Trapnest, Jencks

Jencks’ proposal of “canons” or rules that we have enforced upon the art world is interesting. I feel that these rules often occur after the fact, as Jencks point out with the “seemingly spontaneous” art movements of the recent centuries after we have observed them it seems natural for them to implement our own rules to apply to them. Then it is through these rules that we apply as an outside force that we attempt to understand the movements. Not only do we attempt to use this as a means for understanding the movement, but we then attempt to further apply and teach said rules to future students and enthusiasts. In a way, this reminds me of tmesis in that we are taking a text, the postmodern art, and as we’re reading it we “edit” it and begin to apply our own thought to it.

As I was reading all of the canons things like anthropomorphism stuck out to me, things done by the artist to resemble human features, or the concept of suggestive narrative within the artwork. All of this combines and seems to me that rather than things being created simply for the art of creating something, the texts must have a story. They must be double-coded (which I understand as “reading between the lines” to put it in layman’s terms), involve rhetorical figures (renewing previous ideas through stylistic choices of aspects of the work) and so fourth. And, perhaps that is the argument of postmodernism in art and architecture. I personally see it as simply a way to begin to obscure and define things that don’t necessarily need a definition. Art initially was created for very specific purposes, religion, gentry, ect. However, there was a point in Art History where Artists gained an independence and personal worth in their craft, which I feel is a very important point in history. To keep attempting to define every movement of the pen, every stroke of the brush, is near insult to many of the artists seeking independence from previous notions of confinement and definition in what art is.