The era of
post-modernism has come with a breaking off from the regular canons of
aesthetics to something avant-garde and something that was inconceivable even a
few decades before the onset of post modernism. What post-modernism gave to the
world was a socio-realistic form of art which juxtaposed the whole notion of
modern lifestyle, as confusing and as dissipative in nature as it is, into art,
the result being something so exquisite and revealing that it has still left
some questions about the sustainability of art in the modern era. The question
arises now, in the validation of everything that comes into the mind of an
artist into an art form, without the restrictive schools that would judge the
form by its order, by its construction, which are absent now, and the artist
has the proverbial freedom to call a stain on the wall a form of art, and here
rises the question whether art can still be perceived as objectively as it was
or whether it has become completely susceptible to changing opinions and
changing perceptions, that one person may regard it as the highest art from
whereas another person might completely disregard the importance of the art
form as a bastard piece of art. It is this perception of the people about the
art, and more that we seek to clarify further, in our analysis of what actually
is post-modern art is in microscopic, macroscopic and fractal levels, each
having its own importance to a certain section like the microscopic aspect
which deals with the individual and the art, the macroscopic aspect deals with
the society and the art and the fractal approach deals with the notion of
artist and art, encompassing effects of both the individual and the society on
the art form, the other way round.
The microscopic
approach of the art is completely dependent upon the frameset of the individual
and his psycho-analytical critique of the art form completely ignoring the
affiliation of the art form, if it has any, to a particular school of thought.
The theory behind the judgment of an art form can be many, ranging from the
emotional indulgence of the piece to its realistic significance on the life of
the individual, to the extent that the individual would call himself ‘touched’
by the art which itself implies a level of indulgence in the art in a relative
sort of way. This often happens with a realistic piece of art or something that
pertains to the emotional sentiments of the human being and reflects it like
the theory of Aristotelian mimesis. The other aspect of critical appreciation
is being ‘lost’ in the art which often happens between an individual and an
abstract piece of art, whose meaning is latent and it is on the individual to
find its meaning and so there is a direct connect with the abstraction of the
art and the psychology of the individual. This kind of indulgence is dissimilar
to that indulgence that occurs with respect to a realistic piece of art. If an
art is surreal, it appeals the inner psychology of the viewer or the reader and
the art can well be defined as meaningless, but if we examine the art
microscopically dissecting each factor that constitutes the art, we find an
indulgence with the art form through our whole process of understanding the
art, which is termed as being ‘lost’ in the art. There are many other forms of
critical appreciation through the microscopic aspect, for instance art can also
be philosophical and hence give its patrons the knowledge and wisdom of
philosophy, without directly imposing upon them the constructive phrases of philosophy.
Many forms of literature, particularly in the mid-nineteenth century had a
heavy influence of philosophy in their works, particularly French writers. Much
of Nerval’s work is based on societal philosophy which hangs like a bookmark
through his works and it is particularly that philosophical understanding of
French society during that age that the readers feel compelled to read about in
his works. We shall, in our course of analysis, look through Rousseau, due to
his avant-garde outlook in his works all though his existence, once more
through a different aspect too.
Now, we take
to the macroscopic aspect of understanding a work of post-modernism. When we
talk about any macroscopic perception, there is generally a collective approach
based and we know that opinions highly bias and shape a collective perception,
and sometimes public opinions can be stronger in determining the worth of an
art form through this approach than the actual skill of the artist of the class
and brilliance of the work in a macroscopic perspective. We shall see now how
artistic public opinions come to shape. Like any other piece of public
information, public opinions too, graft out of the dialectics, intellectual
debates and privileged critiques of ‘artistic bourgeoisie’.
This artistic
bourgeoisie is the determinant of worth or worthlessness of an art form and it
is comprised of the so called manufacturers of consent, the print media, the
established artists and the enterprise of intellectuals. However just their
review of an art may be, it is bound to be biased in some way or the other,
maybe through the frameset of the society, the general social conditions or
conflicts between the artists. Apart from these direct factors, there are also
some indirect modes or agents that affect the interpretation of an art form
which are often overlooked or not given serious consideration. These agents
include things like the theme and genre of the art from. While there is
sufficient interest in the theme and genre, one would say, still there has been
little to determine what particular theme or what particular genre would a
post-modern piece of art like a meta-fiction or a split-fiction or an
anti-fiction falls into. Neither is there a fixed genre for these works nor is
there a need for a better understanding of these post-modern sub-spheres.
Albeit, these agents affect highly in forming the public opinion about art
work, we still waste our resources predicting the ‘popular genre’ instead of
understanding the ‘popular movement’ behind that genre. These are some aspects
of perception through macroscopic analyses and the factors that affect this
analysis. However, the essence of the macroscopic perspective is incomplete
without the socio-economic conditions that the work is expected to pertain to.
For example, at the time of Rousseau, the French revolution aroused a diversion
of public opinions which was very strict, rigid and opposing. On one hand were
the pro-revolutionists and on the other the anti-revolutionists and in this
tumult, Rousseau sought the essentiality of neutrality and readily became the
bridge between the French bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
This brings
us to the fractal approach where we take into consideration, in a very bemusing
and innovative way, as innovative as post-modernism technically is, the
amalgamation of the macro and the micro perspectives and prove that how both of
these aspects can be satisfied without essentially back-firing and leading to
the disvalue of post-modern art form. The fractal approach is the nonlinear
approach wherein we assess the art form from a completely different manner, not
assertively but in a way society generally does but not as healthily and as
frequently as it should and even if it does, it lacks the ability to make
fractal analysis the generalized manner of assessment of post modern art. What
we have to understand while looking at post modern art is that it may or may
not cater to our specific needs and we shouldn’t disregard the quality of a
good artwork if it doesn’t. What we basically need to do is to look not just at
the art but also at the artist, not in a way that we need to acquaint ourselves
with what the artist thinks about his work, but we need to simply treat the
artist also as a form of art.
In the age
of post-modernity, there has been aroused a certain associative tendency in us
that we tend to label as ‘stereotype’. This characteristic, the so called
stereotyping is actually looked down upon by the society, but in a way this
stereotypical view gives us a scope for generalization of certain things that
are too infinitesimal to be determined otherwise. So what we might think is a
‘stereotypical thought process’ and is supposedly is flawed is actually not
flawed but a super-intelligent form of taxonomic organization that is
beneficial for our understanding of things, but the problem lies in our misuse
of this capability. Let us now focus on this stereotypical thinking on the
post-modernist movement of the twenty first century. Through our inherent,
thought process of generalization, we have already started associating the
artist with the art, making the artist something more than the mere imitator of
emotions; we make the artist the emotion itself. When we look the art form
through this generalized notion, we involve ourselves mildly, if not totally,
with other works of the artist also, and in that manner, we associate the art
to the general mood of the artist, making the artist itself a ‘genre’ of his
art. This perspective is very evident in film and entertainment where certain
actors associate themselves with genres, and while they limit themselves to
these genres, they also help in defining and redefining the genre by their
works, like action heroes or romantic heroes, who are known for their works
specifically in that genre. This kind of free but associative
self-organizational school of divergence is lacking in the era of
post-modernism, which we dearly need. Through mutual and self-association of
the artist with the art, or the manufactured association by the critics of the
artist with the art will help us define and in a better way, characterize
post-modernity in the movement of art in the twenty first century.
