This
month, Clef Notes has been looking at how various music and art movements
overlap throughout history. Let’s wrap up our topic this week by looking at
postmodernism.
Just
what is post-modernism? This late 20th-century style in art, music,
architecture, and literature began as a reaction to objective explanations of
reality. While modernism focused on new innovative ideas and the concept of art
for art’s sake, postmodernism believes that anyone can be an artist and often
takes images from pop culture or mass production as its subject, thus blurring
the bridge between high and low art and culture.
Not
sure if you’ve seen postmodern art? If you’ve visited the Cincinnati Art
Museum, you most likely saw a few Andy Warhol works that fall into this
category. The first, shown here, reflects the idea of mass production and
commercialism in art—everyone has seen a Campbell’s soup can!
This next piece draws from pop culture, again, an example of blurring those lines
between high and low art. Most people, even those not accustomed to viewing
art, would see this piece and be familiar with who it depicts—pop culture icon
Pete Rose.
Next
time, we’ll take a look at why John Cage is considered to fit into the
postmodern category with some of his works.
