Six Degrees of Postmodernism

Playbill for “Six Degrees of Separation”, Lincoln Center, 1990.

The six degrees of separation concept was originally presented by Hungarian author, playwright, and poet, Frigyes Karinthy in his 1929 short story, “Chains”. This concept would then be brought in to the frontline of discussion yet again by playwright, John Guare. In his 1990 play, “Six Degrees of Separation”, John Guare expresses a sort of grief towards the hype to be rich and famous, or the need to rely on pop illusions, has become synonymous with the American Dream. The play famously hypothesizes that every person in the world is only six people removed from everyone else. And in the art world during the postmodern era, you could say that each person is nearly once removed from each other. As the playwright would describe it, it is through that association that art is produced, art which makes people, philosophies, and worlds collide. And artists like David Hockney, David Bowie and even John Guare could be share in this theory. And at some point in their career, these artist have all depicted ordinary objects, signs, words, or systematic reproduction which characterizes Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is a multifaceted term used to characterize a certain visual and truth-seeking response by artists, thinkers, writers, sculptors, and musicians. It is, by fundamental nature, the aesthetic outline, a philosophy or a way of thinking, a flair of approach, an agent for thought, action, feeling and human life.

In a Time magazine article Andy Warhol said, “Whole new schools of painting seem to charge through the art scene with the speed of an express train, causing Pop Artist Andy Warhol to predict the day “when everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” (Time, 1967). That 15 minutes remark resonated with playwright John Guare. Adele Chatfield-Taylor, Guare’s wife, noted that “he thinks people wanting to be famous for 15 minutes is the great engine of twentieth-century life” (Plunka, 2002). Guare’s wife may have had a part in how art would influence him and his work. From 1988-2013, she was the president and CEO of The American Academy in Rome, a center for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities.

“Six Degrees of Separation” Film clip with Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland and Ian McKellen. Written by John Guare. Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1993.

In”Six Degrees” Guare uses the matters of the late twentieth century, such as social issues and art, to create a broad picture of a disjointed society, one in which the six degrees that link people together are disregarded, deliberately ignored, and sometimes celebrated. One of the characters, art dealer, Flanders “Flan” Kittredge, recognizes that some of the people to whom he sells great works of art value them not for their beauty but for their social cachet. Even mentioning the distinction of price value of one of David Hockney’s pieces.

“I mean, a David Fucking Hockney print sold for a hundred bucks fifteen years ago went for Thirty four thousand dollars!” – Flan

Postmodern artists view the past as a despondent time; and reinterpret it with a cynical and humorous twist. In a way that nearly frightened and astonished people, the postmodern philosophy embraced its own ironic attitude with a humorous sort of naturalness.

In the 1970’s, David Hockney’s realism deepened, but it never appeared unoriginal, and though he used photographs as references, it wasn’t a variation of Photorealism. And it wasn’t ever conventional or outdated. The focus of his interest has always been what he calls “the depiction of the visible world” (Hockney, 1982). And his central skill has been drawing, which he was scrupulously taught at Bradford College of Art thus developing an amazing brilliance. During this time he comments about the abandoned, “People had been drawing for 40,000 years, and they gave it up in 1975” (Hockney, 1982). “It’s almost funny” he says. Describing how artists couldn’t really give it up. By that, he implies that any new approaches of seeing the world would require creativity and collaboration from a person’s heart, hands and eyes. And this philosophy applied as much to his photographic imagery as it did to his paintings.

“Place Furstenberg- Paris- August 7-8-9 1985 #1” David Hockney (1985)

In the early 1980’s, Hockney used a Polaroid camera to bring together collages of photos after repeatedly taking numerous shots of his subjects. Hockney was fascinated with the idea of seeing things through a window frame. This method allowed him to approach things in a different way. By the mid 80’s Hockney was in Paris creating “Place Furstenberg, Paris, August 7, 8, 9, 1985 #1” which seems to be an attempt to construct a more realistic image of the street, seen through the trees of the square. Using a large number of pictures from roughly the same viewpoint, Hockney functioned in a systematic manner to embrace the scene, although there is a closer view of part of a wall in place a section of one of the tree trunks, and on closer examination other features are misplaced and there are some openings in the middle of the image as well as those around and near its edges. This work gives the feeling that Hockney, instead of functioning with a huge assortment of separate images, has actually taken a smaller number of prints and cut them up to construct the photo collage, an approach expanded upon even more so with “Pearblossom Highway, 11-18th April 1986 #2” (1986).

“Pearblossom Highway” Photographic collage-David Hockney (1986)

The Postmodernism views expands upon the essence that directed modernists to tryout with inventive ways of storytelling. And in contrast, postmodernists are creatively manic. There were almost no limits with Postmodernism. They believed progress could not exist without change and or experimentation, and in the environment of Postmodernism, art grew like plants in a conservatory. Postmodernist music shared these characteristics.

David Bowie and his first six albums create Fascination 1975 RCA records promo photo print Advertisement

The 1970’s were considered David Bowie’s majestic period and is often referred to as an innovation of Postmodern ideas into popular music. Bowie provided enough to justify this perspective, the thrilling journey through musical genres, the massive range of lyrical influences, the limitless shuffling of subject matter. There is a relentless concentration on the surface in Bowie’s music. He once described himself as a musical Xerox machine and someone who doesn’t invent himself but remixes other people’s inventions (Thomas and Gutman, 1996).

During the mid 70’s Bowie moved to Berlin and devoted more time to his painting, and produced a number of postmodernist pieces. In 1976, Bowie painted “A Portrait of J.O.” is a colorful picture of his friend James Osterberg, also known as Iggy Pop.

“Portrait of J.O.”
David Bowie (1976)

His fashion can be considered the main focus of his work in both music and art. The collaborative aspect of both played an important role in his creative process. The costumes, designed with the same rigor used in the construction of the songs are fundamental to the development of multiple characters of multi-artist in constant reinvention from Ziggy Stardust, to Aladdin Sane to The Thin White Duke to The Man Who Fell to Earth to Pierrot to finally, the latest and possibly most fascinating, of them all Meta-Bowie.

David Bowie sings “Golden Years” on Soul Train (1976)

These artists have represented Postmodern art that they knew, saw or imagined, with their own eyes and viewpoint. Postmodernism challenged the supreme ideal of Modernism by favoring bold colors and eccentric patterns, historical reference, wittiness and a new found freedom in design and self-innovation.

Sources:

Delves Broughton, Philip (2012). The Art of the Sale. New York, NY: The Penguin Press. Print.

Hockney, David. (1985). Martha’s Vineyard: My Third Sketchbook from the Summer of 1982. Vol. 1. HN Abrams.

Plunka, Gene A. (2002). The Black Comedy of John Guare. University of Delaware Press.

Thomson, Elizabeth, and Gutman, David. The Bowie Companion. Da Capo Press, 1996.

Crafts: Lethal Masterpieces. Time magazine. 13 October, 1967. Vol. 90:15. Print.

The Harlem Renaissance

Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery Through Reconstruction, Aaron Douglas, American c. 1934

“Let’s bare our arms and plunge them deep through laughter, through pain, through sorrow, through hope, through disappointment, into the very depths of the souls of our people and drag forth material crude, rough, neglected. Then let’s sing it, dance it, write it, paint it. Let’s do the impossible. Let’s create something transcendentally material, mystically objective, earthy. Spiritually earthy. Dynamic.”   – Aaron Douglas (1925)

When I think about a renaissance movement I think about the broad range of the arts such as the literary work, the music, the philosophy, the sculptures and paintings. So, my first thought was to compare the similarities to both the Italian and Harlem Renaissance periods. Briefly, of course. The Italian Renaissance was not just about the influence in Florence, Rome or other areas around Italy, it was about the various activities and great cultural change going on throughout Europe at the time. And much like the Italian Renaissance, during the Harlem Renaissance there was an outburst of African American creativity, not just in New York City but in Chicago, Washington D.C., London, Paris and the Caribbean all of which were circling around people of African background. And the Harlem Renaissance had the same cultural influence and strength. There were literary artists like James Weldon Johnson collaborating with visual artists like Aaron Douglas in God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. There was a sort of fusion among artists during this time period. The musical was written by four vaudevillians who first met in 1920 at a NAACP benefit held in Philadelphia (Glass, 2012). That’s what makes a renaissance a renaissance, by feeding each other in expression about the arts and culture. In a letter written by Douglas to poet Langston Hughes were commendable ideas of a new kind of artists trying to mirror their racial experiences and praising their cultural personality by creating new art forms, art forms that were genuine to themselves and genuine to all African Americans.

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Theater

Shuffle Along promotion, M. Witmark & Sons. New York (1921)

Shuffle Along was a satirical musical about a mayoral race. With its jazzy music styles, Shuffle Along was the modern, edgy contrast to the mainstream song-and-dance styles that audiences were accustomed to on Broadway. It had the right amount of mixture of satire, attraction and respectability, minstrel blackface humor and romance, to please the African American community. A chorus line of sixteen-girl was one of the contributing factors the show became so successful. The success of Shuffle Along musical revue in 1921 indicated a step forward for the African-American musical performer and while making musical theatre history. In the “Black Manhattan” writer James Weldon Johnson described Shuffle Along as being created by an arrangement of brilliantly talented Black Americans whose work struck a major blow against racial stereotyping (Johnson, 1968). The revue demonstrated to producers that audiences would pay to see African-American talent on Broadway. In 1948, President Harry Truman selected “I’m Just Wild about Harry”, a Shuffle Along hit tune, for his campaign song.

Shuffle Along made a huge impact on Broadway and audiences. It was the model for future African-American musicals well into the 1930s (Woll, 1989). It paved the way for Runnin’ Wild in 1923 which ignited the Charleston craze. And for the following years, black theater would lead the way for more dance pioneers. The Blackbirds of 1928 featured tap dancing legend, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who became the first black dance star on Broadway. In 1929, Wallace Thurman and William Rapp, introduced the Slow Drag in the drama Harlem. The Slow Drag would become the first African-American social dance to reach Broadway. With dance styles like the Charleston, tap, Slow Drag, and jazz dancing, the greater part of African-American musicals followed the same formula of variety shows featuring specialty acts, comedians, singers, dancers, musicians and a chorus of attractive females (Woll, 1989).

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Literature

Pictured here are Langston Hughes [far left] with [left to right:] Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney, on a Harlem rooftop on the occasion of a party in Hughes’ honor, 1924.

Literature during the Harlem Renaissance included a collection of writers and intellectuals linked to Harlem which became the main area for a majority of blacks. This time period was associated with the New Negro Movement, a term penned by Howard University Professor of Philosophy, Alain Locke in the Forward in “The New Negro”. The Forward was a statement of ideals that the people during the Harlem Renaissance had felt. In it he writes of the Negro who is no longer apologetic for being black but who shows pride in their identity and heritage, of the “renewed self-respect and self-dependence” experienced in the black community, which was “about to enter a new phase.”

An attribute of the Harlem Renaissance was a move toward suggested “high art” in black literature, instead of using folk expressions, comic writing, and language that had previously been considered the usual scope of African-American writing. In some respects this shift mirrors the change from rural to urban life for many blacks in this period. In The Nation’s 1926 June issue Langston Hughes referenced classically trained African American writer, Countee Cullen, as believing that an African-American poet should be free to write in the traditional mainstream conventional way, and should not have to add race into poetry. Cullen had told Hughes, “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet.” Hughes, however, made powerful use of folk expressions such as the blues. The artistic differences between Hughes and the Cullen were informative. But Hughes saw this approach as being disloyal to their ethnic identity, and he explored and accepted his “blackness” using forms and expressions that he related to it. Both are major poets but their differences point to the relative extent of the ideals and the change in variations of African-American writing in the Harlem Renaissance.

“Po’ Boy Blues”

When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
When I was home de
Sunshine seemed like gold.
Since I come up North de
Whole damn world’s turned cold.

I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong.
Yes, I was a good boy,
Never done no wrong,
But this world is weary
An’ de road is hard an’ long.

I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An’ almost lose ma mind.

Weary, weary,
Weary early in de morn.
Weary, weary,
Early, early in de morn.
I’s so weary
I wish I’d never been born.

– Langston Hughes (1926-1927)

Hughes’ use of alliteration or repetition of letter sounds between multiple words in this poem adds a sort of steady melody for the reader. Hughes puts rhyme and alliteration to the most somber of lines, “a gal I thought was kind. She made me lose ma money an’ almost me mind.” I felt sympathy for the narrator. In this poem, the narrator tells the story about their recent arrival to a northern city thinking of the south they left behind. The narrator suspends two worlds, the rural world they left and the harsh new city life they began. The blues structure of the poem reinforces a sense of being halfway. By incorporating both rural and urban feelings, that are continuously changing, Hughes, in some respects mirrors the change from rural to urban life for many blacks in this period.

In his autobiography, Hughes marked the end of the Harlem Renaissance with the stock-market crash of 1929. The crash that, in his words, “sent Negroes, white folks, and all rolling down the hill toward the Works Progress Administration” (Hughes, 1940). And while the era may have ended, its impact on American literature and the arts was enduring.

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Art 

In keeping with ideals of Alain Locke’s “The New Negro”, which also encouraged African American artists to create a discipline of African American art with an identifiable style and to look to at African culture and African American living for substance and motivation. Locke’s ideals, together with the new ethnic awareness that was happening in urban areas, inspired new African American artists. These new artists rejected traditional landscapes for the symbolic backdrops, rural scenes for urban scenes and centered on culture, class and Africa to bring ethnic awareness into art and establish a new black identity. And it was no wonder that Locke chose Aaron Douglas to illustrate “The New Negro”. Douglas was well-known for his graphic art, such as “Rebirth.”  This work, produced to illustrate magazine articles and poetry, linked him to the literary Harlem Renaissance. Heavily influenced by African figures, jazz music, dance and angular forms, Douglas’ hard-edged style made it possible to see within the black-and-white, abstracted patterned work of “Rebirth”. And in paintings like “Building Stately Mansions” he created a rhythmic pattern that dominated his later work

Rebirth, Aaron Douglas. (1927)

Building Stately Mansions, Aaron Douglas (1944)

In 1928, Aaron Douglas became the first President of the Harlem Artists Guild, which was later effective in facilitating African American artists getting projects under the Works Progress Administration.

Here’s a great rendition of “Po’ Boy Blues” with music recorded at Elmhurst High School in Fort Wayne Indiana before it was closed.

Sources:

Enoch Pratt Free Library. African American Department Collection and State Library Resources. Literature. Web 16 July, 2015. http://www.prattlibrary.org/locations/afam/?id=8590

Enoch Pratt Free Library. African American Department Collection and State Library Resources. Art. Web 16 July, 2015. http://www.prattlibrary.org/locations/afam/index.aspx?id=8982

Glass, Barbara S. African American Dance, an Illustrated History, MacFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina, and London. 2012.

Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea, New York: American Century series, 1940.

Hughes, Langston, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” The Nation. June 1926.

Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940. Reprint. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968.

Kirschke, Amy Helene. Aaron Douglas: Art, Race & The Harlem Renaissance.Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.

Locke, Alain. Forward to The New Negro: An Interpretation. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925, p. ix.

Woll, Allan L., Black Musical Theater: From Coontown to Dreamgirls. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

My impression of Impressionism

Claude Monet, Self-portrait. (1917)

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I can honestly say there are some Impressionists and Post-Impressionists that left quite an impression on me. In the past, 15 years ago, I was not much of a fan for their work or style. I was more, and still am, a Renaissance person at heart. But when I visited the Musée d’Orsay and after reading more about artists like Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh, I started appreciating their work in a different way. Though their work are distinct in styles and vision, they are both equally responsible for influencing the direction artists would go during and after the period. In particular, Monet’s style seemed simple and not very complex. He would place colors side by side and bring about an image on the canvas. This technique is known as juxtaposing. His intention was to bring out a specific quality or create an affect, with two contrasting or opposing elements in his view. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the likenesses or differences between the elements. Thus giving familiarity to the subject. This technique would later be refined by Neo-Impressionists with pointillism which is using an arrangement of dots and blocks of color in to introduce a sense of organization and consistency. Van Gogh was introduced to this style but Monet was not a fan of this movement (Clement, 1999 and Roslak, 2007).

“Boulevard des Capucines” – Claude Monet (1873)

Monet’s 1873 “Boulevard des Capucines” is a perfect example of side by side colors placement by capturing a scene of the busy street of Parisian life. Applying very little detail, Monet uses short, quick brushstrokes to create the sense or “impression” of a crowd alive with movement in the city. Up close, the painting it all blurs together does not make sense. But step back and the images take form because your eyes mixes the paints on the canvas. Impressionism was all about color and light. And Monet went out of the studio to work directly with nature and natural settings to capture the exact color and effects of the light.

Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait. (1887)

Van Gogh incorporated the techniques of impressionism but inserted more passion, emotion and expression by using color to communicate reality through personal vision. His 1888 “Starry Night Over the Rhone” captured the sparkling colors of the night sky and of the artificial lighting (gas lighting), new to the era, glow along the river. It seemed like Van Gogh features pointillism in this piece. The placement of his strokes were placed carefully on the canvas to convey the expressive value of colors. He often referenced his worked in letters to his brother.

“The starry sky painted by night, actually under a gas jet. The sky is aquamarine, the water is royal blue, the ground is mauve. The town is blue and purple. The gas is yellow and the reflections are russet gold descending down to green-bronze. On the aquamarine field of the sky the Great Bear is a sparkling green and pink, whose discreet paleness contrasts with the brutal gold of the gas. Two colourful figurines of lovers in the foreground.”

– Vincent Van Gogh, letter 1888

“Starry Night Over the Rhone”. Van Gogh (1888)

Monet’s style and vision allowed him to depict the effects of light and other visual effects. Whereas Van Gogh wanted to express meaning beyond the surface appearance, he painted with emotion, intellect, and the eye. But I can say these two artists, among many others, helped set the stage or planted the seed for what would be Modern art.

Technically speaking:

Sources:

Clement, Russell (1999). Neo-Impressionist Painters: A Source Book on Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, Paul Signac, Theo Van Rysselberghe, Henri Edward Cross, Charles Angrand, Maximilien Luco, and Albert Dubois-Pillet. Greenwood Press. pp. 63–235.

Roslak, Robyn (2007). Neo-Impressionism and Anarchism in Fin-de-Siècle France.  Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company. pp. 15–36.

Discovering the Classics through David

The Death of Marat, by Jacque-Louis David, 1793

The neoclassical style developed following the excavation in Italy of the ruins of ancient cities Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (ten years later), publications of archeological books by English archaeologists James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, and London “acquiring” the collection of Classical Greek marble sculptures (Elgin Marbles) from the Parthenon in Greece. German archaeologist and art historian, Johann Winckelmann, admired the “noble simplicity and calm grandeur” of Greco-Roman art. He maintained, “The only way for us to become great, or even inimitable if possible, is to imitate the Greeks.”

The Herculaneum Gate, Pompeii – Giovanni Battista Lusieri (1783)

Johann Winckelmann by Angelika Kpaufmann,1764

“Winckelmann’s visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum during the early years of their discovery led to his communications in the form of ‘open letters’, which exposed the blunders of amateur treasure seekers and helped put these excavations into competent hands. For this and his catalog of ancient gems, he has been called the ‘father of modern archaeology’.” – Matthew Immanuel Wiencke, Emeritus Professor of Classics, Dartmouth College

The Neoclassical style appeals to the order, to the intellect and stresses the depth of the subject. Use of elements from Greek and Roman ruins and interest in the Roman-Greco antiquity, Neoclassical artists cared for technical perfection, harmony and balance, dominated by regularity, reason and logic. As I see Neoclassical works, I feel the influence of honesty and realism it may have had on French revolutionists. Works from Jacques-Louis David with Death of Marat, 1793, I see the style is articulating and dramatically appropriate to the artists intended audience. Prior to this painting, David’s Roman-Greco inspired Neoclassical ideas were influenced through interests in German painter Anton Raphael Mengs and art historian, Winckelmann. This interest paved the way to works such as Death of Socrates in 1787 and The Lictors Bringing to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, two years later. By this time, efforts towards the French Revolution had begun, and his portrayal of Brutus and the patriotic Roman consul who ordered the deaths of his double-crossing sons to save the republic, took on political connotation, just as David did, through his work and personal life.

Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787)

The Lictors Bringing to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons,by Jacques-Louis David (1789)

Neoclassicism in art acquired a new sense of direction with the dramatic success of revolutionary artist, Jacques-Louis David. In Death of Mara, David merged Neoclassical values with revolutionary ideals. His work elevated heroes of the classical past and revolutionary times in a style that immersed calm colors, simple and balanced arrangements, and dramatic tenebrism.

While it seemed that Neoclassical art was evenly expanding with the development of the French Revolution, the progress of Classical music reflected the fall of royal tyranny. Although upper-class patrons continued to commission music, composers began to look beyond the fading patronage arrangement for other means of support. To gratify the tastes of upper-class and middle-class audiences equally, composers refined a style that they felt reflected the appealing values of Classical Greece through the growth of public concerts. To express this style, composers gave definite structure to some categories of music, particularly the sonata, which was the foundation of Classical symphonies and concertos.

German composer and pianist, Ludwig van Beethoven was a major authority of this style. Beethoven’s music assembled the association between the Classical and Romantic styles. After learning the effects of works by Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Beethoven lead the way with methods for inducing emotion through music. As his career progressed, his works became more and more long, complex, and bold, a music progression that capped with his 9^th Symphony which incorporated a vocals in the final movement.

(Below is a link to a scene from a movie about Beethoven. Very good at depicting emotion from 9th Symphony)

“Copying Beethoven”, released by MGM, 2006

Sources:

Beethoven, Musical Style and Innovations. (2015). Beethoven website. Retrieved, Jun 29, 2015, from http://www.beethoven.ws/musical_style_and_innovations.html

Boorstin, David J. (1983). The Discoverers. Random House. New York. Print

David and the Death of Marat. (2015). Khan Academy website. Retrieved, 28 Jun, 2015, from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/monarchy-enlightenment/neo-classicism/a/david-and-the-death-of-marat

Johann Joachim Winkelmann. (2015). 18th Century Online Encyclopedia: Enlightenment and Revolution. Retrieved from website, 28 Jun, 2015. http://enlightenment-revolution.org/index.php/Winkelmann,_Johann_Joachim