Prior to class on Monday, I wrote a blog post unpacking the following quote by Lyotard:
“A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by preestablished rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining Judgment, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work. Those rules and categories are what the work itself is looking for. The artist and the writer, then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done.”
Now that we, as a class, have discussed Lyotard's work, I will attempt to apply this quote to a piece of postmodern art in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the quote. The following images are sculptures by artist Jeff Koons:
These sculptures are created to resemble balloon creatures. They are covered in reflective color coating and they stand (or float) at quite a large size. Koons's sculptures undoubtedly push the boundaries of art--they are simplistic yet magnificent pieces of work. Some would deem these sculptures as unimpressive because they do not necessarily adhere to the the preestablished rules of art--at first glance, they do not seem to invoke any meaning or express any particularly thoughtful ideas. However, they are most certainly postmodern pieces of art. Their resemblance to the balloon creatures made by balloon twisters brings up the argument Lyotard makes about verisimilitude (the idea that art can be very similar to reality). Lyotard states that "...so-called realistic representations can no longer evoke reality except as nostalgia or mockery". These sculptures are most certainly nostalgic of the balloon creatures that many of us used to play with in our childhood. However, it is impossible to discern which is the "reference" and which is the "referent", or which is the signifier and which is the signified. What makes balloon creatures more real than these sculptures? This is a difficult, perhaps impossible, question to answer. Postmodern art is searching for the answer to this question diligently; it is pushing the boundaries until it eventually runs into a wall and thus is able to be defined by certain rules.
Comments
Post a Comment