Post Modernism (Revision)

Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol, (1962) 

Postmodernism was a movement that came after the movement modernism. Modernism was mostly based on idealism and reason. Postmodernism was basically a reaction against modernism and was full of speculation and challenged the simplicity notion of the modernists.“It embraces many different approaches to art making and may be said to begin with pop art in the 1960s and to embrace much of what followed including conceptual art, neo-expressionism, feminist art, and the Young British Artists of the 1990s.” (Tate.org) It carries a refusal against authority of a single style or definition of what art should be. Breaking away from the societal expectations of what should and can be art from the modernist perspective to the postmodernist perspective. Also, the fact that art is not limited to a specific standard. 

 

I chose a piece by an artist named Andy Warhol who was known for his role as a leading figure within the pop art culture.  As Warhol suggested, the choice of mundane subject matter and machine-like techniques was a blunt rejection of the heroic subjects and methods of abstract expressionism, the leading American movement of the 1950s. This movement started originally in London where everything mass culture from movies, magazines, or advertisements became the main center point. Artists often created Pop works using mechanical or commercial techniques, such as silk-screening. The Marilyn Diptych was Warhol’s first piece of work that he created using this silk-screening technique where he put photographic images on a canvas that were already taken. During this time, Marilyn Monroe was a huge movie star, and he chose her to be the subject of his artwork because she was so widely known. The image he chose was taken from her picture in the film Niagara. He put these images together after she had died in 1962 to display his interests in celebrity death. He first produced a page in color then followed up with another page in black and white. This is insinuating a timeline of her life as a movie star as she was alive with color and then as it fades into black and white towards the end of her life. This piece would fall into the postmodernism category as it is a product of repetition and mass production. The diptych style was known from the Renaissance period as it was used in Christian altarpieces. It helped draw attention to her status as a celebrity and the roles that she played. 

"Postmodern Art Definition Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2021. TheArtStory.org Content compiled and written by Sarah Jenkins, Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors, Available from: https://www.theartstory.org/definition/postmodernism/ 

First published on 25 Jan 2015. 

History.com Editors. “Modernism and Post-Modernism History.” HISTORY, 21 Aug. 2018, www.history.com/topics/art-history/history-of-modernism-and-post-modernism.