In music (I don't know a lot about other things), WW2 was a big force in this "jumping off." I think a good point can be made. Modernism was trucking along just fine (Stravinsky and neo-classicism I see as just another part, not some sort of problem). After WW2, Boulez, Stockhausen and that crowd jumped off the end, severing all ties to tradition. You want to talk about music that nobody listens to? Check out the total serialism of the 50's. So Post-Modernism in music reared its head in the 60's as a response. In my view, people jumped off modernism because modernism broke all ties with tradition and severed its own trajectory. WW2 was a big reason.

There are composers who are trying to pick up where Bartok, Stravinsky, Berg, and so on left off before WW2 and it could happen, but I don't think that social conditions would allow for anything substantial.

It's no coincidence that pop music became serious in the 60's and I'm thinking of the Beatles.

By the way, I'm not knocking Boulez, Stravinsky, and those guys. They saw the error in their ways and started making awesome music that really inspired new music of all kinds. Handed off the baton in a way.

Exactly. Which is why the idea of postmodernism is not only lazy but ultimately historically incorrect.

I've already mentioned key modernist figures such as Joyce as demonstrating key postmodernist principles in their work, but we could go at least as far back as Shakespeare and Da Vinci for evidence of artistic 'plunder'.

Perhaps the only true avant-garde is that of the early soviet union, in its bid to construct a culture completely seperate from (and in opposition to) that of the Western canon. But even here, with someone like Eisenstein and his appropriation of traditions such as vaudeville, the circus, etc, things are far from straight forward.

Bands like The Beatles have more to do with institutional shifts in Britain's education system, than they do with anything that might directly be seen as a result of either modernism or postmodernism.

I hate this too about Joyce. Exact analogs exist in music: Stravinsky and Bartok. I bristle when I hear people talk about Stravinsky as a post-modernist. Schoenberg himself re-worked old music, he just did it a little more under the radar.

No, I didn't mean to imply a direct relationship, only that post-modernism in music and the Beatles can be seen as effects of similar larger causes. What do you mean exactly about Britain's education system?

I have a large amount of new found respect for you, demonrail.

The post-War years saw a massive drive towards extending further education to the working classes. The most interesting development to come out of this was the establishment of the Arts School (which the likes of John Lennon, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, David Bowie, Brian Eno and so many others all went to). These seemed to exist outside of the conventional university system, acting more as a space to freely develop ideas. Pop Art was conceived here (a good few years before the likes of Warhol ever thought about it) and is now thought to be the key factor behind a number of the more open-minded strands that are found within popular culture in Britain during the 1960s.

Spot on.

That's interesting. I've read about the Arts School in connection with Lennon. I think it's a good example of a very specific factor. One among many though, in the larger picture.

Artists that add their name to their respective artistic canons throughout history have always borrowed from the past and gained inclusion into the canon by paying the appropriate homage to that the current time demands, and by also adding some novel element that progresses the art forward.

----


I added to this post:



case in point: Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh, as we know, is the A-number one king daddy in today's art market. His works fetch the highest prices. He's widely recognized as a visionary genius. And he is.
But, with Van Gogh, or with any artist, one can deconstruct the work with a critical eye and see the influences/. For Van Gogh, it was the work of Millet. And he copies Millet in his early work in his very crude way. He finally flowers later on after coming into contact with his contemporaries: Gauguin, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, etc. which he also apes in his own way.
Moreover, his meager collection of Japanese wood-block prints were an instrumental inspiration to his art. Van Gogh's work helped to bring over to the Western world an Eastern conception of negative space and pictorial composition.
I've just enumerated many ways in which Van Gogh isn't original, yet he's regarded as a visionary genius.
And I do think he is a visionary genius, but I'm just trying to make a point here.

I surely do hope that I have made it abundantly clear what "postmodernism" is truly about. As the speed of information and technology has progressed, we have simply sucked the mystery (and hence the symbolic meaning) out of everything.

I do find it distressing that this board always tends towards art crit and philosophy. It's a music board. What about post-modernism in music? It's a different animal from PoMo in art.

This, I agree with very much.

It's a severe run-on hehe..."the past"
"the past"
"and"
\"and"

forgive me, I'm having a very miserable day actually. Some shit went down today.

What's more interesting about the rise in stature within today's art market of someone like Van Gogh is the way in which he symbolises a fetish for some romantic kind of artist-as-visionary figure.

Van Gogh satisfies our apparant need to see the artist as some kind of an outsider. We like to think of him as being somehow 'different' from us. Van Gogh's mental illness thus places him alongside Beethoven's deafness, Monet's partial blindness, etc, etc. It's sad that art is valued primarily for its 'outsiderness' (something I know Atari (at least) is aware of, having mentioned Colin Wilson's book, The Outsider, on another thread).

This isn't to say that I think Van Gogh is a bad atrist, so much as that I believe the elevation of his stature in recent years is a direct result of some underlying popular discontent with a kind of postmodern consensus regarding the death of the artist.

I'm far more optimistic about the fact that the most collectable living artist at the moment is Gerhard Richter (known on here mostly for the candle painting on Daydream Nation). Here is an artist who embraces appropriation but who still manages to maintain a level of individuality in his work that neither undermines its sense of borrowing from others without calling into jeopady the 'intregrity' of the artist. Furthermore, to my knowledge, Gerhard Richter is neither deaf, blind nor depressed!

(that's_ )
All true, and the word "fetish" is utilized to great effect...an excellent elucidation to peel back another layer of the Van Gogh onion, so to speak.

I get your point but, hey, I'm just glad this thread has got this far with everyone adding intelligent posts, no one feeling the need to argue and, best of all, not a single mention of Kurt Cobain!

hope it all works out, atari

Although I haven't heard much Throbbing Gristle, what I have listened to of theirs suggests that they might be a difficult band to properly categorise. Obviously they can't be considered a part of the classical avant-garde (1920s-30s) but nor do they fit easily into any kind of notion of the postmodern (except maybe with the 20 Jazz Funk Greats album).

There is a certain 'anti-art' quality about them which would lend itself to comparisons with Dada, but that seems slightly reductive too. The whole 'industrial' thing does at timeds appear to be a sort of retrospective looking back at things the Futurists and the Constructivists were doing.

It might then be argued that Throbbing Gristle were one of the only genuinely avant-garde bands of their period, but problems in validating such a claim only echoes similar problems in defining what the avant-garde is/was in the first place. For all that though, they're definitely an interesting case for debate.

So would you say there's a difference between the underground and the avant-garde?

It's....Something.

I suppose that given the saturation of media these days, staying underground could in itself almost be an avant-garde gesture. Especially when you're popular enough to 'make it' in the 'mainstream'.

I'm Avant Garde Love Meee

you seem better read in art criticism than i am, and strange things happen when ideas are borrowed from other fields (a "postmodern" idea in itself - the trope or détournement). for example, while most people see postmodernism as a rejection of history, or at least the idea of history, postmodernist architecture is deeply historicist, primarily a reaction against modernist ideologues rejecting all forms of ornamentation as decadent (from which emerged the stark white "international style" most people associate with "modern" architecture). and deconstructivist architecture has so little to do with deconstruction that derrida disowned it, once refusing to speak at a conference on the subject (featuring famous architect and bow-tie wearing wank peter eisenman, with whom he'd already broken off his working relationship) sending in his stead a tape recorded statement detailing his disagreements with the whole idea. the term deconstructivist acknowledges this and more acurately describes the architecture, referencing as it does the russian constructivists.

anyway, my point is that while i agree with a lot of what you have to say about art, it is disturbing that you dismiss the philosophy of postmodernism so readily and so completly. the epistemological implications of the information revolution are quite distinct from the aesthetic concerns you are discussing. and while it is true that a lot of late twentieth century continental philosophy makes heavy use of rhetorical methods traditionally considered to be vices, which could accurately be described as double-speak (particularly catachresis, relying as it does on the slippage of the signifier), that hardly makes it bullshit. deconstruction can be a powerful analytical method, and poststructuralist thought in general has a lot of valuable insight into linguistics. lacanian psychoanalysis picks up on these and examines how language operates at an unconscious level. all are handy tools, despite not being perfectly suited to every job. (ie art criticsim, music criticism, architecture theory) but what tool is? that's why you have a toolbox. ...if i had to critique the idea of the cartesian cogito, i'd hardly pick up some clement greenburg... likewise, just because deleuze and guattari didn't help you describe a painting doesn't mean it's groundless gibberish.




[edit] to answer the question, my understanding of the term avant-garde is primarily the historical one. the collection of movements than begins roughly with the salon des refusés of 1863... actually wrote a paper in undergrad titled "Is an avant-garde act still possible?" ...don't remember what my argument was, though.

my screen name for this board?

whatever I am into

tl;dr version:

why are you assuming that postmodern philosophy originated from a need to describe art? isn't it more likely that art critics borrowed ideas from philosophers who were trying to trying to understand a broader set of socio-economic circumstances having to do with late capitalism and information technology? just as modernism and the historical avant-garde were ultimately driven by the circumstances of the industrial revolution?

STILL tl;dr version (part 1):

postmodernism in the arts

STILL tl;dr version (part duh):

postmodernism in the philosophy

 

...apologies to any board memebers offended by this hand gesture.

Just read through your reply to Atari, Mirror dash, and found a lot of it very interesting. Although I tend to side with Atari on the whole 'lunatics taking over the asylum' issue, I believe that these lunatics better represent those that have chosen to apply ideas put forward by the likes of Barthes, Lacan, etc with almost no regard for their original purpose and/or context. This has led to something of an intellectual cul-de-sac within large areas of the humanities, as over-enthusiastic (but often under-read) academics attempt to apply Deleuze to absolutely anything and everything. Toolbox is right. It's just a shame that universities are increasingly coming to the job armed only with a single spanner.

Damn, Sonic Youth needs some of this cash!

I have to say, I'm looking scarily like a slightly younger Slavoj Zizek these days. Christ, at least he has old age to blame - and a life spent in deep contemplation. All I have is Kentucky Fried Chicken. Thank you Colonel Sanders. Thanks a fuckin' lot.

let's go to mars guys

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0...ace/index.html
http://www.china.org.cn/english/scitech/69510.htm

although under-read students and graduates are sadly all too common, there are other problems... one of the lacanian professors at UF has the telling e-mail signature, "reading in no way obliges you to understand."

the double-speak bullshit label is one often thrown at derrida, lacan et al. but it oversimplifies while it dismisses. first because they were trying to show you how their philosophy works through their rhetorical methods (puns, triple puns, obscure references, coined words) as much if not more than simply explaining it to you.

and second because before these writings were ever borrowed by other fields, they were borrowed from another language. and puns pose a particularly difficult translation problem, compounded by the fact that the puns and references are just as often in german as in french, and frequently in ancient greek or even aramaic. for this reason the body of work that we have available in english for these authors is often well below half of what exists in the native language. what we know as foucault's madness and civilization is a severely abridged version missing all of the appendixes, and lacan's most well known english work the ecrits is also merely a selection, and some of the more esoteric ones at that. lacan's seminars, in which he attempts to explain his ideas in less flowery language, without the puns and obscure references (or so i've heard, i've read about them, but haven't read them) have never been translated.

...to return to the tool analogy, while i agree with you that many academics seem to think of these writers as comprising some sort of swiss army knife that can do anything, the translation issue creates a situation sort of like trying to learn how to use chopsticks, or even judge their usefulness for eating, by going the local chinese takeout place and watching some rednecks use them.


[srsly... up until 2002 the only translation of the selections from the ecrits that were available in english, was done by someone who did not study psychoanalysis, let alone lacan or freud specifically]

Good points regarding the translation issue. Another problem is the way in which figures such as Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze and, in particular, Guattari have so effectively been domesticated by the university system. The true message of books like Anti-Oedipus and Discipline and Punish call into question the entire structure of institutions: structures that the university system relies upon for its very existence. Departments get around this by de-politicizing such books, reducing them to abstract (read safe) theory. The Anti-University in London in the sixties was a good example of an institution that absorbed these ideas into its very structure, rather than simply employing them as a way of sexying up course reading lists. In many ways, it's this very fear of letting the lunatics take over the asylum that stops universities from teaching such writers properly.

"academics attempt to apply Deleuze to absolutely anything and everything"

I was at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory a couple weeks ago and here are the names of the papers from a special session:


----7:30-10:30 Deterritorializing Music Theory: Deleuze, Guattari, and
A Thousand Plateaus (Maryland E)

Sponsored by the Music Philosophy Interest Group

Alan Street (Music Analysis/University at Buffalo), Moderator

John Rahn (University of Washington), “Mille Plateaux, You Tarzan: A Musicology of (an Anthropology of (an Anthropology of A Thousand Plateaus))”

Michael Gallope (New York University), “Immanence, Transcendence, and the Musical Work in A Thousand Plateaus”

Martin Scherzinger (Eastman School of Music), “’Deterritorializing the Refrain’: Music As Philosophical Critique”

Amy Cimini (New York University), “Voice, Aurality, Ontology: Locating the Sonic in A Thousand Plateaus”

Benjamin Boretz (Bard College), “On the 1001st Plateau”----


I didn't go to the session. I was tired from a workshop that morning and a bunch of other papers I sat through.

good for you! pure wankery.

how did you like baltimore?

that was priceless comedy

Oh, it was very nice. I had some crab chips and took a nice walk around Federal Hill and downtown. I had some cigars and beer at some Irish pub in the inner harbor while listening to a cover band mangle Smells Like Teen Spirit. Good times.

And I met a bunch of theorists and attended the workshop that I was in, which was a great experience. There were also some really interesting papers--including two on Bartok that were very good. There was supposed to be a paper on Meshuggah, but it was canceled because it had just been published in a journal.

Anyway, yeah, my knowledge of Deleuze, Guattari, and whatnot is limited, and I prefer to stick to more straightforward music theory. In my experience, philosophy ends up being used more for navel-gazing (in terms of the discipline itself), but those are some smart folks up there and I'm reluctant to completely dismiss it. If anybody wants to read the abstracts, the complete program is here:

http://societymusictheory.org/pdf/SM...racts_2007.pdf

MILLE PLATEAUX, YOU TARZAN: A MUSICOLOGY OF
(AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF (AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF A THOUSAND PLATEAUS))
John Rahn
University of Washington
First we critique the philosophy and practice of and around the book A Thousand Plateaus (TP)
by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. We show how its program of dissed organization, nonhierarchy,
transformation, and escape from boundaries at every moment resonates in harmony with some of its
modes of presentation and mentation, but dissonates with others. The Anthropological Gaze which
forms in the name of observation, and re-forms Us as it forms Them, is one of the nodes of TP’s
thought: the erotic, climax-free plateaus of some Batesonesque Balinese orgy. Even the structuralism of
Claude Levi-Strauss permeates TP in the form of a paradigmatic procedure of polar opposites (e.g. raw
vs. cooked in Levi-Strauss, territorialization vs deterritorialization etc. in TP). Is such a Gaze performed
by TP on us, or merely referred to by it? What is the nature of TP’s practice upon us?
Taking off from a series of articles by John Rahn and others, we will then further explore the
nature of this Platonically anti-Platonic practice by TP upon us as it affects the practice of music and
thinking about music.

-----------

^^ see how he refers to himself in the 3rd person? wankery, wankery, wankery