Jean-François Lyotard, “Answering The Question: What Is Postmodernism?"

Jean-François Lyotard born in 1924 was a French philosopher and literary theorist, best known for his highly influential writings on postmodernism and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition.

Within ‘The Post Modern Condition’ Lyotard suggests that ‘photography did not appear as a challenge to painting... any more than industrial cinema did to narrative literature’(74). I share this opinion in that photography is not a threat to painting, alike cinema to creative writing, simply because they are different artistic mediums. One medium cannot ‘challenge’ another medium as each has different materials, processes, and techniques, and therefore produces an entirely different aesthetic, which can logically not be compared fairly against the other.

Lyotard continues to discuss this presupposed challenge in relation to time and efficiency, suggesting ‘the challenge lay essentially in that photographic and cinematographic processes can accomplish better, faster, and with a circulation a hundred times larger than narrative or pictorial realism’(74). I would also agree with Lyotard that photographic and cinematographic processes can produce faster results and can be dispersed more rapidly to an audience, because of their technically advanced quality in comparison to more traditional processes such as painting and literature. For example, a film can illustrate an entire narrative within minutes yet a book with the same narrative may take hours to conceive. However, when considering a work of art, ‘faster’ may not always be a positive attribute. Sometimes the awe and admiration of an artwork can be the length of time injected into a piece, its essence revealed in the countless hours dedicated to the artistic endeavour. Such as art works that have obsessive qualities and repetitive actions, although a machine could have achieved the same results and in half the time, it would produce entirely different readings and would not carry the same potency.

Furthermore Lyotard states ‘that the mechanical and industrial should appear as substitutes for hand or craft was not in itself a disaster – except if one believes that art is in its essence of an individuality of genius assisted by an elite craftsmanship’(74). This solely relies upon personal preference. Would one favour the hand-made product or the same industrial made product? Personally, there is something more persuasive in an artwork that exhibits human touch which is superior to me over mechanical processes.

However, I do not disregard professional assistance or the use of industrial processes to create an artwork if this is the aesthetic the artist wants to achieve, or perhaps the using of industrial processes is part of their concept. As ultimately the plans of the artwork are still created by the artist, despite the actual execution.
Walter Benjamin is his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of the Mechanical Production’ states ‘Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes’(Benjamin, 50). Artists began to make use of mechanical and industrial processes which became an integral part of their practice and concepts.
Such as Minimalist artists who employed industrial processes to remove the hand of the artist in order to create more immediacy; they challenged this conception that an artist must personally manufacture a work of art.




References:

Jean-François Lyotard, “Answering The Question: What Is Postmodernism?”, trans. Régis Durand, in The Post Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp.71-82.

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, reprinted in Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner ed.s, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, Oxford: Blackwell, 2001, pp.48-70.