An Academic Glimpses Infinity

Today's project is postmodernism. I'm to promote or discuss the subject in zine format to be released at an undisclosed point in March.

Postmodernism is a broad cultural movement ranging from philosophy to architecture, beginning in the 20th century and arguably continuing to this day. Having only approached it from a literary standpoint, I don't have the best understanding of the label as an artistic genre, but like modernism it's mainly defined by its focus on the subjectivity of  conceptual relativism and its rejection of traditional artistic values, such as the distinction between high and low art. Where it differs from modernism is in its approach; while modernism is nihilistic in its portrayal of the world as a fragmented mess of subjective impressions, postmodernism instead celebrates this freedom.This is why pop art, minimalism and abstract expressionism can be considered both modern and postmodern in their approach to art. In general, something can be considered postmodern if it makes use of irony, deconstruction or metafictional themes.

After some initial research and letting the ideas build in my head for awhile, I started on visuals.

This is a response to the expressionist movement, a satirical pastiche of Magritte's The Son of Man. The lampshade is a metatextual icon, representing the convention of explicitly referencing the artistic constructs that make up an artform within the art itself. This is known colloquially as lampshade hanging, in which the offending trope is drawn attention in a way that paradoxically diminishes its artificial qualities. The idea is that this modernist icon has been appropriated as a demonstration of the fictional nature of art.

Still just experimenting, I tried my hand at pixel art. It's actually just a base image manipulated by hand to be more low res, but it's something I've never done so I guess it's not bad for a start. Digital art is considered postmodern, so I thought about making the zine as a blog of some kind, with content that exclusively comments on modern life through a digital lens.

This is an attempt at minimalism. I don't think it really works. The gradient is the wrong colour and I think the size doesn't work, but it's something I could come back to.

Continuing with the lampshade motif, I started to think about the role of the frame in art. Incorporating it into the image itself seems to proclaim that the presentation of an image is just as important as the image itself, and that when removed of the context of presentation it ultimately becomes meaningless. By now I'm stacking lampshades on lampshades.

I made an animated gif from the image to try and approach things from a digital-exclusive manner. I think it's about questioning the boundaries between art and reality, or alternatively nothing at all.

This is the inspiration for the painting gif. I created it at around the same time and saw a connection to the project, so I redid it with the postmodern iconography I'd developed.

That's about all I've come up with for now. I also considered randomly arranging website favicons to spell out cryptic and esoteric things. Maybe it could be a comment on how technology shapes modern life?

I don't know. I need to go to bed.