Who is Jean-Francois Lyotard?
Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist, studying philosophy at Sorbonne and gaining a PhD in literature. He was involved in left-wing politics and taught in various universities around the world. He promoted Modernist art and wrote about artists such as Barnett Newman, and was also known for his writing on the impact of postmodernism on the human condition. [1]
Lyotard talks about a period of slackening in contemporary art and a collective nostalgia for the “anything goes”[2]. He says that within the many aims of art there is a call for unity. He uses Walter Benjamin’s ideas about mechanical reproductions effects to say that academism needs to find a new realism in order for artists to have true meaning in their work.[3]
For Lyotard this true meaning is based on the aesthetic of the sublime, which is based around the unpresentable. Modernism is the attempt to represent this concept by putting forward the unpresentable within the missing contents. However modernism fails when its recognisable forms offer aesthetic pleasure, therefore the ability for a collective nostalgia. Postmodernism creates new rules for the game therefore preventing aesthetic enjoyment in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable, but will also become modernism once it has been put out into the world.[4]
Lyotard takes the view that anti-aestheticism is the only way forward from previous modernisms. Geremy Gilbert-Rolfe defined two types of postmodernism- one that was conceptual or anti-aesthetic as Lyotard talks about and one that was still based around actions, sensations and aesthetics.[5] The anti-aesthetic approach he suggests believes that modernism was a movement based on the ubiquity of commodity fetishism, which is what Lyotard touched on at the beginning of his essay. This anti-aesthetic view of modernism believes that modernism is dead, and absolutely suppresses sensation in the aim to express judgements about ideas.[6]
If the total suppression of sensation occurs, would not the aims of the sublime sentiment of pleasure and pain be lost altogether? Or is the sensation only allowed to be in the pleasure of the new rules that must have been recognised through loss of sensation? Gilbert-Rolfe talks about a post-modernism that still relies on the reinvention of the aesthetic and is not driven totally by concept, suggesting that there are different ways of obtaining the unpresentable other than a total loss of aesthetic pleasure.[7]
This alternatively postmodernist painting creates indeterminacy by containing, for example, movement and flow but no shape, thus retaining a sense of the unpresentable. Painting becomes an object and is not so concerned with being an art historical gesture or paint as an extension of body movement (as in Pollock). [8]An example of this could be Rohan Wealleans’ work, where his multi-layered paintings sway between painting and sculpture. Perhaps Wealleans teases the viewer with a sense of pleasure in created form, yet creates the pain of knowing that paint remains hidden beneath paint; we will never be exposed to the whole reality of the work.
[1] "Jean-Francois Lyotard." Wikipedia. 13 Sept. 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2009.
[2] Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Answering The Question: What Is Postmodernism?” trans. Regis Durand, in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp71-82;p76
[3] Ibid;p77
[4] Ibid;p81
[5] Gilbert-Rolfe, Geremy. "The Place of the Aesthetic in Postmodernism: Part1." ArtUS (USA) 0 (2003): 8-9;8
[6] Ibid;8
[7] Ibid;9
[8] Gilbert-Rolfe, Geremy. "The Place of the Aesthetic in Postmodernism: Part2." ArtUS (USA) 1 (2004): 8-9;9
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