A postmodern day for the soul

One of my resolutions was to take 2 days in the studio and one for the soul (of course, they could be the same thing, depending). So,today my friend Seema and I went to see an exhibit at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts Gallery called “How American Women Artists Invented Postmodernism, 1970-1975." It was art from the early '70s by "Revolutionary Feminists" including Judy Chicago, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Joan Snyder, and others. Sculpture, installation, video, painting, lithographs, and some other things that I can't quite remember. Some of it was boring, some was outrageous, and some of it seemed very dated, given the changes in the last 30 years. But interesting. Of course, since I have no idea how you define "postmodernism," I did a little research. Here is a postmodern excerpt from the definition I found: Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject. Ah - I get it. Here is an example of postmodern art, right in my own studio: an installation that certainly rejects rigid genre distinctions. Is it sculpture? Is it fiber?

Fragmented? You bet. Dehumanized. Totally. Lowbrow? For sure. And a definite pastiche. I was going to organize it tomorrow, but I may have to reconsider. It is just too avant garde.