| History of art |
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| Postmodernism |
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| Preceded byModernism |
| Postmodernity |
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Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects ofmodernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such asintermedia,installation art,conceptual art andmultimedia, particularly involving video are described aspostmodern.
There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context,bricolage, the use of text prominently as the central artistic element,collage,simplification,appropriation,performance art, as well as the break-up of the barrier betweenfine andhigh arts andlow art andpopular culture.[1][2]
The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is "contemporary art". Not all art labeled as contemporary art is postmodern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist andlate modernist traditions, as well as artists who reject postmodernism for other reasons.Arthur Danto argues "contemporary" is the broader term, and postmodern objects represent a "subsector" of the contemporary movement.[3] Some postmodern artists have made more distinctive breaks from the ideas of modern art and there is no consensus as to what is "late-modern" and what is "post-modern". Ideas rejected by the modern aesthetic have been re-established. In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation.[4] Some critics argue much of the current "postmodern" art, the latest avant-gardism, should still classify as modern art.[5]
As well as describing certain tendencies of contemporary art, postmodern has also been used to denote a phase ofmodern art. Defenders of modernism, such asClement Greenberg,[6] as well as radical opponents of modernism, such asFélix Guattari, who calls it modernism's "last gasp",[7] have adopted this position. The neo-conservativeHilton Kramer describes postmodernism as "a creation of modernism at the end of its tether".[8]Jean-François Lyotard, inFredric Jameson's analysis, does not hold there is a postmodern stage radically different from the period ofhigh modernism; instead, postmodern discontent with this or that high modernist style is part of the experimentation of high modernism, giving birth to new modernisms.[9] In the context ofaesthetics andart, Jean-François Lyotard is a major philosopher of postmodernism.
Many critics hold postmodern art emerges from modern art. Suggested dates for the shift from modern to postmodern include 1914 in Europe,[10] and 1962[11] or 1968[12] in America.James Elkins, commenting on discussions about the exact date of the transition from modernism to postmodernism, compares it to the discussion in the 1960s about the exact span ofmannerism and whether it should begin directly after theHigh Renaissance or later in the century. He makes the point these debates go on all the time with respect to art movements and periods, which is not to say they are not important.[13] The close of the period of postmodern art has been dated to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact ofglobalization andnew media.[14]
Jean Baudrillard has had a significant influence on postmodern-inspired art and emphasised the possibilities of new forms of creativity.[15] The artistPeter Halley describes his day-glo colours as "hyperrealization of real color", and acknowledges Baudrillard as an influence.[16] Baudrillard himself, since 1984, was fairly consistent in his view that contemporary art, and postmodern art in particular, was inferior to the modernist art of the post World War II period,[16] while Jean-François Lyotard praised Contemporary painting and remarked on its evolution from Modern art.[17] Majorwomen artists in the Twentieth Century are associated with postmodern art since much theoretical articulation of their work emerged from French psychoanalysis andfeminist theory that is strongly related to post modern philosophy.[18][19]
As with all uses of the term postmodern, there are critics of its application.Kirk Varnedoe, for instance, stated that there is no such thing as postmodernism, and that the possibilities of modernism have not yet been exhausted.[20] Though the usage of the term as a kind of shorthand to designate the work of certain Post-war "schools" employing relatively specific material and generic techniques has become conventional since the early to mid-1980s, the theoretical underpinnings of Postmodernism as an epochal or epistemic division are still very much in controversy.[21]
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Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends inmodernism.[22] General citations for specific trends of modernism are formal purity,medium specificity,art for art's sake,authenticity,universality,originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. theavant-garde. However, paradox is probably the most important modernist idea against which postmodernism reacts. Paradox was central to the modernist enterprise, whichManet introduced. Manet's various violations of representational art brought to prominence the supposed mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation, design and representation, abstraction and reality, and so on. The incorporation of paradox was highly stimulating from Manet to the conceptualists.
The status of the avant-garde is controversial: many institutions argue being visionary, forward-looking, cutting-edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and therefore postmodern art contradicts the value of "art of our times". Postmodernism rejects the notion of advancement or progress in art per se, and thus aims to overturn the "myth of theavant-garde".Rosalind Krauss was one of the important enunciators of the view that avant-gardism was over, and the new artistic era is post-liberal and post-progress.[23]Griselda Pollock studied and confronted the avant-garde and modern art in a series of groundbreaking books, reviewing modern art at the same time as redefining postmodern art.[24][25][26]
One characteristic of postmodern art is its conflation of high and low culture through the use of industrial materials and pop culture imagery. The use of low forms of art were a part of modernist experimentation as well, as documented inKirk Varnedoe andAdam Gopnik's 1990–91 showHigh and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art at New York'sMuseum of Modern Art,[27] an exhibition that was universally panned at the time as the only event that could bringDouglas Crimp andHilton Kramer together in a chorus of scorn.[28] Postmodern art is noted for the way in which it blurs the distinctions between what is perceived as fine or high art and what is generally seen as low or kitsch art.[29] While this concept of "blurring" or "fusing" high art with low art had been experimented during modernism, it only ever became fully endorsed after the advent of the postmodern era.[29] Postmodernism introduced elements of commercialism, kitsch and a generalcamp aesthetic within its artistic context; postmodernism takes styles from past periods, such asGothicism, theRenaissance and theBaroque,[29] and mixes them so as to ignore their original use in their corresponding artistic movement. Such elements are common characteristics of what defines postmodern art.Art Spiegelman, when discussing his selection of a specific style forMaus, described a postmodernist's ability to develop a wide "palette" of varying styles that they can draw from at will, where their predecessors would instead focus on improving and maintaining a single "trademark" style.[30]
Fredric Jameson suggests postmodern works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity. Against this definition, Art and Language's Charles Harrison and Paul Wood maintained pastiche and discontinuity are endemic to modernist art, and are deployed effectively by modern artists such as Manet andPicasso.[31]
One compact definition is postmodernism rejects modernism'sgrand narratives of artistic direction, eradicating the boundaries between high and low forms of art, and disrupting genre's conventions with collision, collage, and fragmentation. Postmodern art holds all stances are unstable and insincere, and thereforeirony,parody, andhumor are the only positionscritique orrevision cannot overturn. "Pluralism and diversity" are other defining features.[32]
Radical movements and trends regarded as influential and potentially as precursors to postmodernism emerged aroundWorld War I and particularly in its aftermath. With the introduction of the use of industrial artifacts in art and techniques such ascollage,avant-garde movements such asCubism,Dada andSurrealism questioned the nature and value of art. New artforms, such as cinema and the rise ofreproduction, influenced these movements as a means of creating artworks. The ignition point for the definition of modernism,Clement Greenberg's essay,Avant-Garde and Kitsch, first published inPartisan Review in 1939, defends the avant-garde in the face of popular culture.[33] Later, Peter Bürger would make a distinction between the historical avant-garde and modernism, and critics such as Krauss, Huyssen, and Douglas Crimp, following Bürger, identified the historical avant-garde as a precursor to postmodernism. Krauss, for example, describesPablo Picasso's use of collage as an avant-garde practice anticipating postmodern art with its emphasis on language at the expense of autobiography.[34] Another point of view is avant-garde and modernist artists used similar strategies and postmodernism repudiates both.[35]
In the early 20th century,Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal as a sculpture. His point was to have people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art just because he said it was a work of art.[36][37][38] He referred to his work as "Readymades".[39] TheFountain was a urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, which shocked the art world in 1917.[40] This and Duchamp's other works are generally labelled asDada. Duchamp can be seen as a precursor toconceptual art. Some critics question calling Duchamp—whose obsession withparadox is well known—postmodernist on the grounds he eschews any specific medium, since paradox is not medium-specific, although it arose first in Manet's paintings.[41]
Dadaism can be viewed as part of the modernist propensity to challenge established styles and forms, along withSurrealism,Futurism and Abstract Expressionism.[42] From a chronological point of view, Dada is located solidly within modernism, however a number of critics hold it anticipates postmodernism, while others, such asIhab Hassan andSteven Connor, consider it a possible changeover point between modernism and postmodernism.[43] For example, according to McEvilly, postmodernism begins with realizing one no longer believes in the myth of progress, and Duchamp sensed this in 1914 when he changed from a modernist practice to a postmodernist one, "abjuring aesthetic delectation, transcendent ambition, and tour de force demonstrations of formal agility in favor of aesthetic indifference, acknowledgement of the ordinary world, and the found object or readymade".[10]
In general,Pop Art andMinimalism began as modernist movements: aparadigm shift and philosophical split betweenformalism and anti-formalism in the early 1970s caused those movements to be viewed by some as precursors or transitional postmodern art. Other modern movements cited as influential to postmodern art areconceptual art and the use of techniques such asassemblage,montage,bricolage, andappropriation.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s,Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for allContemporary art following him. Pollock realized the journey toward making a work of art was as important as the work of art itself. LikePablo Picasso's innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture near the turn of the century viaCubism and constructed sculpture, Pollock redefined artmaking during the mid-century. Pollock's move from easel painting and conventionality liberated his contemporaneous artists and following artists. They realized Pollock's process — working on the floor, unstretched raw canvas, from all four sides, using artist materials, industrial materials, imagery, non-imagery, throwing linear skeins of paint, dripping, drawing, staining, brushing - blasted artmaking beyond prior boundaries.Abstract expressionism expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities artists had available for the creation of new works of art. In a sense, the innovations of Jackson Pollock,Willem de Kooning,Franz Kline,Mark Rothko,Philip Guston,Hans Hofmann,Clyfford Still,Barnett Newman,Ad Reinhardt and others, opened the floodgates to the diversity and scope of following artworks.[44]
Inabstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s several new directions likeHard-edge painting and other forms ofGeometric abstraction like the work ofFrank Stella popped up, as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract expressionism began to appear in artist studios and in radicalavant-garde circles.Clement Greenberg became the voice ofPost-painterly abstraction; by curating an influential exhibition of new painting touring important art museums throughout theUnited States in 1964.Color field painting,Hard-edge painting andLyrical Abstraction[45] emerged as radical new directions.
By the late 1960s,Postminimalism,Process Art andArte Povera[46] also emerged as revolutionary concepts and movements encompassing painting and sculpture, viaLyrical Abstraction and thePostminimalist movement, and in earlyConceptual Art.[46] Process art as inspired by Pollock enabled artists to experiment with and make use of a diverse encyclopedia of style, content, material, placement, sense of time, and plastic and real space.Nancy Graves,Ronald Davis,Howard Hodgkin,Larry Poons,Jannis Kounellis,Brice Marden,Bruce Nauman,Richard Tuttle,Alan Saret,Walter Darby Bannard,Lynda Benglis,Dan Christensen,Larry Zox,Ronnie Landfield,Eva Hesse,Keith Sonnier,Richard Serra,Sam Gilliam,Mario Merz,Peter Reginato,Lee Lozano, were some of the younger artists emerging during the era oflate modernism spawning the heyday of the art of the late 1960s.[47]
During the late 1950s and 1960s, artists with a wide range of interests began pushing the boundaries ofContemporary art.Yves Klein inFrance, andCarolee Schneemann,Yayoi Kusama,Charlotte Moorman, andYoko Ono inNew York City were pioneers of performance based works of art. Groups like TheLiving Theater withJulian Beck andJudith Malina collaborated with sculptors and painters creating environments; radically changing the relationship between audience and performer especially in their pieceParadise Now.[49][50] TheJudson Dance Theater located at theJudson Memorial Church,New York, and the Judson dancers, notablyYvonne Rainer,Trisha Brown,Elaine Summers,Sally Gross, Simonne Forti,Deborah Hay,Lucinda Childs,Steve Paxton and others collaborated with artistsRobert Morris,Robert Whitman,John Cage,Robert Rauschenberg, and engineers likeBilly Klüver.[51] These performances were often designed to be the creation of a new art form, combining sculpture, dance, and music or sound, often with audience participation. The reductive philosophies ofminimalism, spontaneous improvisation, and expressivity ofAbstract expressionism characterized the works.[52]
During the same period — the late 1950s through the mid-1960s - variousavant-garde artists createdHappenings. Happenings were mysterious and often spontaneous and unscripted gatherings of artists and their friends and relatives in varied specified locations. Often incorporating exercises in absurdity, physical exercise, costumes, spontaneousnudity, and various random and seemingly disconnected acts.Allan Kaprow,Joseph Beuys,Nam June Paik,Wolf Vostell,Claes Oldenburg,Jim Dine,Red Grooms, andRobert Whitman among others were notable creators of Happenings.[53]
Related toAbstract expressionism was the emergence of combined manufactured items — with artist materials, moving away from previous conventions of painting and sculpture. The work ofRobert Rauschenberg, whose "combines" in the 1950s were forerunners of Pop Art andInstallation art, and made use of the assemblage of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds andcommercial photography, exemplified this art trend.[citation needed]
Leo Steinberg uses the term postmodernism in 1969 to describe Rauschenberg's "flatbed" picture plane, containing a range of cultural images and artifacts that had not been compatible with the pictorial field of premodernist and modernist painting.[54]Craig Owens goes further, identifying the significance of Rauschenberg's work not as a representation of, in Steinberg's view, "the shift from nature to culture", but as a demonstration of the impossibility of accepting their opposition.[55]
Steven Best andDouglas Kellner identify Rauschenberg andJasper Johns as part of the transitional phase, influenced byMarcel Duchamp, between modernism and postmodernism. These artists used images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, in their work, while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures of high modernism.[56]
Anselm Kiefer also uses elements of assemblage in his works, and on one occasion, featured the bow of a fishing boat in a painting.
Lawrence Alloway used the term "Pop art" to describe paintings celebratingconsumerism of the postWorld War II era. This movement rejectedAbstract expressionism and its focus on the hermeneutic and psychological interior, in favor of art which depicted, and often celebrated, material consumer culture, advertising, and iconography of the mass production age. The early works ofDavid Hockney and the works ofRichard Hamilton,John McHale, andEduardo Paolozzi were considered seminal examples in the movement. While later American examples include the bulk of the careers ofAndy Warhol andRoy Lichtenstein and his use ofBenday dots, a technique used in commercial reproduction. There is a clear connection between the radical works ofDuchamp, the rebelliousDadaist — with a sense of humor; andPop Artists likeClaes Oldenburg,Andy Warhol,Roy Lichtenstein and the others.
Thomas McEvilly, agreeing withDave Hickey, says U.S postmodernism in the visual arts began with the first exhibitions of Pop art in 1962, "though it took about twenty years before postmodernism became a dominant attitude in the visual arts".[11]Fredric Jameson, too, considers pop art to be postmodern.[57]
One way Pop art is postmodern is it breaks down whatAndreas Huyssen calls the "Great Divide" between high art and popular culture.[58] Postmodernism emerges from a "generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high modernism".[59]
Fluxus was named and loosely organized in 1962 byGeorge Maciunas (1931–78), a Lithuanian-born American artist. Fluxus traces its beginnings toJohn Cage's 1957 to 1959 Experimental Composition classes at theNew School for Social Research in New York City. Many of his students were artists working in other media with little or no background in music. Cage's students included Fluxus founding membersJackson Mac Low,Al Hansen,George Brecht andDick Higgins.In 1962 in Germany Fluxus started with the: FLUXUS Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik inWiesbaden with,George Maciunas,Joseph Beuys,Wolf Vostell,Nam June Paik and others. And in 1963 with the: Festum Fluxorum Fluxus inDüsseldorf withGeorge Maciunas,Wolf Vostell,Joseph Beuys,Dick Higgins,Nam June Paik,Ben Patterson,Emmett Williams and others.[citation needed]
Fluxus encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity. LikeDada before it, Fluxus included a strong current of anti-commercialism and ananti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists preferred to work with whatever materials were at hand, and either created their own work or collaborated in the creation process with their colleagues.
Fluxus can be viewed as part of the first phase of postmodernism, along with Rauschenberg, Johns, Warhol and theSituationist International.[60]Andreas Huyssen criticises attempts to claim Fluxus for postmodernism as, "either the master-code of postmodernism or the ultimately unrepresentable art movement – as it were, postmodernism's sublime." Instead he sees Fluxus as a majorNeo-Dadaist phenomenon within the avant-garde tradition. It did not represent a major advance in the development of artistic strategies, though it did express a rebellion against, "the administered culture of the 1950s, in which a moderate, domesticated modernism served as ideological prop to theCold War."[61]
By the early 1960s,Minimalism emerged as an abstract movement in art (with roots ingeometric abstraction viaMalevich, theBauhaus andMondrian) which rejected the idea of relational, and subjective painting, the complexity ofAbstract expressionist surfaces, and the emotional zeitgeist and polemics present in the arena ofAction painting.Minimalism argued extreme simplicity could capture the sublime representation art requires. Associated with painters such asFrank Stella, minimalism in painting, as opposed to other areas, is a modernist movement and depending on the context can be construed as a precursor to the postmodern movement.
Hal Foster, in his essayThe Crux of Minimalism, examines the extent to whichDonald Judd andRobert Morris both acknowledge and exceed Greenbergian modernism in their published definitions of minimalism.[62] He argues minimalism is not a "dead end" of modernism, but a "paradigm shift toward postmodern practices that continue to be elaborated today".[63]
Land art, variously known asEarth art,environmental art, andEarthworks, is anart movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s,[64] largely associated withGreat Britain and theUnited States[65][66][67] but that also includes examples from many other countries. As a trend, "land art" expanded the boundaries of traditional art making in the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials used are often the materials of the Earth, including the soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site, and the sites are often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation is commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.[66][68][69]
Concerns of the art movement center around rejection of the commercialization of art-making and enthusiasm with an emergent ecological movement. The beginning of the movement coincided with the popularity of the rejection of urban living and its counterpart, and an enthusiasm for that which is rural. Included in these inclinations were spiritual yearnings concerning the planetEarth as home to humanity.[70][71]
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Robert Pincus-Witten coined the termPost-minimalism in 1977 to describe minimalist derived art which had content and contextual overtones minimalism rejected. His use of the term covered the period 1966 – 1976 and applied to the work ofEva Hesse,Keith Sonnier,Richard Serra and new work by former minimalistsRobert Smithson,Robert Morris,Sol LeWitt, and Barry Le Va, and others.[46]Process art and anti-form art are other terms describing this work, which the space it occupies and the process by which it is made determines.[72]
Rosalind Krauss argues by 1968 artists such as Morris, LeWitt, Smithson and Serra had "entered a situation the logical conditions of which can no longer be described as modernist".[12] The expansion of the category of sculpture to includeland art andarchitecture, "brought about the shift into postmodernism".[73]
American sculptorChristopher Wilmarth could be considered a post-Minimalist alongsideEva Hesse andBruce Nauman. Wilmarth’s work eschewed the perfect machine-made aesthetic of the minimalists, yet also resisted the process-oriented excess of much 1970s postminimalist sculpture.[74]
Minimalists likeDonald Judd,Dan Flavin,Carl Andre,Agnes Martin,John McCracken and others continued to produce their latemodernist paintings and sculpture for the remainder of their careers.
Conceptual art is sometimes labelled as postmodern because it is expressly involved indeconstruction of what makes a work of art, "art". Conceptual art, because it is often designed to confront,offend or attack notions held by many of the people who view it, is regarded with particular controversy.
Precursors to conceptual art include the work of Duchamp,John Cage's4' 33", in which the music is said to be "the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed", and Rauschenberg'sErased De Kooning Drawing. Many conceptual works take the position that art is created by the viewer viewing an object or act as art, not from the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. Thus, becauseFountain was exhibited, it was a sculpture.
Some currents of post-warfigurative painting have been analyzed as postmodern. The Italian painterCarlo Maria Mariani was described as a postmodernist by American critics. According toCharles Jencks, Mariani's group portraitThe Constellation of Leo (1980–1981), which depicts people from Italy's art world with references to mythology and art history, came to define a trope of postmodern art: "an ironic comment on a comment on a comment which signals the distance; a new myth thrice removed from its originating ritual".[75]
An important series of movements in art which have consistently been described as postmodern involvedinstallation art and creation of artifacts that are conceptual in nature. One example being the signs ofJenny Holzer which use the devices of art to convey specific messages, such as "Protect Me From What I Want". Installation Art has been important in determining the spaces selected for museums of contemporary art in order to be able to hold the large works which are composed of vast collages of manufactured and found objects. These installations andcollages are often electrified, with moving parts and lights.
They are often designed to create environmental effects, asChristo and Jeanne-Claude'sIron Curtain, Wall of 240 Oil Barrels, Blocking Rue Visconti, Paris, June 1962 which was a poetic response to the Berlin Wall built in 1961.
Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music,hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow art highlights a central theme in postmodernism in that the distinction between "high" and "low" art are no longer recognized.
Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process. The impact of digital technology has transformed activities such aspainting,drawing,sculpture and music/sound art, while new forms, such asnet art, digitalinstallation art, andvirtual reality, have become recognized artistic practices.
Leading art theorists and historians in this field includeChristiane Paul,Frank Popper,Christine Buci-Glucksmann,Dominique Moulon,Robert C. Morgan,Roy Ascott,Catherine Perret,Margot Lovejoy,Edmond Couchot,Fred Forest andEdward A. Shanken.
Another trend in art which has been associated with the term postmodern is the use of a number of different media together.Intermedia, a term coined byDick Higgins and meant to convey new artforms along the lines ofFluxus,Concrete Poetry,Found objects,Performance art, andComputer art. Higgins was the publisher of theSomething Else Press, aConcrete poet, married to artistAlison Knowles and an admirer ofMarcel Duchamp.Ihab Hassan includes, "Intermedia, the fusion of forms, the confusion of realms," in his list of the characteristics of postmodern art.[76] One of the most common forms of "multi-media art" is the use of video-tape and CRT monitors, termedVideo art. While the theory of combining multiple arts into one art is quite old, and has been revived periodically, the postmodern manifestation is often in combination withperformance art, where the dramatic subtext is removed, and what is left is the specific statements of the artist in question or the conceptual statement of their action.Higgin's conception of Intermedia is connected to the growth ofmultimedia digital practice such asimmersive virtual reality,digital art andcomputer art.
Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic encounters.Roy Ascott sees the telematic art form as the transformation of the viewer into an active participator of creating the artwork which remains in process throughout its duration. Ascott has been at the forefront of the theory and practice of telematic art since 1978 when he went online for the first time, organizing different collaborative online projects.
In his 1980 essayThe Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism,Craig Owens identifies the re-emergence of anallegorical impulse as characteristic of postmodern art. This impulse can be seen in theappropriation art of artists such asSherrie Levine andRobert Longo because, "Allegorical imagery is appropriated imagery."[77] Appropriation art debunks modernist notions of artistic genius and originality and is more ambivalent and contradictory than modern art, simultaneously installing and subverting ideologies, "being both critical and complicit".[78]
The return to the traditional art forms of sculpture andpainting in the late 1970s and early 1980s seen in the work ofNeo-expressionist artists such asGeorg Baselitz andJulian Schnabel has been described as a postmodern tendency,[79] and one of the first coherent movements to emerge in the postmodern era.[80] Its strong links with the commercial art market has raised questions, however, both about its status as a postmodern movement and the definition of postmodernism itself. Hal Foster states that neo-expressionism was complicit with the conservative cultural politics of the Reagan-Bush era in the U.S.[63]Félix Guattari disregards the "large promotional operations dubbed 'neo-expressionism' in Germany," (an example of a "fad that maintains itself by means of publicity") as a too easy way for him "to demonstrate that postmodernism is nothing but the last gasp of modernism".[7] These critiques of neo-expressionism reveal that money and public relations really sustained contemporary art world credibility in America during the same period that conceptual artists, and practices ofwomen artists including painters and feminist theorists likeGriselda Pollock,[81][82] were systematically reevaluating modern art.[83][84][85]Brian Massumi claims thatDeleuze andGuattari open the horizon of new definitions ofBeauty in postmodern art.[86] For Jean-François Lyotard, it was painting of the artistsValerio Adami,Daniel Buren,Marcel Duchamp,Bracha Ettinger, andBarnett Newman that, after the avant-garde's time and the painting ofPaul Cézanne andWassily Kandinsky, was the vehicle for new ideas of thesublime in contemporary art.[87][88]
Critiques on the institutions of art (principally museums and galleries) are made in the work ofAndrea Fraser,Michael Asher,Marcel Broodthaers,Daniel Buren andHans Haacke.
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