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Postmodernism: The Triumph of Proletarian Culture
There are many negative comments on Postmodernism. Some people think it is a pathological symptom of a society that has become incapable of dealing with time and history. (Beginning Postmodernism, p.212) Some people say it is an indifferent, parody culture; some people question the value of its vulgar taste; and some people wonder if it has any definition of art. Postmodernism confuses people's idea about art. I do not know if I should agree with the Postmodern aesthetics or not; however, I think what most important of Postmodernism is not the value of its aesthetics but the subversive concept it impacts on traditional art. And this is what I attempt to explore for this essay.
ART WAS FEUDALISM
Art used to be the proprietary hobby of aristocrats and elite. It was the symbol of being intelligent, being superior to most of other people. The purpose of art was creating beautiful works; and beauty was the collective belief of human beings. Beauty might be human beings' first belief even before the belief of religion. Religion has been questioned for a long time; but our belief of beauty seemed to be the ultimate truth and immortal. Since art brings people beauty, being successful in art is therefore respectful. Consequently, art becomes the label of being superior. In order to maintain the validity of this label, to maintain the superiority, people have to establish institutional laws of art to serve this purpose. According to the need of maintaining the invested interest, this law of art should be able to issue artists the certificate of unchangeable honor, that is to say, a certificate of honorable pedigree. And the means to achieve this purpose is as follows,
First, art has to be as profound as possible in order to be mystified, canonized, and aloof from the proletariat.
Second, art has to insist on the importance of the author in order to maintain the prestigious position of the author.
Third, art has to insist on its originality in order to make it unique and raise its value.
The result is a work of art will be always good once it was good. This is how the law of art operated to make art a virtual religion that everybody subliminally believed. It is also to say, art became feudalism. However, this feudalism has not been so convincible since the belief of beauty was challenged by the belief of money.
ECONOMICS DEMOCRATIZES EVERYTHING
The power of economics jeopardizes all autocracies. It democratizes everything. The reason is as follows,
The development of economics is based on production and consumption; for that greater benefit comes from greater production; greater production bases on the need of greater consumption. In order to increase the consumption, the population of rich people should keep growing more and more. The more wealthy people are, the more power people would have. And the greater population of wealthy people in a society, the more democratic the society would be. As a result, economics democratize all autocracies; and democracy breaks down all feudalism. Among the fields of art, architecture is the first one to repel the feudalism of art; in that architecture is the art relates with economics the most. This movement of the art of architecture was so called Postmodernism. Soon after Postmodernism ushered in architecture, the other fields of art also found the changes they had which made them deviate from modernism and challenge the feudalism of art, comply with Postmodernism. And the era of Postmodernism thus started. Another evidence of how economics presupposed Postmodernism is that, the leading country of the Postmodern culture is America, the most capitalism country in the world. Postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world. (Postmodernism, p.65) American culture seems to be the most eligible one to defy the originality of art, to subvert the feudalism of art. Because America is a country of immigrants so that it is critical of having a commensurable originality; and America is highly industrialized that new technique of reproduction enable art to permeate everyday life. Technical reproduction caused the most profound change in their impact upon the public. The desire of contemporary masses to bring things "closer" spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness or every reality by accepting its reproduction. (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, p.225) With this powerful influence of American culture, Postmodernism overwhelmed the whole world and democratized art.
THE TRIUMPH OF PROLETARIAN CULTURE
There are three main ways by which Postmodernism subverted the feudalism of art,
First, depthlessness.
Postmodern art belongs to proletarian culture. It is not an art to be read or interpreted. It is playful, ironic, and superficial. It breaks down the barriers that keep the profane out of the everyday life; and legitimates the value of proletariat's banal taste. It is a celebration of the collapse of the distinction between high and low cultural styles and techniques. The elite can no longer be pretentious by dominating the regime of art.
Second, anti-auteur.
Postmodernism is the end of unique and personal style. It effaces the historical past. It is pastiche of the past and other styles. It obliterates the distinctive individual brushstroke of works of art. Therefore, this ending of the bourgeois ego no longer promises the tenure of the artists??prestigious position.
Third, reproduction.
By means of reproduction, Postmodern art follows the desire of proletarian masses to bring art close to them. Therefore, originality is not important. Art becomes commodity of everyday life. It is not the proprietary hobby of aristocrats and elite any more.
By these three strategies, Postmodernism emancipated art from the feudalism. This triumph of proletarian culture even made the world more like a global village. It seems that no culture is absolutely the dominant one; and the minor cultures seem to have more ways to survive. However, is it really a liberation of cultures or chaos of cultures? In fact, Postmodernism is not really the dominant movement, now. Another cultural revolution is really imminent.
THE COMING OF A VIRTUAL WORLD
Architecture introduced Postmodernism into the world thirty years ago. About ten years ago, architecture started new attempting of different aesthetics. Thom Mayne's morphological architecture, Ben van Berkel's concept of blob texture, Peter Eisenman's project of smooth facade entwined with organic striations, and etc.. These new forms are all not possibly contrived without computer; and these architectures of virtual forms may soon take over our living space of reality. Besides, digital image keeps creating new visual wonders that are never seen before. Again, computer brings us into a virtual world. In addition, Internet abolishes originality even more radically than Postmodernism. Auteur is not only meaningless but everyone can be an auteur right away on Internet. Art is not just completely approachable but inundating. With its virtual reality and gaseous status of Internet, the virtual world of computer is getting stronger, but more and more unpredictable; and maybe more uncontrollable. And this time, who will be the winner?
by Tung-Wang Wu
March, 2000
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