What is Postmodernism?

Jean-François Lyotard, “Answering The Question: What Is Postmodernism?”, trans. Régis Durand, in The Post Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp.71-82.

I agree with Lyotards comment that ‘photography did not appear as a challenge to painting from the out side any more than industrial cinema did to narrative literature.’ Photography’s conception did not undermine painting or aim to supersede it; it simply became another way of capturing an original subject or providing evidence of its reality. Just like previous inventions before photography, for example, the printing press it did not destroy the need for writing it merely became another way to reproduce text.

Photography cannot destroy the beauty of painting, as they are completely different ways of picturing objects. The camera takes a direct impression of the world around us where as painting ‘even one that meets a photographic standard of representation is never more than the stating of an interpretation.’ In painting the subject and the style in which it is depeciated is due to the choice of the artist and the skills they posses. Susan Sontag brings up an interesting point in her essay ‘On Photography’ on the contrast between the image (copy) and thing depicted (original), the way an artist decides to picture a subject in their paintings from life may be far different from what a camera can produce. Artists from the Impressionists movement achieved this reality; their aim was to capture the changing effects of light on the landscape through colour and use of painterly brush strokes. The style captures the mood of the landscape through the artists’ impression of the space.

Walter Benjamin discusses in his essay the term “aura” in reference to how one feels when in the presence of a unique work of art. Through the use of ‘tools’ such as photography, painting and photoshop contemporary artists are able to piece together ideas from the world in different way to depict new realities that relate to the time in which we live to create works that are relevant to the time in which we life creating a new relevant ‘aura’. This proves the point that Lyotard was correct in saying that photography did not appear as a challenge to painting.



Sontag, Susan, On Photography, Picador 2001, pg.154

Seth Price "Dispersion" (2001-2002)

On first reading of Seth Price’s ‘Dispersion,’ the article can be viewed as a wide ranging observation of random topics as described in our tutorial as ‘sampling,’ like a combination of Wikipedia pages. This idea I can relate to as I have a broad range of knowledge but nothing specified. For me, the way Price groups a large seemingly random text as a form of sample bought back the ideas of Meg Cranston. “I don’t discredit artists whom go deep, but I go broad. I prefer to go from flower to flower. That was part of my education. We were taught not to trademark- that was unethical, to brand yourself” . This point is very relevant to all of us we are taught from an early age to study a wide range of subjects if an individual is not good at one area we are taught to try and try again where as back in history from an early age you would become an appretiance to a ‘master’ in a particular area. In this era with the access to technology the notion of knowlege has changed a lot. We view a range of information to be relevant, knowledge is part of success. As the world his developed we have needed to learn about a wide range of things, for me this is how Price’s article is relevant. At first the big picture in Prices essay is hard to grasp but once we break down the text into areas for example blocking off the source from the image we begin to see how the ambiguity is the authors intention, like Wikipedia we all take ideas from different places to help piece our knowledge together to form a varied relevant new language.


Israel Nico, Cranston Meg, Running on Light Feet in Hot pants in a Cold Cold World: Works 1987-2007, Artspace and Clouds, Auckland, 2008, pg.7