" LET US WAGE WAR ON TOTALITY; LET US BE WITNESSES TO THE UNPRESENTABLE; LET US ACTIVATE THE DIFFERENCES AND SAVE THE HONOR OF THE NAME"

I'm going to tell a story. Hopefully the story should explain itself. Having the possibility that it won't, after the story I'll give an explanation as to how it relates to Lyotard.

It's summer of 2003 and I'm visiting New York City for the bagillionth time, but the first time in matters of life importance. I've just finished my freshman year of high school and everything is nouveaux rebellion for me, what's new, what's life, what's different? The city feels different on this trip, the museums seem different, even the city buses smell different in the most exhilarating of ways. On the particular day of which I speak, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art solely for the purpose of the Chanel exhibit in the Basement (where they had recently started doing fashion-oriented exhibits, which are marvelous if you should ever get the chance). I had been to the Met and to other famous museums dozens of times over- I had seen Monet, Van Gogh, Dali, Rembrandt, the likes. Strolling through these art sections meant nothing much to me anymore for I had studied them I had learned from them...I was tired of them. Being so, I decided to explore the Contemporary Art museum for the first time in my life and was aesthetically changed.

As in any Contemporary Art exhibit there are things that don't...make sense. Well, they didn't then at least. Exhibits containing chairs and trash cans and running video, pieces that looked like exploding vomit- most notably for me, a series of solid color canvases hanging on a wall meant to resemble a xylophone. I had one main question and disappointment running through my frustrated nerves: WHY? Why a blank canvas with two colored stripes? Why a canvas with nothing on it but PlaySkool Pink (I didn't realize then what a time-space issue it was aside from lack of knowledge concerning postmodernism)? I was growing increasingly frustrated and further conservative in my aesthetic values when I turned my vision from one wall and landed it upon a Pollock.

Most unfortunately, I don't remember which piece it was. It was big and splattered, but those are no defining qualities when it comes to the work of postmodern artist Jackson Pollock. I would like to say it was Lavender Mist, but only because that piece is my favorite of his. If you haven't seen a Pollock before, you cannot possibly understand the magnitude of what it is. First of all, it is superbly large. Most of us wouldn't be able to fit one into a dorm room or a chapter room for that matter- they most certainly make you feel small. Second of all, they are chaotic: layers upon layers of splatter and dribble and color and texture and continuity and discontinuity and most importantly- unknown- unknown that evokes...something. And that is all that mattered for me. I went quite quickly from being disgruntled to being in awe. I stood in front of that monstrosity of anything-ness and couldn't tear my eyes away, which were slowly streaking my cheeks with tears. The Contemporary Art Section suddenly made a bit of insensible sense- the art didn't have to make sense, it didn't have to mean anything, it didn't have to correspond to the likes of what I considered 'art'- it simply had to evoke. I was overwhelmed, I was confused, I was inspired, I was lost and found at the same time. I didn't understand Pollock at that moment and to this day, after many projects and papers of research about him, I refuse to understand Pollock entirely for that would defeat the purpose of his art or furthermore defeat the purpose of postmodernism.

After reading Lyotard, this experience of mine makes more sense. Really, the xylophone makes sense, the exploding vomit makes sense. Lyotard discusses that 'modern' is the art devoted to present the fact that the unpresentable exists. I would say that postmodern, then, is the art that interprets the unpresentable. A lot of art critics call this abstraction. Lyotard calls abstraction a negative presentation. Lyotard also asks us, "But how to make visible that there is something which cannot be seen?" I answer him "With our eyes open". The Sublime concepts that Lyotard discusses (pleasure and pain) is like understanding Modern Art or Contemporary Art: there is no pleasure from prior knowledge for their are no objects attached to the concepts, there is pain from going beyond these conventions and opening your eyes to a greater acceptance, a greater emotion perhaps or interpretation. We must all be avant-gardes who "devote themselves to making an allusion to the unrepresentable by means of visible presentations".

Let us then 'wage war on totality' and be 'witnesses to the unpresentable'. Let us open our eyes. Let us be evoked.