Modernism and postmodernism, relations with photography/art

Modernism and postmodernism...

Modernism became a huge factor in social change and the divide between the lower class and Upper class of the social divide. The modernist art era allowed for new and strange art and photography, and allowed people to experiment outside the box of paint and photographs. The basic idea of Modernism came about that the more traditional art, photography, paintings etc... were no longer interesting to the viewer and artist and photographers wanted a change in the way in which art and photography is used and made to relate to the real issues and debates of the world. Banksy, a world famous grafitti artist, uses has very political and outspoken grafitti tags in various places around the world to make bold statements about the world and to relate to a changing audience of art.

In this graffiti tag made by Banksy, he is using the subject of CCTV and is making a bold statement about the use of CCTV around the UK on every street corner 'a big brother' nation where there is no where we can go to without being on CCTV. The CCTV camera to the right of the photograph and the child seeming to be defacing the wall, adds to the modernist humour which Banksy who is always quick to make his audience laugh as well as making bold statements.

In this similar graffiti tag which Banksy has made, he is again making a bold statement about how our nation is all under survalliance and what the viewers response is to CCTV, he has used similar text to get across to the nation. This use of modernism art expresses the feelings of what the viewer wants to see and is reinventing the ideas which the audience have on their mind and can relate too, other pictures by him create large disturbance in some cases but Banksy allows for a humour-us factor mainly, to put points across about what is wanted by an audience.

In the modernism era, the art movement became very abstract based and tried to move as far from Traditional paintings as possible, this was because there was a new audience which wanted a creative genre of art in it's viewings. In this new age of abstract art, many artists were now able to draw from the mind and create some very sereal paintings which no viewer could possibly explain. For example, Pollock Jackson painting 'Stenographic Figure' gives a very abstract approach today art and paintings, and once read into how he paints can see he has changed the way he paints to suit the 20th century modernist society.

The modern era also introduced the defacing of paintings, city walls, city floors ect. Giving new photographers etc to try new kind of photographs. Once image image by Banksy, this to he has actually defaced an artists painting and created it his own, Banksy has defaced alot of paintings, for exanple this painting defaced my banksy shwos the kind of changes he make.

"Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody"(1). Post modernism deny s any efforts in society to try and define how and where we were made or how anything works or on earth is sourced. It is very hard to define the difference when it come to modern and post modern art and although an explanation of Big Ideas could be the result of the post modernism era, where artists were trying to create their own big ideas, moving away from Science ideas etc to create their own feelings of the world. Once again the post modern era contained a lot of abstract art but also allowed for the much more traditional style paintings of using lines and subjects etc. The post modern photography era, involved alot of idea based photographs, were thought and time was put into these prints.

This photograph by Von Hausswolff's 1993 colour from her 'Back to Nature' series shows a big idea about rape and what we see on the television and involves more of a thinking process for the viewer when viewing the photograph as they have to work out why the photographer as photographed a woman lying on the swamp like this naked, it relates to post modernism as using big ideas.

The conclusion which i can make from Modernism and post modernism is a very confusing one in that modernism is the idea of a new art form, and the audience getting bored of the more traditional paintings, art and photography etc. Modernism creating new and inventive art to relate to the viewer. In similar to this, post modernism as it seems when i have researched it is more about making big ideas to allow for denial of any process being an action to how the earth works etc.