Electro-______ music genres: The Hybrid of the hybrid

Electricity. A spark. A pulse. A presence that has been consistent in maintaining an identity in music for quite some time. Adding this pre-fix to genres of music i.e. (electro-pop, electro-rock) can almost be seen as an injustice... for Electro has all the capabilities of standing on its own. The hybridity between electro and other genres is essentially what induces an inflammatory reception in the senses. An electric-feel per say (to borrow from MGMT).

I started thinking of this post in terms of what first comes to mind when I think of electronic music. I first thought geographically, and mostly associated the genre with Europe. Then I started to think of the music I am listening to these days, and I realized most of the stuff I am really digging is one form of electro or another. Either electro pop, electro-synth-pop, electro indie-rock, etc etc etc….Even Wikipedia has a very extensive list of the different sub-genres which you can check out here:

So, in terms of a breakdown here are some interesting sub-genres that I think are worth looking at:

The resurgence of the DJ: (EURO style)

Tiesto

Armin Van Buren

David Guetta

Paul Van Dyk

Ferry Corsten

Electro-pop (UK style)

La Roux

is an English electropop duo band whose music is influenced by 1980s synthpop including Yazoo, Depeche Mode, The Human League, Heaven 17, and Blancmange. I got to see them live this summer in Los Angeles and they really had that element that literally put a jolt of electricity through the crowd. The playful melodies in songs such as "I'm Not Your Toy" and "Tigerlily" re-charged the initially dull audience into replicas of the energizer bunny.

Little Boots

is an English electropop musician who sings and plays the keyboard, piano, stylophone and a Japanese electronic instrument, called Tenori-on is definitely putting her stamp on the electro-pop movement. Check out her songs "Stuck on Repeat" and "New in Town"

and across the Pond...

In Lady GaGa’s new album The Fame Mons†er: a new, monstrous side of GaGa is shown. A side that can be attributed to the European Electro-Industrial vibe present in her songs such as "Dance in the Dark". This new eerie and metallic sound substantiates her equally eerie lyrics that allude to other highly respected artists such as Plath and Kubrick. The album’s high-voltage delivers and liberates the listener. An escape to a filthy over-sized 'warehouse' somewhere in Eastern Europe, echoing with the sharp current of electricity.

Down Under

Sneaky Sound System

are very well received in the dance scene, and some of their stuff has been remixed by Tiesto making for an interesting sound:

Cut Copy

is a synthpop band from Melbourne, Australia. Their sound, often labeled as electropop, draws considerable influence from 80s new wave, synth-pop and post-punk genres.

Ladyhawke

all of her music is very nostalgic of the 1980s, (her name is a riff on the movie of that decade), but her music featuring PNAU is especially noteworthy.

Rock fusion

MGMT

"We weren't trying to start a band," remarked Goldwasser. "We were just hanging out, showing each other music that we liked." They experimented with noise rock and electronica before settling on what David Marchese of Spin calls "their current brand of shape-shifting psychedelic pop."

Phoenix

An interesting thing about Phoenix (who I think are one of the best indie rock outfits on the scene today): In early 2009, it was announced that the band was returning with a new album titled Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which was released on May 25, 2009. The album was recorded in Paris by Cassius's Philippe Zdar who co-produced and mixed the album. Cassius is a French house music duo consisting of producers Philippe Cerboneschi and Hubert Blanc-Francard, better known as Philippe Zdar and Boom Bass. You can definitely hear the house influence on Phoenix's new record (especially in Fences, Girlfriend, and Armistice) which I think makes for an amazing one, and the technique in the recording is phenomenal.

Experimental (goes Canadian)

Crystal Castles

is an experimental electronic music band from the province of Ontario consisting of producer Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass. Crystal Castles are known for their chaotic live shows and their low-fi melancholic home productions. To listen to Crystal Castles "is to be cast adrift in a vortex of deafening pain without a safety net. You get the feeling you could do anything in the world, but that that "anything" would ultimately mean nothing. Crystal Castles marks a nuanced emotional territory that dance music never covered before." (BBC).

MSTRKRFT

is an electronic music group from Toronto. MSTRKRFT (pronounced Master Kraft) have been commissioned to remix songs by such artists as Justice, Bloc Party, Metric, Wolfmother, and Annie and The Kills...and you have probably heard Heartbreaker featuring John Legend, one of their singles:

These are just some of my favorites, and hopefully are illustrative of how influential electronic music is across the board...perhaps it is THE postmodern musical genre of our time, and can be counted on for constantly mixing and remixing (quite literally) the music scene for our enjoyment and paving the way for more groundbreaking sounds to come...

PS... I also love this Felix Da Housecat Remix of the Nina Simone song "Sinnerman" which is now being featured in the new HTC mobile phone commercial you have probably seen on TV in the past couple of weeks...

The Slavery of Narrative and the Ivory Tower Dilemma

I found Peter Greenaway's film roster to be both slightly disturbing and fascinating (and as a reference, The Pillow Book is apparently one of his warmer films). Up until this point, I had considered myself to be adequately in-the-know when it came to the 'Art-house' genre, but I had never heard of Greenaway or his films. (Sidenote: in the Salon interview the journalist mentions that Greenway thinks "most movies are empty and sentimental -- and that includes art-house pictures, which Greenaway treats with as much disdain as mainstream Hollywood products"—so with this statement, I guess I don’t feel quite as bad.)

What I found to be most interesting in reading through his interviews was this notion of the narrative in cinema, and his feelings of enslavement by the very idea. Usually when someone critiques a film (not necessarily a professional critic, but maybe an average consumer of this popular art form) you will hear them say something like, “it was a little slow”, or maybe ‘it was too fast paced’, (the latter being less common I presume). I think it’s safe to say that these critiques are really of the narrative structure of the film, rather than the actual visual nature of the movie (this is just my idea, and I could be wrong). I found his discussion on the narrative nature of cinema to be very interesting, as he doesn’t feel like it is conducive to it. Or maybe not that it’s not conducive to it, but that it should transcend storytelling to achieve other ends.

“These may be heretical opinions, but I don't think that cinema is a very good narrative medium. I think if you want to tell a story you should be a writer -- it's far more powerful. I think that cinema should be allowed to get on with other things.” He says that like music and painting have done before it, cinema also needs to explore other elements apart from the narrative. He even proposes that cinema needs to ‘dump’ narration altogether. He explains that there is and should be another purpose for cinema aside from just telling stories. He does however qualify this statement by saying, “I'm not against narrative, I enjoy storytelling. I do think that cinema has so much to offer outside the slavery of narrative.” I think his choice of words here are quite audacious: it’s slavery.

Enter the Ivory Tower conundrum: Greenaway says, “I would continue to push in that direction [away from the narrative], though John Cage suggested if you introduce more than 20 percent of novelty into any artwork, you're going to lose 80 percent of your audience. And I want to go on making movies, so -- without any sense of condescension or patronage -- we have to work at a certain pace, otherwise I'm going to disappear into the outer darkness and never make another movie. And I want to make mainstream movies. This might sound very strange, but I don't want to live in an ivory tower, I don't want to be an underground filmmaker. I want to make movies for the largest possible audience, but arrogantly I want to make them on my terms.” Herein lies the dilemma of every indie (or art-house) filmmaker (or musician, artist, etc) out there: How can you get your work to reach a lot of people (which is always the goal, because culture is shared after all) while protecting it from the agendas of those with the money and power (Hollywood, production companies, etc) to do so? I feel like this struggle for credibility and audience, and let’s face it—money—is one that may have no end. This problem of course is not unique to cinema, and exists in all realms of cultural production.

This brings me back to a little earlier in the discussion to the idea of the slavery of narratives. The Pillow Book, although highly stylized visually by integrating all different types of cutting edge technologies, is very much a narrative, and not only does it have a definite narrative structure, but it was in a sense adapted from a preceding text (although the film is set in the modern day and the stories are different). When confronted with this in an interview, Greenaway said, “One shouldn't start a discussion of this film by referring to a set text because the origins of the project are much deeper than that, and respond to, I suppose, my general sense of anxiety and disquiet about the cinema we've got after 100 years -- a cinema which is predicated on text. So whether your name is Spielberg or Scorsese or Godard, there's always a necessity to start with text and finish with image. I don't think that's particularly where we should organize an autonomous art form. That's why I think that, in a way, we haven't seen the cinema yet, all we've seen is 100 years of illustrated text.”

I think this is a very interesting point, and I will definitely keep my eye out for Greenaway’s next projects, and hopefully he will produce the breakthrough in cinema, not just ‘illustrated text’. Just to relate these ideas to my own very recent experience, I saw the second installment in the Twilight franchise: New Moon (along with 5,000 other screaming girls at the Georgetown theater), and I must say I was a bit disappointed. I will admit (for the purposes of this blog) to being part of this subculture of fanatics surrounding the franchise, and I found myself identifying (if only slightly) with Greenaway’s analysis of cinema as a poor medium for narratives. I felt as though (especially in the second installment) that the book was infinitely more satisfying in this respect than the highly anticipated film. You always hear that the ‘books are always better than the movies’ but on the flip side there is always a delight in seeing narratives take on a visual form. I guess I will conclude by saying that although it is very difficult for me to envision a world and cinema culture in which narratives are obsolete, I still welcome the prospect of a cinematic departure from the narrative into something new.

Steven Klein and Postphotography

Sonesson poses the question, "But is there really a world after photography?"

Many of today's emerging photographers have offered a response to this question, and Sonesson offers his own explanation as well:

"The postphotographic world can only exist in the same sense in which we have long lived in a world after painting: a world in which the meaning of painting has been modified by the advent of photography. But now the meaning of photography and painting alike are in the process of being thoroughly changed by the emergence of computer-pictures....But the computer may also be an instrument of creation: it is not only one of several possible means for mechanical reproduction, but it is also a means for digital production. And this is where we enter the domain of postphotography."

Enter Steven Klein:

On his website, he offers a response to the notion of these categories that can not be interpreted in isolation, and why there is a necessity to define them based on their predecessors:

"There is a desire to link photography with painting. My background is painting and I feel there is no connection between the two. It is as if the camera is linked to a sin, producing a bastard art form that we feel we must link to the past in order to give it credentials. I don't want those credentials. I have no need to apologize for photography."

Many of you may be familiar with his work in fashion photography, particularly in W magazine (which is where I first became acquainted with his work). I found an interesting article on his website that I thought captured the discussion quite nicely:

"For some time now photography has existed in an expanded field that includes fashion, advertising, music, cinema and virtually every other aspect of the culture we live and breath every day. And while there are those who denounce this as a contamination of its ability to report accurately on the world we live in, there are others for whom this very impurity is a saving aesthetic grace. Steven Klein might be one such photographer and X-STaTIC Pro=CeSS, his collaboration with Madonna, is just such a cross-fertilization of talent, medium and genre."

In my opinion, like every art form, and not even limited to art but life in general, things naturally evolve and change, and those who take advantage of this in the appropriate ways and contexts can benefit immensely. I thought Steven Klein was one photographer who was a great example of an artist who is delving into evolving techniques in his art and is not afraid to blend ideas and see what works. With that I will leave you with one last quote that illustrates his involvement with this:

"To this end many of the still images of X-STaTIC Pro=CeSS have been animated with CGI, just as the moving images are often edited in such a way that they appear to be composed of sequenced stills. In doing so he has created a strange hybrid that is neither one nor the other yet draws on both."

Photographical Context: Staged vs. Organic?

Cartier-Bresson’s ideas on photography are fascinating, and I found them very helpful in considering the work of some of the most notable contemporary photographers on the scene today (which depending on the context can be staged or not).

“Manufactured’ or staged photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgment, it can only be on a psychological or sociological level. There are those who take photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover the image and seize it. For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which—in visual terms—questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames through the viewfinder….It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”

Would he consider Marla Rutherford’s work staged?

Q: How do you decide on an idea or setting for the portrait?

A: It depends what kind of subject matter I am photographing. Usually I chose the location first, then wrap the whole concept around it. With my latex and fetish work and my fine art work, generally I go for a desert kind of Blue Velvet David Lynch atmosphere—very surreal. The type of light that I use is already pretty strange, so I look for a location that fits that type of lighting, like bizarre rooms or a more Planet of the Apes type location where it's minimalist and looks like a desert or another planet.

or someone like... David LaChapelle

Initially distinguished by his campy fixation with white-trash culture, LaChapelle is also known for his groundbreaking use of computer manipulation and futuristic fashion shoots and for placing hollywood celebrities. His signature photography has become synonymous with wildly beautiful colorful sets, unexpected positioning of models and celebrities, all shot with subtle or overt humor. More than static portraits, his photos often appear as a still from a motion picture, with layers of plots ready to play out before our eyes.

In connecting LaChapelle to the hybrid nature of contemporary art, he is one photographer who has segued into other areas, starting with directing music videos, and onto films.

What about artists like Richard Prince, who make paintings to look like photographs?

I guess my point is that in today's world, it's all about context. Artists are aware of this as they are creating and disseminating images to the public, whether that is intended for the fine art world or for the masses.

Ubiquity of Manga

I sometimes feel I lack the right reference points to really understand the worlds of manga and anime and would not have considered myself to really subscribe to these categories. The more I read, the more I realized (especially in my younger years) how much of it I did consume, although off hand I didn't feel as though I did. Here are a few examples, mostly recollections from my youth, but I'll start with a more recent example:

The 'Ghost in the Shell' franchise follows a fictional counter-terrorist organization, set in a sort of cyberpunk world. The idea of cyberpunk itself is an interesting look at hybridity as it combines the high tech world of cybernetics and information technology and 'low life' especially in regards to 'punk' as those looking towards a change in social order. The setting as I am imagining it immediately reminded me of the film PUSH that came out in 2009. Although it is an American movie, it is set in Hong Kong (which of course is not Japan, but I feel that Hong Kong as a city has borrowed from manga, anime and elements of Japanese culture). The film, in my opinion, had a very hybrid-anime type feel, in terms of the way it was shot and the way in which it showcased the city as another character in the story.

On the topic of hybridity, I think that manga culture lends itself very well to the idea: Manga-->anime series--> films--> novels--> video games. This is a great segue to discuss Manga and Anime as a business. Clearly, over the years it has become a viable part of the world market, being that it is a billion dollar industry, extending its influence not only over Asia but to the West and beyond.

As a tween, I remember absolutely loving Sailor Moon (in fact, and I probably shouldn't be sharing this, but I still know the theme song). It definitely had that element of cute that Japanese pop culture is known for that I think is very appealing and easily marketed to the pre-teen age group anywhere, which is why it was so successful in the U.S.

I also remember spending my summers in Libya as a child and young teenager, and I remember my cousins all being obsessed with Captain Majid, which was clearly a Japanese import. In this globalized society, it is clear that Japanese pop culture has an element that makes it successful around the world, not just in Asia and youth culture in the states. Although soccer is a major staple in Arab pop and youth culture, the way it was done originally was as a video game [Captain Tsubasa (Famicon)] and then adapted into a television show. Its popularity was so immense in the Middle East that it was bootlegged and dubbed in Arabic.

This brings me to post-pop in the US and artists like Jeff Koons, and recording artists like Gwen Stefani who are clearly influenced by Japanese pop culture in their own work. We are consuming it at times without direct realization (although this is not the case with Stefani), it's become the dominant post pop art of our time...

The Space Between

I love John Seabrook's ideas on "nobrow" culture. It reminds me of the sort of tenants of a lot of postmodernist ideas, and of course of the pop art movement and into the post pop art movement of street art which redefines and reinterprets meanings, lines, boundaries, etc.

"The brand is the price of your admission to the subculture. The brand is neither quite marketing nor culture; it's the catalyst, the filament of platinum that makes culture and marketing combine."

Additionally, as defined by American culture: high and low brow--> intellectuality vs business

"In the United States, though, people needed highbrow-lowbrow distinctions to do the work that social hierarchy did in less egalitarian countries. Any fat cat could buy a mansion, but not everyone could cultivate a passionate interest in Arnold Schoenberg or John Cage."

"In Nobrow, the challenge that élite institutions such as the major museums face is how to bring commercial culture into the fold--how to keep their repertoire vibrant and solvent and relevant without undermining their moral authority, which used to be based, in part, on keeping the commercial culture out."

"In the changing rooms, which are tastefully designed, the fashion psychopath makes an appearance. Buy it, he whispers. Go ahead. Buy it. You know you want it. Then you can be part of that whole hip-hop thing happening down Broadway, while at the same time being secretly above it all. You'd spend two hundred dollars for a dress shirt, so why not a two-hundred-dollar T-shirt that you'll wear a lot more? It's anti-status as status, another important principle in Nobrow."

I loved that at the end of the day, his Jersey tomatoes from Dean & Deluca might as well have been from the 'low-brow' supermarket...

(This is especially comforting because I hate Dean & Deluca, and every day I walk by I just want to mess up all their perfectly placed produce, and break their duck eggs one by one. Ok, so maybe this is the bitterness talking, but seriously, I hate that place.)

All this talk of high and low and 'no' got me thinking of new ways to interpret or assign meaning to things...in this case, Street Art:

Fashion as Street Art

The Sartorialist : While this may not be what is conventionally seen as street art (graffiti, tagging, etc), The Sartorialist fashion blog takes snapshots (let's keep in mind that photography, and fashion photography are a part of the art world) of both unknown and well-known people on the street and has gained much notoriety in fashion by doing so. The idea of a blog like the Sartorialist as a type of street art may be a stretch as it is not a permanent fixture on the street as much of street art can be, but when I was thinking of this, it got me thinking of O’Doherty’s “Inside the White Cube”. These photographs are snapshots of street culture in multiple places and times that collectively serve as an artistic representation of that occurrence, in this case: fashion in the streets. So could this be classified as street art?

War-HOLLA Back!

The Dandy Warhols Album Cover

Whether or not you like Warhol, which I can't understand why you could dislike such an iconic force that essentially represents much of American culture in the 60s (which was probably one of the most creatively glamorous times in history), you can't deny the mark he has left not only on the art world, but on culture across all categories...

The Dandy Warhols and The Velvet Underground

Aside from the nod they give to Warhol in the name of their band, The Dandy Warhols riff on the album cover artwork Andy Warhol did for The Velvet Underground in their own album art. Interestingly enough, the band cites The Velvet Underground as one of their musical influences…a dose of postmodernism perhaps?

Lady Gaga

I am sure you are all thoroughly sick of my posts on Lady Gaga, and I have been told by colleagues that the idea of Lady Gaga being a force in art made them nauseous...but I don't care. I found a quote from her from some time ago that might respond to this notion in a very Warholian way...

She says, "The Fame [her album] is about how anyone can feel famous. Pop culture is art. It doesn’t make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it’s a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle."

She's inviting everyone to the party. If you're not sold on that point, keep in mind that there is a category called Performance Art, which clearly has her name stamped all over.

Around the globe...

Just to add to the discussion that Warhol is in fact an international icon, I just read an article that there are plans to open a Warhol museum in the United Arab Emirates. I find it interesting that the UAE, which is definitely more conservative than Western culture still sees the appeal in Warhol's work, which goes back to my original question...How can you really dislike Warhol? (just my opinion, of course!)

Pop Art in Consumer Culture: Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein’s images may be some of the most recognized apart from Andy Warhol’s in the pop art movement. In 1961 Lichtenstein began his first Pop paintings using cartoon images and techniques derived from the appearance of commercial printing. This phase would continue to 1965 and included the use of advertising imagery suggesting consumerism and homemaking. Rather than attempt to reproduce his subjects, his work tackled the way mass media portrays them. Lichtenstein would never take himself too seriously however: "I think my work is different from comic strips- but I wouldn't call it transformation; I don't think that whatever is meant by it is important to art". (From Wikipedia)

Kiehl’s

I was in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago and I noticed this window display (and took a picture with my handy iphone) at the Kiehl’s store and thought, Lichtenstein (like Warhol) might actually not mind this. I saw that the same display at the store in Georgetown, so it is clearly a campaign they are doing. This prompted me to check out their website where they have set up the entire Lichtenstein branding experience, complete with an interactive comic strip that you can create!

The Sneaker

The Nike Vandal: Lichtenstein edition. The Vandal is part of a Pop Art Pack made by Nike. They feature benday dots and comic-like “Pop Art” illustrations on the back panel that are used throughout the work of legendary pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Even the famous shoe brand has gotten in on the action, which seems one of the more unlikely pairings, but actually works out very nicely.

School Supplies?

The Homey Lichtenstein pen commemorates an American icon, Homer Simpson, in the Ben-Day dot style of Pop Art icon, Roy Lichtenstein. The Simpsons as cartoon characters themselves have such a huge stamp on American pop culture that this partnership is almost seamless. Also, if any of you remember Saved by the Bell, Screech and many of the other kids carried around folders with many of Lichtenstein’s famous images, most notably the “girl with hair ribbon”.

American Gothic

We've all heard the phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words"...

Most of us will recognize this image in some way, maybe not as 'American Gothic', a painting by Grant Wood from 1930. Some may reference it as 'The farmer and his wife' or recognize the image from some type of popular culture reference. This is a great example of intertextuality because we all interpret and digest the same image in different ways, based on our knowledge of other images, texts, films, etc that contextualize this meaning for us. "Every text (and we can insert any cultural object here: image, film, Web content, musical composition) is a mosaic of references to other texts, genres, and discourses"(Irvine).

The writer, The reader, Exterior texts...

Grant Wood was obviously expressing an idea in his art, as is the goal of an artist (usually), and his famous painting is quickly associated with American identity and all that is ideal and Midwest. Kristeva would argue that there are undoubtedly 'texts' and narratives that influenced Wood's painting, following the postmodernist model that nothing can be entirely original. NPR interviewed Thomas Hoving, who has written a biography on "American Gothic": the story behind the painting (if you will). Wilson's Music Man was the forum for the beginning of the parodies, that continue into today, with political, popular, and artistic themes alike. As Chandler concludes in Semiotics for Beginners, intertextuality presents a new paradigm in which art imitates art. And in fact, many artists have done their own versions, as well as artists in music (the Smashing Pumpkins have an EP titled American Gothic) and other categories have drawn influence.

I thought of a couple other things while reading everyone's posts. The current vampire craze reminded me of how Stephenie Meyer (the author of the Twilight Saga) revealed that each of the novels in the series was inspired by one of her favorite classics, and in reading the books, you definitely get a sense of this. For example, Twilight was inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, New Moon drew upon Romeo and Juliet, Eclipse was influenced by Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Breaking Dawn follows Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is a great very recent example of the inevitability of intertextuality (especially since it is text-based), and this is of course in addition to the influence of traditional romantic vampire narratives.

Breaking the Code

Photographers and artists have gone outside the mark so to speak to try to do other things. If you were pursuing photography as a profession, you would probably be trying to develop your own style, or trademark or vision. In the contemporary photography scene, it seems as though every artist has their own aesthetic that they have created, because essentially that is what their art requires. Walter Benjamin explains that “Works of art are received and valued on different planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the exhibition value of the work.”

Juergen Teller

"In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty. But as man withdraws from the photographic image, the exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value."

Peggy Sirota

Guess who

Peggy Sirota plays with the element of spectacle (especially with regard to celebrtity) in her project that she compiled entitled 'Guess Who'. In this book she photographs celebrities in the most absurd of fashions and completely re-contextualizes the image to leave you 'guessing'. She stated that most celebrities were eager to participate, but on occasion there were ones who pulled out when the scenario of their particular photograph was revealed to them. Creative differences perhaps? "I knew that it would be a book, but I didn't know that it would be respected as a fine art project until I got accepted by people that I very much respected. It just sort of happened."

Postmodernism in the MusicScene

I thought of a few examples in music that I thought I'd share. Some of these may be way off, but then again, as Jameson points out, 'the concept of modernism is not widely accepted or even understood today'. The first example I thought of was the Clash, who Jameson mentions, but I remembered a story I read some time ago that brought in Bhabha's more globalized vision of the postmodern. There is an Algerian rock artist by the name of Rachid Taha, who tells a story of how he went to see the Clash at the Mogador in Paris as a teenager and handed them his demo. Before the gig at the Mogador, Rachid met the band, spoke to them for a few minutes and handed over a tape of Carte de Séjour songs. “I felt that they were interested,” remembers Rachid, “but when they didn’t get in touch afterwards I just thought that’s life.” “Having said that, when I heard ‘Rock the Casbah’ later that year, I thought that maybe something really had happened after all,” he adds with a wry mischievous smile." I thought this was an interesting take on how influence can be carried out in reverse, especially across borders (and only increasingly such with the advent of globalization).

Also, many of you may have seen the VMAs this weeekend, and I thought Lady Gaga's performance could be considered in the realm of the postmodern. There were definitely nostalgic elements in her performance with allusions to John Lennon, Princess Diana, and was very theatrical, reminiscient of 40s murder mystery and horror movies. As an artist, she very much blends high and low culture, as she performs pop music but infuses what she considers fine art. I would say she employs pastiche as opposed to parody, as the motive is not to mock but rather draws on a nostalgia for a different time.

Headlines

Kuspit describes art today as "grounded in codes rather than images".

For the postmodern (or po-pomo) artist, the "creation of the code becomes the primary creative act".

"Visual culture is too interested in the question of what vision is"

Art history

High Culture

mass media/film studies = comfortable with low or mass culture

"Visual culture: vision is a mode of cultural expression and human communication as fundamental and widespread as language"

Jay Leno's headlines

This popular segment on the Tonight Show is all the more indicative of the importance of visual cues.

Fine Art?

I thought it was really interesting looking at the emergence of photography as a viable part of the art market, and its relative infancy as a category of fine art. It was fascinating to hear Marla Rutherford's take on this particular topic and how she saw her own work. At the opening night of her exhibit at Irvine Contemporary, someone had asked her whether or not she considered her work to be 'fine art', to which she gave an interesting response. She said that she did consider her work to be in that category, and especially what she has done in the past with the fetish girls where she basically immersed herself in their world, and most recently with the character project where she had very specific ideas and conditions for which how she wanted it to turn out.

Marla's work reminds me a little of David LaChapelle's in that she likes to play around with contexts and the elements. I feel like LaChapelle is sort of known for his surrealist style in that regard. Would his work be considered fine art?

Well, he did have a retrospective in Paris (ran in 2009 I believe), which I would think contributes to his work being afforded that category. His style is so distinctive, and you can see some of his recent work really harping on a lot of our current issues. When you see a LaChapelle, you are definitely going to look twice, or a dozen times.

W Magazine: The Art Issue

W Magazine: The Art Issue

In thinking about Art media theory and discourse, I wondered about what mainstream magazines featured art. It's pretty rare that non-art specific magazines will showcase art or up-and-coming artists unless it somehow fits their agenda in that particular time, for instance if a particular artist or work of art intersects with something important to their brand, they will feature it.

I was looking at some of the more mainstream magazines, and it looked like W was one of the ones that will feature art occasionally. This could be due to the fact that their subscribers and readers have interests in the art world and art discourse, whereas readers of some other magazines would not. Also, W considers art to be one of it's 'tags' (Fashion, art, & culture).

They even have an art issue, and you may remember the November 07 cover by Richard Prince. who famously painted portraits of celebrities to look like photographs.

In another 'Art Issue' cover, W attempts to cover the art world key players and even feature some of the more up-and-coming artists.

The Recession and Museums

I thought it would be interesting to see how the current state of the economy has affected museums as institutions. As we know, museums have now taken the marketing aspect of the game much more seriously, as evidenced through some of the very impressive websites out there.

I was looking into MOCA-LA and it seems as though they have run into some troubles lately. Although this could be attributed to a mis-management of sorts, it seems that MOCA lost around 44 million of their $50 million endowment.

LA billionaire Eli Broad offered a rescue deal to the museum to keep it up and running. They are still discussing the possibility of a merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It seems as though in the case of MOCA-LA, it may have been an issue of management, and if Broad's donation goes through, he will have a number of guidelines for them to follow. Hopefully it can be resolved, especially given Los Angeles's position as a node in the art world.

Jeff Koons: the pastor...or prophet of the art religion?

“The curator of the MCA exhibition, Francesco Bonami, presents his point in a eulogy: “If art were a religion, Jeff Koons would be its pastor, maybe even its prophet.” Perhaps Bonami echoes Koons’ credo: “Art is an opportunity for the artist to equalise the protagonist with the spectator.”

I suppose for art to have some sort of value in the art world, it has to have the ‘what the hell is that’ factor. This seems to coincide with the idea of binary logic, where this distinction is perhaps left up to the gatekeepers of the art world.With the principle of the ‘economics of disavowal’ it seems that value is created through denial of said value. A good example of Koons subscribing to this idea is a quote from an interview where he says, in response to the importance of his work being famous:

“There’s a difference between being famous and being significant. I’m interested in [my work's] significance — anything that can enrich our lives and make them vaster — but I’m really not interested in the idea of fame for fame’s sake."

If the art business succeeds by pretending to not to be doing what it is doing (and creating symbolic capital in the process) then it would make sense for artists to approach their work in such a manner.

He says in his ’86 interview, that the gallery is “a commercial world, and morality is based generally around economics, and that’s taking place in the art gallery. I like the tension of accessibility and inaccessibility, and the morality in the art gallery”.

His description of the tension and the exclusivity coincide in many ways with Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas of capital and the artworld as an ‘autonmous field’.

Q:"Is this huge operation that you run, with these dozens of artists producing your art, just the necessary means of making the work?"

A:“That’s right. I’m not involved in business art, that’s not my interest. My interest has always been in art. I remember when I was 16 and I turned on the radio and heard Led Zeppelin. That was when I came into contact with how powerful art can be. It was a very moving experience, and I thought, “I want part of this.”

Postmodern Art's Appeal

I thought that one of the most interesting things noted by Donald Kuspit was that postmodern art had the advantage in that it was more accessible or more appealing somehow, and that the modern avant-garde art that had preceded it had a limited appeal. In wanting to understand what Kuspit had framed a little more thoroughly, I found a chart by Ihab Hassan, a writer, that helped to explain the essential split.

This is one way to visualize all that postmodernism rejects about modernism:

Bart Simpson's cameo in a reproduction of an iconic Nirvana album cover can definitely be seen as postmodern. Does this have a certain appeal that modern art lacks as Kuspit theorized?

Although he acknowledges that postmodern art is clever for 'juggling' different subtexts, he still feels it lacks any innovation.

Kuspit says that "pop art doesn't require depth interpretation to grasp, but rather sociological understanding and behaviorism". This is true, because one would have to have an understanding of both the television show The Simpsons and the grunge band Nirvana for it to make any sense.

And another album cover art example (just by chance)

This is of course Kanye West's Graduation Album with the cover art done by Murakami

The above installation by Jeff Koons shows that although his work is considered to fit into the postmodern category, he still draws from the modern era, especially in the areas of surrealism, minimalism, and Duchamp's Dada works (which Hassan considered to be sort of the gap or line in between modern and postmodern).

After Warhol, it's tough to ask 'What is Art?'

The question of 'what is art' as has been addressed in the discussion is quite unrewarding. We know that we should really be asking 'Where' and 'When' instead. We also know that where art happens has a lot to do with the art itself (As it is institutional at the end of the day). For Warhol, New York City was the node that affected how his art 'happened'.

It is interesting to see how the revolution Warhol started in the Art world continues to be relevant today. Although it's only been twenty some odd years since his death, his popularity only seems to increase with time, and it is fascinating to me how that type of staying power is achieved.

In Danto's article on the Artworld, he discussed how for Socrates, art was simply a mirror image of nature (because contextually that was what was available, sort of the institution of the time). No offense to Socrates of course, but Danto explains that as we evolve, "an imitation" is not a sufficient condition for "is art".

Warhol did a similar thing in the 60s by re-appropriating art in a way, and challenging the institution of his time. He decided that he would define 'What is art' to be whatever he wanted. Not only was he going to make mass produced commercial items into art, but he was going to mass produce that art.He sort of turned capitalist America on its head in a weird socialist kind of framework. ""What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca Cola, too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.""

Suze mentioned in her post how Bourdieu might appropriate this, especially due to his upbringing, and maybe his angle of thinking in this way falls into that same sort of category on symbolic and cultural capital because of his Slovak background and his upbringing in Pittsburgh.

It is interesting to note his influence on artists today. I would assume that he would be flattered by comments made by Lady Gaga, a recording artist who sets out to sort of blend as many elements of art as she enjoys. She says, "The Fame [her album] is about how anyone can feel famous. Pop culture is art. It doesn’t make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it’s a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle.""

In a way it seems she is setting out to mass produce the idea of fame and celebrity in the same ways Warhol wanted to capitalize on the commerical. Interestingly, I was reading that Warhol coined the concept of "15 minutes of fame", which refers to the fleeting condition of fame in the modern world, mainly attributed to mass media and transience in human beings.

Lady Gaga adds that ""In this industry, you get a lot of stylists and producers thrown at you, but this is my own creative team, modeled on Warhol’s Factory. Everyone is under 26 and we do everything together.""

His scope of influence on her art and lifestyle is very apparent here. Fascinating to see the continued redefinition and re-appropriation of art, despite the presence of institution.