S1: okay i think we can cut here... so this is part of a sort of thirty-two minute, video uh, film, recording the process of the the making of Spiral Jetty, but you get a kind of idea that you maybe didn't get it so well, during lecture of... of how significant the process is to, the actual meaning behind the piece, and how, you know you look at it and say like how the heck was that made? well literally with a bull dozer right, scooping up huge uh, loads full of, stones rocks, earth basalt salt, and, creating the sort of uh, the the spiral itself, you know foot by foot going back, loading up going back, and you also saw on the clip, uh Smithson the artist himself right walking out into uh the water to set up the sort of stakes, so it becomes if you remember when we were talking about minimalism and the idea of phenomenology, he becomes very physically implicated and present, right in the making of the work, (cause) he connects sort of bodily with the environment, as he stakes out, the perimeter, the sort of path uh, that the spiral jetty will take. so we see, ooh, you know this is the coolest thing to watch in reverse, i don't know if you have reverse, but uh, it's a cool video to watch in reverse... <SS LAUGH> i don't know what it is about, <LAUGH> stones going back up into and having, backward splash. isn't it bizarre? <STUDENT CLAPS> yeah. cool. so we have with earthworks as we talked about before this expanding, you know definition of art, what it's made of, where it is, uh wer- the relationship between the viewer, it's certainly far removed from the gallery and the museum space, and it seems to be really, about process, about flux, about time, and you can see in this video how he's making reference to, uh, not only sort of, the idea of now and the process of now while it's being created but yo- you saw the little cut to dinosaurs so, this also reference back to prehistoric time, to geologic time, uh to a much sort of older slower time at the same time, he also this piece is also, purposefully trying to play with, present, and potentially future as it becomes, okay well now it becomes less cool backwards, <LAUGH> uh as it becomes implicated in, the daily sort of environment and activities of, this, lake, and of course disappears and ends up, sort of, being uncreated by the very environment in which it was made. so you can also get an idea from this video, and from the slides that we looked at when we saw this piece as well as the other earthworks, that we looked at, how important photography, and video, are, in the recording, of these works how important photographic process, is, to our being able to get access to these works right because i don't_ i actually haven't ever, taken a trip to Spiral Jetty when it was still around, i don't know if you have, nor have i been to The Lightning Field and so what makes it possible for us to experience these works, is photography and video. so today what we wanna do, with the time that we have, uh we wanna deal with two, things. one thing we wanna do is deal with, the concept of, postmodernism. the P word. A-K-A, pomo. postmodernism, often used to describe visual arts made, between, the nineteen-sixties and the present, and what we're gonna do is look specifically at the case of, photography. so the implication of photography, uh in postmodern practice. but where we're gonna begin, is, with a little jaunt a little foray, into architecture. so on the left you have, does anyone recognize that building? any of you New York City, folks?
S2: Seagram
S1: very good, whoever that was. Seagram building. this is by Mies Van der Rohe. Mies Van der Rohe the Seagram building, built in the late nineteen-fifties, and on the right, any gamblers in the audience?
S3: it's Las Vegas
SS: New York New York
S1: oh sure everyone can recognize New York New York in Vegas, <LAUGH> and we got one person who can do Seagram. hm what does that mean? what does that say? yes New York New York, Las Vegas. have you been there, Rhonda? 
S3: yes.
S1: was it fun?
S3: they have a really nice roller coaster.
S1: they have a really nice roller coaster. just like th- just like Manhattan. yeah, no. uh, so we've got New York New York on the right a simulation of New York city, right, in Las Vegas. a simulation, um, but not as, big right it's sort of, do you know how big it is in relationship to the real thing, in terms of scale?
SU: (it's pretty small)
S1: relatively speaking small but from a distance it gives you this idea of, the high-rise, so New York becomes a kind of icon, uh symbolized by what, i'm trying not to walk away from mics, from, with the high-rise can you recognize any of the buildings? Chrysler, i think, Empire State, and of course on the left-hand side, the Statue of Liberty, located... in the middle of water, near Ellis Island? no, in the middle of Las Vegas, lend me your weary. uh, i was gonna make some joke about you know, desperate gambling but, but i won't cuz Las Vegas is about so much more. albino tigers, magic, the Rat Pack, glamour, and uh, fakeness right? the idea of, a kind of fake substitution for the real thing. so Mies Van der Rohe on the left this is not an example of postmodern architecture but instead, high modernism. modernism with a capital M something that we are_ we've become increasingly familiar with. and how do we know? what do we_ how do we characterize it stylistically when we look at it? is there a lot of ornamentation going on? no. no, so very sort of streamlined, sparse_ actually if you look at it close up, Mies Van der Rohe the architect who coined, the cliche, what's become the cliche form follows function, alright so very sort of streamlined aesthetic, uh, a- literally where you ca- you can sort of see the construction, on the exterior of the building. and in fact if you had a detailed slide of this building we would see, just this teensiest tiniest little bit of applied ornament he's taken, um, steel I-beams and actually placed them on the exterior of the building going vertically, so real vertical emphasis here right. and those I-beams don't actually serve as support, they in a sense mirror the internal, skeletal framework of the building, but they in a sense become, a kind of, uh, ornament if you will, although extremely subtle, extremely refined, extremely spare. so in contrast with this idea of, high modernism something changes, in the sixties seventies eighties and nineties. and i'll say from the outset that, the term, that P word, postmodernism, is extremely contested, amongst scholars and critics, art historians, for example, and other theorists. not agreed upon. you know, don't you wish one time i could come in here and just say you know this equals that? wouldn't that be n- what a what a happy world we'd all live in. but no, here i am again. you know, it's a can of worms just like, that big modernism word was a can of worms and so is the avant garde. some theorists have thought about postmodernism, as a kind of radical break from modernism. so a radical shift from, the kind of, sort of stylistic, and theoretical example set by somebody like Mies van der Rohe. others however argue that it's merely a continuation, of modernism. others still a parody, of modernism. but generally speaking there is a kind of recognition that, in the art produced sort of post-sixties, in the visual culture produced post-sixties, a lot of, that work is concerned with articulating, a crisis, a crisis um, that speaks to, sort of questioning the cultural authority, of, the so-called west. of western European culture, and institutions. so a questioning of that kind of authority that we have seen established, uh sort of throughout the twentieth century really. so one critic, wrote in the late seventies, quote <READING> the nineteen seventies has not been just another decade. something did happen. </READING> i'm thinking, disco? <LAUGH> but wait that can't be it, <READING> something so momentous, that it was ignored in disbelief. modernity had gone out of style </READING> end quote. so that sort of gives us, hm, does that mean this is a sort of stylistic shift? a story about changing style, so that we go from, uh a modernism that values, again and go back to your Greenberg right, uh painting about painting let's say the separation of, different kinds of art, and a very sort of narrow definition of what, um, modernist painting modernist architecture should be, and i- is the shift then to something like, the strip, uh a kind of, amalgamation, of, which really in the end, becomes, uh an amalgamation a sort of simulation of, something that didn't really exist an a- a re-created New York City, when in fact that just represents sort of, uh in a very kind of superficial, way the idea of, uh the metropolis, of Manhattan. so let's look at one artist associated uh or excuse me architect... associated with, uh postmodern architecture. this is Robert Venturi. V-E-N-T-U-R-I, Venturi. on the left is his Guild House from Philadelphia early nineteen-sixties, and on the right is a photograph he made with one of his partners, of, the kindler(sic) gentler strip, of Las Vegas, late nineteen-seventies. the strip um, still, all about signs, all about signs and literally, through a sign, through a kind of visual icon in this case textual, instead of the actual shape in terms of you know like a New York New York building, the textual sign of getting your attention right trying to say like come here come here. Star Dust. Gold Key Motel. Shopping Center. loose slots. i mean, what more do you need, to get you to go inside the front doors? so Venturi, along with other architects in the sixties and seventies, instead sorta turns against this very limited vocabulary, of high modernist art architecture, and embraces, the much more pluralistic, and in a sense, pop culture values associated with, a place like Las Vegas. and he publishes along with Denise Scott Brown, a book, called Learning from Las Vegas in the nineteen seventies, in which you know he_ they talk about embracing these lessons of pop ar- architecture. so no longer minding the split, in a sense between, mass culture everyday pop kitsch right, this is how we've thought about it in this class. um, but saying these are all sort of valid vocabularies for architectural practice. it doesn't have to be the all streamlined, form follows function, business of Mies Van der Rohe. that you can incorporate a whole range of styles, uh and not be limited, in that kind of sense. so another example, of this, is this is uh Charles Moore, his Piazza d'Italia f- in New Orleans anyone been here...? the late nineteen seventies as well. and again oftentimes, uh, postmodernism, as it's thought of in terms of a stylistic shift, stylistically it's often characterized as, contradictory. as embracing, parts, from, various different styles historical styles, and so therefore it's often thought of as being kind of schizophrenic right, it's doesn't, present necessarily one point of view, one_ doesn't back one sort of, you know this is my style and i'm gonna go with it i'm gonna t- borrow and take from a whole bunch of different, um, historical, times... so it's very eclectic, uh you get the sense of a pastiche, and certainly of, what we'll see with photography too appropriation. and perhaps for us, in terms of a a pulp- popular culture technique, uh artistic strategy, the idea of appropriation, is, most familiar to us through music, i would think. right how many songs today, uh and really for the last two decades, are actually samples, right, samples from other songs that are then, put together and then sort of given a maybe slightly different vocal, or new beat right sampling very popular you're all familiar with that right? mhm yeah. so we'll see the same kind of strategy architecturally we'll see the same kind of strategy visually, with photography. poor Piazza d'Italia when i was there in um, oh man, it was like early nineties, like a decade ago, uh, it was full of trash, it was so sad there were just huge heaps of literal garbage, all through it and yet, oftentimes it becomes this example of, postmodern architecture i'm i'm pretty sure it's reproduced in the Arnasan Prather book, and here we have Charles Moore who, i think you can get the idea is very playfully engaging with a whole range of architectural styles. right he's got the sort of Vegas neon along the same lines_ well in the same project he's got um, different all sorts of different types of columns, making reference to, ancient architecture to Greek architecture Roman arches, uh etcetera etcetera and even being so self-reflexive and self-referential, that in the little, in the corners of these little arches here, uh are little heads which maybe you can sort of little faces you can perhaps just begin to make out, and those are actual uh based on his own face. ego? so, a very sort of, self-referential practice too where you're constantly sort of calling into question, uh your own ability to, sort of represent, uh in this case, yourself as well as sort of past architectural styles just, globbing them all together... hm. so, in addition i think that we have to think about, the idea of postmodernism, certainly we can see stylistic shifts, but we should also consider, how the world had been changing economically and also politically. so that, beginning in the nineteen-sixties... oftentimes marked as a new, economic era, the sort of era of late capitalism, where really we see uh interpenetration of government and big business to an extent that we hadn't seen before, and i think you can remember back to, Lisa's lecture, uh on Wednesday on the work of Hans Hocka an artist who was i- is explicitly commenting on the interrelationship between, uh government big business and the arts. and politically of course, this is almost in your, within your own memories, uh although not quite, we have, beginning in the sixties uh the, increase of a really radical political landscape, right that sort of starts with student uprisings in Europe and certainly infiltrates, university campuses, uh in the United States, particularly this campus, for example, uh and in nineteen-seventy with the bombings of Cambodia and the killings of students at Kent State University, uh shortly after those, there was the founding i think that you mentioned this, Lisa, the founding of the New York art strike. you didn't mention that? what was the group that uh Hocka was part of?
S4: WAC. [S1: oh. ] worker's arts, worker's artists (coalition) 
S1: that other group. so also, artists mobilizing with sp- sp- specific political, uh intentions and goals, so for example with New York art strike, uh made up of a large group of New York artists and writers and also art dealers, um, some of their actions included sit-ins at the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, and also inside the Whitney and the Guggenheim, uh, the mounting of exhibitions for peace and of course as the seventies, progress our involvement in Vietnam, uh is stepped up and pe- uh, other groups also are fighting for political, social, and artistic enfranchisement. and that increases, and so art also takes on a real, um, serious, uh political edge. <P :04> but first, back to, our old favorites. so, on the left we have the artist, gee i don't know, <LAUGH> Pollock, an- do you remember the title?
SS: Lavender Mist.
S1: Lavender Mist. do you remember the date? nineteen-fifty right that's sort of the date that we have for him. and on the right the artist?
SS: Andy Warhol.
S1: Andy Warhol and, the title?
SS: The Marilyn Diptych
S1: The Marilyn Diptych, sixty-two, and the process?
SS: photo silk-screen
S1: photo silk-screen. so what we have beginning in the sixties, right with an artist like Warhol that we've seen or perhaps, somebody like Rauschenberg, and we've talked about this before, a real revolt, against, the version of modernism that critics like Clement Greenberg had been proponents of. so rather than, a history of modernism as the logical unfolding toward, uh, Jackson Pollock, and abstract expressionism, a group of artists, who were working in very different ways, and continue, uh sort of passed down to other artists in the seventies and eighties, instead wanting to explore the kinds of contradictions and contingencies involved, in art-making in the social world and the political world at the time. so really against this kind of de-politicized version of modernist high art, against the idea of high art, uh as being formally pure, against this idea of purity, against the idea of autonomy, and the desire instead to re-merge art, with life. <P :05> so artists and we've seen this, again we see this with Warhol, taking issue with ideas of originality, with authenticity with autonomy by attacking, the notion_ what's that other A word that we used in relationship to Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction? 
SS: aura.
S1: attacking aura right? we see that pretty clearly with Warhol, in the sense you know i talked about this a little bit with, the Marilyn Monroe and the repetition of her face, both in color and then black and white as it sort of fades out, this idea that there is, uh a kind of unbridgeable distance, from the original. there's no way to get back to the original in the Warhol in a sense because, what are we getting back to but a film-still icon, of, Marilyn Monroe. a kind of self-created, uh studio-created image of the star. so there's this idea of how do you even g- where is the original here? how do you even get back to an original? is there even a possibility of an original in this work? and without the presence of th- of an original, how can there be aura? how does this complicate, uh through photographic reproduction, that idea of Benjamin's of the existence of aura, and how crucial the idea of aura is, uh to understand the kind of value attributed to, the gestural abstract expressionism of a painter like Jackson Pollock? so we- we're seeing this contestation of the uniqueness of the work of art, really intensifying in the past three decades sort of taking off, with artists, in the sixties and continuing to be questioned through different kinds of, uh pictorial strategies, in the seventies eighties and nineties and really, again what better medium to exploit, and explore, uh this idea of, aura and authenticity than, with the photograph? <P :06> so on the left here we have, Sherrie Levine <P :04> After Rodchenko. nineteen-eighty-three. Levine Sherrie Levine After Rodchenko in nineteen eighty-three. Sherrie Levine an artist and this is an example of her work, an artist who, becomes, relatively prominent uh in the nineteen-eighties. and she works... for the most part, with, the pirated print. she's stealing photographs basically, that have already been made by, uh relatively usually canonical artists. Alexander Rodchenko someone you're familiar with for example, or people from, uh artists from the canon of modern photography, Edward Weston would be another example. or Walker Evans who you saw briefly when we talked about F-S-A photographs. After Rodchenko. so she actually takes the print, and, displays it as her own work. she takes them in different ways sometimes she re-photographs sometimes she takes posters... according to, Douglas Crimp who writes about postmodern photography quote <READING> a group of young artists </READING> and he's referring to Levine, <READING> working with photography have addressed photography's claims to originality, showing those claims for the fiction they are. showing photography to be always a re-presentation. always already seen. their images are purloined, confiscated, appropriated, stolen, in their work, the original cannot be located. </READING> so again and you see an artist here, Levine, deconstructing the modernist notion of the original. and you should think about this, and this, a- as being part of a lineage, of art production in the twentieth century, a lineage, starting really with what artist? <P :04> the big D, right? right with Duchamp. so again we shouldn't_ and this can influence how you yourself wanna think about postmodernism h- and how you define it, but here we're picking up, of course practices from, uh much earlier in the twentieth century. but you also wanna think about how they're different right, how, these kinds, how how pirating a a photograph let's say, and showing it sort of as your work, how, that kind of gesture is different what are the different kinds of implications between that, and say, uh taking a urinal and displaying it, under the name uh R Mutt. so appropriation here, uh we can see as being a r- a very key strategy, in postmodern photography. and here again she's questioning as Warhol is, the idea of autonomy she's refusing authorship, and, in that sense dismantling that notion of the unique original, work of art with aura. right how does this have aura anymore? and then what does it mean for it not to? how does this become part of, uh a gallery system for example? how does this become part of the commodity system, part of the art market? so appropriation, as a very key strategy, in, postmodern photographic practice. two other artists we have here on the right, uh is Richter, R-I-C-H-T-E-R... a photo-painting called Betty, it's a it's a painting based on a photograph, and on the right Boltanski B-O i'm just giving you last names B-O-L-T-A-N-S-K-I and again these are taken straight from your, final exam slide list. this is the drawer from nineteen-eighty-eight. so it's a installation right multimedia he's using a photograph, a light and, of course a drawer. <P :04> according to Richter, <READING> i pursue no objectives no system no tendency. i have no program no style no direction. </READING> seems like a bit of a nihilist no? <READING> i have no time for specialized concerns, working themes or variations that lead to mastery. </READING> again mastery is a kind of notion tied up with, high modernism. right with Pollock right that there can be this idea of this uh, well on the one hand this sort of master creator this master genius, and then, with Greenberg in terms of a critical point of view a master reading like one way to read the k- this kind of work. i st- back to Richter, <READING> i steer clear of definitions, i don't know what i want. </READING> oh isn't that so true for most of us. <READING> i am inconsistent noncommittal passive. i like the indefinite the boundless, i like continual uncertainty. </READING> so certainly voicing a lot of, uh, the kinds of concerns in a sense of, some artists associated with postmodernism right instead of, being like sort of heroic, um, you know modernist, uh artist, here is a trace of my genius, uh taking a much different approach, uh philosophically towards his own artistic production. i steer clear of definitions i don't even know what i want i'm inconsistent, you know i take from a lot of different sources i create a lot of different kinds of work, and in fact he's an artist that ranges from, a kind of photo-realism, in this painting based on a photograph, to complete sort of abstract paintings. this portrait in particular, on the left is made of his teenage daughter, Betty again based on a photograph, and, we can make comparisons between, this work and the Boltanski on the right and how they're using the photograph, uh in a sense, on the one hand to recall, uh, how oftentimes we think of the photograph, particularly the photograph of a person functioning, right to record individual characteristics to give us a document of that person a kind of map, of that person's individual face, and and, the features that describe that individual person but they're subverting that right, th- that practice, Richter is, because her head's turned, so we don't get her face, we get the back of her head instead, and furthermore he's blurred, the edges slightly so the painting, has this strange quality, of being on the one hand, uh sort of based in, a kind of photo-realism on the other hand, we're denied access to her face and we're also given, a_ th- the really sort of blurred, edge, so that you get the question of you can't really necessarily define, with any specificity, the subject through image-making, through photography, nor through the painting, based on the photograph. Boltanski, and what i'll do is i'll forward to another one of his works on the left. this is another work by Boltanski, Monu- uh, called Monuments, also referred to, as the t- Children of Dijon, made from the mid-eighties, Boltanski often in his multi-media installations uses, uh anonymous photographs and, places them, in a really kind of poignant, way with light directed, onto their surfaces, but with the example of drawer on the right, we get this idea again of this, portrait, right this close-up of a face, uh that maybe reminds you of, i don't know a high school yearbook photograph maybe a yearbook, college yearbook photograph, on the other hand it's so, blurred that the actual identity of the person is obscured. so again y- he's playing around with this idea of photographic truthfulness. and then it's furthermore ob- obscured at the same time, it's highlighted, by, the placement of this light fixture which on the one hand literally like bars your vision, right you can't see the center of the image because it's being blocked by this light. at the same time it's actually illuminating the rest of the image, so this constant sort of tension between revealing, using the photograph to sort of reveal the speci- uh the specificity of identity, at the same time sort of denying you access, to that actual individual. so it becomes this just sort of implied presence, instead, also in the Monuments on the left, uh, as you can see very small, individual, portraits, some smiling, some sort of more passive, and strewn in between them, uh these lights, and some of his work including the Monuments on the left, is making reference to, uh, pre-war Jewish children, uh school photographs that had been taken of children who of course never returned to their schools after the Second World War. so you get this again this idea of photography on the one hand of, evoking a kind of anonymity, but one that speaks potentially for, you know millions of millions of of specific, lives extinguished, lost, uh extinguished but as he's sort of recalling them, uh, through the individual sort of lights placed around, the photograph so they become and you can see this is sort of in a kind of church setting, uh ironically, they become, really evocative of, again lost presence. <P :05> i wanna show you one other artist, two other artists on the left is Patrick Nagatani. N-A-G-A-T-A-N-I. Nagatani and this is his National Atomic Museum, Kirtland Air Force Base nineteen-eighty-nine color photograph. on the right, uh an image by Jeff Wall, W-A-L-L, called stumbling block from nineteen-ninety-one. color transparency, light and display case. now, we've seen artists who are using a- the appropriated image right, who are taking already made images and incorporating them into their work. here are two examples of artists who instead... instead create a very self-consciously composed, manipulated and fictionalized image. so use photography, as a kind of basis to create a whole, tableau kind of almost stage set, and again this too calls into question the truthfulness of the photographic image, and the kind of fiction, that uh photographs often, construct. so they're using the apparent truthfulness of photography sort of against itself. an artist like Jeff Wall is gonna create, uh these tableaus these sort of scenes of drama this sort of slice of narrative, uh blow them up alter them computerly_ uh with a computer, blow them up, backlight them, they're transparencies that are then backlit, um, and according to Wall they exist in quote unquote the grey area between the theatrical and the real. so that's the image on the right. Nagatani on the left, he uses photographs generally speaking as backdrops in a sense, so this, Kirtland Air Force Base, is, a black-and-white photograph that he's taken, then he goes back to his studio, uh he blows the image up, usually it's a sort of over life-size put its in th- pu- puts it in the back of a studio, and then starts to layer, other images, and painting over that original photograph. um so here's he's obviously painted a lot of the backdrop red, he's taken photographs these are actually family members though that's not necessarily relevant, uh made photographs of them, uh enlarged them, made them into sort of cudb- cardboard cutouts cut them out, and then hung them in the space of his studio so can you, you maybe can start to make out, can you see these thin lines going down? these are holding up the sort of cardboard cutouts of his, family, that have been, you know costume dressed in kimonos, eating sushi, and then he himself, sort of at a last second, this is the artist Nagatani inserts himself physically into the image, and then the work of art is a photograph then taken, of the entire tableau. so it becomes reinterpreted it sort of starts with a photograph, and it ends with a photograph but in between, there are multiple layers of different kinds of artistic gesture, including painting other photography he'll build models and hang them from the, the top of the studio. uh, and as you can see here, this is part of a larger body of work, called nuclear enchantment in which he's dealing with, in particular the nuclear history, of the state of New Mexico where he lives. and, i think maybe you can make out, in the reflection, this is actually his mother, Diane in the reflection of her sunglasses, Aaron, who's in the front? can you see what's in the reflection of her sunglasses? can you see in the front? a mushroom cloud. right so the idea is she's looking off into the distance, and seeing the effects of i- of an explosion of a nuclear, bomb. <P :05> so again this idea of, uh using photography as a piece, in a sense, uh to create this kind of fictional, tableau. i wanna show you one other work, by Nagatani, uh... this is called Japanese American Concentration Camps, Manzanar, nineteen-ninety four, a color photograph. and, so this is late eighties this is sort of mid-nineties on the right-hand side. so in this work on the left with i- with his nuclear enchantment series he's working, very much in the kind of, of vocabulary that is often associated with postmodernism. um, this idea of, on the one hand, uh appropriation but the different layering of different kinds of artistic, gesture, a- and technique building models and creating this whole sort of fictionalized tableau. but on the right-hand side in this work, he instead is using, unmanipulated color landscape, images and this becomes part of another series another portfolio, called uh Japanese American Concentration Camps and, just briefly, to mention, uh the sort of background behind this piece, his um parents who you see here, and there, during World War Two had been incarcerated in internment camps, uh, his father in Arkansas and his mother in Manzanar in California. and, along with, basically the rest of the population of Japanese descent along the west coast of the United States. this is after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. and Nagatani (who) grew up not knowing or hearing very much about, this experience of incarceration, he was born just after the war, decided in the nineties to s- go back to these sites, and photograph the remains of these camps decided to make a kind of connection to, this experience of i- of not only his parents but of, uh Japanese Americans in this country a really sort of, uh, incredibly important, experience and so he goes back to those sites and you can see, in the image on the right, Manzanar's located in southern California, maybe some of you have been there it's it_ you can go visit it now. it's about two hundred and fifty miles northeast of Los Angeles. and in the background you can see really dramatic mountains in the foreground, these stone steps um and if you go there you see a lot of, sort of ruins of remains of, the incarcerated population who was held there in the nineteen forties, uh including his mother. so, these idea this these ruined steps that i- that lead really to nowhere, right, so you get this kind of eerie um, idea of of this past crime this sort of past, purpose that this land was put to. and again, it's a ver- stylistically very different practice than what's going on, in his earlier work on, the left but, i don't think we need to think about postmodernism again the trap is to think about i- about it purely in sort of stylistic terms, and instead i think we need to open it up and think a little bit, about more, uh in terms of meaning and in terms of content in terms of purpose. so with the image on the right and with that body of work he seems to be coming, trying to come to terms, with this certain, uh traumatic event of the past. um as in a sense he's doing with the nuclear history of New Mexico as Boltanski is doing, in, the work that we saw, just a couple slides before. and at the same time he's also, Nagatani on the right in particular, is focusing, uh although it seems, maybe not so overtly because he's using landscape but really focusing on the politics, of identity. right of looking back into his past, uh and into the past of all, uh Japanese Americans in this country, and this kind of shared, uh traumatic experience that they endured during the Second World War. djuum. i'm sure you all know her. i'm sure you all know her well here we have Cindy Sherman. Cindy Sherman one of the most uh, well-known artists, who really comes to prominence in the nineteen-eighties, these are two of her un- untitled film stills, from the late seventies. two untitled film stills from the late seventies. and we see here, and as we'll continue, um, next week, we'll look a little bit, at Sherman at, uh, other, women artists in the eighties Barbara Kruger Lorna Simpson, and the Gorilla Girls and we'll think about how, these strategies of, photographic appropriation, and the construction of, the tableau the sort of fictionalized photograph, how those these artists in particular are using these strategies to on the one hand, again comment on the politics of identity, but also do so particularly on, the role and the representation of women. so have an excellent weekend and i'll see you on Monday.
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