Postmodern Art

Ah, postmodern art. The grand finale, or perhaps just another tired rerun. You want to understand this mess? Fine. Don’t expect me to hold your hand.

Postmodern art

Postmodern art is a rather ambitious term, isn’t it? It’s used to describe a collection of art movements that decided, for whatever reason, to thumb their nose at modernism , or at least at the bits of it that had already sprouted and festered. Think of it as the art world’s awkward teenage phase, amplified. It’s the era where intermedia , installation art , conceptual art , and the bewildering world of multimedia , especially anything involving video, started getting labeled as “postmodern ”. It’s less about innovation and more about a defiant, often ironic, rehash.

What makes art “postmodern”? It’s a delightful cocktail of pastiche, collage, and a rather liberal application of text. Styles and themes from bygone eras are resurrected, not with reverence, but with a cheeky wink, shoved into a modern context. Bricolage is practically the national pastime. There’s a curious fascination with text as the central artistic element, a move towards simplification that often feels more like intellectual laziness, and a penchant for appropriation . Performance art becomes a stage for deconstruction, and the once-sacred divide between fine and high arts crumbles before the onslaught of low art and the ever-present popular culture . It’s a grand, messy, and often contradictory performance.

Use of the term

Now, the dominant label for art churned out since the mid-20th century is “contemporary art ”. But here’s the catch: not all contemporary art is postmodern. It’s a vast umbrella, sheltering artists who are still clinging to modernist ideals, those who’ve outright rejected postmodernism, and everyone in between. Arthur Danto, bless his analytical heart, posited that “contemporary” is the overarching category, and postmodern works are merely a peculiar sub-genre. Some artists, however, have managed to carve out a more distinct path, a radical departure from modernist dogma. The line between “late-modern” and “post-modern” is blurrier than a cheap watercolor, with formerly rejected modernist ideas making a rather dramatic comeback. Representation, for instance, has staged a rather bold return in painting. Some critics, with a weary sigh, argue that much of what we call “postmodern” is merely the latest iteration of the avant-garde, still firmly rooted in modernism.

Then there are those who see postmodernism as a distinct phase within modern art itself. Thinkers like Clement Greenberg, a staunch defender of modernism, and even its radical opponents, like Félix Guattari, who rather dismissively called it modernism’s “last gasp,” have weighed in. The neo-conservative Hilton Kramer saw postmodernism as the final, exhausted breath of modernism. Jean-François Lyotard, as interpreted by Fredric Jameson, suggests that postmodernism isn’t a new era at all, but rather an internal critique, a form of experimentation within high modernism that simply gave birth to new modernisms. In the realm of aesthetics and art , Lyotard is undeniably a key figure in the postmodern discourse.

Many critics firmly believe postmodern art is a direct descendant of modern art. The transition from modern to postmodern has been pegged to various moments: some say as early as 1914 in Europe, others as late as 1962 or even 1968 in America. James Elkins, in his typically nuanced way, compares the debates over the precise shift from modernism to postmodernism to the ongoing discussions about the exact temporal boundaries of mannerism . He points out that these debates are constant when dealing with art movements and periods, which doesn’t diminish their significance. The supposed end of the postmodern art era has been placed around the late 1980s, when the term itself began to lose its sharp edge, and artistic practices started grappling with the seismic shifts of globalization and new media .

Jean Baudrillard’s influence on postmodern-inspired art is undeniable. He championed the idea of new creative forms emerging from the postmodern condition. Peter Halley, for instance, described his vibrant, almost garish colors as a “hyperrealization of real color,” openly acknowledging Baudrillard as a significant influence. Ironically, Baudrillard himself, from 1984 onwards, tended to view contemporary and postmodern art as inferior to the modernist art that followed World War II. Lyotard, on the other hand, found contemporary painting fascinating, noting its evolution from its modern roots. The rise of major women artists in the 20th century is also intrinsically linked to postmodern art, as much of the theoretical framework for understanding their work emerged from French psychoanalysis and feminist theory , fields deeply intertwined with postmodern philosophy.

Of course, like any label applied to art, “postmodern” faces its share of detractors. Kirk Varnedoe, for one, argued forcefully that postmodernism doesn’t exist and that modernism’s potential is far from exhausted. While the term has become a convenient shorthand for certain post-war “schools” employing specific materials and techniques, the theoretical underpinnings of postmodernism as a distinct epochal or epistemic division remain hotly contested.

Characteristics

Postmodernism, at its core, is a reaction. It arises from, and often actively rejects, the principles of modernism . Modernism championed ideals such as formal purity, medium specificity , art for art’s sake , the pursuit of authenticity , the quest for universality , and the relentless drive for originality and the avant-garde . Postmodernism, however, finds much of this rather tiresome. Paradox, perhaps, is the most significant modernist concept against which postmodernism rails. Modernism, initiated by figures like Manet , reveled in paradox. Manet’s defiance of traditional representation highlighted the supposed irreconcilable differences between reality and its depiction, design and representation, abstraction and the real. This embrace of paradox was a fertile ground for artistic exploration, from Manet’s time right up to the conceptualists.

The very notion of the avant-garde is a point of contention. Many institutions champion the idea of art being visionary, forward-thinking, cutting-edge, and progressive – essential qualities for art reflecting our current times. Postmodernism, in contrast, tends to dismiss the concept of inherent progress in art, seeking to dismantle the “myth of the avant-garde ”. Rosalind Krauss was a prominent voice in declaring the avant-garde’s demise, heralding a new artistic era that was both post-liberal and post-progress. Griselda Pollock, through her extensive research and writing, has critically examined the avant-garde and modern art, simultaneously reevaluating modern art and redefining postmodern art.

A hallmark of postmodern art is its audacious blending of high and low culture. It readily incorporates industrial materials and imagery drawn from popular culture. While modernist experimentation also dabbled in “low” forms, as seen in Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik’s 1990-91 exhibition “High and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art” at the Museum of Modern Art —an exhibition universally panned for its perceived failure to reconcile these disparate elements—postmodern art fully embraces this fusion. This blurring of the lines between fine art and kitsch, high art and low art, is a defining characteristic. While modernism experimented with this fusion, postmodernism fully endorses it. It readily incorporates elements of commercialism, kitsch, and a general camp aesthetic. Postmodern artists often borrow styles from past eras, such as Gothicism , the Renaissance , and the Baroque , recontextualizing them without regard for their original significance. This eclectic borrowing is central to postmodern artistic practice. Art Spiegelman, in discussing his stylistic choices for Maus , highlighted the postmodern artist’s ability to draw from a vast “palette” of styles, a stark contrast to their predecessors who often focused on refining a singular “trademark” style.

Fredric Jameson suggested that postmodern works deliberately eschew spontaneity and direct expression, favoring instead pastiche and discontinuity. However, Charles Harrison and Paul Wood of Art and Language countered that pastiche and discontinuity are inherent to modernist art and were effectively utilized by modern masters like Manet and Picasso .

A concise definition might state that postmodernism rejects modernism’s grand, overarching narratives of artistic direction, dissolves the boundaries between high and low art, and disrupts conventional genres through collision, collage, and fragmentation. It operates on the principle that all stances are inherently unstable and insincere, leaving irony , parody , and humor as the only positions impervious to critique or revision . “Pluralism and diversity” are also frequently cited as defining features.

Avant-garde precursors

The seeds of postmodernism can be traced back to radical movements and trends that emerged around World War I and particularly in its aftermath. The introduction of industrial artifacts into art and the widespread use of techniques like collage by avant-garde movements such as Cubism , Dada , and Surrealism fundamentally questioned the nature and value of art. New art forms, notably cinema and the burgeoning field of reproduction , played a significant role in how these movements conceived and created artworks. Clement Greenberg ’s seminal 1939 essay, Avant-Garde and Kitsch , published in Partisan Review , defended the avant-garde against the perceived threat of popular culture. Later, Peter Bürger would distinguish between the historical avant-garde and modernism. Critics like Krauss, Huyssen, and Douglas Crimp, following Bürger’s lead, identified the historical avant-garde as a crucial precursor to postmodernism. Krauss, for example, viewed Pablo Picasso ’s innovative use of collage as an avant-garde practice that foreshadowed postmodern art’s emphasis on language over autobiography. However, an alternative perspective suggests that both avant-garde and modernist artists employed similar strategies, and postmodernism represents a repudiation of both.

Dada

The early 20th century witnessed Marcel Duchamp exhibiting a urinal as a sculpture, a gesture intended to challenge viewers to perceive an everyday object as art simply by virtue of its designation as such. He termed these works “Readymades ”. His notorious piece, Fountain , a urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt, sent shockwaves through the art world in 1917. This work, along with Duchamp’s other creations, is typically categorized as Dada . Duchamp is often seen as a precursor to conceptual art . Some critics, however, question classifying Duchamp—whose fascination with paradox is well-documented—as postmodern, arguing that he deliberately avoided any specific medium, as paradox itself is not medium-specific, despite its early emergence in Manet’s paintings.

Dadaism , alongside movements like Surrealism , Futurism , and Abstract Expressionism, can be seen as part of modernism’s broader tendency to challenge established artistic styles and forms. Chronologically situated within modernism, Dada is nevertheless considered by many critics to anticipate postmodernism. Figures like Ihab Hassan and Steven Connor view it as a potential transitional point between modernism and postmodernism. McEvilly, for instance, argues that postmodernism begins with the realization that the myth of progress is no longer tenable. He suggests Duchamp grasped this as early as 1914, shifting from a modernist to a postmodernist practice by “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.”

Radical movements in modern art

Generally speaking, Pop Art and Minimalism originated as modernist movements. However, a significant paradigm shift and philosophical schism between formalism and anti-formalism in the early 1970s led to these movements being re-evaluated by some as precursors or transitional forms of postmodern art. Other modernist movements cited as influences on postmodern art include conceptual art and the utilization of techniques such as assemblage , montage , bricolage , and appropriation .

Jackson Pollock and abstract expressionism

The revolutionary approach to painting pioneered by Jackson Pollock in the late 1940s and early 1950s profoundly expanded the possibilities for all subsequent Contemporary art . Pollock recognized that the process of creating a work of art held as much significance as the finished piece itself. Much like Pablo Picasso ’s groundbreaking reinventions of painting and sculpture around the turn of the century through Cubism and constructed sculpture, Pollock redefined the very act of artmaking in the mid-20th century. His departure from conventional easel painting liberated his contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists. They discovered that Pollock’s method—working on the floor, on unstretched canvas, from all sides, employing both traditional artist materials and industrial ones, incorporating imagery and abstraction, and using techniques like pouring, dripping, drawing, staining, and brushing—shattered previous artistic boundaries. Abstract expressionism , in its various forms, broadened and redefined the definitions and possibilities available to artists for creating new works of art. The innovations of artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning , Franz Kline , Mark Rothko , Philip Guston , Hans Hofmann , Clyfford Still , Barnett Newman , and Ad Reinhardt , among others, truly opened the floodgates to the immense diversity and scope of art that followed.

After abstract expressionism

In the 1950s and 1960s, abstract painting saw the emergence of new directions, such as Hard-edge painting and various forms of Geometric abstraction , exemplified by artists like Frank Stella . These developments arose in reaction to the perceived subjectivism of Abstract Expressionism. Clement Greenberg became a prominent advocate for Post-painterly Abstraction, curating an influential exhibition of new painting that toured major art museums across the United States in 1964. Color field painting , Hard-edge painting , and Lyrical Abstraction emerged as significant new directions in abstract art.

By the close of the 1960s, movements like Postminimalism , Process Art , and Arte Povera also appeared as revolutionary concepts and movements. These encompassed both painting and sculpture, drawing from Lyrical Abstraction and the Postminimalist movement, and also laid the groundwork for early Conceptual Art . Process art, inspired by Pollock’s methods, allowed artists to explore a vast range of styles, content, materials, spatial arrangements, temporal considerations, and both plastic and real space. Artists such as 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 , and Lee Lozano were among the younger generation of artists who emerged during the era of late modernism , paving the way for the vibrant art scene of the late 1960s.

Movements

Performance art and happenings

Pioneers of performance-based art, often incorporating nudity, included Yves Klein in France , and in New York City , artists like Carolee Schneemann , Yayoi Kusama , Charlotte Moorman , and Yoko Ono . Groups such as The Living Theater , with Julian Beck and Judith Malina , collaborated with sculptors and painters to create immersive environments, radically altering the audience-performer relationship, particularly in their influential piece Paradise Now. The Judson Dance Theater , located at the Judson Memorial Church in New York , and its associated dancers, including prominent figures like Yvonne Rainer , Trisha Brown , Elaine Summers , Sally Gross , Simonne Forti, Deborah Hay , Lucinda Childs , and Steve Paxton , collaborated with artists such as Robert Morris (artist) , Robert Whitman , John Cage , Robert Rauschenberg , and engineers like Billy Klüver . These performances were often conceived as the creation of entirely new art forms, merging sculpture, dance, music, and sound, frequently involving audience participation. The reductive philosophies of minimalism , spontaneous improvisation, and the expressive qualities of Abstract expressionism were characteristic of these works.

During the same period, from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, various avant-garde artists created Happenings . These were often mysterious, spontaneous, and unscripted gatherings of artists, their friends, and family in designated locations. Happenings frequently incorporated elements of absurdity, physical exercise, elaborate costumes, spontaneous nudity , and a series of seemingly disconnected acts. Notable creators of Happenings included Allan Kaprow , Joseph Beuys , Nam June Paik , Wolf Vostell , Claes Oldenburg , Jim Dine , Red Grooms , and Robert Whitman .

Assemblage art

Related to Abstract expressionism was the emergence of assemblage art , which involved combining manufactured items with artist materials, marking a departure from earlier conventions of painting and sculpture. The work of Robert Rauschenberg , particularly his “combines” from the 1950s, which prefigured Pop Art and Installation art , exemplified this trend. These works incorporated the assemblage of large physical objects, including stuffed animals, birds, and commercial photography .

Leo Steinberg, in 1969, used the term postmodernism to describe Rauschenberg’s “flatbed” picture plane, which integrated a diverse array of cultural images and artifacts that had previously been incompatible with the pictorial field of premodernist and modernist painting. Craig Owens expanded on this, identifying the significance of Rauschenberg’s work not merely as a representation of what Steinberg termed “the shift from nature to culture,” but as a demonstration of the inherent impossibility of truly separating them.

Steven Best and Douglas Kellner classify Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns as figures operating within the transitional phase between modernism and postmodernism, heavily influenced by Marcel Duchamp . These artists incorporated images of ordinary objects, or the objects themselves, into their work while retaining the abstraction and painterly gestures characteristic of high modernism.

Anselm Kiefer also employs elements of assemblage in his art, notably incorporating the bow of a fishing boat into one of his paintings.

Pop art

Lawrence Alloway coined the term “Pop art” to describe paintings that celebrated the consumerism of the post-World War II era. This movement represented a rejection of Abstract expressionism and its focus on introspective, psychological themes, in favor of art that depicted, and often celebrated, material culture, advertising, and the iconography of the mass-production age. Early works by David Hockney and the works of Richard Hamilton , John McHale (artist) , and Eduardo Paolozzi are considered seminal examples of the movement. Later American examples include the bulk of the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein , notable for his use of Benday dots , a technique prevalent in commercial reproduction. There is a clear lineage connecting the radical works of Duchamp , the irreverent Dadaist with his penchant for humor, and Pop artists like Claes Oldenburg , Andy Warhol , and [Roy Lichtenstein].

Thomas McEvilly, concurring with Dave Hickey, suggests that U.S. postmodernism in the visual arts commenced with the initial exhibitions of Pop Art in 1962, though it took approximately twenty years for postmodernism to become a dominant attitude in the visual arts. Fredric Jameson also considers Pop Art to be postmodern.

One significant way Pop Art embodies postmodernism is by dismantling what Andreas Huyssen terms the “Great Divide” between high art and popular culture. Postmodernism, in this view, emerges from a “generational refusal of the categorical certainties of high modernism.”

Fluxus

Fluxus, a loosely organized international network of artists, designers, and composers, was named and formally organized in 1962 by George Maciunas (1931–1978), a Lithuanian-born American artist. Fluxus traces its origins to John Cage ’s Experimental Composition classes held at the New School for Social Research in New York City between 1957 and 1959. Many of Cage’s students were artists working in other disciplines with little or no formal musical background. Among Cage’s students were Fluxus founding members Jackson Mac Low , Al Hansen , George Brecht , and Dick Higgins .

In 1962, Fluxus events began in Germany with the FLUXUS Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik in Wiesbaden , featuring artists such as George Maciunas , Joseph Beuys , Wolf Vostell , and Nam June Paik . This was followed in 1963 by the Festum Fluxorum Fluxus in Düsseldorf , with George Maciunas , Wolf Vostell , Joseph Beuys , Dick Higgins , Nam June Paik , Ben Patterson , and Emmett Williams , among others.

Fluxus championed a do-it-yourself aesthetic, valuing simplicity over complexity. Similar to Dada before it, Fluxus harbored a strong current of anti-commercialism and an anti-art sensibility, disparaging the conventional, market-driven art world in favor of an artist-centered creative practice. Fluxus artists often utilized readily available materials and either created their own work or collaborated closely with their peers.

Fluxus can be seen as part of the initial phase of postmodernism, alongside artists like Rauschenberg, Johns, Warhol, and the Situationist International . Andreas Huyssen, however, criticizes attempts to fully claim Fluxus for postmodernism, suggesting it is either the “master-code of postmodernism” or an “ultimately unrepresentable art movement—as it were, postmodernism’s sublime.” Instead, he views Fluxus as a significant Neo-Dadaist phenomenon within the broader avant-garde tradition. While it may not have represented a major leap in artistic strategies, it undeniably expressed a rebellion against “the administered culture of the 1950s, in which a moderate, domesticated modernism served as ideological prop to the Cold War .”

Minimalism

By the early 1960s, Minimalism emerged as an abstract art movement. With roots in geometric abstraction through figures like Kazimir Malevich , the Bauhaus , and Piet Mondrian , it rejected the idea of relational and subjective painting, the complexity of Abstract expressionist surfaces, and the emotional tenor and polemics prevalent in the discourse of Action Painting . Minimalism proposed that extreme simplicity could achieve the sublime representation that art requires. Associated primarily with painters like Frank Stella , minimalism in painting, distinct from its application in other fields, is considered a modernist movement. Depending on the context, it can be interpreted as a precursor to the postmodern movement.

Hal Foster, in his essay “The Crux of Minimalism,” explores the extent to which artists like Donald Judd and Robert Morris (artist) both acknowledged and transcended Greenbergian modernism in their definitions of minimalism. He argues that minimalism was not a mere “dead end” of modernism but rather a “paradigm shift toward postmodern practices that continue to be elaborated today.”

Land art

Land art , also known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. It is largely associated with the United Kingdom and the United States , though examples exist globally. As a trend, “land art” significantly expanded the traditional boundaries of artmaking by altering the materials used and the locations where artworks were sited. The materials employed are often natural elements—soil, rocks, vegetation, and water—found directly at the site, which are frequently located far from urban centers. While these sites can be inaccessible, photographic documentation is typically brought back to urban art galleries.

The movement’s core concerns revolved around a rejection of the commercialization of art and a burgeoning enthusiasm for ecological consciousness. The emergence of land art coincided with a growing disillusionment with urban living and a romanticization of the rural. These inclinations were often intertwined with spiritual yearnings concerning the planet Earth as humanity’s home.

Postminimalism

Robert Pincus-Witten coined the term Post-minimalism in 1977 to describe art derived from minimalism but incorporating content and contextual overtones that minimalism had previously rejected. His definition encompassed the period from 1966 to 1976 and applied to the work of artists like Eva Hesse , Keith Sonnier , and Richard Serra , as well as new works by former minimalists such as Robert Smithson , Robert Morris (artist) , Sol LeWitt , and Barry Le Va, among others. Process art and anti-form art are other terms used to describe this body of work, where the space it occupies and the process of its creation are integral to its meaning.

Rosalind Krauss argues that 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.” She posits that the expansion of the category of sculpture to include land art and architecture “brought about the shift into postmodernism.”

American sculptor Christopher Wilmarth can be considered a post-Minimalist alongside figures like Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman . Wilmarth’s work moved away from the perfectly manufactured aesthetic of the minimalists but also resisted the process-oriented excesses found in much postminimalist sculpture of the 1970s.

Minimalist artists such as Donald Judd , Dan Flavin , Carl Andre , Agnes Martin , and John McCracken (artist) , among others, continued to produce their later modernist paintings and sculptures throughout their careers.

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is sometimes categorized as postmodern due to its explicit engagement with the deconstruction of what constitutes a work of art. Conceptual art often provokes controversy because it is frequently designed to challenge, offend, or attack the prevailing notions held by its audience.

Precursors to conceptual art can be found in the work of Marcel Duchamp , John Cage ’s piece 4’ 33" (where the music is considered to be “the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed”), and Rauschenberg’s Erased De Kooning Drawing . Many conceptual works propose that art is created by the viewer’s perception of an object or act as art, rather than stemming from the intrinsic qualities of the work itself. Thus, Duchamp’s Fountain was considered a sculpture simply because it was exhibited as such.

Figurative painting

Certain currents within post-war figurative painting have been analyzed through a postmodern lens. The Italian painter Carlo Maria Mariani was described as a postmodernist by American critics. According to Charles Jencks , Mariani’s group portrait The Constellation of Leo (1980–1981), which depicted figures from Italy’s art world with references to mythology and art history, came to embody a characteristic postmodern trope: “an ironic comment on a comment on a comment which signals the distance; a new myth thrice removed from its originating ritual.”

Installation art

A significant series of movements consistently described as postmodern includes installation art and the creation of conceptual artifacts. Jenny Holzer’s signs, for example, employ artistic devices to convey specific messages, such as “Protect Me From What I Want.” Installation art has played a crucial role in shaping the spatial considerations of museums of contemporary art, accommodating the large-scale works often composed of vast collages of manufactured and found objects. These installations and collages frequently incorporate electrical elements, moving parts, and lighting.

They are often designed to generate environmental effects, as exemplified by Christo and Jeanne-Claude ’s Iron Curtain, Wall of 240 Oil Barrels, Blocking Rue Visconti, Paris, June 1962, a piece that served as a poetic response to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Lowbrow art

Lowbrow is a widespread, populist art movement with origins in the underground comix scene, punk music, hot-rod car culture, and other Californian subcultures. It is also frequently known as pop surrealism. Lowbrow art highlights a central theme in postmodernism: the dissolution of the distinction between “high” and “low” art.

Performance art

As previously discussed, performance art and happenings were central to the postmodern exploration of artistic boundaries.

Digital art

Digital art encompasses a broad spectrum of artistic works and practices where digital technology is integral to the creative process and/or presentation. The advent of digital technology has profoundly transformed traditional mediums such as painting , drawing , sculpture , and music/sound art. Concurrently, new forms like net art , digital installation art , and virtual reality have emerged as recognized artistic practices.

Leading theorists and historians in this field include Christiane Paul , Frank Popper , Christine Buci-Glucksmann , Dominique Moulon , Robert C. Morgan , Roy Ascott , Catherine Perret , Margot Lovejoy , Edmond Couchot , Fred Forest , and Edward A. Shanken .

Intermedia and multi-media

Another artistic trend associated with the term postmodern is the integration of multiple media. Intermedia , a term coined by Dick Higgins , aimed to describe new art forms emerging along the lines of Fluxus , Concrete Poetry , Found objects , Performance art , and Computer art . Higgins, a publisher of Something Else Press , a Concrete poet , married to artist Alison Knowles , and an admirer of Marcel Duchamp , significantly influenced this area. Ihab Hassan includes “Intermedia, the fusion of forms, the confusion of realms,” among his key characteristics of postmodern art. One of the most prevalent forms of “multi-media art” involves the use of videotape and CRT monitors, commonly referred to as Video art . While the theory of combining multiple arts into a single art form is ancient and has been revived periodically, its postmodern manifestation often occurs in conjunction with performance art , where the dramatic subtext is deliberately removed, leaving the artist’s specific statements or the conceptual underpinnings of their actions to the forefront. Higgins’s conception of Intermedia is closely linked to the proliferation of multimedia digital practices such as immersive virtual reality , digital art , and computer art .

Telematic Art

Telematic art describes artistic projects that utilize computer-mediated telecommunication networks as their primary medium. It challenges the traditional dynamic between passive viewers and active artworks by fostering interactive, behavioral contexts for remote aesthetic experiences. Roy Ascott views telematic art as a transformative process where the viewer becomes an active participant in the creation of the artwork, which remains in a state of ongoing development throughout its duration. Ascott has been at the forefront of telematic art theory and practice since 1978, when he first went online and began organizing collaborative online projects.

Appropriation art and neo-conceptual art

In his 1980 essay “The Allegorical Impulse: Toward a Theory of Postmodernism,” Craig Owens identified the resurgence of an allegorical impulse as a defining characteristic of postmodern art. This impulse is evident in the appropriation art of artists such as Sherrie Levine and Robert Longo , as “Allegorical imagery is appropriated imagery.” Appropriation art actively debunks modernist notions of artistic genius and originality. It is inherently more ambivalent and contradictory than modern art, simultaneously reinforcing and undermining ideologies, existing in a state of being “both critical and complicit.”

Neo-expressionism and painting

The resurgence of traditional art forms like sculpture and painting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly evident in the work of Neo-expressionist artists such as Georg Baselitz and Julian Schnabel , has been described as a postmodern tendency and one of the first coherent movements to emerge in the postmodern era. However, its strong ties to the commercial art market have raised questions about its status as a truly postmodern movement and the definition of postmodernism itself. Hal Foster argues that neo-expressionism was complicit with the conservative cultural politics of the Reagan-Bush era in the U.S. Félix Guattari dismisses the “large promotional operations dubbed ’neo-expressionism’ in Germany” as a facile means to demonstrate that “postmodernism is nothing but the last gasp of modernism.” These critiques of neo-expressionism highlight how financial backing and public relations sustained the credibility of the contemporary art world in America during a period when conceptual artists and the practices of women artists , including painters and feminist theorists like Griselda Pollock , were systematically reevaluating modern art. Brian Massumi contends that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari opened the door to new definitions of Beauty in postmodern art. For Jean-François Lyotard, the paintings of artists like Valerio Adami , Daniel Buren , Marcel Duchamp , Bracha Ettinger , and Barnett Newman served as vehicles for new conceptions of the sublime in contemporary art, particularly after the era of the avant-garde and the paintings of Paul Cézanne and Wassily Kandinsky .

Institutional critique

Critiques directed at the institutions of art, primarily museums and galleries, are central to the work of artists such as Andrea Fraser , Michael Asher (artist) , Marcel Broodthaers , Daniel Buren , and Hans Haacke .

This is a rather exhaustive, and frankly exhausting, overview. If you’ve managed to absorb any of it, perhaps you’re not a complete lost cause. Just don’t expect me to be impressed.