Summary
Highlights
The lecturer welcomes students to Art History 315, a course on contemporary art, a term described as 'elusive.' The course structure involves online lectures, readings, and supplementary materials, with a special recommendation for students new to art history to watch a standalone lecture on form and content in artworks.
The lecture introduces 'the modern' as a complex term, often initially associated with innovation and technological development. It is then broken down into three subheadings: modernization (rapid social, economic, and technological change, originating in England), modernity (the experienced time and space compression due to modernization), and modernism (a cultural response to these experiences, seen in various art forms).
The speaker discusses problems with defining the modern, including its ambiguous origin date (ranging from the French Revolution to the Middle Ages) and its equivocal worth. The modern brought aspirations for a better life and scientific advancements (like the polio vaccine) but also led to atrocities like the Holocaust, highlighting its capacity for both progress and destruction. This duality makes assessing its value difficult.
The lecture examines how Modern Art, particularly after events like Auschwitz, struggled with the limits of representation to meaningfully address massive suffering. This led to a questioning of art's efficacy in addressing political issues and an attempt by some critics, like Clement Greenberg, to establish an 'autonomous sphere' for art, separate from political concerns, though this also raised issues of commodification.
The term 'post-modern' is introduced as more difficult to define, often characterized by a sarcastic and deflating attitude towards the seriousness of the modern. It is divided into 'post-modernity' (the cultural situation after the collapse of modernity's grand narratives) and 'post-modernism' (a cultural movement adopting a skeptical stance toward Western thought's principles, challenging concepts like authorship, originality, creative genius, and the autonomous individual).
Post-modern artists often employ appropriation, exemplified by Sherrie Levine rephotographing Duchamp's 'Fountain,' to demonstrate the lack of originality and challenge modernist notions. These critiques aim to 'decenter' traditional power structures and give voice to marginalized identities, leading to the rise of identity politics. However, concerns about the elitism and vulnerability of such critiques, as well as the commercialization of identity-based art, are also discussed.
The term 'avant-garde,' initially a military term for advanced shock troops, was applied to artists by Saint-Simon in 1825, suggesting artists could 'cut a line' through societal defenses to new ideas. Key characteristics include a focus on contemporary times (as advocated by Baudelaire), a rejection of received artistic traditions and conventions (such as classical ideals and 'licked' finishes), and an opposition to kitsch.
Kitsch is defined as popular, naturalistic, easily understood, mass-produced, and uncritical art, often used for propaganda (illustrated by George Elgar Hicks's 'The Sinews of Old England'). In contrast, the avant-garde debated its ideal form: should it be realistic and easily digestible (like Gustave Courbet's 'Stone-Breakers,' a critical piece on class relations) or abstract and intellectually challenging (like Malevich's attempt to represent a new cosmic consciousness)? The political orientation of the avant-garde is also questioned, ranging from left-leaning surrealists to right-leaning futurists.
The discussion touches on whether avant-garde art should be committed to social and political change (e.g., Russian Constructivists aiming for 'Artist as engineer' to improve society) or strive for an autonomous sphere, free from political influence, as seen in the Abstract Expressionism of Pollock. This latter approach was a response to art being co-opted by totalitarian regimes in the 1930s, seeking to preserve art as a 'vital center' of freedom.
The contemporary understanding of the avant-garde critically examines its historical exclusions, particularly concerning gender and race. Picasso's appropriation of African masks, often without acknowledgment or understanding, is highlighted. Faith Ringgold's quilted work, which deconstructs Picasso's process and exposes his suppressed sources, demonstrates how artists like her challenged the avant-garde's 'apartheid' nature, guarded by gender and racial biases. The lecture concludes by noting the ongoing relevance and re-evaluation of avant-garde tactics in contemporary art, including the 'Neo avant-garde'.