Postmodernism in Art: An IntroductionGlobalization and Art

Globalization and ArtThe purpose of this presentation is to offer a wider perspective upon significant changes taking place during the period we’ve studied.

An example of GlobalizationThis example (slides 4 - 10) is taken from Mafried B. Steger’s excellent Globalization: A Very Short Introduction

Osama bin Laden addressing the glode in 2001

Office in Kabul

Contemporary Military FatiguesTimex WatchAK-47 Kalashnikov Rifle

GlobalizationNew Communication TechnologiesHigher speed of informationGreater distribution of informationMultinational CorporationsIncreased International tradeIncreased flows of money across national boarders.(Increased ease of travel!)

“With Globalisation people become move able – physically, legally, linguistically, culturally and psychologically – to engage with each other whereever on planet earth they are” (Scholte, p. 59)“Instead of the monochrome fixation on nationality that reigned in the mid-twentieth century, identities in today’s more global world have tended to adopt a more plural and hybrid character” (Ibid, p. 225)“Globalization has tended to generate hybridity, where persons have complex multifaceted identities and face challenges of negotiating a blend of sometimes conflicting modes of being and belonging within the same self.” (Ibid, p. 226)

Flash Mob In TorontoSecond Life

Neo-liberalism, Reagan and Thatcher.

“The Soviet and the East European regimes were unable to prevent the reception of Western radio and television broadcasts. Television played a direct role in the 1989 revolutions, which have rightly been called the first ‘television revolutions’. Street protests taking place in one country were watched by television audiences in others, large numbers of whom then took to the streets themselves.” (Giddens 1999, p.14-15)

Anti-Globalization“In 1820 the five richest countries in the world were three times as rich as the five poorest. By 1950, they were 35 times as rich; by 1970, 44 times; and by 1992, 72 times.”(Fulcher 2004, p.98)

McDonaldizationHomogenizationDisenchantmentDehumanization

Globalization and Art“Seen from the point of view of the art-world as a system [artworks] appear as the component parts of a uniform machine, which produces a large range of novel combinations that are tested against various publics for marketable meaning.” (Stallabrass 2004, p.151)“The filtering of local material through the art system ultimately leads to homogeneity. This system – not just the curation but the interests of all the bodies, private and public, that make up all the alliances around which biennales are formed – tend to produce an art that speaks to international concerns.” (Stallabrass 2004, p. 42)

Globalization and Art“The real story of the art world in the 1990s lies in how it subtly embraced and then reversed this trend toward hypercommodification by using the machinations of ‘marketing’ to shift the focus of art patronage away from the artist and back toward the institution... [The] 1990s did not show its unique aesthetic hand in the emergence of any identifiable period style in the visual arts; rather, it did so with a building boom in stylish museum buildings and a concomitant proliferation of international biennial exhibitions.” (Van Proyen, Mark 2006)

Globalization and Art

MatejAndraiVogrincic (2006) Untitled. Liverpool Biennale

Documenta 11 (2002)OkwuiEnwezorThomas Hirschhorn (2002), Bataille Monument. Kassel, Documenta 11.

Roderick Buchanan (1995) Work in Progress. “Players who associate themselves with Italian football by wearing Inter Milan and A.C. Milan shirts amid the dozens of local tops on display every night on the football parks of Glasgow.”

Local vs. GlobalMartin Kippenberger (1997) Madulain. Part of the Metro-Net series.

ReferencesFulcher, J (2004) A very short introduction: Capitalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press.Giddens, A (1999) Runaway World. London, Profile Books Ltd.Stallabrass, J (2004) Art Incorporated. Oxford, Oxford University Press.Steger, M (2003) A very short introduction: Globalization. Oxford, Oxford University Press.Scholte, Jan Aart (2005) Globalization: A Critical Introduction. Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire.Van Proyen, Mark (2006) Contemporary Art and the Administrative Sublime. In Art Criticism 21 no 2. pp. 25-56, 162-71.