How does the postmodern frame interpret artworks through irony, appropriation, parody, and the questioning of authorship and originality?
The postmodern frame: the interpretation of artworks through irony, appropriation, parody, pastiche, the blurring of high and low culture, and the questioning of originality, authorship, and the institution of art
A focused answer to the HSC Visual Arts dot point on the postmodern frame. Defines the frame, identifies its strategies (appropriation, irony, parody, pastiche), exemplifies it through Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes, Banksy's interventions, and Patricia Piccinini's hybrid creatures, and contrasts postmodern with subjective, structural, and cultural readings.
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What this dot point is asking
NESA expects you to define the postmodern frame, identify its strategies, apply it to named artworks, and contrast it with the other three frames. The postmodern frame is one of four frames in the Visual Arts Stage 6 syllabus.
The answer
What is the postmodern frame
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.
The frame draws on postmodern theory (Jean-Francois Lyotard, Fredric Jameson, Jean Baudrillard), on poststructuralism (Roland Barthes' "The Death of the Author," 1967), and on the long tradition of appropriation that runs from Marcel Duchamp's readymades (Fountain, 1917) through Pop Art (Warhol, Lichtenstein), conceptual art (Joseph Kosuth), and the Pictures Generation of the 1980s (Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince) into the present. The frame is dominant for Pop Art, conceptual art, appropriation art, street art, and much contemporary art that knowingly engages with the art market and the institution of art.
The strategies the postmodern frame foregrounds
- 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).
- Irony
- 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.
- Parody and pastiche
- 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.
- Seriality
- 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.
- Blurring of high and low culture
- 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.
- Institutional critique
- Artworks that attack the gallery and museum system. Hans Haacke's Shapolsky et al. (1971), Andrea Fraser's Museum Highlights (1989).
- Questioning authorship and originality
- The "death of the author" thesis applied to visual art. Levine, Prince, Cindy Sherman's self-portraits as constructed identities.
Applied to a named artwork: Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes (1964)
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.
A postmodern reading reads the Brillo Boxes as a sustained attack on the modernist ideal of art as unique, original, and authored by a single genius. The visual content is appropriated; the production was outsourced to assistants in the Factory; the boxes were made in multiples. Arthur Danto's philosophical question (1964) is the postmodern frame in compressed form: what makes Warhol's boxes art and the real boxes not? Answer: the institution of art, the gallery, the discourse around the work. Warhol made the institutional frame visible by pushing the artwork to the edge of visual difference from its mass-produced source.
Applied to a named artwork: Banksy's Love is in the Bin (2018)
Banksy's Girl with Balloon framed print sold at Sotheby's in London on 5 October 2018 for 1.04 million pounds. As the gavel fell, a shredder hidden in the frame partially shredded the print, leaving half of the artwork hanging in strips below the frame. Sotheby's authenticated the partially shredded work as a new artwork titled Love is in the Bin.
A postmodern reading reads the work as a multi-layered institutional critique: the original artwork (a beloved stencil of hope and longing) is destroyed at the moment it is sold for a record price; the destruction itself becomes the new artwork; Sotheby's, the institution being critiqued, monetises the critique by authenticating Love is in the Bin (it subsequently resold in 2021 for 18.6 million pounds). The artwork's irony is total: every move against the institution is absorbed by the institution.
Applied to a named artwork: Patricia Piccinini's The Young Family (2002)
Piccinini's The Young Family (2002, silicone, fibreglass, leather, plywood, human hair, life-size, exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2003) shows a hybrid creature, part human and part animal, lying on its side suckling a litter of small offspring. The realism of the silicone surface and the human hair makes the creature simultaneously tender and uncanny.
A postmodern reading reads the work as pastiche of nineteenth-century natural history dioramas, as parody of the unique artistic gesture (the work was produced by Piccinini's studio team), as a hybrid of high and low (sculpture and B-grade horror cinema), and as institutional critique (the Venice Biennale is the elite of the art world; Piccinini's work refused its elite codes). The work's strategies are postmodern; its emotional charge holds the frame together.
The postmodern frame in critical practice
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 frame has limits. A purely postmodern reading can flatten artworks into ironic gestures, ignoring their formal richness and emotional content. Strong postmodern readings show how the strategies produce meaning, not how they replace it.
Past exam questions, worked
Real questions from past NESA papers on this dot point, with our answer explainer.
Practice (NESA)8 marksApply the postmodern frame to an artwork you have studied. Refer to the artwork's strategies of appropriation, irony, or parody.Show worked answer →
An 8-mark postmodern application needs a named artwork, the postmodern strategies it deploys, and a reading that addresses authorship, originality, or institutional critique.
- Artwork
- Andy Warhol, Brillo Boxes (1964, silkscreen ink on plywood, multiple boxes each 43 by 43 by 36 cm, originally exhibited at the Stable Gallery, New York, April 1964).
- Strategy of appropriation
- Warhol appropriated the commercial packaging design for Brillo soap pads (designed by Steve Harvey for Brillo Manufacturing Company) and recreated the boxes in wood at full scale. The visual content is not invented; it is borrowed from supermarket shelves.
- Strategy of seriality
- Warhol made many boxes, stacked them in the gallery, and made identical copies. The unique artwork is replaced by the multiple. Seriality undermines the romantic ideal of the unique original artwork.
- Authorship and originality
- Warhol famously said "I want to be a machine." The Brillo Boxes were produced in his Factory studio with assistants. Authorship is dispersed; originality is replaced by reproduction. The viewer cannot distinguish a Warhol Brillo Box from a real Brillo box by looking. This is the philosopher Arthur Danto's famous question (1964): what makes Warhol's Brillo Boxes art and the supermarket boxes not?
- Institutional critique
- The artwork's status as art depends on its placement in the gallery and on the institutional theory of art (Danto, Dickie). The frame around the artwork is the institution itself. The Brillo Boxes make this dependence visible.
- Conclusion
- A postmodern reading shows the Brillo Boxes as an attack on the modernist conception of art as unique, original, and authored by a single genius. Warhol's irony is double-edged: he celebrates and critiques the commercial culture he borrows from. Markers reward named postmodern strategies, the institutional context, and reference to authorship.
Practice (NESA)5 marksDefine the postmodern frame.Show worked answer →
A 5-mark define needs a precise definition plus the strategies the frame foregrounds.
- Definition
- 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. It asks how the artwork plays with conventions, borrows from existing imagery, and undermines or critiques the modernist ideals of originality and authenticity.
- Strategies
- Appropriation (using existing images, often from popular or commercial sources), irony (saying or showing one thing while meaning another), parody (humorous imitation that mocks or subverts), pastiche (imitation without satirical intent), seriality (multiples that undermine the unique original), and institutional critique (artworks that attack the gallery and museum system).
- Applied example
- Sherrie Levine's After Walker Evans (1981) is the textbook postmodern artwork. Levine rephotographed Walker Evans' iconic 1936 photographs of Depression-era sharecroppers and presented her near-identical photographs as her own work. The artwork is entirely appropriated; the gesture is the artwork. Levine's work asks who owns an image, what originality means, and how the male canon of modernist photography is constructed.
Markers reward the definition, named strategies, and a named applied example.
Related dot points
- The subjective frame: the interpretation of artworks through personal, emotional, psychological, and biographical experience, including the artist's interior life, dreams, the unconscious, and the audience's affective response
A focused answer to the HSC Visual Arts dot point on the subjective frame. Defines the frame, identifies the kinds of meaning it produces, exemplifies it through Frida Kahlo's self-portraits, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and Brett Whiteley's interior work, and contrasts subjective with structural, cultural, and postmodern readings.
- The structural frame: the interpretation of artworks through formal language, including composition, colour, line, form, texture, materials, signs, symbols, and visual codes
A focused answer to the HSC Visual Arts dot point on the structural frame. Defines the frame, identifies its analytical vocabulary (composition, colour, line, form, texture, signs, symbols), exemplifies it through Picasso's Analytic Cubism and John Olsen's landscape painting, and contrasts structural with subjective, cultural, and postmodern readings.
- The cultural frame: the interpretation of artworks through the social, political, religious, gender, racial, and class contexts in which they are produced and received
A focused answer to the HSC Visual Arts dot point on the cultural frame. Defines the frame, identifies the contexts it foregrounds (social, political, religious, gender, race, class), exemplifies it through Picasso's Guernica, Emily Kngwarreye's batiks, and Banksy's stencil work, and contrasts cultural with subjective, structural, and postmodern readings.
- Andy Warhol (1928-1987): a case study of an American Pop artist whose practice in silkscreen prints, film, and Factory-based production exemplifies postmodern strategies, supported by frame readings and audience reception
A case study of Andy Warhol for HSC Visual Arts. American Pop artist whose Factory-based production of silkscreen prints, celebrity portraits, and the Brillo Boxes (1964) made him the canonical postmodern artist. Materials, conceptual interests, key works, frame readings, and reception.
- Banksy (active from c.1990): a case study of an anonymous British street artist whose stencil practice critiques surveillance, war, and the institution of art, supported by frame readings and the contradictions of his market reception
A case study of Banksy for HSC Visual Arts. Anonymous British street artist whose stencil practice critiques consumerism, war, surveillance, and the art world. Materials, conceptual interests, key works including Girl with Balloon and Love is in the Bin (2018), frame readings, and the contradictions of his institutional reception.