Modernism Vs. PostModernism

According to the World Encyclopedia the term Avant-garde is used to describe “innovators in the arts, particularly those whose artistic audacity surprises their contemporaries.”

Avant-garde always introduces something new and innovative. In art it can refer to something that has not been done before; a novel and innovative artwork which is much ahead of its time and in most cases radical and pioneering. Avant-garde despite modernism and postmodernism movements which chronologically followed each other in 19th and 20th century, could have happened in any period of time. In other words in every movement in art history there could have beenavant-garde, as there were, and because rather than a movement in art, it is a novelcharacteristic of an artwork, it could have even started a movement itself. For example Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes can easily be regarded as an avant-garde piece as Danto specifically credited this work of art with the end of modernism and the beginning of the postmodernism.

Looking through the “possibility of universal communication” which modernists believe in and postmodernists don’t, it is even more likely to consider avant-garde in postmodernist art rather than that of modernist. Karen Hamblen (1991) argues that “most scholars no longer believe that art objects can communicate without viewers having access to knowledge about the times in which they were made and the places in which they originated.”

Where Immanuel Kant, who set the philosophic groundwork for artistic modernism, believed “when viewing art, people should put themselves in a supra state of sensory awareness, give up their personal interests and associational responses and consider art independently of any purpose or utility other than the aesthetics.”

Therefore viewing this notion from the modernist perspective, it is almost impossible to have an avant-garde, because one of the major requirements of considering an artwork avant-garde is to view it in regards of its time of production or performance. In other words avant-garde is temporal. For example in modernist point of view John Cage can no longer be considered as an avant-garde musician as his chance operation techniques have been practiced by different artists in variety of disciplines.

One of the major concepts that effected both modernism and postmodernism during the 19th and 20th century was the major advances and developments in the technology. In Both movements it attracted a lot of attention from both artists and philosophers. Many different articles were published concerning technology and its consequences. Many of the artists and philosophers deeply engaged themselves in producing material exploring, criticizing or admiring technology.

In modernist art Technology was still observed in the context of capitalist Industrialization, where postmodernism, because of its roots in Marxism, criticized modernity by mentioning the subjugation of workers under that system, and focused more on the implications of technology in the lifestyle of people and its relation with the society in a more general view. Artists not only made art about technology, but they actually employed it to produce art. The significance of the technology in art production in Modernist and postmodernist art is to an extent that Douglas Crimp (1990) mentions the invention of photography as the reason for modernism’s demise and postmodernism’s birth.

Technology, particularly in postmodern world, has benefited artists in various ways and has offered them so many different tools, or what Marshall Mcluhan calls extensions of our senses and nerves, that the possibilities and options in front of them comparing to that of the modernism, is extremely vast. As a matter of fact, if according to Douglas Crimp photography is considered as the end of modernism, many art disciplines including photography and cinema appeared during the postmodernism. Therefore the postmodern artist can express her/himself in a much larger variety of mediums and in this age referring to Mcluhan again medium’s characteristics gains such an importance that it overwhelms the importance of the content. Therefore as technology provides variety of tools and also creates a new subject in the philosophy of art, one can say the more a society is advanced in technology the more possibilities and options are open for the artist in that society, which means postmodernists have a much more diverse range of mediums and concepts to work on comparing to modernists. Thus it is more likely to see avant-garde in a postmodernist rather than modernism, because of the potentials that technology has granted it. At the same time in another sense it is fair to say that it is almost impossible to produce an avant-garde art today, because according to the definition of avant-garde one can refer to him/herself as an avant-garde if s/he believes that s/he is ahead of his/her time, where quoting Marshall Mcluhan: “in the electric age there is no longer any sense in talking about the artist being ahead of his time. Our technology is, also, ahead of its time, if we reckon by, the ability to recognize it for what it is.”

One of the key contributions of technology to art is the development of reproduction which photography as mentioned earlier is an important part of that. Therefore postmodernism has benefited the most from technology as one of its main qualities is reproducing existing information in new means. As Terry Barrett (1997) mentions: “Postmodernists flout the modernists’ reverence for Originality.” In other words postmodernists tend to, what he calls, “barrow” from the past and by placing the old information into new contexts, try to question the whole concept around the information, and of course this goes back to the nature of the postmodernism, as quoting Richard Tarnas: “The subject of knowledge is already embedded in the object of knowledge: the human mind never stands outside the world judging it from an external vantage point. Every object of knowledge is already part of a preinterpreted context and beyond that context are only other preinterpreted contexts.”

The reproduction developments have not only provided tools for artists, and particularly postmodernists, but have also influenced art indirectly by making it available to the public. The reproduction brings a work of art to all those people who would otherwise not see it; regardless of their position in time and space, although reproduced art lacks what Walter Benjamin calls the “aura” of it. In this concept one may reason that because postmodernists have the tendency to appropriate material from the past to remind us that the notion of originality is absent in most traditions of art, there can not exist an avant-garde in postmodernism. But the necessity of being considered avant-garde is more based on innovation rather than originality. In other words a piece of art can be new and innovative while it appropriates material from the past. A perfect example for this can be Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. By “appropriating” a urinal, an object from the daily life, he pioneered and introduced the idea that art could take any form and he shocked the world. Therefore he was a postmodernist avant-garde.

As It is demonstrated above, avant-garde not only can exist is postmodernism but it is even more likely to appear in postmodernism rather than modernism, mainly due to the nature and structure that forms postmodernism: the nature of questioning knowledge and truth, its roots in Marxism and feminism and the appropriation from the past, Also considering the fact that postmodern era is exposed to a much more advanced technology.