Postmodernism is a breakaway from modernism – the judgement seat of art overturned by photography,
Postmodernism is basically anti-establishment – a breach from the museum, art history and photography.
When Douglas Crimp first used the term ‘postmodernism’ in 1979 (essay ‘Pictures’) he described the aesthetic mode that was exemplary as performance art – work which acknowledged the presence of a spectator in front of the work as the performance was carried out. This privileged the spectator, not the artist.
This is perhaps better understood by looking at Crimp’s original essay, Pictures in conjunction with this one as it does refer back to ideas raised there.
It was this “preoccupation with time – more precisely, with the duration of experience” that disturbed Michael Fried (Crimp, 1979: 76). In this essay, performance art was extended to “all those works that were constituted in a situation and for a duration by the artist or the spectator or both together” (Crimp, 1979: 77). Basically this meant that the spectator had to be present in order to validate the performance of the work (being there presence).
In the case of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills (1977-80) or any works by Jeff Wall, for instance, one can clearly see that the performance has occurred prior to the spectator’s presence, or even prior to the shutter button being pressed, as part of the performance involves the whole setting up of the scene, and in the case of Sherman, dressing up and fixing the make up.
Describing Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills as fragments and quotations from a film, Crimp alludes to the simultaneous absence and presence (condition of representation) contained in their individual narratives (Crimp, 1977: 80).
Crimp adds a third definition of the word presence, and that is “an aspect of presence that is in excess” (Crimp, 1995: 109), that refers more to the intangible quality which makes an artist/performer noticed even if they are not performing. Perhaps one way of illustrating this is in this video of America’s Got Talent below. As viewers, we are aware of the presence of the performers, i.e. puppeteers, even though we do not physically see them.
(Lightwave Theatre Company Delivers Emotional Life-Size Puppetry, 2020)
I’m not sure how fine a line exists between simultaneous absence and presence and presence that is in excess. I think there may well be an overlap.
It is this very presence, free from the original, through its very absence, that Crimp attributes to postmodernism.
This type of presence is the antithesis of Benjamin’s concept of the aura. With the aura, the original is present, and the presence of the artist must be discernible (through its provenance or chemical and/or stylistic analysis by an expert). With this notion of presence through absence, however, we are dealing with copies or reproductions.
But when a work of art is reproduced ad infinitum, it drifts away from its traditional setting and loses its aura, because aura has to do with modes of reception and not mediums. The Mona Lisa has been reproduced so many times in various forms of media, that when one comes face to face with the masterpiece, it might actually be a disappointment and is not at all what one expects (loses aura). Conversely, it is this very act that is responsible for the deletion of the aura (mechanical reproduction/photography) that is responsible for the attempts at recuperation of the aura. This occurred in the mid 1970s with the resurgence of expressionist painting and the emergence of photography as art. Expressionist painters viewed postmodern photography as a threat in that it was now competing with the traditional arts for gallery space.
Walter Benjamin granted aura to a very limited selection of photographs, mainly those made prior to commercialization in the 1850s. There were two criteria that interested Benjamin, namely the long exposure time value where the presence of the sitters was gradually layered onto the negative, and the unmediated relationship between sitter and photographer. The aura in these photos is to be found in the presence of the sitter in the form of “the uncontrolled and uncontrollable intrusion of reality” (Crimp, 1995: 113). Benjamin saw the loss of the aura in an art object as a form of liberation.
“The photographic activity of postmodernism operates … in complicity with these modes of photography-as-art, but it does so only in order to subvert or exceed them. And it does so precisely in relation to the aura, not … to recuperate it, but to displace it, to show that it too is now only an aspect of the copy, not the original”.
(Crimp, 1995: 117).
Crimp refers to a group of young artists who began using photography to examine the strategies and codes of representation.
How? They rephotographed advertisements, B-movie stills and classic Modernist photographs. In doing so, they adopted the role of director and spectator and exposed and dissembled mass-media fictions, but also enacted more complicated scenarios of desire, identification and loss.
Sherry Levine’s photographed reproductions of Walker Evan’s FSA photographs, ‘After Walker Evans’ became a landmark of postmodernism, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It received both praise as well as severe criticism: “feminist hijacking of patriarchal authority”, “a critique of the commodification of art, “an elegy on the death of modernism”. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, s.d.)
“The desire of representation exists only insofar as it can never be fulfilled, insofar as the original always is deferred. It is only in the absence of the original that representation can take place. And representation takes place because it is always ready there in the world as representation”.
(Crimp, 1995: 119).
I think what Crimp is trying to get at here is when we see one of Levine’s photographs, be it an after-the-fact Walker Evans, or an after-the-fact Vincent van Gogh, this should create in us the desire to see the original image, and working back from that point, once we see the original image, we might want to see the actual person who is represented in the photograph, which of course, is usually impossible.
In talking about Cindy Sherman’s work, Crimp declares her works are all self portraits. However, as I discussed in this post, Sherman herself states that they are explorations of cultural archetypes, commentaries on social status and so on. Her work is frequently misunderstood to be self portraiture.
The most manipulative artist in my mind is Richard Prince who takes commercial advertisements and other found imagery, even Instagram selfies and tries to present them as documentary images. I’m definitely not a fan of his work, but more can be seen here.
Relevance to Own Practice?
As I mentioned in my other Postmodernism post in more detail, I can definitely see the concept of intertextuality playing a role in my work. I plan on incorporating other media as well as archival imagery into my work and I think this does fit with my understanding of intertextuality. Although I did rephotograph work during my final Documentary project, unlike Sherrie Levine, I presented it in a different format or compilation. It was not just another ‘replica’.
Bibliography
Crimp, D. (1979) ‘Pictures’ In: October 8 pp.75–88.
Crimp, D. and Lawler, L. (1995) ‘The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’ In: On the museum’s ruins. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Douglas Crimp on Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Still #60, 1980 (2012) Directed by Walker Art Center. [Online Video] At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeeDSWPDQJM (Accessed 21/07/2020).
Lightwave Theatre Company Delivers Emotional Life-Size Puppetry (2020) Directed by America’s Got Talent 2020. [Online Video] At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCa_EmnalFY (Accessed 21/07/2020).
Prince, R. (s.d.) Richard Prince – Untitled (originals). At: http://www.richardprince.com/originals/# (Accessed 23/07/2020).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (s.d.) Sherrie Levine | After Walker Evans: 4. At: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214 (Accessed 23/07/2020).
Illustrations
Figure 1. Levine, S. (1981) Untitled, After Walker Evans. Media Art Net | Levine, Sherrie. At: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/after-walker-evans/ (Accessed on 23 July 2020)
Figure. 2. Kuit, L. (2019) Cindy Sherman’s Vogue Covers. [Photograph] In possession of: the author: Blind Bay
Lynda Kuit Photography Level 3 