JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME: History Painter Part One Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) was on the wrong side of history. Many people have been on the wrong side of history, and, like the segregationist Senator, Strom Thurmond, they deserve to stay there. However, art history is...
JEAN BAUDRILLARD (1929-2007) Simulacra and Simulations (1988) “The Precession of the Simulacra” (1981) As the Bible once stated, The simulacrum is never that/Which conceals the truth—it is/The truth which conceals that/There is none./The...
The Différend (1983) as “The Postmodern Condition, Part Two” Defining the Différend Although Le Différend was the natural outcome of The Postmodern Condition, this book is also an overt return to politics and a reassertion of a life-long concern with...
RE-DEFINING ART AS TEXT in the POSTMODERN ERA Postmodernism promises endless creative play in contrast to Modernism, which, according to Roland Barthes (1916-1980), was a fraudulent attempt to find the universal in every solution. For Barthes, Structuralism, or the...
POSTMODERNISM AND HETEROGLOSSIA PART TWO Hybridity and Pluralism In her 1966 essay, “Word, Dialogue and Novel,” Julia Kristeva (1941-) privileged the term “Text,” insisting that the subject is composed of discourses, created by a signifying system. The...
