Most of us, myself included, are sadly lost in the realm of contemporary art. We have yet even to come to an understanding of modern art, with its ink-blot paintings and random geometrical figures. The most that we might conclude about modern art is that it is entirely disconnected from reality, i.e., it does not even attempt to represent anything from the outside world. It was an attempt to turn art into what Gene Vieth calls “pure aesthetic form.” Much as the Modern epoch was characterized by rationality and cold science, so modern art reflected this philosophy in a glorification and exaltation of form—for the sake of form itself, and for no other reason. Think about how vast a change occurred: prior to the last century, art by-and-large was a representational business. The artist sought to convey something—be it meaning, emotion, a political goal, religious truth, a personal viewpoint, etc, in his artwork. And art is undeniably powerful in achieving this goal. The great Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn offered such a critique of art in his 1970 Nobel Lecture in Literature:

Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited—dimly, briefly—by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking…[The arts] can perform a miracle: they can overcome man’s detrimental peculiarity of learning only from personal experience so that the experience of other people passes him by in vain. From man to man, as he completes his brief spell on Earth, art transfers the whole weight of an unfamiliar, lifelong experience with all its burdens, its colours, its sap of life; it recreates in the flesh an unknown experience and allows us to possess it as our own.

Such was the prevalent view of art throughout most of the history of the world. It was the Modern era, then, in its cold and analytical approach to life—and, we might add, its separation from God—that changed art, that severed exterior motivations and produced ars gratia artis—art for the sake of art. Modern art sought to fulfill and perfect a form. Of course, even Modern art in the most perfected of form leaves, in my opinion, much to be desired. It, like Modernism, is unfeeling and disengaged from the rich vibrance of human experience. After all, we don’t regularly experience exact, perfect geometrical patterns in our daily lives. Even my bees, which produce honeycomb in a nearly perfect hexagonal pattern, produce only that—nearly perfect. So then, is art solely about form? Is not the essence of art more concerned with human existence and emotion than it is with fulfilling mathematical obligations? To take the imperfections out of existence is, in my opinion, the epitome of blandness.

Art still remains an indicator of the prevalent philosophy. It is a visible manifestation of the general thought trends. So then, how does postmodern art depict postmodernism? Recall that postmodernism has rejected all absolutes. This is reflected in postmodern art. A work of postmodern art ultimately strives to avoid attaching to itself any specific meaning. It is designed to be interpreted. Many postmodern works of art incorporate the use of collage; completely unrelated ideas and objects are haphazardly crammed together. Combining various artistic conventions and styles produces a work as open and varied to understanding as is possible. Another popular form of postmodern art is more along the lines of what I might call “shock and awe” art. Vieth notes that “ordinary objects—such as coke bottles, sleds, or toilets—are displayed as if they were art.” Others produce the most vulgar and repulsive works that can be imagined. These, besides being open to interpretation, are also designed to destroy the elitist implications of modern and pre-modern art. The modern elevation of the scientist to a near-deity, which leaves the common people below to be enlightened by him, has been rejected by postmodernism. Art has been “opened” to the common person, because his understanding of art, as well as his worldview, is equally valid. Furthermore, postmodern art is designed to destroy what Stanley Grenz terms the “powerful originating author.” Postmodernism dislikes the idea of a person who claims that his view is superior to any others

The quintessence of postmodernism art is “the screen.” Grenz states that the screen, whether it is a television, a computer, or a movie theatre, represents the postmodern “blurring of the traditional contrast between the subjective self and the objective world.” Think for one moment about the computer that you use everyday. What you see on the screen really is neither “out there” nor within yourself. In other words, it is not you, nor is it an object that you can touch. The screen has created a hazy middle ground—you cannot perceive the internet in the same way as you perceive, say, your car, or a rock, or a tree. Neither can you perceive it as something within your mind. Postmoderns love this because it destroys both the powerful influence of individual personalities as well as the reality of the physical world. Furthermore, superficiality and shallowness are objects of praise among postmoderns. For example, television is composed of a rich juxtaposition of various images and ideas. Commercials are an excellent example of the vast assortment of ideas, albeit shallow, that television can bombard a person with within a matter of minutes. Thus it may come to no surprise that postmoderns enjoy the superficiality that is bred on television. Watching the evening news will hardly give you a detailed understanding of anything; yet being overwhelmed with surface information is what the postmodern prefers. After all, as Vieth says, “People who have no beliefs lack a sense of personal identity and an inner life. They are thus, in every sense of the term, superficial.”

Art has the powerful ability to convey the philosophical undercurrents of contemporary society. This is why the history of art is a particularly fascinating field of study. It is important for us to step back and understand just what art is attempting to communicate to us. In so doing, not only will we gain a greater insight into present thought trends, such as postmodernism, but we will also gain a deeper insight into the history and morphology of western thinking in general.

Sources

Grenz, Stanley. A Primer on Postmodernism. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. Nobel Lecture in Literature 1970. Available on-line at http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1970/solzhenitsyn-lecture.html

Vieth, Gene Edward. Postmodern Times. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994).

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