Editing Postmodern art (section)

==Use of the term==
The predominant term for art produced since the 1950s is "[[contemporary art]]". Not all art labeled as contemporary art is postmodern, and the broader term encompasses both artists who continue to work in modernist and [[Late modernity|late modernist]] traditions, as well as artists who reject postmodernism for other reasons. [[Arthur Danto]] argues "contemporary" is the broader term, and postmodern objects represent a "subsector" of the contemporary movement.<ref>''After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History'' [[Arthur C. Danto]]</ref> Some postmodern artists have made more distinctive breaks from the ideas of modern art and there is no consensus as to what is "late-modern" and what is "post-modern." Ideas rejected by the modern aesthetic have been re-established. In painting, postmodernism reintroduced representation.<ref>Wendy Steiner, ''Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th-Century Art'', New York: The Free Press, 2001, {{ISBN|978-0-684-85781-7}}</ref> Some critics argue much of the current "postmodern" art, the latest avant-gardism, should still classify as modern art.<ref>''Post-Modernism: The New Classicism in Art and Architecture'' [[Charles Jencks]]</ref>

As well as describing certain tendencies of contemporary art, postmodern has also been used to denote a phase of [[modern art]]. Defenders of modernism, such as [[Clement Greenberg]],<ref>[http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/postmodernism.html Clement Greenberg: Modernism and Postmodernism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190901163630/http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/postmodernism.html |date=2019-09-01 }}, 1979. Retrieved June 26, 2007.</ref> as well as radical opponents of modernism, such as [[Félix Guattari]], who calls it modernism's "last gasp,<ref name="Guattari109">Félix Guattari, ''the Postmodern Impasse'' in ''The Guattari Reader'', Blackwell Publishing, 1996, pp109-113. {{ISBN|978-0-631-19708-9}}</ref>" have adopted this position. The neo-conservative [[Hilton Kramer]] describes postmodernism as "a creation of modernism at the end of its tether."<ref>Quoted in Oliver Bennett, ''Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World'', Edinburgh University Press, 2001, p131. {{ISBN|978-0-7486-0936-9}}</ref> [[Jean-François Lyotard]], in [[Fredric Jameson]]'s analysis, does not hold there is a postmodern stage radically different from the period of [[high modernism]]; instead, postmodern discontent with this or that high modernist style is part of the experimentation of high modernism, giving birth to new modernisms.<ref>Fredric Jameson, ''Foreword'' to Jean-François Lyotard, ''The Postmodern Condition'', Manchester University Press, 1997, pxvi. {{ISBN|978-0-7190-1450-5}}</ref> In the context of [[aesthetics]] and [[art]], Jean-François Lyotard is a major philosopher of postmodernism.

Many critics hold postmodern art emerges from modern art. Suggested dates for the shift from modern to postmodern include 1914 in Europe,<ref name=McEvilly27/> and 1962<ref name=McEvilly29/> or 1968<ref name=Krauss287/> in America. [[James Elkins (art critic)|James Elkins]], commenting on discussions about the exact date of the transition from modernism to postmodernism, compares it to the discussion in the 1960s about the exact span of [[mannerism]] and whether it should begin directly after the [[High Renaissance]] or later in the century. He makes the point these debates go on all the time with respect to art movements and periods, which is not to say they are not important.<ref name="Elkins16">James Elkins, ''Stories of Art'', Routledge, 2002, p16. {{ISBN|978-0-415-93942-3}}</ref> The close of the period of postmodern art has been dated to the end of the 1980s, when the word postmodernism lost much of its critical resonance, and art practices began to address the impact of [[globalization]] and [[new media]].<ref>Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung, ''Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985'', Blackwell Publishing, 2005, pp2-3. {{ISBN|978-0-631-22867-7}}</ref>

[[Jean Baudrillard]] has had a significant influence on postmodern-inspired art and emphasised the possibilities of new forms of creativity.<ref>Nicholas Zurbrugg, Jean Baudrillard, ''Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artefact'', Sage Publications, 1997, p150. {{ISBN|978-0-7619-5580-1}}</ref> The artist [[Peter Halley]] describes his day-glo colours as "hyperrealization of real color", and acknowledges Baudrillard as an influence.<ref name="Genosko154">Gary Genosko, ''Baudrillard and Signs: Signification Ablaze'', Routledge, 1994, p154. {{ISBN|978-0-415-11256-7}}</ref> Baudrillard himself, since 1984, was fairly consistent in his view that contemporary art, and postmodern art in particular, was inferior to the modernist art of the post World War II period,<ref name=Genosko154/> while Jean-François Lyotard praised Contemporary painting and remarked on its evolution from Modern art.<ref>Grebowicz, Margaret, ''Gender After Lyotard'', State University of New York Press, 2007. {{ISBN|978-0-7914-6956-9}}</ref> Major [[women artists]] in the Twentieth Century are associated with postmodern art since much theoretical articulation of their work emerged from French psychoanalysis and [[feminist theory]] that is strongly related to post modern philosophy.<ref>[[Catherine de Zegher|de Zegher, Catherine]] (ed.) ''Inside the Visible'', MIT Press, 1996</ref><ref>[[Carol Armstrong|Armstrong, Carol]] and de Zegher, Catherine, ''Women Artists at the Millennium'', October Books / The MIT Press, 2006, {{ISBN|978-0-262-01226-3}}</ref>
	 
As with all uses of the term postmodern, there are critics of its application. [[Kirk Varnedoe]], for instance, stated that there is no such thing as postmodernism, and that the possibilities of modernism have not yet been exhausted.<ref>William R. Everdell, ''The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-century Thought'', University of Chicago Press, 1997, p4. {{ISBN|978-0-226-22480-0}}</ref> Though the usage of the term as a kind of shorthand to designate the work of certain Post-war "schools" employing relatively specific material and generic techniques has become conventional since the early to mid-1980s, the theoretical underpinnings of Postmodernism as an epochal or epistemic division are still very much in controversy.<ref>''The Citadel of Modernism Falls to Deconstructionists,'' – 1992 critical essay, The Triumph of Modernism, 2006, [[Hilton Kramer]], pp218-221.</ref>