Postmodern Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Postmodern Art - Essay Example The focus in this essay "Postmodern Art" is on postmodern art. The art world often pretentiously demands a certain level of sophistication from its viewers, as a means of separating the two worlds, but many of the best artists postmodernism has to offer, accept the viewer's own existence, experiences, and emotional base as a point of departure from which to present their message. This works as an explanation for the overwhelming popularity of American artist Jeff Koons, who is arguably the poster boy for postmodern thought and practice. While modern art seems to remain aloof and separated from its audience, postmodernism seeks too coexist on the same level as its viewers, using images from popular culture with which its audience is already familiar, and inverting, twisting, and ultimately destroying those images to create an entirely new thought, and an entirely new work of art. This paper will discuss the era of postmodern art from its conception with Andy Warhol in the 1960’ s, to Koons himself and the way that the genre exists today. It is difficult to discuss Jeff Koons and postmodern art without first discussing it’s conception and Andy Warhol. Koons is often compared to Warhol, because he has achieved much of what the revolutionary Warhol had, including a sort of notorious controversial presence. In understanding Warhols motivation, we will certainly come to a better understanding of the motivating factors behind Koons’ work. The parameters with which we define art are under constant organic change. New ways of understanding concepts of art are at best, problematic as new movements force the visual spectator to at times disavow all preconceived notions and interpretations of art The emergence of a new art movement enables critics to redefine their own theories and understandings, in essence, to reconceptualize art theory. This is an interesting phenomenon when it takes place, one that truly exposes the theorization and ideologies of ar t. The emergence of Pop Art in the 1950's in Britain and its vivacious inception into American society is one such movement that captures this broadening of art. Andy Warhol was one of the movements' most prolific artists, helping to truly affirm the position of Pop Art as a credible, enlightening and in Warhol's conception, groundbreaking art form. Abstract Expressionism had been thoroughly institutionalized within art history since the Second World War and the arrival of Pop Art and its methods ultimately appeared as a reaction against this school of art. Pop Art found its imagery and techniques from the sociological climate of the sixties in which consumerism was fueled by the mass productivity ethos of the time. Certain artists began to aspire to a hard-edged style of art; one that Suzi Gablik believes led to a "moral strategy" facilitated "to avoid tasteful choices and to set the stake higher," (Gablik, 1969). The most profound realization of this strategy was to be the use of found or ready-made objects within pieces of artwork. Warhol was one of the main propagators of this method, a style of painting that would for the first time blemish the distinct qualities between 'high' and 'low' art and find the artist stripped of his autonomy. In Andy Warhol, Crone argues that any attempt to describe or analyze Warhol's work, "must consider the conditions of reality reflected as more important