Post Modern Versus Post-Postmodern: Continued

In my entry dated February 12, 2010 I looked at David Bate’s article, "After Postmodernism," in which he, a photographer discussed Hyper Realism in the visual arts as a Post-Postmodern – I’m calling it “Po-Pomo” - phenomenon. I am a visual realist myself so I tend to stay focused myopically. However, on Sunday a week ago, I read “Post Minimal to the Max,” an article by Roberta Smith in the New York Times. In that article, Smith gives examples of artists she believes should currently have much more exposure in the major museums of New York City. All of the artists fit in categories other than realism. Smith decries the sameness of the New York Museum art scene, and I am reminded that there is so much more to both the Modern and Postmodern than extreme realism in the visual arts. Some of the artists she discusses are Jim Nutt, Dona Nelson, Nicole Eisenman, Roy De Forest, Peter Saul, Louis Dodd, Thomas Nozkowski, and Larry Poons. Because of my own Realist proclivities Smith’s article took me by surprise. Smith expressed displeasure over seeing the same international Minimalist artists repeatedly in the major New York museum venues- though she is not devaluing either the museums or the artists - generated by the need to conform to the committee system in place and to raise cash. She simply emphasizes the fact that so much more is being left out. Based on the reading of Smith I have left so much out of my own discussion of the contemporary art scene. For instance, in my last journal entry I didn’t think to observe that David Bate’s photographs from the series “Bungled Memories” (image above) are actually Minimalist works.

Thus, it behooves me to look into and possibly write at length about trends other than realism and how these relate to the topic “Post-Postmodern versus the Postmodern.”

* Bate, David, “Bungled Memories,” David Bate Website at http://davidbate.net/EXHIBITIONS/Bungled-Memories.html. Viewed 10:21 AM EST, Friday, February, 12, 2010.


Reading

Bate, David, “After Postmodernism?” in Lens Culture, http://www.lensculture.com/bate1.html, © 2005. Viewed 10:35 EST, Friday, January 15, 2010.

Smith, Roberta, “Post Minimal to the Max,” Arts and Leisure, New York Times. Sunday, February 14, 2010. (1 and 23).