Postmodernism

Frederic Jameson:

-Van Gogh's painting of the peasant shoes-

• requires us to reconstruct some initial situation because without some background information, this painting basically means nothing
• peasant shoes represent agricultural misery, rural poverty, brutal and primitive state of the world
• work of art emerges between meaningless and meaning...looking at the pair of shoes brings up memories of the past 
• hermeneutical- the work in its objectical form is taken as a clue for some vaster reality

-Andy Warhol's Diamond Dust Shoes-

• work turns centrally around commodification
• death of the world of appearance

Jean Baudrillard:

• people visit Disneyland because it is supposed to be a magical, imaginary world where dreams come true
• presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest of the world is real life
• the areas surrounding Disneyland are so fake now that Disneyland seems more real

Postmodernism Introduction:

• postmodern cultural forms reflect the dislocation and fragmentation of language communities 
• fixated on commodities, products, and images
• Andy Warhol's pop art
• we are all hypnotized by the television
• era of mass communications
• hyperreality- an order of representation that is not the unreal, but has replaced 'reality' and is more than real, more real than real