This document discusses several key aspects of postmodernism and feminism. Postmodernists critique modernists and are eclectic in their sources and media. Feminists deconstruct images to show what is taken for granted and hidden. Both question existing power structures and aim to give voice to underrepresented groups. The document also discusses how sexuality and identity are socially constructed, and how postmodern artists appropriate existing works to show this. It notes debates around promoting a Western "canon" of art versus being more inclusive.

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12. •Postmodernists do not merely follow modernists
chronologically but also critique them.
•Postmodernists are generally content to borrow from
the past and are challenged by putting old information
into new contexts.
•Postmodernist critics and artists embrace a much wider
array of art making activities and projects.
•Postmodernists tend to be eclectic regarding media and
freely gather imagery, techniques, and inspiration from a
wide variety of sources, much of it from popular
culture.
•Postmodernists are skeptical and critical of their times;
and when it comes to activist art, some postmodernist
artists are socially and politically active.
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13. • Feminists and postmodernists have much in common: dialogue is about
discovery, expansion, new ideas and deconstructing old worn out ideas.
• Images as part of discourse: they very much need to be deconstructed,
taken apart and dismantled.
•
Purposely, images are made problematic by Feminists in order to show
what society takes for granted and to try to make explicit that which is
implicit and hidden in language and images.
•
The history of feminism is older than
some of us may realize:
1949: Simone de Beauvoir‘s The Second Sex
1963: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique
1970: Kate Millet's Sexual Politics
1971: Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuchin.
1972: Gloria Steinem founded Ms. Magazine
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14. DEFINITION:
•
Multiculturalist Postmodernism asks serious questions about why
certain objects have been selected, who made these choices, why,
who is best served by the choices, and which objects were not
selected and why.
•
Postmodernist critics and artists in a pluralistic American
society are asserting in words and artworks that there are many
repertoires of knowledge, several traditions, and different shapes of
consciousness-despite the fact that only certain modes of
consciousness are given institutional credence.
• Within a pluralistic democracy, diversity of expression, unpopular
viewpoints, and minority rights are supposed to be protected and
respected. Critics, scholars, and artists working to increase
multiculturalist sensibilities are fighting the assumption that the
Western European tradition of male superiority is of greater value
than other traditions.
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15. DEFINITION:
•
All sexuality, is socially constructed meaning, sexuality is
something that we ourselves create.
• Appropriation art, in which the artist forgoes the claim to original
creation by appropriating already-existing images and objects, has
been to show that the 'unique' individual is a kind of fiction, that
our very selves are socially and historically constructed through
preexisting images, discourses, and events.
•
What counts in activist art is its propaganda effect; stealing the
procedures of other artists is part of the plan-if it works, we use it."
•
Gay activist artists don't claim invention of their style or the
techniques; they want others to use their graphics as well as make
their own.
• Michel Foucault, the late French historian of ideas is an important
influence on postmodernist criticism and particularly on
gay activist art and criticism.
.
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16. DEFINITION:
•
Scholars of art education, assert that
the postmodernist goal is to
"keep things open, to demystify the realities we create.”
Postmodern work is "evocative rather than didactic,
inviting possibilities rather than closure."
•
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Support alternates between two views of
“The Canon of Art History”:
Either “pro” or “con” as part of the debate
for high culture and the cultivation
of an appreciation of its masterworks.

17. •
The “Pro” Canon approach to art
focuses on those Western masters one would expect in a
typical art appreciation course and is "thoroughly
conventional" - that is, modernist. There are 4 beliefs:
(1) There is a tradition of great art that is worth
preserving and transmitting;
(2) There are people (artists, historians, critics,
educators) who care about this tradition and whose
judgments are the best guides to artistic excellence that
we have;
(3) Works of high culture are inestimable sources of
intense enjoyment, gratification, and humanistic
insight;
(4) Such works are significant constituents of national
pride and unity.
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18. The “Con” Canon approach to art
•
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Opponents of the canon consider it
too narrow in scope and hold it
to be legitimating only certain types of art,
while implicitly denigrating other types.
At issue is the concept of quality:
"What is in question is the way the word
is used to compare, select and sort
out art and artists.”