The Art Historian's Postmodernism

Featured image: She Is Called Peace

I am going to write for the next several posts about the post modern in art history.  Since approximate 1960 and the artist DuChamp the art arena has been filled with de valuing the meaning behind art and removing the artist self from the definitions.  The artist creativity is being written out of how art can be understood. 

In looking for the next stand out movement to write about in the art history books, many art historians have latched on to the concept of a postmodern movement.  And, they have defined that postmodern movement as different from modernism, mainly though collective designs and collaborations of an art work. They have taken the notion of the individual out of the work of art and replaced it with the collective group of artists that created the work.  I say, “Fine. Yet the work still needs to be unique, one-of-a-kind, and is never to be repeated.” But what this collective, collaborative concept of group art has morphed into appears like this. Do we all agree this is a good cause to create a visual work about? They all have to agree. In my personal opinion, the work becomes a poster for some political ideology and immediately loses it’s uniqueness and one-of-a-kindness.  To date, I have not seen a work that is a collective that can stand alone as a work of art and not a collective ideal. Mind you, collective visual ideals are great to illustrate but they are a visual history and a documentary, not a work of art.