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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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