Post Modern Era

 

In this week's assignment, I am going to showcase the Post-Modern era from 1980 to the present with a non-traditional theme. Post-Modern era art has a different style from the Mid-Modern era in the fact that it does not have one unified style like one would see in cubism. But you may see a common thread more like the dada or surrealism approach because of its style that is less abstract. The one common thread from the Mid to Post Modern era is the motivation to reject abstraction. Post-Modern art still has an approach that maintains a desire to produce nontraditional art. You may find a solid subject but the way the art is presented will leave the interpretation up to the viewer.  Mediums include many different types of materials. You may see fiber, technology, electronics, glass, and steel. I am going to start with Karen Finley. She is famously known for Performance Art and she is able to create art that injects passion, humor, honesty, and even aggravation into a room. She would cover topics such as sex, feminism, politics and would often strip down to her naked body for Performance Art. She has the ability to take news and turn it into art.  I choose her piece called "Blood Coming Out of Her Whatever." This piece moves me in many ways. I remember watching the Trump interview where he said these words about Megyn Kelly, and I quote, "She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions," Trump said in a CNN interview. "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. In my opinion, she was off base." (Rucker,2015) I remember being mortified, embarrassed, and in shock to hear these words come out of our President's mouth. So when I see that Karen Finley was able to take news and turn it into art it makes me feel like art can transcend many platforms and this piece to me captures what Trumps idiotic words truly meant to women all over the world. The Art Elements used are contrast and value used in the shading of the letters, the rhythm and movement of the writing, and the curly line of the cursive helps me interpret Trump's quote to exactly what I think it means. It reminds me of a finger-painted sign that is written in menstrual blood which is what I really think is his thoughts on women. That we are just bloodstains. It makes me feel like I am part of a "girls club" because as women we all know how it feels to menstruate, how heavy, soft, thick, and sometimes watery our period blood can be and I feel like that's what this art is a representation of. 

Artist: Karen Finley“Blood Coming Out of Her Whatever,” 2018.

This again is how Karen Finley can turn news into politics. This piece was created in 2018, during the Trump era and this is exactly how I felt about politics at that time. These two works were created out of  Finley interpreting and questioning the roller-coaster political climate fueled by the 2016 presidential election, notably Donald Trump, his supporters, and the media's sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton throughout the presidential campaign. You can see the cost of admission to one of her shows here. Tickets are upwards of 500.00$!

                                            Artist: Karen Finley “Fuck Politics,” 2018

"We Keep our victims Ready." Karen Finley

 

 In the 1990s Karen Finley stripped down nude and smeared chocolate all over her body in a demonstration against sexual violence.  She was an NEA grant recipient. Government-funded Artist. A local senator launched a full-scale attack of her work, and that of three other NEA grant recipients, leading the National Endowment of the Arts to rescind her grant with the charge of “indecency.” This attempt by Washington to censor the arts forever changed the structure of public funding in the United States. Over the next eight years, Finley fought her way to the Supreme Court. She lost that suit but championed the freedom of artists and their voices and bodies the entire way. (She even posed, covered in chocolate, for Playboy in 1993 to draw attention to the hypocrisy coming out of the nation’s capital.)

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I had the chance to visit Chicago and see "The Bean". I choose this piece of art because I like how public sculptures moved away from politics and began a creative space for artists during Post-Modernism. The bean was created in 2006 in Chicago. It is massive in size and the cool thing is it is made from stainless polished steel and looks light in weight but it weighs over 100 tons. The smooth texture of the stainless steel reflects the sky and all of the looming skyscrapers at Millennium Park. If you get a chance go and see it! The color of the steel is magnificent and the lines are curved. and the shape is three-dimensional. This piece makes me feel like I'm rich and cultivated- I felt like a consumer of art when I walked around Chicago and unexpectedly would come across public sculptures everywhere!  You can read more about the history of  "The Bean" here.

                                 "Cloud Gate” or “The Bean” Artist: Anish Kapoor

                                                    

                                      "Turning the World Upside Down" 2010 Artist: Anish Kapoor

Above In 2010, "Turning the World Upside Down," was commissioned and installed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The sculpture is a 16-foot tall polished-steel hourglass and it reflects and reverses the Jerusalem sky and the museum's landscape, a likely reference to the city's duality of celestial and earthly, holy and profane the curved form captures in its reflections, the earth, and sky, but because of the shape, these are reversed: the top half reflects the ground (the visitors on the plaza), while the lower half reflects the skyline as it is seen around the perimeter of the museum campus. I like this sculpture because it reminded me of "The Bean" and its three-dimensional elements. The texture looks so smooth and the lines are symmetrical. I love the color silver of the stainless steel which creates the reflection which in turn helps create the interpretation of the duality of the city being profane yet holy. You can find some of Anish Kapoor art here. His public sculptures really are amazing and on a gigantic scale of size!

Below: From left, Xenobia Bailey's 1993-2009 "Sistah Paradise's Great Wall of Fire Revival Tent"; Ernesto Neto's 2012 "SoundWay"; and Piotr Uklanski's 2012 "Untitled (Femmage)." (Greg Cook)

Above is what is called Fiber Art. It is an installation piece that is done while artists were trying to turn their craft into art. What I like about this wave of post-modern art is how near it is to this era. The above art was done in 2012. I grew up in the 70's so when I think of macrame plant hangers, old school macrame swing chairs and I envision my grandmother crocheting scarves for us I like how this art was thrust into modern times. I feel like it has one foot in the hand-woven tapestry of the '60s to the Third-wave feminism of the Post Modern style of the 1990s and the crafty revolution, though, sparked a revival by the 2000s. The shapes are geometric, and to the touch, there are many elements. The middle piece has bells and seed pods woven into the fabric that creates a sound as you touch it. This art tries to strike a balance between handmade and technology as the contemporary craft revival runs in parallel with our futuristic smartphones and smart bombs. People seek out craft’s deft skill and human flaws as cozy, homey, and soft.

                                                     “Some/One” Artist: Do Ho Suh

A philosophy that informs post-modernism is Deconstruction, which rejects universals. The above installation piece is a philosophy of deconstruction. The Post Modernist still wasn't us to look at the symbol and realize that it may not always have the same meaning. For instance, in this piece, the artist combines thousands and thousands of soldier's dog tags and asks you the consumer of art to realize that each soldier is an individual but together they are combines to make a troop. The shape/form has depth, length, and width.  The texture of the silver dog tags makes me individualize them, count them. Helps me realize the enormity of the number of dog tags in the installation. The line of the arms in the coat makes me feel the strength and openness of time and space. Like even though soldiers are considered tuff, they have a human soft-like quality to them as well. This piece was created in 2005 and is housed in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Follow this link and you can zoom in on the individual stainless steel dog tags.

Citations:

---. “Trump Says Fox’s Megyn Kelly Had ‘Blood Coming out of Her Wherever.’” Washingtonpost.Com, The Washington Post, 8 Aug. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/07/trump-says-foxs-megyn-kelly-had-blood-coming-out-of-her-wherever.

“Sext Me If You Can.” Newmeuseum.Org, New Museum Of Contemporary Art, www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/176/sext-me-if-you-can-by-karen-finley-performance-and-installation-3. Accessed 24 July 2021.