Teets, Jencks

Charles Jencks highlights eleven “canons” that lie behind the new art and architecture. He begins by talking about dissonant beauty, or disharmonious harmony. “From a pluralist society… we find an oversimple harmony false or unchallenging. Instead, the juxtaposition of tastes and world-views is appreciated as being more real than the integrated languages of both Exclusionist Classicism and High Modernism” (282). With all the various world views and different cultures, dissonant harmony in art is something considered postmodern. People of many different backgrounds can appreciate a work of art because it is not constructed for just one type of people. “Significantly it appeals to different tastes and ages” (282). I would compare this concept to reality television shows, in which they try to cast the most diverse group of people. They cast some whites, some minorities, some gay people, some crazy people, etc, so they can draw in a more eclectic crowd. This makes perfect sense because in American society today people get bored very easily. If there is something we can view in many different ways, it has more longevity. It will remain interesting longer than a one-dimensional work of art or show, in a sense.


This notion of eclecticism is something Jencks considers a canon as well. “As strong a rule as ‘disharmonious harmony’, and one which justifies it, is pluralism… In architecture, the stylistic counterpart of pluralism is radical eclecticism – the mixing of different languages to engage different taste cultures and define different functions according to their appropriate mood” (282-283). This concept of radical eclecticism is essentially what I just talked about. A work of architecture can function well in society if it has this sort of disharmonious harmony, a collection of countering world-views. It is what makes the work postmodern and interesting. Art has changed a lot over the years, and this seems to be a popular theme. This is the same reason you see music artists trying to blend different genres into one. Performing a trope at its tropiest is no longer interesting. In order to be considered interesting, an art form must be different and function through disharmony. Disharmony makes the audience stop and think for a second. It generates more thought process to produce, but also to observe.