#posmodernism

[vintagemanhattanskyline]

The 41-story IBM Building. 590 Madison Avenue west side between 56th to 57th streets. Edward Larrabee Barnes, John M Y Lee, Armand P Avakian, Architects.1979-1983.

View looking east of the new IBM Building from 57th Street, near Fifth Avenue Summer, 1983.

Photo: Unknown.

Source: Huxtable, Ada Louise. “The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style” (New York, Pantheon Books, 1984).

[glassribbon]

Byung-Chul Han, “Profound boredoom”, from The Burnout Society

[ariversss]

郊外の明るい柱 - Light Poles In The Suburbs - Postes de luz en los suburbios

[sumpix]

Postmodernism and the Long Arm of Marx

These disciplines draw their philosophy from multiple sources. All are heavily influenced by the Marxist humanists. One such figure is Max Horkheimer, who developed critical theory in the 1930s. Any brief summary of his ideas is bound to be oversimplified, but Horkheimer regarded himself as a Marxist. He believed that Western principles of individual freedom or the free market were merely masks that served to disguise the true conditions of the West: inequality, domination and exploitation. He believed that intellectual activity should be devoted to social change, instead of mere understanding, and hoped to emancipate humanity from its enslavement. Horkheimer and his Frankfurt School of associated thinkers— first, in Germany and later, in the US— aimed at a full-scale critique and transformation of Western civilization.

More important in recent years has been the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, leader of the postmodernists, who came into vogue in the late 1970s. Derrida described his own ideas as a radicalized form of Marxism. Marx attempted to reduce history and society to economics, considering culture the oppression of the poor by the rich. When Marxism was put into practice in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere, economic resources were brutally redistributed. Private property was eliminated, and rural people forcibly collectivized. The result? Tens of millions of people died. Hundreds of millions more were subject to oppression rivalling that still operative in North Korea, the last classic communist holdout. The resulting economic systems were corrupt and unsustainable. The world entered a prolonged and extremely dangerous cold war. The citizens of those societies lived the life of the lie, betraying their families, informing on their neighbours— existing in misery, without complaint (or else).

Marxist ideas were very attractive to intellectual utopians. One of the primary architects of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, Khieu Samphan, received a doctorate at the Sorbonne before he became the nominal head of Cambodia in the mid-1970s. In his doctoral thesis, written in 1959, he argued that the work done by non-farmers in Cambodia’s cities was unproductive: bankers, bureaucrats and businessmen added nothing to society. Instead, they parasitized the genuine value produced through agriculture, small industry and craft. Samphan’s ideas were favourably looked upon by the French intellectuals who granted him his Ph.D. Back in Cambodia, he was provided with the opportunity to put his theories into practice. The Khmer Rouge evacuated Cambodia’s cities, drove all the inhabitants into the countryside, closed the banks, banned the use of currency, and destroyed all the markets. A quarter of the Cambodian population were worked to death in the countryside, in the killing fields.

Jordan B. Peterson. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (306-307). Penguin Books Ltd.  

[sylokpro]

“Minstrel”, by Sylok. === #sylokpro #ipadart #contemporaryart #digitalart #digitaldesign #digitaldrawing #bpa_arts #editgrammer #eg_vipmember #eg_member #artistsoninstagram #visualquotation #watteau #superedit #modernart #drawing #sketchclub #instagram #icolorama #sketch #bpa_membersonly #bpa_arts_members #artistsontumblr #artillustration #gestual #doodle #loosestyle #artofdrawing #artofdraw #posmodernism #posmodern #relecture #rococo (em São Paulo, Brazil)

[marianagaleanol-blog]

| Universo holograma |

[felipecortez16]

El amor es histórico y siempre es simbólico. Existe como imaginario, como literatura, como ideología, como normas, como política. Como cada quien realiza el amor dependerá del momento de la historia que vive y de sus condiciones de vida. Aprendemos ideologías amorosas, aprendemos los contenidos específicos del amor a través de los mandatos, de normas, de creencias. Al vivir, cada persona trata de realizar el amor ideológicamente aprendido. En la realidad, la mayoría vive frustraciones amorosas, porque casi nunca podemos realizar el imaginario amoroso al que estamos vinculadas.

Claves Feministas Para la Negociación en el Amor; Marcela Lagarde

[vintagemanhattanskyline]

Afternoon view looking north of Times Square (at the time of its redevelopment), from 44th Street. Circa, 1994.

Photo: Alfred Mainzer, Inc.