient of the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism. Heartney is a board member of the American section of the AICA. She is also the author of Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads (Cambridge, 1997). She lives in New York.
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 10, 2020
142nd book of 2020.
A "simple" insight into postmodernism. The definition of postmodernism is elusive. There's a great line in the first few pages of this book: postmodernism may feel very much like Narcissus’ reflection in the water, which disintegrates the moment one reaches out to grasp it. I would say that's fairly apt; and when we reach out to grasp it, ripples are sent rolling in all directions, disturbing everything: art, literature, music, film...
I recently read Butler's Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction and found it enlightening to an extent, but his stance was too scathing to be truly interesting; by introducing something at the same time as discrediting it, your opinion comes off as being rather redundant. My review of Butler is here. Enough about Butler though - Heartney takes a more neutral stance and it pays off. She outlines elements of postmodernism and explains, briefly and without much jargon, some of the philosophy and context behind some famous pieces. For example: Kosuth's "Clock (One and Five) English/Latin Version" [pictured below] is a piece I have seen many times and often disregarded, but now it is perhaps one of my favourite pieces of postmodern art.
Heartney covers Feminism, Multiculturalism and the idea of the Anti-Aesthetics; it is not a long book but everything is covered to a good measure, brief but not lacking in content, with interesting examples. It was published by Tate, so with it is the level of trust, especially since postmodernism tends to defy all logic and (simple) explanation. There is still room for one to ask if critics are forcing meaning on some of the displayed artworks - as ever in the art world, particularly the modern art world. It's probably impossible to be in the Tate Modern nowadays and not to hear "I could do that," multiple times. Or else claiming a child could do it. (This is a tangent but I saw this book in a bookshop recently and feel very inclined to read it, what a great title and subject matter: Why Your Five-Year-Old Could Not Have Done That: Modern Art Explained.)
Even artwork that appears to have no meaning at all finds meaning. Koons' piece above is one that I have seen a thousand times now as I have spent the last few months researching postmodernism and one I have continually ignored. Heartney says this, which I will leave here without reflecting on myself:
I will say - its creation is far more impressive than I ever previously imagined. (Mercury! Suspended! Salt water!)
And, like Butler's conclusion, Heartney ends with questioning the lifespan of postmodernism. Is it already dead? Have we reached the post-postmodern era? She says, There is evidence everywhere of the return of the real. Interestingly, postmodernists even conceded that postmodernism has become discredited by its very popularity. So, is it dead? Or, rather, did it lose? I'll end with a quote from Hal Foster -
We did not lose. In a sense a worse thing has happened: treated as a fashion, postmodernism became démodé.
A "simple" insight into postmodernism. The definition of postmodernism is elusive. There's a great line in the first few pages of this book: postmodernism may feel very much like Narcissus’ reflection in the water, which disintegrates the moment one reaches out to grasp it. I would say that's fairly apt; and when we reach out to grasp it, ripples are sent rolling in all directions, disturbing everything: art, literature, music, film...
I recently read Butler's Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction and found it enlightening to an extent, but his stance was too scathing to be truly interesting; by introducing something at the same time as discrediting it, your opinion comes off as being rather redundant. My review of Butler is here. Enough about Butler though - Heartney takes a more neutral stance and it pays off. She outlines elements of postmodernism and explains, briefly and without much jargon, some of the philosophy and context behind some famous pieces. For example: Kosuth's "Clock (One and Five) English/Latin Version" [pictured below] is a piece I have seen many times and often disregarded, but now it is perhaps one of my favourite pieces of postmodern art.
Heartney covers Feminism, Multiculturalism and the idea of the Anti-Aesthetics; it is not a long book but everything is covered to a good measure, brief but not lacking in content, with interesting examples. It was published by Tate, so with it is the level of trust, especially since postmodernism tends to defy all logic and (simple) explanation. There is still room for one to ask if critics are forcing meaning on some of the displayed artworks - as ever in the art world, particularly the modern art world. It's probably impossible to be in the Tate Modern nowadays and not to hear "I could do that," multiple times. Or else claiming a child could do it. (This is a tangent but I saw this book in a bookshop recently and feel very inclined to read it, what a great title and subject matter: Why Your Five-Year-Old Could Not Have Done That: Modern Art Explained.)
Even artwork that appears to have no meaning at all finds meaning. Koons' piece above is one that I have seen a thousand times now as I have spent the last few months researching postmodernism and one I have continually ignored. Heartney says this, which I will leave here without reflecting on myself:
in which three basketballs inflated with water and mercury were unnaturally suspended in aquariums full of salt water. Again, Koons' point was that stasis and equilibrium are states reserved for inanimate objects. Thus, in works like these, he suggests that commodities are our more perfect selves, and that our desire for them is the desire for unsustainable states of being.
I will say - its creation is far more impressive than I ever previously imagined. (Mercury! Suspended! Salt water!)
And, like Butler's conclusion, Heartney ends with questioning the lifespan of postmodernism. Is it already dead? Have we reached the post-postmodern era? She says, There is evidence everywhere of the return of the real. Interestingly, postmodernists even conceded that postmodernism has become discredited by its very popularity. So, is it dead? Or, rather, did it lose? I'll end with a quote from Hal Foster -
We did not lose. In a sense a worse thing has happened: treated as a fashion, postmodernism became démodé.
September 30, 2023
Really glad i picked this book up!! Really cool and well written exploration of postmodernism within art and it genuinely provided with a myriad of perspectives- not exclusive to white hetero western world. If you’re even the tiniest bit interested in getting into reading about contemporary art theory and movements this book is super easy to read while still providing critical outlook on the concept.
Read
September 11, 2012Published in 2001 as part of Tate’s Movements in Modern Art series, Eleanor Heartney’s short introduction to Postmodernism illuminates some obscure tendencies in late 20th century art better than most books I’ve read.
Contextualizing this ambiguous term as a response to both the post-structuralist view that our understanding of the world is never unmediated (by images, signs and ideologies), and to Clement Greenberg’s Modernist dogma, it surveys Postmodernist art under the headings: Neo-expressionism, The Anti-aesthetes, Commodity Critics, Postmodern Feminism and Postmodern multiculturalism.
Heralded as a return to figurative painting and self-expression in the wake of the arid irony and distance of the 1960s-70s, in fact several of the so-called neo-expressionists were already at work in those decades, but only achieved recognition in the 1980s. Heartney describes it as an exclusively male movement, ignoring the likes of Paula Rego and Eileen Cooper, and fails to take issue with the inadequate label (in which she includes styles as varied as realism, neo-classicism and street art).
The ‘anti-aesthetes’ mostly rejected painting in favour of reproducible media and text, turning the Conceptualist approach of the 1960s-70s away from its focus on art itself towards representation and largely unrecognized tools of oppression such as advertising, popular culture, and mass media. However, others used painting as their medium in a strategy of subversion from within, challenging notions of personal style and expression. Others used appropriation (plagiarism by another name) to question notions of authorship and originality. Ironically, and hypocritically, these artists were no more immune to the art market than the neo-expressionists.
The ‘commodity critics’ identified art with consumerism and shopping with self-expression. Specializing in simulation (copies without a real original), they made mostly either products that looked like old-fashioned art or art that looked like mass-produced commercial products. A dead end according to Heartney (although the likes of Jeff Koons continues to make millions today).
The last two sections can be bracketed together in the sense of dealing with the marginalised in society, and being concerned partly with deconstructing history, canons, hierarchies, and stereotypes. As uncomfortable with the art of the past as the anti-aesthetes, some of their work seems closer in spirit to satirical journalism and political polemic or activism than art. However, it is largely thanks to them that today’s art world is no longer quite so exclusively a white man’s club.
Heartney concludes that, although a much-needed corrective to Greenberg, its contradictions, negations and absurdities undermined postmodernism itself, but it leaves a lasting legacy. In fact the then fashionable philosophical ideas behind it are usually more interesting than the art itself, and once explicated the art objects sometimes seem redundant. If abstraction (form without content) and conceptualism (content without form) are the twin cul-de-sacs of Modernism, much of Postmodernism makes it seem another failed project, as it also tends to throw out the baby with the bath water. In ditching the aesthetic in favour of critical discourse, etc., has art history in fact ditched art? Greenberg has a lot to answer for, since most art since about 1960 seems to be about proving him wrong!
Unfortunately, the series seems to end here. Perhaps it’s time to write a sequel?
Contextualizing this ambiguous term as a response to both the post-structuralist view that our understanding of the world is never unmediated (by images, signs and ideologies), and to Clement Greenberg’s Modernist dogma, it surveys Postmodernist art under the headings: Neo-expressionism, The Anti-aesthetes, Commodity Critics, Postmodern Feminism and Postmodern multiculturalism.
Heralded as a return to figurative painting and self-expression in the wake of the arid irony and distance of the 1960s-70s, in fact several of the so-called neo-expressionists were already at work in those decades, but only achieved recognition in the 1980s. Heartney describes it as an exclusively male movement, ignoring the likes of Paula Rego and Eileen Cooper, and fails to take issue with the inadequate label (in which she includes styles as varied as realism, neo-classicism and street art).
The ‘anti-aesthetes’ mostly rejected painting in favour of reproducible media and text, turning the Conceptualist approach of the 1960s-70s away from its focus on art itself towards representation and largely unrecognized tools of oppression such as advertising, popular culture, and mass media. However, others used painting as their medium in a strategy of subversion from within, challenging notions of personal style and expression. Others used appropriation (plagiarism by another name) to question notions of authorship and originality. Ironically, and hypocritically, these artists were no more immune to the art market than the neo-expressionists.
The ‘commodity critics’ identified art with consumerism and shopping with self-expression. Specializing in simulation (copies without a real original), they made mostly either products that looked like old-fashioned art or art that looked like mass-produced commercial products. A dead end according to Heartney (although the likes of Jeff Koons continues to make millions today).
The last two sections can be bracketed together in the sense of dealing with the marginalised in society, and being concerned partly with deconstructing history, canons, hierarchies, and stereotypes. As uncomfortable with the art of the past as the anti-aesthetes, some of their work seems closer in spirit to satirical journalism and political polemic or activism than art. However, it is largely thanks to them that today’s art world is no longer quite so exclusively a white man’s club.
Heartney concludes that, although a much-needed corrective to Greenberg, its contradictions, negations and absurdities undermined postmodernism itself, but it leaves a lasting legacy. In fact the then fashionable philosophical ideas behind it are usually more interesting than the art itself, and once explicated the art objects sometimes seem redundant. If abstraction (form without content) and conceptualism (content without form) are the twin cul-de-sacs of Modernism, much of Postmodernism makes it seem another failed project, as it also tends to throw out the baby with the bath water. In ditching the aesthetic in favour of critical discourse, etc., has art history in fact ditched art? Greenberg has a lot to answer for, since most art since about 1960 seems to be about proving him wrong!
Unfortunately, the series seems to end here. Perhaps it’s time to write a sequel?
October 10, 2020
Extremely enjoyable and easy-to-read prose. I would highly recommend this for anyone scratching their heads over sharks suspended in formaldehyde or crucifixes bathed in urine. It doesn't attempt to justify the postmodern era of art, but instead intends to describe it in a way understandable to human beings who exist outside of the bubble that is the art world.
January 21, 2023
A good grounding with great breadth of dici0linary reference and some useful pointers to further research but clearly an introduction.
April 4, 2013
I was after a simplified way of understanding Postmodernism, and thats pretty much what I got. A short book that gives a brief overview of some of the movements and concepts within Postmodernism. Easy to read, touching on a collection of Artists who are relevant within it's parameters, without going into much depth.
July 7, 2016
I definitely would not describe this book as "jargon-free" - even for a fairly astute student such as myself, a few paragraphs in the book really almost cross the line into jargon for jargon's sake. In spite of this, I really loved this book. Gave me a great introduction to a very complicated idea.
April 9, 2007
4/9, 77pg
August 2, 2016
it appears someone took her thesaurus away half way through this book.
January 12, 2011
Not really a good read.
September 26, 2011
A good, quick overview of postmodernism - including not just postmodern art, but a taste of the overall cultural/sociological theory (which is hard to separate from the art).
August 26, 2012
I read this for school. Just blurbs and definitions of different art styles.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews