But what is “Modernism”? What is ‘Post-Modernism”?
The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature (1996) defines Modernism as:
a term encompassing numerous movements characterizing international developments in literature, music, and the graphic and plastic arts from the late nineteenth century onward. [. . .] The experimental qualities thought of as essentially Modernist are found in the writings of many of the above [cited writers]; others are more traditional in their stylistic and narrative practices. All, however, respond acutely to the radical shifts in the structures of thought and belief that were brought about in the fields of religion, philosophy and psychology[.] [. . .] The moral cataclysm of the First World War accentuated the senses of general cultural catastrophe and individual spiritual crisis apparent in the writings of novelists and poets already sensitive to such disruptions in the humanist tradition.
[. . .]
The Modernists’ disregard of the expectations of a common readership resulted in allegations of obscurity and élitism which remain central to critical debate.So in other words, Modernism encompasses a wide variety of movements in various arts, which are experimental—except when they’re not—and respond acutely to the events and crises of the period 1890–1940, especially the First World War.
Huh. In other words, the term “Modernism” is as broad as, say, “The Twentieth Century”, or “ice cream”, or “sports”—a catchall phrase. But unlike those terms, which have specific limits between what is in fact the Twentieth Century, or ice cream, or sports, there are no clear boundaries in Modernism. And though Modernist works are often “difficult”, there are plenty of other works from other periods which are also “difficult”.
Therefore, Modernism would seem to be a distinction with practically no meaning, and hence to usefulness.
What about the term Post-Modernism?
From the same source (emphasis in the original):
[. . .] It is not entirely clear if anyone or any thing actually is Post-modernist—perhaps the paintings and films of Andy Warhol are. The condition seems to be a generalized projection of what are felt as scattered but unmistakable tendencies in the West since 1945. There are two quite different ways of thinking about the condition, one broader and more historical than the other. In the first, Post-modernism is the name of what comes after Modernism in the arts[.] [ha-ha.] [. . .] In the broader sense Post-modernism is the name of the overall cultural climate of late capitalism[.] [. . .] We are Post-modern whether we know it or not; our art and culture are our reflection, displayed in entertaining but revelatory mirrors.Again, a distinction without meaning—and this coming from the folks at the Oxford University Press: People way smarter than the average academic dunderhead.
The last sentence I quoted in particular gets my goat: All art and culture, throughout history, are “our reflection, displayed in entertaining but revelatory mirrors.” To claim that Post-Modernism has an exclusive warrant on this issue is completely false. (I’m not too keen on the issue that we are “Post-Modern unaware”, either.)
If both terms truly were distinctions without meaning—or distinctions so broad and loose and generalized that they don’t seem worth the bother—then my essay ought to end here. (Or rather, I never should have even started this essay—I should have stayed in bed this Saturday morning and banged my girlfriend silly.)
But the thing is, there in fact are certain works of art which we immediately identify—correctly—as Modern and Post-Modern. For instance, Ulysses is Modern, as is Fallingwater House. Gravity’s Rainbow is Post-Modern, as is Playtime.
The endemic use of the two terms in the arts and culture also makes for the need for a tight, clear definition of Modernism and Post-Modernism. However, the lack of a stable definition, for either term have led both to fall into Potter Stewart's Hedge: I know it when I see it, but I can’t really define it.
This satisfies no-one. Stewart’s Hedge didn’t satisfy the relatively paltry issue of pornography—how could anyone expect it to work with definitions of Modernism or Post-Modernism: These aren’t trivial artifacts designed to stir base emotions—these are historical/philosophical/aesthetic categories, used to distinguish one kind of work from another, so as to thereby help us better understand art.
That’s something that is often forgotten, in the human urge to categorize: The whole reason for imposing categories is so that we can understand what is encompassed in these categories—and thereby better understand ourselves. In and of themselves, categories and distinctions have use only insofar as they help us get a clearer sense of reality. If they do not help us—or worse, if they add a layer of obscurantism to things we are trying to understand—then they must be cut out and discarded like a cancer.
If there aren’t definitions for these two terms, then they are meaningless and should be discarded. Yet it is clear, on an intuitive level, that there are such things as “Modernist” novels and “Post-Modernist” paintings—so they cannot be discarded. Rather, they have to be defined.
So, Joe—I’ll give it a go:
I posit that “Modernism” refers to an aesthetic movement whose works refer to and depend on outside secular events or other works of art. They cannot be understood without the audience being aware of and familiar with these outside referents. Hence, Modernist works depend on the outside referents for their complete meaning.
For example, the Hemingway short story “On the Quai of Smyrna” is incomprehensible, unless one is aware of the historical background of World War I. The same can be said of all the other stories in Hemingway’s collection, In Our Time (1925), where “Smyrna” appears. If one is not aware that Hemingway is writing in reaction to the events he experienced in the First World War, one cannot understand his work.
Similarly, Joyce’s Ulysses makes no sense, unless one is aware that the novel’s structure is based on Homer’s The Odyssey, and knows the basic personal biography of the author, Joyce. Far from the artists being aloof of his work, paring his fingernails, in Modernist works, an author’s biography is essential to understanding the work.
Modernist exterior referents need not be only other works of art or literature—they can be social referents. For instance, Degas’ paintings of ballet dancers are referencing the then-common knowledge that the dancers were part-time prostitutes, and the ballet aficionados their patrons.
All of these Modernist exterior referents are by my definition secular. Indeed, I would say that Modernism is a reaction to religious art, whose external referent was the Christian narrative.
Similarly, Joyce’s Ulysses makes no sense, unless one is aware that the novel’s structure is based on Homer’s The Odyssey, and knows the basic personal biography of the author, Joyce. Far from the artists being aloof of his work, paring his fingernails, in Modernist works, an author’s biography is essential to understanding the work.
Modernist exterior referents need not be only other works of art or literature—they can be social referents. For instance, Degas’ paintings of ballet dancers are referencing the then-common knowledge that the dancers were part-time prostitutes, and the ballet aficionados their patrons.
All of these Modernist exterior referents are by my definition secular. Indeed, I would say that Modernism is a reaction to religious art, whose external referent was the Christian narrative.
The exterior secular referents expand the meaning of the Modernist works. Hence, brief works can be filled with meaning, to the extent that they successfully and artfully reference outside works or events. But if the link between the Modernist work and its exterior referent is cut—if one reads Ulysses, without being aware of The Odyssey—then the significance of the Modernist work is lost, rendering it confusing to the point of obscurity.
Modernist works are therefore not “portable”—they cannot be fully (or sometimes even partially) understood outside of their historical context, as they depend on their historical context in order to transmit their meaning.
Modernist works are also exceptionally useful for modern academia. Since they depend on outside referents in order to fully tease out their meaning, they supply an endless source for students and academics to “study”. Modernist works provide the raw material for endless academic disquisitions. In other words, Modernist works provide academics with the totems, gospel and liturgy of their own private religions.
This academic effort is very necessary, for Modernist works of art can quickly lose its meaning, and its very sense: Since the exterior referents it depends on can sometimes be obscure, or become obscure through time, often there is a danger that the Modernist work will become untethered from reality altogether—become just a jumble of meaninglessness.
Modernist works are therefore not “portable”—they cannot be fully (or sometimes even partially) understood outside of their historical context, as they depend on their historical context in order to transmit their meaning.
Modernist works are also exceptionally useful for modern academia. Since they depend on outside referents in order to fully tease out their meaning, they supply an endless source for students and academics to “study”. Modernist works provide the raw material for endless academic disquisitions. In other words, Modernist works provide academics with the totems, gospel and liturgy of their own private religions.
This academic effort is very necessary, for Modernist works of art can quickly lose its meaning, and its very sense: Since the exterior referents it depends on can sometimes be obscure, or become obscure through time, often there is a danger that the Modernist work will become untethered from reality altogether—become just a jumble of meaninglessness.
“Post-Modernism”, to my way of thinking, is the conscious effort by artists to achieve this untethering—this jumble of meaninglessness.
I posit that Post-Modernism is identical to Modernism, in that works of this category refer to outside events, other works of art, or generally extraneous information. However, the extraneous information Post-Modernism refers to is often either deliberately obscure, trivial (such as pop culture), erroneous, or altogether non-existent.
Hence Post-Modernism is untethered to reality or to outside referents—or else, whatever slim and brittle line holds it tethered to reality is designed to be broken by the artist, so as to cast the work adrift.
A piece of Modernist art can become Post-Modernist, whereas other works are Post-Modern from their conception.
For example, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) is a prime example of a Modernist work of art that became Post-Modernist. In the Wake, literally every word of text refers to external referents by way of puns and allusions to other works—a classically Modernist move.
I posit that Post-Modernism is identical to Modernism, in that works of this category refer to outside events, other works of art, or generally extraneous information. However, the extraneous information Post-Modernism refers to is often either deliberately obscure, trivial (such as pop culture), erroneous, or altogether non-existent.
Hence Post-Modernism is untethered to reality or to outside referents—or else, whatever slim and brittle line holds it tethered to reality is designed to be broken by the artist, so as to cast the work adrift.
A piece of Modernist art can become Post-Modernist, whereas other works are Post-Modern from their conception.
For example, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) is a prime example of a Modernist work of art that became Post-Modernist. In the Wake, literally every word of text refers to external referents by way of puns and allusions to other works—a classically Modernist move.
But so many of those exterior referents are so obscure, that from the perspective of today’s reader, they no longer make any sense. Hence the Wake has become untethered from reality—the novel can literally mean whatever a reader wants it to mean. There is no longer a “right way” to interpret Joyce’s work—all interpretations are “right”.
This points out a defining element of Post-Modernist works of art: By making exterior referents obscure, ambiguous or non-existent, those referents multiply, to encompass everything—the infinite.
That which is infinite? Of course—God.
It's no accident that, at the end of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, the bidder at the auction that Oedipa Mas is waiting for is an infinite being. Pynchon never says this outright, but the only infinite being is God. Similarly, in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953), the man the characters are all fruitlessly waiting for is, in a very clear sense, infinite and all-encompassing. Beckett himself always pronounced the title of the play “Waiting for God-Ought”.
Elegantly contrapuntal to the notion that all successful Post-Modernist work ultimately expands to refer to the infinite, there is also the case of what I would call the Wallace Spiral, after David Foster Wallace: Where the Post-Modernist work of art spirals in on itself, questioning every assertion—even at the most trivial level—ultimately spiraling down into meaningless and entropy. The obsessive self-reference of Post-Modernism—beyond mere narcissism—points to a fundamental sickness at the core of the movement.
Finally, the obscurity and ephemerality of the outside referents that Post-Modernist works depend on makes them prime examples of planned obsolescence.
Hence it’s no accident the Post-Modern fixation on consumer goods and epehemeral human objects: Post-Modernist art is busy creating precisely such objects of planned obsolescence, whether the artist making them is aware of it (Duchamp) or not (Toulouse-Lautrec). The only difference is, those consumer goods embody a practical, near-term utility, whereas self-consciously Post-Modern works (such as Duchamp’s) only hold artistic pretentions.
Finally, the obscurity and ephemerality of the outside referents that Post-Modernist works depend on makes them prime examples of planned obsolescence.
Hence it’s no accident the Post-Modern fixation on consumer goods and epehemeral human objects: Post-Modernist art is busy creating precisely such objects of planned obsolescence, whether the artist making them is aware of it (Duchamp) or not (Toulouse-Lautrec). The only difference is, those consumer goods embody a practical, near-term utility, whereas self-consciously Post-Modern works (such as Duchamp’s) only hold artistic pretentions.
That’s why so much of Modernism and Post-Modernism is so cold and dreary: Neither appeals to human emotions—they appeal to the artist’s vanity. They are both, at bottom, aesthetics of the artistic narcissistic. That’s why they are “difficult”—they are exercises in self-indulgence, that often deliberately (and rather meanly) belittle its audience.
Such works are a thin gruel, for people hoping to find nourishment from art: That the best artistics talents of the last century were directed by such awful aesthetics gives an indication of what was squandered. So much of this work can be admired, but not loved. Experienced, but not enjoyed.
Most of all, as tools to understand the reality around us, they fail. Because their principle aim is not to help others understand reality—it is so that the artist can indulge in his own subjective reality, and force his audience to go on the same ride.
This art is ultimately doomed: It is the ex uno plures, e pluribus casus (out of one many, out of many downfall) fallacy I am exploring in The Green of the Republic and the other two parts of United States. Such atomization into private little universes cannot long continue—art that appeals only to the artist and academics is doomed.
So what will come next? What sort of art will come after Post-Modernism? What will be post Post-Modernism?
I can speak for myself—for my own aesthetic: I call it neohumanism.
The idea of neohumanist art as I am practicing it is art that helps human beings understand the common reality around us all. (I'm aware of the epistemic issues this statement raises; I have an epistemology that covers these issues, which I will discuss at a later date.)
In order to help human beings understand and experience the common reality, neohumanist art as I practice it elicits a specific, deliberate, predictable reaction from my audience. I do this by using craft (so as to elicit the specific reaction), and by referring only to those things which are universal to all human beings (so that I need not worry that my audience does or does not know extraneous information).
Therefore, in neohumanism, all references to information outside the scope of the work—which my audience would not necessarily know or even be aware of—is either purged from the work, or explained fully within the work.
This guarantees that neohumanist art is portable—it depends on nothing but itself, reality, and human nature for comprehension.
The ideal of neohumanism is to create a specific work of art that elicits the exact same reaction in every human being who has ever lived, regardless of their circumstances, history, sex, age, whatever.
In other words, perfect communication.
Of course, nothing perfect is possible—perfect communication is an ideal. Yet in the search for this ideal, great things can be achieved.
Such works are a thin gruel, for people hoping to find nourishment from art: That the best artistics talents of the last century were directed by such awful aesthetics gives an indication of what was squandered. So much of this work can be admired, but not loved. Experienced, but not enjoyed.
Most of all, as tools to understand the reality around us, they fail. Because their principle aim is not to help others understand reality—it is so that the artist can indulge in his own subjective reality, and force his audience to go on the same ride.
This art is ultimately doomed: It is the ex uno plures, e pluribus casus (out of one many, out of many downfall) fallacy I am exploring in The Green of the Republic and the other two parts of United States. Such atomization into private little universes cannot long continue—art that appeals only to the artist and academics is doomed.
So what will come next? What sort of art will come after Post-Modernism? What will be post Post-Modernism?
I can speak for myself—for my own aesthetic: I call it neohumanism.
The idea of neohumanist art as I am practicing it is art that helps human beings understand the common reality around us all. (I'm aware of the epistemic issues this statement raises; I have an epistemology that covers these issues, which I will discuss at a later date.)
In order to help human beings understand and experience the common reality, neohumanist art as I practice it elicits a specific, deliberate, predictable reaction from my audience. I do this by using craft (so as to elicit the specific reaction), and by referring only to those things which are universal to all human beings (so that I need not worry that my audience does or does not know extraneous information).
Therefore, in neohumanism, all references to information outside the scope of the work—which my audience would not necessarily know or even be aware of—is either purged from the work, or explained fully within the work.
This guarantees that neohumanist art is portable—it depends on nothing but itself, reality, and human nature for comprehension.
The ideal of neohumanism is to create a specific work of art that elicits the exact same reaction in every human being who has ever lived, regardless of their circumstances, history, sex, age, whatever.
In other words, perfect communication.
Of course, nothing perfect is possible—perfect communication is an ideal. Yet in the search for this ideal, great things can be achieved.
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