Listics

Mark Woods links…

…to a collection of Jean Arp links in celebration of the old dadaist’s birthday.  If, as Arp wrote, ”Dada wished to destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover an unreasoned order,” then I think Dada was post modernism emergent.

TranscendAnce…

French modern art contains the genius of Renoir, Matisse, Monet and more, much more.  But at some point, those of us with a classificatory or historical bent will want to draw a line and create a distinction:  up to this point is modern art; after this is something else, perhaps “post modern.”  And naturally, during some period this “post modernism” will wane and be replaced by the next thing.  Genres are mere folders in the file drawer containing what I’m talking about.

I’m engaged in a conversation with myself about when post modernism ended, and for that matter, when it began.  It seems obvious, but perhaps bears stating that the study of post modernism could not begin until post modernism itself was well advanced.  In fact the study itself sounds the death knell of the movement.  We can imagine post modernism popped into the ether bottle, then removed and pinned like a butterfly in the display case of criticism.  I’m betting V. Nabokov, ensconced in a hotel suite in Montreux, could feel the critical needle probing for his heart.  All his modern Russian work had long since been subsumed by his oeuvre in English: Ada providing apical dominance for the tree of the American novel for the next thirty years.

Cultural expression doesn’t move in lockstep fashion, with literature, graphic arts, theater, music, and ephemeral expressions (such as new modes of play) all advancing at the same pace through a critical context.  So post modern art will have different temporal boundaries from post modern literature, and post modern music.  One American novelist who transcends the boundaries between post modern and the perhaps neo-classical revival that has succeeded it, is Thomas Pynchon.  You can see the marvelous expression of  a hip, clear, dark vision in the first three novels, then a transcendance (as distinct from transcendEnce TYVM Jake Deridda) through a natural realism in Vineland to a three point landing in the structured framework of Mason and Dixon.

“…Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir’d, or coerc’d, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,—who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish’d, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev’ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government…” (p.350)

The study of games seems like it would bear fruit if conducted in parallel with critical assessments of art, music, and literature.  One is reminded of the modern ascendancy of positional play in the chess world - Richard Reti’s dominance of the board with his cocked and loaded bishop pair covering the long diagonals.  From 1922 to 1950 - the modern period - the popularity of Alekhine’s defense declined.  Then from 1950 to 1970 - arguably a post modern period - the popularity of this opening increased to a peak.  Since 1970 it has dropped off and is about as popular today as it was during World War II.

There was a modern period in western culture, and it was over in the twenties or there-abouts.  There was a post modern period that emerged and it was certainly over by the time Bunuel filmed “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” in the early seventies.  Since that time, there has been a new cultural period that the academy has not addressed.  I suspect it could be labeled as a brand of neo-classicism.  Regardless what we call it, it seems ever more important to me that the gardeners in the academy return to tending their garden, prune the diseased sport of post modern theory from all but a few specimens necessary to provide context in our measurement of progress, and get on with the job of studying and learning and teaching what is and what we imagine.