后现代主义视觉艺术(上)

Visual Arts of Post-Modernism

后现代主义理论的纷乱、多元、核心的不稳定性不便于人们理解 ,但“后现代”作为一个时髦的词汇被使用的频率却颇高 ;在此情况下 ,澄清它的意义或仅仅进行概括性的描述 ,都是一种有益、有趣的工作。在视觉艺术领域中 ,人们也惯于用“后现代主义”来形容一些难以归类于以往范式的艺术案例 ,但这种贴上“后现代”标签的方式并不能消除人们心中的疑惑。实际上 ,这场纷争不清的后现代主义运动是一种异质性的革命 ,它在视觉艺术中所涉及的不再是审美判断的问题 ,而是认识判断的问题。它的异质性在于“后现代主义”不试图像以往的变革 (包括现代主义变革 )那样建立新的核心 ,而恰恰是蓄意解构中心、反对权威。因此 ,样式与意义都呈现出纷乱和增值的状态。另一方面 ,艺术家在思考的过程中可以“僭越到哲学家的身位” ,使用文字语言的逻辑思维 ,但表达时依然是感官的艺术语言 ,甚至有时超出了视觉而涉及到听觉和触觉 ,并刻意弃用以往的主流艺术形式 ,不提供确定的解读方式 ,而大多数观众由于现代主义思维的惯性想得到统一的答案 ,这种矛盾形成了一些人对后现代主义艺术理解的障碍。因此 ,在描述后现代视觉艺术之前 ,从社会环境和文化环境上作哲学高度的思考是有利的。基于这种考虑 ,本文的结构是先描述后现代哲?

The disorder, pluralism and instability of the theory of postmodernism have made it hard to understand. However, postmodernism is a fashionable word that has been frequently used. Under this circumstance, it is necessary as well as interesting to clarify its significance or just generalize the idea of it. In visual arts, people get used to describing artistic cases that hardly belong in the previous paradigm as postmodernism. But this kind of labeling can never dispel people’s doubts. In fact, the disputed movement of postmodernism is a heterogeneous revolution, which in visual arts relates not to the problem of aesthetic judgments, but to that of cognitive judgments. It is heterogeneous because it attempts not to create new cores as the previous revolution did including the modernism revolution, but to decentralize and deconstruct, to oppose to the authority. This has resulted in a situation of disorder and increment. Besides, artists may “come to the role of philosopher” in their reflection, as they express their language logic in artistic ways, for example beyond visual media and through audio and esthesiodic ones. They deliberately render out the previous mainstream artistic forms, refuse to provide definite ways of interpretation. In the meanwhile, most of the audiences are eager for unanimous answers due to the modernist impacts. This contradiction has become a barrier for some of the people to understand the postmodernist arts. Therefore, it is necessary to in the height of philosophy and from the perspective of social and cultural environment, before describing postmodernist visual arts. Thus this article begins with introduction of the postmodernist philosophy, and then comes to the topic of postmodernist visual arts. Chapter 1 gives a brief account of the postmodernist movement, including its history and status quo. Chapter 2 introduces some typical critics, theorists and their basic points of views. Among them, Hans Bertens is a critic of considerable influence, who is capable of analyzing and citing others’ points rather than establishing his own independent theoretical system. Therefore, the analysis of this chapter will keep the original appearance of these philosophic theories by all means, and introduce some relative art cases as comparisons. Chapter 3 gives a few analyses on some of the influential cases of visual arts, the categorization of which is just for better understanding. As the stances of artists will change with social and individual development, and the components of an art piece are always complicated it may be a mixture of postmodernism, modernism and realism, the art critics’ classifying of arts is by no means the same. The chaotic and instable situation of art happens to comply with the heterogeneity of postmodernist movement. Chapter 4 is the author’s understanding and prospect of postmodernism and its visual arts as a whole, giving considerable emphasis on the Chinese identity and the strategy of Chinese culture. But the postmodernist movement fraught of critiques and its impact will go on in global scope, so it would be too early to draw conclusions and make definition at present.