Modernism

I have had an introduction to modernism through reading the first 55 pages of our modernism book. It has given me some deeper understanding about what modernism is. Reading this has built onto the small intro to modernism we had in the Postmodern book. What I gathered is that modernism came about through all the changes and new-ness that was happening in the world at the time. It said that modernism is a lot about technology and revolution and the idea of time as a stream. The world was entering into modernity and this coincided with the modernism movement. One of the forerunners and most easily recognized modernist was Pablo Picasso who started painting people with exaggerated form that were very deconstructed and flat. He was also one of the first people to head the idea that for something to be modern it must have no relationship to anything outside of the thing itself. For one to gather meaning from a modern painting you need to only look at the image and not drawl from any other knowledge. This is what I found to be one of the important criteria to recognize a modern work. In the book they also talked about the idea of time being a part of something. Art was no longer about a landscape or a recreation of a space but about a moment in time. This was evident with the introduction of movie film. Most of the films were train films where the camera was placed on a train and the train was moving through time and space. All of these things are important to modernism but they are not the only things that are important as I am sure we will find out through reading the rest of the book.

So if thats postmodernism.. what is art and who decides??

We read about postmodernism so now we should have a new sense of what art is and who decides. And I would say that I do. I know now that postmodern art is about a mesh of all sorts of ideas and styles and people and places and events. It is about the coming together of everything and the movement of creating something out of other thngs. I think that this tells us that art is a collage so to say and that the people who decides are to postmodernists themselves. The modernists and the premodernist arent going to agree on what art is and what is or is not art. Because of this I think that postmodernists are the ones who decide what postmodern art is and the modernists decide what modern art is and so on and so forth. It is still a touchy subject though and I still cant completely wrap my head around all of the concepts but I think nonetheless I have gained a greater insight from reading this book.

Inappropriate

Im am very angry about this idea of appropriateness. IT MAKES ME REALLY REALLY REALLY MAD!!!!!! The whole idea that something that we are reading for a class isn't appropriate for school. I AM EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD. I am legally an adult. These things are out there anyway, why cant we read about them in the safe environment of school?? I feel as though it is inappropriate not to let us read them. Teachers aren't showing us these books or whatever it may be and saying go do this be just like that. We are reading for educational value and to be taught life lessons and ideas. In English a little while ago we read Sula. In that book there were plenty of scenes that I wouldn't even call suggestive. They were so blatantly out there that it was almost reading soft-core porn. It is a little ridiculous to me that we are seen as so impressionable that reading a book will somehow damage us in unforeseeable ways and ultimately destroy our live. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. I AM FURIOUS. That is just my opinion.



An exerpt from Sula that had been deemed appropriate for school, to have students read ,and be taught..

"He liked for her to mount him so he could see her towering above him and call soft obscenities up into her face.. As she was rocking, swaying, she focused her thoughts to bar the creeping disorder that was flooding her hips. She looked down, down from what seemed an awful height at the head of a man whose lemon yellow gabardines had been the first sexual excitement she'd ever known... The height and the swaying dizzied her, so she bent down and let her breasts grave his chest... She slipped her hands under his armpits, for it seemed as though she would not be able to dam the spread of weakness she felt under her skin without holding onto something.. He swallowed her mouth just as her thighs had swallowed his genitals." - Sula p. 129-130

How's that for suggestive?

Post-Modernism Post-modernly

We got our first book yesterday and it is called Post-Modernism: A graphic guide to cutting edge thinking. We did some previewing of the book last night and I discovered that this book is not like any book I have ever read before. First of all it is about post-modernism, a subject I have never read about before, and secondly it is a graphic novel. It is really neat that it is a graphic novel because I have never been taught a graphic novel before. I imagine that it is going to be an interesting read and an interesting way to have class. On thumbing through the book I saw that it is pretty much a series of images and some text. On a particular page that I randomly turned to (p. 142) there is a scene about karaoke and its origins. The pictures were silly and the words were big and I was amused. Then on the next page it starts talking about serial killings, which doesnt seem to have anything to do with karaoke but apparently does. I get the feeling that reading this book is going to be insanely interesting and exciting.

But what is modern??

An example of a modern dance class

I am not very knowledgeable about different art forms. When asked the question what is modern and what does it mean and how it is applied I am not really sure what to say. I think that modern is a term used for things that happen now. How that applies to art I am not really sure. Drawling from my own experience, I have seen a type of dance that is called 'modern dance'. I was a ballerina from many many years and one year at my dance studio they introduced a modern class. Curious, I tried it out and went to see what it was all about. The typical dance class as a ballerina normally consists of drills upon drills upon drills about the foundations of ballet and the positions and the preciseness that it entailed. In my modern class I was astonished to see the other girls without the standard leotard and tutu but in shorts. We begun our class with a stretching exercise, not at the barre. It was odd to me that all of a sudden, in this modern class, we were foregoing the traditional seriousness of dance and began experimenting with what we could do. We added in new elements like stretchy elastic and gymnastic style rolls tucks and lifts. It was a complete turn around from the ballet that I had been doing all of my life. We didn't even wear ballet slippers, instead we went barefoot. In my experience with modern dance I think that I ended up with the idea that modern is something that breaks traditional rules and makes its own new ways of going about something. I don't know if it is that same way with other art forms but for me, modern dance was something that took everything I had learned as a traditional ballet dancer and twisted and warped it into something completely new and different.

The most amazing video in the world, created by us.

so for this class we made a live action video about what is art and who decides. It turned out amazing if I may say so myself but first off let me explain it. For the video all of us individually embodied a stereotype of artists. We used these stereotypes as our characters and in a class room scene we had a critique of pieces that we made in the fashion of out characters. In this way we showed how everybody, depending on views as an artist, thinks differently about what are is. Ultimately, through the use of interspersed testimonials, we displayed that really it is the creator of the art who decides if they feel that it is art. Other people may agree or disagree with the claim but in the end it is all about the artist. Our video showed all of this in a comedic nutshell by using us as the characters and commenting on the pieces made (or not made) by the different characters.

So... why DOES man create?

The most unique movie we watched was Why Man Creates? it was a kind of documentary esque video about the reasons for creation. The First segment we saw was a cartoon and it showed how man has been creating and solving problems since the beginning of time. It was interesting to see all the inventions and ideas that came through time. Another one of the segments we watched that I thought was interesting was the one where the artist put up his sculpture and all the people were criticizing it and how those bad reviews were shooting him. I thought that was a really interesting way to portray the idea that the artist depends on recognition from the public to survive. The last segment that I thought was cute was the bouncy ball that didn't meet the standards and was thrown out of the factory for bouncing too high. Then he made a life for himself as an individual and bounced into the sky forever. I think this was trying to show how sometimes when there is something new it might be rejected at first but if you perservere you never know how it will turn out in the end and eventually it may take off. The video as a whole was really neat to watch. It was a good unique way to look at some of those concepts.