Postmodernism. It is artwork that, some believe, started in Paris in 1968 from the student riots; while others believe it started twenty years ago. It is an artwork that is innovated, but does derive some background in society, whether it is from everyday life or a famous painting. An example of a postmodern piece of art is Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. That architecture is postmodernism because of the innovation throughout the entire building. He designed the museum off of the history of Bilbao as a fishing town; hence, the giant fishing boat. By forming the entire museum as a boat, Gehry showed how the history of that city is important to that area. He doesn't go completely away from modernism, like what postmodernity artists do, instead he shows the science and industrialization that modernism emphasized. The curves of the steel plates catches the light, and the entire building is constructed of a steel frame and titanium sheathing. Lastly, the dog that Jeff Koon placed in front of the museum added a comical viewpoint on the building. The dog seems to be the museum's guard dog. Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain with Jeff Koon's Puppy, in my opinion of what I know about postmodernism, are postmodern works of art.
Website for just the museum
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/bilbao/guggenheim_museum_bilbao.htm
*note: If you want a larger picture of the museum just click on that thumbnails. Also, this website has better pictures of just the museum.
Website for Guggenheim Museum with Puppy
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/spain/bilbao/gehryguggenheim/gehry.html
*note: Again, if you want a larger picture of the museum with the puppy, just click on the thumbnails.
Thank you for reading
Susan Ahlfs
Excellent choice. Definitely both Gehry's building and Koons' dog would count as postmodern (Gehry's architecture is also referred to as "deconstructivism," confusingly aligning it with deconstruction, a post-modern post-structuralist technique for analyzing meaning in literature and art).
ReplyDeleteArchitecture is a really good route to understanding the difference between modern and postmodern. Modernist architecture, following the idea that "form follows function" reduced everything to the bare minimum, resulting in bare concrete blocks or glass skyscrapers. Postmodern architecture re-introduced ornament, appropriation, etc.
Koons' appropriation, humor, low-brow approach, refusal of originality (he hires people to make most of his works), etc, all make his work deeply postmodern.
Remember, if you want to embed images in your posts you can just click on the "picture" icon as you are blogging and either upload from your desktop or link to an image online.
ok thank you, so an example of a modern piece would be the bauhaus teapots and furniture? or no?
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