Postmodernism

When thinking about postmodernism, it's interesting to consider why the things that are created are done. After our class discussion on the topic, my friend and I had a long debate about why a crumpled up piece of paper would or wouldn't be considered "art". I argued that art is all in the perspective of who looks at it. One person could look at the paper and think "that's a piece of paper", while someone else could think "that is the meaning of life". Both could be right, but if it's art to someone, then it's art. Of course that means that absolutely anything could be art, which may take the meaning and value of art away for some people. She argued that art should be something unique, never done before, and a piece of paper that's been crumpled is not a new idea. Art should be innovative, and different, and special. What's special about a piece of paper?

That's the thing about postmodernism though, in my opinion. It's taking an ordinary item, and changing the way we perceive it, making it special. Maybe the point of the piece isn't the paper, but the fact that we were talking about the paper. We were forced to think about it, which means that it did its job. Postmodernism tries to question what we assume as "normal" and make it "abnormal". One example of this that I really like, is this doll made to look like what a barbie should look like if she were accurate to a real girl. It kind of brings to attention how popular Barbie is, and how normalized she is in our culture, yet she wouldn't even look like a normal girl if she were real. It makes us take a step back and look at Barbie. She's just a doll, until something like that appears, and we rethink our view on it. This also goes for billboards, commercials, all of these picture perfect photo shopped models, are ingrained in our society.

With this same mindset, I would argue that something like this is a form of post modern art. It's something that questions our perspective on what is "normal". It's an ad for women who aren't photo shopped, again showing us reality in a new way to make us question why it is the way it is. This is of course just one example of what postmodernism is. It shows one of the many ways that art can be expressed in a post modern world.