Postmodernism

Penny Byrne and Flora Hall are both artists that push the boundaries to the art world. They are a range of mix media artist who mainly focus on sculpture pieces. They mostly focus on social and political messages through their artworks concerning today’s issues that create an impact to the audience, by challenging and provoking them. The focus on using everyday ordinary objects that we see day to day and turning them to become something that shocks and makes the audience question and rethink the significance of what the art work it trying to portray through the stronger art style.

Penny Byrne artwork style is more taking and antique mainly a ceramic porcelain sculpture and creating this everyday common object and turning it into a strong political/social message. Though Penny Byrne artworks are too be believed as destroying these eighteenth-century plastic figurines, though Penny believes that she Is re-creating these sculptures of beauty and releasing darker understanding of their meaning when created. Penny Byrne is a perfect example of heat postmodern art and how it challenges the convections in art. “Humor, satire, and parody are essential ingredients in my work.

Even though a title might sound flippant it is never meant to be, it is meant to make people think about the particular issue, or educate them about a particular issue as well as to entertain them”. She does this by the way she creates her pieces of art, of how she takes everyday objects and changes it onto another piece; therefore her art making practice is a great example of the way she pushes the boundaries In art and the post modern frame. Her art challenges the convections of postmodern frame by her concept she brings In her art and how It wows a deeper meaning of social and political Issues.

Finn Hall Focuses on the same concept as Penny Byrne, through sending a message through her artwork of political, social issues in today’s world. Though one difference between these artists would be that Finn Hall focuses more on human and plant life, classification and as well opposites. She uses non-traditional media and methods of display that involves a sense of humor to this controversial artwork as like Finn Hall. ‘l tend to choose materials already loaded with meaning … Having selected a tedium, I then devise a way to make it take on the forms I want, so my work usually ends up looking highly crafted. Finn challenges the postmodern art world through her choice of unconventional media and messages of humor and darker meaning involving the political and social issues we suffer In today’s world. Both artists challenge the postmodern frame of today’s mainstream art world through their choices in media, artist practice and concepts chosen to represent their work. Case study By Nijinsky Argue a case that Postmodern art challenges conventions (socially accepted, norm, mainstream), referring to the work of Penny Byrne and Finn Hall.

Use artist quotes Penny Byrne and Finn Hall are both artists that push the boundaries to the art political/social message. Though Penny Byrne artworks are too be believed as she is re-creating these sculptures of beauty and releasing darker understanding of pushes the boundaries in art and the post modern frame. Her art challenges the convections of postmodern frame by her concept she brings in her art and how it shows a deeper meaning of social and political issues. Involving the political and social issues we suffer in today’s world.

Examine how FLW represents a postmodern way of thinking. Postmodernism encompasses a reinterpretation of classical ideas, forms and practices and reflects and rejects the ideologies of previous movements in the arts. The postmodern movement has made way for new ways of thinking and a new theoretical base when criticising art, literature, sexuality and history.

John Fowles’ 1969 historical bricolage, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, utilises the ideas of postmodern theorists such as Foucault, Barthes and Sartre amongst others to form a postmodern double-coded discourse which examines values inherent in the Victorian era from a twentieth century context. The novel’s use of intertextuality, metafiction and its irreverent attitude can be seen as a postmodern parody of Victorian fiction and the historical novel.

For the purpose of examining the values and ideologies of the Victorian era in comparison to the postmodern paradigm, Victorian conventions are shown juxtaposed with postmodern techniques such as the authorial intrusion and alternative endings. Sarah Woodruff is different from other characters in The French Lieutenant’s Woman because she is epistemologically unique and because the narrator does not have access to her inner thoughts: in chapter 13 the author directly addresses the reader and states that he gives his characters the free will to determine their outcome in his novel.

In a typical Victorian context, the protagonist’s inner conflict and motives would be exposed to the reader. Fowles denies his right as the author to impose definition of characters and in this way recognises “the age of Alain-Robbe Grillet and Roland Barthes” in bringing about the “death of the author” and the birth of the “reader”. The reader must interpret the text in ways (s)he views it and is forced to actively engage in the text. Fowles also introduces the author as a god-like figure (who turns back time) to craft multiple endings. He (the author) allows Sarah to act in an existentialist way to determine her outcome in the novel.

It allows her to exercise her individuality, making her stand as a lone feminist figure amongst the tides of Victorian conventionality. The novel rewrites Victorian sexuality and in this way is an example of the way the sexual revolution of the 1960s is described in the historical novel of its time. Foucault described the Victorian period as the “golden age of repression” and he revises the notion that the Victorian era was silent on sexual matters in his works. Both Foucault and The French Lieutenant’s Woman claim that the forms of power and resistance are historically conditioned.

For example, Sarah’s body is still institutionalised at the end of the novel since she appears only as a minor character in Rosetti’s house. The fact that Sarah is an anachronistic creation points to the idea that the novel is not about the Victorian era but a critique of relative values in their context. The metafictional structure of the novel successfully elucidates that Sarah seems to be subordinated in the patriarchal power of the contemporary narrator- it also endeavours to show that even the most emancipated groups during the Victorian period could not carry the liberation of women completely.

This is a reflexion of what Fowles deems backward in the context of his society, and is apparent in Sarah’s repressed sexuality; and the blatant disparity regarding notions of female sexuality: Ernestina is always confined within the strict boundaries of patriarchal, societal convention- this is shown by the way she represses her sexual desire for Charles, being content with the most “chaste of kisses”. In this way the novel represents the truth as a form of pleasure in a Foucauldian sense.

The institutionalisation of prostitutes, a somewhat clandestine pastime for Victorian gentlemen, is a situation that reflects the obvious hypocrisy of Victorian society when compared to Sarah’s situation. She (Sarah) is labelled a “fallen women” (hence her nickname “Tragedy”) and is ostracised because of her free-will and “feminine misconduct”. Charles finds her forwardness rather intimidating as it goes against his beliefs that the stratification of society is a vital element of social stability. This enforces Charles’ Darwinian beliefs about the social hierarchy (in reference to Social Darwinism).

Darwinian evolution finds its expression by creating a new way of thinking. Fowles’ novel represents the great crisis of Darwinian Victorian England and traces its impact on society. Charles questions his religion in the Church, admitting he is agnostic, and the narrator himself labels Charles as having agnostic qualities. At the end of the novel Charles has become a “modern man” and Sarah the “hopeful monster” who feels alienated in Victorian culture without being able to conceptualise Charles’ intuitive understanding of her otherness and modernity.

Darwinian evolution and nineteenth century psychology are portrayed in The French Lieutenant’s Woman as providing a corrective culture dominated by narrow minded Evangelicalism. Examples can be observed in Mrs Poulteney’s fickle attempts at being charitable, her dismissive attitude towards her duty to the church which is merely a habitual pastime for her, and her decision to dismiss Sarah. Then novel’s intertextuality is made up of its bricolage of history and fiction.

Victorian epigraphs (and the irony used in them) serve to reconstruct the cultural milieu of the age using representations of facets of its literary world through the poetry of Hardy, Tennyson, Arnold and Clough. It provides a context within which the characters try to construct their subjectivities where they can emancipate themselves from the novel’s dominant ideology (this is an example of how Freud’s ideas about literature’s subjectivity are utilised).

Also, the footnotes reinforce the author’s presence and allude to the fact that the author is omnipresent (in the novel). The alternative endings represent two types of Victorian endings and the last, a more postmodern, existentialist one. Fowles’ plays with different endings to epitomise the early postmodernist problem of artistic form and representation and this technique agrees with Umberto Eco’s idea that literature has openness and can be interpreted in many ways.

The postmodern style is successful in creating a tension between these endings within a single text. The last alternative ending in chapter 61 can be construed as the existentialist one. The existentialist theme dramatises the struggles of individuals to define themselves and to make moral decisions about the conduct of their lives in worlds which deny them of freedom. Both Charles and Sarah are searching for themselves, trying to find their own existences by rebelling against the norms of tradition: Charles by embracing Darwinism nd declaring himself agnostic (in line with the Nietzschean existentialist ideology); and Sarah by redefining herself (such as labelling herself “Mrs”) and avoiding the hypocrisy of Victorians towards sexuality and human relations. Like Charles and Sarah, the reader is free of manipulation (by the author) and we can manoeuvre our position in the narrative to create our own “meaning”. The use of the existentialist theme in The French Lieutenant’s Woman makes the reader aware of Sartrean-style thinking which was not in existence in Victorian times but was conceptualised in Fowles’ era.

It is successful in allowing the reader to criticise and contrast the differing ideologies present at the respective times and, by highlighting the shift in values, Fowles effectively expounds a new way of thinking. Fowles successfully blends the Victorian novel with postmodern ideologies and twentieth century sensibility by applying paradigms which lead to the reader being allowed to question previously held values, in particular relative values which change according to context, such as sexuality and religion.

Through his pastiche of traditional Victorian romance, and historical narrative Fowles deconstructs his novel and makes the reader aware of contextual codes and conventions through ironic, metafictional comments: “Perhaps it is only a game…. Perhaps you suppose the novelist has only to pull the right strings and his puppets will behave in a lifelike manner” -The French Lieutenant’s Woman Chapter 13 *

They have manipulated our opinion, reactions, and even likeness of art. They defined who the great artists are and through their judgments they have even cited the value of art. But unfortunately for them, post-modern art has dethroned critics with the use of humor, wit, and scale of impact in their art.

Post-modern art rejects the idea Of beauty and truth and reveals the value Of irony. Artists such as Marcel Decamp, who created the Fountain, or Mark Tansy, shock, mock, and force the viewers to rethink the meaning of art. The reader/viewer must create a whole new context in which to hold the art, one which may truly challenge his belief structures, one which may force him, to make sense of what he is seeing, to hold a larger perspective than he errantly has in place”.

And this applies to the critic as well. His opinion can no longer be valued as before because this kind of art no longer has a meaning and its interpretation no longer matters. Its importance lies on the impact and sensation of its viewers. Art becomes then a participatory experience, one in which the audience receives, and handles as they may, the flows of libidinal energies which the artist set free. “

The control the words Of critics had over art is gone and viewers are able to let their unconscious decide what art is. Nothing can better explain the place of the critic with this ewe art as Roland Breather’s essay title does: post-modern art has brought “The Death of the Author. ” In his essay Farther explains how in literature the identity of the author no longer has any importance. Nonperformance” may be admired, but not his “genius”.

The author

By giving the power to the literature rather than to the writer itself, he is giving the power to the piece of art and not to the critic as it has always been. As explained earlier, the opinion of the critic was impeding us from reaching our own conclusions on art. But by denying beauty in art and introducing something as absurd as a urinal, post-modern artists “refused to assign [art] a “secret” that is, an ultimate meaning,” that a critic can easily identify or criticize, and instead, “liberates an activity” where each viewer can have their own reflections on the piece.

In my essay I am giving the role of the author in Farther essay, to both the critic and the artist. Nevertheless, I am assigning the part of the modern author to the artist, and its opposite to the critic. Before, the importance was given to the author, he was recognized, in other words, the critic was recognized. But now, “language knows a subject, not a person. And from my point of view I interpret this statement as meaning that the person, in other words the critic, does not matter anymore, the art does, the subject.

Of course the critic will still be a critic and give their opinion, rank a piece of art, and judges it as well. But this time they cannot use an absolute standard of arbitration. By not being able to judge the way they used to, they assert Farther point, that ‘the explanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced and for me this man he speaks about could only be the artist himself. Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Roseland Krause have been incredibly influential in the history of art. Greenberg championed and was the first to appreciate the achievements of abstract art.

Rosenberg was also a supporter of the abstract expressionists and proved the importance of the happenings and performance art. Krause introduced a new approach that focused on aesthetics that apprehend cultural and historical issues. While I have criticized them in my essay shall also embrace their intellectual knowledge on the subject of art and its importance in society as well as history. Nevertheless, “the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author.  The public should continue to take in and learn from these figures opinions. Nevertheless, we cannot take what they say too literal.

We must understand that they are critics, they are “a person who judges the merits of literary, artistic, or musical work. ” They judge but they do not define art. Challenges to the Status Quo Art has deliberately hidden the figure of women and their work in society. There have been great women artists, but have not been recognized as such and valued by posterity. Many paintings by women were initially credited to males, suggesting that there is no objective difference between art made by omen or men, but when it is verified that the author is a woman, the economic and symbolic value of the work decreases immensely.

Even today, there are works by women that are not attributed to the real author because the fact that they are women would reduce the price of the work considerably. As Linda Gnocchi explains in her essay, ‘Why Have There Been no Great Women Artists,” the answer to this question “lies not in the nature of individual genius or the lack of it, but in the nature of given social institutions and what they forbid or encourage in various classes or groups of individuals.

Women have a long experience in the fields of art and culture, their contributions have always been present, although in many cases the concept of “respect” has not been applied to them in the same way as their male counterparts. They have always been relegated to a second plane. Being a woman and artist has often been seen as an injurious occupation and inconsistent, while it has been traditionally reserved the epithet of genius for men. Women have to live in a society which has not ceased to be sexist, in a culture where women are still thought of as an inferior place and lacking retain rights.

And this, as Gnocchi explains, does not apply to art only. In her article she gives us the example of the great artist, Rosa Bonjour. Now a day if women become the CEO of a company, an architect, or a policeman, they would be categorized the same way Bonjour was: a tomboy, a woman with a desire to be more masculine, or selfish. Yet if men “have a need for feminine involvement,” as Gnocchi puts it, the jobs such as pediatricians, child psychologists, or chef, are admired rather than frowned upon. In her essay Gnocchi explains the disadvantages women had in art education that led to he lack of great women artists.

Some examples were the restriction put on them to participate in classes with nude models or be a part of several contests. Nevertheless, today those restrictions no longer apply but the lack of ‘great women’ still persists. Society and history is to blame for this. Now, as John Stuart Mill points out and Gnocchi quotes in her essay, “everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural”. We have progressed as a society and we have reached equality in many areas.

However, sexism as well as racism seems it will never cease to exist because they are distinctions we consider natural. In her article Gnocchi writes about how her question can or has been answered incorrectly. Afraid to be included in the category of incorrect answers, I would like to put my life as a perspective instead and show how the views of today’s society regarding the sexes are clearly defined. From a very young age had a nanny, who as many would expect was a women because caring for children, cooking, and cleaning is a role usually given to a women if in a household.

A man drove me to school every morning and generally anyone who drove that was not a family member was in fact usually a man. I remember the habitual comment that ‘women do not know how to drive. ‘ When I arrived to school there were five male security guards, and my teachers all the way from pre-kinder to about sixth grade were women. Society would see this as correct because security guards are there to protect and men being stronger than women means they can do a better job.

And the reason why all my teachers at a young age were women is because we are still young, I do not receive a grade but simply mille faces, stickers, or a ‘good job’ in its place, and I need a mother figure at all times. High school was not much different. I started to get grades and was considered a grown-up, so men began being my teachers as well. Physical education, however, was still separated by sex, including the teacher, because “boys are more aggressive and they can hurt girls. ” Now I arrive at Washington and Lee University.

An Ivy League education in a beautiful campus with amazing professor, but, a place where it is believed that women only come here to get their MRS. degree. A joke that has been around since he university became co-educational back in the ass’s, saying that women only come here to look for a husband. At this point Gnocchi will probably consider me a feminist, but I am simply showing a perspective from someone that is in her twenties in the 21 SST century and can still clearly separate the roles of men and women as expected in the realm of our society that we claim has improved and changed.

My life is only one perspective and many might not have had the same experience did, but it does support what Gnocchi repeatedly states in her essay. Quote Incision’s words once more: the question of women’s equality-in art as in any other realm-?devolves not upon the relative benevolence or ill-will of individual men, nor the self- confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them.

This also includes the educational system today. Gnocchi makes one more important argument in her article. She explains that when it comes to art what needs to change is the way its history is taught. Does Lucy R. Leopard support this argument in her article, Too Political? Forget It,” when lists the amount of information on art that has most times not been taught, and how it IS “No wonder activist and community art, always a stepchild, is slow to evolve.

The statement that ‘there have been no great women artists’ can be justified, but it does not mean it is correct. Women as well as other minorities have been deprived from being a ‘genius’, a term that is unreal but largely used for men, due to their social conditions and deprivation of an education. But the only way to transform this lack of recognition is to stop listing excuses, or have minorities keep aerating themselves as such and change the unnatural to natural in society. Artistic expression comes from the spirit, not the body type you have or hormones.

The language of art is, more materially, embodied in paint and line on canvas or paper, in stone or clay or plastic or metal-it is neither a sob story nor a confidential whisper”.

The Courage to Break Grounds

For many years there have been many instances where artists have held public events to raise social and political issues, yet many of which are not on record. While artists know that when choosing this career path it will not be ass, especially economically, they risk their commodities for their passion. Nevertheless, this does not mean that they do not want recognition. If they are primarily concerned with audiences who will never write, curate, collect or fund art, they run the risk of being forgotten before they are even acknowledged”. A reason why political artists mostly limit their work to galleries, and this is a problem that must be fixed. However, I do not believe that political artists who only care about this acknowledgement truly care about making political art. In galleries the artwork will always first be seen as esthetics and subject to be rated and criticized by its artistic aspects rather than the subject matter and message it is trying to pass on.

Political art is that which addresses public concern and takes a stand on an issue. It is a way to speak for those who wont and to open the eyes of those who cannot or resist viewing reality. It is also meant to support or represent those that cannot do it on their own. Most importantly it is supposed to change minds. Political art is not meant to be hidden by the walls of galleries and museums and constrained to the eyes of critics and elitists. It is meant for society to see as ell as to learn and experience what is being fought for Or sometimes encouraged.

Nevertheless, politics is a sensitive subject. While I do believe it should be out for everyone to view, certain aspects of the viewer can affect the intended message of the artist, making it difficult to completely object the idea that such an important subject matter should have viewers with certain capacities of understanding. The real answer as to whether or not political art should be presented in public venues, even if it is protected by the first amendment to do so, lies on how it might impact the observers.

Summary Assignment

In “Animism and the Alphabet”, David Abram, a journalist in the Environmental Ethics and a founder of the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE), asserts that through the evolution of the human language, there is a widening gap in the relationship between humanity and nature. Through the examples of pictographic systems and hieroglyphics, Abram suggests that our earliest forms of writing stemmed off of our ecological origins and “remained tied to the mysteries of a more-than-human world”.

As a result of these primitive methods of expression, Abram then describes humanity’s need to convey and define other terms that cannot be expressed through pictures: The development of phonetic script. This was the transfer of sounds and the speaking voice rather than a simple picture that depicts meaning through vision. This innovation came with the creation of the Semitic aleph-beth, later to evolve into our modern-day alphabet, which created a new detachment between human culture and the rest of nature.

Abram believes that the major turning point in our connection with nature lies in the Greek’s lasting contributions to the written world allowing for the “indebtedness of human language to the more-than-human perceptual field…preserved in the names and shapes of the Semitic letters”  to be forgotten. Abram states that the Homeric epics ballads and songs in Greek culture supported the idea that men interact with the non-human world.

These original “oral texts”  were first memorized through a series of formulas and then performed with the poets own creativity and improvisation; however, when these songs became the first large written texts, Iliad and the Odyssey obtained a timeless quality, remaining forever preserved on paper. Abram believes that it is through this alphabetic technology that “language was beginning to separate itself from the animate flux of the world”.

Race, Class, and Gender in Learning Strayer University There is no simple definition or answer when one asks the question, “What is in adult learning. ” To justly answer or define this question one most first ask one definitive question that will provide three important variables. Ultimately, we must ask “Who is asking this question? ” simply, what is this person’s background, are they a WASP or a minority? What is their social class? Are they male or female?

The answers to these questions will provide a contextual framework and starting point in which can genuinely begin to answer our original question, “What is the purpose of education in adult learning? ” The values and norms developed in institutions such as education are authored by the dominant culture. In American society, White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPS) are the authors of the dominant culture. Unfortunately, there are major disparities between White European Americans and other minorities.

These inequalities are prevalent in every American institution, including education. Blacks and other people of color are underrepresented in all types of adult education (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Traditionally, statistics show that minorities do not participate in adult education. Some researchers cite racism as a barrier to adult education. Adult educators have examined how the invisibility/norm of Whiteness has affected adult education, curriculum, theories, evaluation criteria, and instructional practices (Manglitz, 2003).

Researchers found that racism in adult education was not intentional; many adult educators were unaware of the extent to which theories and research reinforce White racist attitudes and assumptions, thus sustaining the perpetuation of inequalities ( Colin & Preciphs, 1991). Some researchers have contended that socioeconomic status not race is the major barrier in adult education. Socioeconomic status is America is highly stratified; only a very small percentage of the population owns all of the wealth, power and influence in American society.

In adult education, when social class is the focus, the aim of the analysis and subsequent action is to bring about a change from a capitalist political economy to a classes socialist form of government (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Some researchers argue that a classless society would result in more participation in not only adult education but in education in general. Usually those categorized in classes lower than middle class tend to have limited educational experiences. When considering race and class we must examine the inequality of gender in adult education.

Feminist have placed gender, and gender as it intersects with race and class (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Statistics have shown that women are increasingly participating in adult education, despite this women still experience inequality in the classroom. Some argue that content knowledge, theories and research encountered in the classroom is still heavily influenced by American patriarchal dominance. Along with addressing the questions of Race, Class and Gender one most also account for the theories of Critical Theory, Postmodernism and Feminist Pedagogy.

These 3 theories will give us a clue into how educators can contextualize the learning experience for each variable (race, gender and class). Each theory offers its own explanation on how the adult learning process should be conducted or imporved. First we will examine critical theory and its context to education. Critical Theory’s aim is to transform and improve society through the use of criticism (Henslin, 2008) Critical Theory defines its social critique through the use of social problems often citing “systems” as part of the problem.

The “system” in a critical theory analysis is an institution (such as government or education) that functions to reproduce the status quo (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007, p. 253). Social institutions exist to positively regulate, order and control members of its society ( Henslin 2008), the institution of education seeks to do the same. Although ideally the institution of education is supposed to improve society, critical theorists often cite the “status quo” of education as hindering a learner’s experience.

Critical Theorist argue that in adult learning there needs to be a paradigm shift in the status quo. Should learning be centered around technology or should more attention be given to emancipatory learning? Essentially critical theorist desire critique the status quo in hopes of developing one that is appropriate and equal to all learners. Postmodernism is a term that is widely used in many fields, such as literature, art, architecture, history, and philosophy. By definition, postmodernism resists definition (Kerka 1997). Postmodernism like Critical theory questions the status quo.

Technically one cannot define postmodernism as a theory. According to Kerka postmodernism is a (Kerka, 1997)“form of questioning, an attitude, or perspective. ” Postmodernism never accepts the truth as absolute and sees truth as ever changing. One can make the contention that postmodernism is part of the foundation of adult learning. Concepts popular with adult learning such as transformative learning or narratives urge learners to question their own “truth” thus by definition, inviting the learner to practice postmodernism. As one would suspect, Feminist Pedagogy is derived from feminist theory.

The feminist theory is based in liberation and the feminist pedagogy seeks to create a liberatory learning environment and it also focuses on the concerns of women in the teaching-learning transaction (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Traditionally a woman is characterized as a docile nurturing human being but rarely as an authority or as assertive. Feminist pedagogy seeks to liberate a woman from this role in the classroom and urges her to be assertive and firm as a learner and to “find acceptance for her ideas in the public world” (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986, p. 20). The liberatory classroom allows for this sort of transformation. As potential adult educators we have to consider “what is ” for learners and how that question should be answered individually. As we have seen, that answer varies for each learner. We must be vigilant considering each learners diverse background and constantly examine and revamp the status quo to ensure that each learner’s background is included. Works Cited Henslin, J. (2008).

Sociology : A Down To Earth Approach. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Kerka, S. (1997). Postmodernism and Adult Education. Trends and Issues Alerts. ERIC Clearing House on Adult, Career and Vocational Education. Manglitz, E. (2003, Feb). Challenging White Privilege in Adult Education : A Critical Review of Literature. Adult Education Quarterly , p. 119. Merriam, S. B. , Caffarella, R. S. , & Baumgartner, L. M. (2007). Learning in Adulthood : A Comprehensive Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

In late XIX – early XX century a total crisis gripped various areas of life – economy, politics and culture. However, the ideological ferment minds, lack of confidence in the future, premonition close historical and social change, although anxiety filled the souls of men, but encouraged to seek new ideals of life and creativity. Artists tried to find new forms adequate to reflect changes that had occurred primarily in human consciousness, and reach a new level of artistic creation values as they didn’t perceive the romanticism and realism means.

Art of the first half of XX century primarily determines such things as decadence and modernism. Among many modernist writers, I would like to mention Ibsen and O ‘Conner, whose works are a reflection of real life and social problems. The status of women in society and family is considered to be one of these problems (Burgess 153). Henrik Ibsen is Norwegian playwright, whose work is considered the crowning achievement of so-called “middle-class drama”, which fell on the flowering of the XVIII century. However, he is considered the creator of the foundations of “new drama” – a new path in the development of world drama.

What was a new Ibsen’s approach to reality? Ibsen was one of the first playwrights, who had shown a new society by making stress on the tragedy of human life not in individual acts of negative second part, and in life itself. He showed the tragedy of life, debunked the false morality. In the play “A Doll’s House” not only the dream of the playwright about the family and the family comfort was embodied, but also a critical attitude towards society, which does not recognize women’s equal rights with men. “A Doll’s House” was an innovative product and the best example of “new drama”.

In addition, it combines realism with modernist form of embodiment. It is also an intellectual and analytical piece, in which there is a problem of personality, which seeks to protect his identity, the right to dignity in modern drama society. The end of XIX century was marked by the development of feminist movements. This question provoked strong interest of society and was the subject of disputes in many families. So the play by Ibsen was a response to the requests of time. The focus of the playwright is in the role of women in the family and her status in society.

From the first scenes the reader can understand how the author appreciates the comfort of kin, how he admires Nora – a real ideal woman: funny, sweet, and nice. Her children adore her and her husband is satisfied with the tale, illusion of a perfect family. What’s wrong with this idyllic picture? Maybe, it’s just fantasy, not the authenticity of everything that they see outside. The plays by Ibsen are called “analytic” not by chance, the author analyzes the problems of the modern family, in which the woman is often not only conquered, but does not have the right to vote.

While Nora was such a vital playful “squirrel” for her husband Thorvald, he admired her; he loved his wife and took care of her. Only of her? Probably not. But once it became clear that Nora could do something by her own, she could make her own decision. When she took the money for her husband’s medication everybody saw the real attitude of such a loving husband to his wife. It was a despot who did not bear the thought that his wife has something to solve herself, that she could be responsible for her choices.

That’s where the subsoil is constructed in the Helmer family (Boyesen 94). The play has become a loud resonance precisely because of the fact that the problem of women’s fate, and human was at point that time. When Nora left the family, it was really a shock for society, with its stabilized mind’s eye on the role of women in family and society. It was the first time when woman said of her dignity and desire to be a person, not just a beautiful doll for men. A woman does not agree any more with the role of a slave and a housewife.

She wants to be on a par with men to live a full life, to love, raise children and feel like a man. This solves the problem of women’s rights in the family. Flannery O’Connor is an outstanding American author. The author of “Gothic” novels and short stories about rural life of the American South, animate the religious fervor and brightly-colored comic strokes. Metaphysical, on what it called “enlarged” view of the world combined with the full perception of reality. Major trends of her work have identified a zealous Catholic and a disbelief in science, shattering the primordial life.

For O’Connor, the image is characterized by unexpected, extreme situations, resulting in acts of violence provoked by the . “A good man is hard to find” is the most outstanding work of this author which tackles both the author’s views regarding personal transformations and Christianity. The story follows the life of a Christian grandmother who faces various struggles with her family and environment in terms of religion, beliefs, and practices. Many of Flannery O’Connor’s characters defy cultural expectations.

For example, many of her women are strong, opinionated leaders, while the prevailing culture, especially during O’Connor’s lifetime, prized women as nurturing homemakers whose role was to support the decisions and opinions of men. Grandmothers, especially, were expected to follow the lead of their grown sons if there was no grandfather in the house. Men, not women, were the driving decision-makers (at least on the surface) in literature, and generally in society until after World War 2. The mother in this story is the more stereotypical character who is left in her assigned gender role.

O’Connor’s grandmother character defies the cultural stereotype. She is opinionated and not shy of voicing those opinions on subjects from vacation destinations to proper etiquette for children to current events. She pays attention to the details that others ignore, including the starting mileage of the car and the facial features of The Misfit (O’Connor 48). O Connor’s grandmother character is also the one to defend the family during the “predicament. ” Again in traditional gender roles, family protection is the domain of the family patriarch, not one of the women.

Yet, in another example of O’Connor’s challenge to social norms, it is the elderly woman who stands to defend her family. Both authors in their works paid great attention to the role of a woman in family and in society, her right to take decisive actions, the importance of her personality. The works by Ibsen and O’Conner caused much controversy but they still remained bright representatives of modernism. The topics and problems they discussed in their works are still important and relevant.

At first glance, it is easy to think that not much is happening in Mark Kostabi’s Hanging with the Masters. We get to simultaneously view works of art from various art movements as they dangle motionlessly from their taut strings. Everything is nonchalant and serene against the sky blue background, the threat of gravity underneath disappears, and even the anonymous human figure tied to a noose by the neck has surrendered. Whatever was supposed to happen in the painting has already happened. No action is caught. This is the state in which we find things because we have unfortunately arrived late.

This apparent lack of motion is what makes Hanging with the Masters so busy. By kidnapping an assortment of works of arts, miniaturizing and tying them in place to become manageable spectacles (classic paintings within a present-day painting), Mark Kostabi has converged, or more appropriately eroded, time and space. There is no nostalgia for the kidnapped paintings at all; just a matter-of-factness. Very postmodern. Taken out of their contexts and arranged in a whole new landscape, the works of arts inside the painting call attention to themselves. Each one of them competes for our attention.

Even if we recognize only one of the paintings/mobiles/cartoon character Hanging with the Masters blatantly references, we still get the feeling a kidnapping has happened. Something has been violated and celebrated at the same time. The verb hang takes on two meanings: Hang a picture, Hang a person. As if decoration and decoration are the same thing. And Mark Kostabi is unapologetic. DEAD MAN PERFORMING In the middle of it all, there is the faceless, sexless artist with the paintbrush pointing downwards, the hanged human,—all red (red-faced, red-bellied, and red-handed) from an unseen light source. It is as if he/she has failed a mission.

In the essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin tells us that “[Mankind’s] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order” (681). After exhausting every possible medium and subject of art, from Campbell’s soup cans to elephant dung, we only have to turn to ourselves next, explore and defy the thresholds of our own body and mind, as if they are the next frontier to turn into art. True enough, the hanged artist in Hanging with the Masters is engrossed in his/her own performance art. He/she is both a subject and object.

If in modernism the subject is a “rational, individualistic, responsible, unified self”, in postmodernism, that subject is dead (Chernus, “Fredric Jameson’s Interpretation of Postmodernism,” par. 7). What replaces is an “identity [that] must be conceived as an intersection of conflicting subject positions” (Collins 337). Kostabi’s hanged artist is neither male nor female. We can’t tell if he/she is just playing dead. We are not sure if his/her execution was forced or self-willed. If this were punishment, we don’t know what the sin was. We aren’t even sure if he/she really is a painter, or just someone with a good grip on the paintbrush.

Like a true postmodern subject, everything about the hanged artist is open to speculation. One thing we are sure of though is that now he/she has laid claim to being a work of art. And who doesn’t want to be a work of art, a shiny spectacle, in our YouTube generation? MEETING HALFWAY Hanging with the Masters instantly inherits timelessness just because it gathers samples of classic works of arts all in one place. What’s more is that these works of arts are tied in place. As if we are looking at a museum wall and the theme is A Very Short History of Art.

Hanging with the Masters cleverly showcases cultural artifacts of the past (a nude, a cartoon character, a Warhol-style portrait, a mobile, an op-art painting), and at the same time it gives a commentary on those cultural artifacts. According to Jim Collins, “[…] the past is not just accessed but ‘hijacked’, given an entirely different cultural significance than the antecedent text had when it first appeared” (333). In postmodernism, such “highly self-conscious forms of appropriation and rearticulation have been used by postmodern painters, photographers and performance artists” (335).

But because they have been hijacked, the works of art have lost their “aura” and “quality of presence”, terms which Walter Benjamin uses to describe the authority of the original work of art that is not yet reproduced or recopied (667). For Benjamin, this diminishing aura of the work of art every time it is reproduced or finds itself in a different context (Edvard Munch’s screaming man in a mousepad, for example) is okay because it “enables the original to meet the beholder halfway” (667). Also, according to Benjamin, it is perfectly natural and okay for cultural artifacts to lose their original intentions and change into something else.

His example is that of an ancient statue of Venus. For the Greeks, it was an “object of veneration”, but for people in the Middle Ages, it became an “ominous idol” (669). “Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura” (Benjamin 669). What we see now in Kostabi’s painting are works of art that are classic examples of the art movements they are part of. They are works of arts that are exclusively tied to a genre, tied in place in the painting’s unseen ceiling, just like the hanged artist. If there is any aura left, it is only a memory of that aura as we try to identify each work of art.

Yet, ironically enough, Hanging with the Masters’s style itself is tied to the surrealist art movement. The painting itself cannot escape the same bonds which have taken the other paintings as captives. But of course, this is okay. Everything in postmodernism is okay, and things are not judged based on whether they are good or bad, but only whether they work for us. According to Chernus: …a cultural artifact is now just a random collection of signs momentarily existing side by side, ready to change at any moment into another random collection. So it cannot point beyond itself to any meaning.

It cannot represent any reality outside itself. It cannot even raise the question of its relationship to any reality outside itself. It refers only to itself; it is its own referent. […] Since the signs are not supposed to relate to anything beyond themselves, it makes no sense to ask what they mean. So the problem of meaning simply disappears. (Chernus, par. 19). THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF IT ALL The meaninglessness of postmodernism can be depressing but that’s what is happening right now. The millions of YouTube video clips uploaded every day don’t have to make sense at all, but we enjoy watching them all the same.

The more stupid and the more disgusting, the better. YouTube has given us a platform where we can be our own celebrities, our own artists, our own works or arts, where we can be viewed by millions other simultaneously. And we all wish we’d get lots of hits every day. Just like the hanged paintings in Hanging with the Masters, we try to be amazing so we can be worthy of being looked at. Underneath it all, just like the paintings, we are all just competing for each other’s attention. Maybe we can call each YouTube clip a cultural artifact in its own right. They, after all, tell a narrative.

They tell us a little something about the person who uploaded it. They tell us that at one point in time, somewhere in the world, this person took the trouble of recording a clip of himself/herself, never mind the ulterior motive. Sure, for a cultural artifact, it may be fleeting, and it is not even tangible, but as each footage weaves into the next one and a medley of voices occur and we are overwhelmed by the sheer number of people out there in the world, a whole community our parents’ parents never knew existed back then, we lose the urge to explain things or make sense of them.

We simply turn on our curiosity and enjoy the fact that all these are happening right here right now. As Chernus has said above, there is no reliable meaning anymore and there is no point in finding the relationships of things. It is quite possible then that Hanging with the Masters is really, at the end of the day, meaningless. That, really, it is just a collection of images randomly picked. If the audience recognizes one or two paintings embedded in Hanging with the Masters, then they’re lucky and good for them.

That will add a new layer to whatever meaning they decide to put into it. If not, then the painting is still nice, and deep, and mysterious, still very marketable. Which is the fate of cultural artifacts in late capitalism: to become commodities in an everything-is-for-sale world (Chernus, par. 7). It is okay to not find or force any connections among the images trapped inside Kostabi’s painting, or even reunite them with other images outside the realm of the painting.

For Chernus, the postmodern way is to “accept the images living side by side in an ever-changing kaleidoscope” (Chernus, par 26). In this postmodern world where diversity is very much welcome, Hanging with the Masters, as a present-day cultural artifact, makes a strong statement about harmony. In the end, it’s not just about works of art with clashing differences in style and opinion and meanings being able to coexist peacefully in a single canvas. Substitute “people” for “works of art” in the sentence and you get the bigger picture.