Pages. 640-648

The term "postmodernism" still brings confusion even after the readings and class analysis on the subject, perhaps due to its complexity and how there are sub-genres under the "postmodernism" title. Neoconservative postmodernism is still confusing to me so if anyone would like to comment and shed light on the subject, that would be greatly appreciated. Julian Schnabel's Exile still proves to bring me confusion regardless of how many times I re-read the text on the piece. Of these two sections, what I truly can understand is the Pop and Minimalism era. The obsession with objects and products and how they are taking over our lives and how we see the world. My favorite of these pieces is in Allan McCollum's Surrogate Paintings with multiple frames in different sizes and colors speaking to the excessive amount of products we have that are all too similar and essentially provide the same usefulness, but are slightly different in size and color. I love the pop art era because it speaks so loudly to the excessive commercialism in society, which still exists to this day but emerges to be so prevalent in society in the 1980's. We become so quickly obsessed with "stuff" and I love the way the artists speak about this phenomena in such a critical way. The artwork at first glance isn't anything too critical, but when you look at the meaning in depth everything about this era is criticizing of society as a whole. What I also love about this era is the extreme shift from a critique to the institution to society as a whole, and realizing the crisis at hand isn't an institutional one but a societal crisis.