ARTS237 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Banksy, Hip Hop, Sherrie Levine
Katherine Paterson
ARTS237 Postmodern Art
Week 11 - Postmodern Conditions in 1980s
-Postmodern > questioning truth, other peoples viewpoints, belonging, discovery, every
thought outside of your own head challenges truth,
-21st Century > Now in an age that isn't postmodern > more conservative time where
voices are heard less. E.g. Racism, 1% of the population owns everything, limiting
opinions and less room for different viewpoints
-Postmodern Art Techniques > eclecticism, appropriation, pastiche, borrowing, revising,
quotation, challenging 'masterpieces', lack of formal aesthetic or methodology,
layering, lack of traditional, object movement not abstract, vernacular (relative),
merging high and low art, inclusion of different outlooks, humour, satire, irony, self-
reflexivity, question truths
-Morimura "Futago" 1988 > theme of identity, other realities to the dominant one e.g.
Sexism and Race > talks about Asians and blacks and women who were deemed as
inferior to whites by putting inferior imagery into the period of Manet's Olympia
APPROPRIATION
-Morimura "playing with Gods, Twilight" 1991 dig. Print > "Art is basically
entertainment" Morimura > using famous iconography like the cruxifiction and wraps
him up in a bow like he's a present while also inserting images of himself as women
as men and men as women through trumpets and goblets placed over the body >
appropriation deconstructs past paintings: he appropriates Dutch master Luc Cranach
"Crucifiction" 1503 >>>> "playing with gods III at night" 1990, barbies replacing men
on the cross > communicating dont take everything you see as the truth
-Morimura "To My Little Sister, for CIndy Sherman" 1998 > appropriates "CIndy
SHerman" Untitled #96 1981 > looking for the flaws in the mimicking to catch him out
-to be postmodern you have to be clever and savvy
-Raphael "La fornarina" 1518-19 > artists favourite mistress > CIndy SHerman
appropriates "Untitiled number 205 1989 > what's different and what's the same from
the original > original shows that she is being sexual enigmatic smile looking beyond
the painting > jump to CIndy Sherman image where prosthesis is used to help mimic
the Raphael where the women presented in unhappy unimpressed, pregnant belly
and pregnant breasts and she looks directly to the viewer
-Sherry Levine, "After Walker Evans" 1980-81 > images appropriate photos from the
depression that are poignant
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