Quick questions on The postmodern frame: HSC Visual Arts core concept

The postmodern frame interprets artworks through strategies of irony, appropriation, parody, pastiche, the blurring of high and low culture, and the questioning of originality, authorship, and the institution of art. Where the subjective frame asks how the artwork feels and the structural frame asks how it is made, the postmodern frame asks how the artwork plays with conventions, borrows from existing imagery, and critiques the modernist ideals of originality and authenticity.

Appropriation. The use of existing images, often from popular or commercial sources. Roy Lichtenstein's paintings of comic-book panels (Whaam!, 1963), Sherrie Levine's rephotographs of Walker Evans (1981), Richard Prince's appropriated Marlboro cigarette advertisements (Untitled, Cowboy, 1989).

Warhol's Brillo Boxes, first exhibited at the Stable Gallery in New York in April 1964, are silkscreened wooden replicas of Brillo soap-pad packaging designed by Steve Harvey for the Brillo Manufacturing Company. Warhol stacked them in the gallery. They look almost identical to the supermarket boxes.

Critics applying the postmodern frame typically open with the appropriated source, then identify the strategies the artwork deploys, then situate the work in the postmodern tradition (Duchamp, Pop Art, Pictures Generation, contemporary). Hal Foster's writing in October magazine is a canonical example.

The use of existing images, often from popular or commercial sources. Roy Lichtenstein's paintings of comic-book panels (Whaam!, 1963), Sherrie Levine's rephotographs of Walker Evans (1981), Richard Prince's appropriated Marlboro cigarette advertisements (Untitled, Cowboy, 1989).

Saying or showing one thing while meaning another. Andy Warhol's celebrations of consumer culture (Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962) are simultaneously embraces and critiques.

Humorous imitation (parody) or imitation without satirical intent (pastiche). Glenn Brown's pastiches of Frank Auerbach and Rembrandt; Damien Hirst's spot paintings as a parody of the unique artist's gesture.

Multiples that undermine the unique original. Warhol's Marilyns; Donald Judd's identical aluminum boxes. Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" is foundational for thinking about seriality.

The collapse of the distinction between fine art and commercial culture. Warhol's silkscreen prints of celebrities, Jeff Koons' inflatable balloon dogs in stainless steel, Takashi Murakami's Superflat aesthetic.

Artworks that attack the gallery and museum system. Hans Haacke's Shapolsky et al. (1971), Andrea Fraser's Museum Highlights (1989).

The "death of the author" thesis applied to visual art. Levine, Prince, Cindy Sherman's self-portraits as constructed identities.

A contemporary artwork is not automatically postmodern. Many contemporary artists work within modernist or cultural frames.

Postmodern artworks engage with the gallery, museum, and market. Address the institutional context.

Some artworks (sincere self-portraiture, formal abstraction) yield more to subjective or structural readings. Pick artworks for which postmodern reading is productive. :::