I found Jameson’s discussion on Warhol and Van Gogh particularly enlightening in illustrating the fundamentally distinct features of the modernism and postmodernism. In Van Gogh’s work, we are connected to a particular moment in history; these peasant shoes are tied to the marginalized peasant, and its work is to compensate for this misery by creating a Utopia in the artwork. The art work is also said to exist between the meaningless physical realm and the social and historical realm where we assign meaning, the space between “the earth and the world”—where it comes into material existence in its own right as visual pleasure. These views of the work are called “hermeneutical”—a term which I interpreted as similar to a ‘representational view’—that this work simply reveals to us an illustration of ‘truth’, it replaces the ‘vaster reality’ with a distorted/accurate representation.

In examining Warhol, we find that his work does not recall a unique moment—it could represent any number of situations from piles of shoes at a concentration camp or an arrangement at a department window. We cannot connect it to any context. This discussion is reminiscent of Benjamin’s assertion about the loss of the aura in the age of mechanical reproduction. When art objects had a ritualistic value, this value was tied to a particular context; it had a unique place in time and space.

In trying to grasp Jameson’s discussion of the constituititive features of postmodernism through his comparison of Van Gogh’s “Pair of Boots” and Warhol’s “Diamond Shoes”, I also ran into a professor’s web site which conveniently lays side by side works of the modern and the postmodern, including the aforementioned works.

Here is the URL:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://people.ucsc.edu/~sbrownle/...

On the website, we find Warhol’s ‘Marilyn Monroe’ contrasted to an earlier Modernist work by Egon Schiele, ‘Scornful Woman’ (1910). I found these two images especially helpful to demonstrate the ‘waning of affect’ in postmodernism. As Jameson points out, the waning of affect is most obvious in Warhol’s depiction of his human subjects, celebrities, for these stars are themselves are commodities in the postmodern era. In Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, the celebrity’s image is literally reproduced; each representation of the star nearly identical to the one adjacent to it—a reference to the reproduction of her image (in films) as a commodity in popular culture. In contrast to “The Scream”, we do not feel a particular externalization of an emotion by Monroe. Perhaps it is because we are aware that this image comes from a film still—we are aware that Monroe is acting after all, not really feeling anything “real”, only representing. In contrast, Schiele’s work seems to function in the same way that “The Scream” does—this woman is externalizing an emotion—scornfulness.

Interestingly enough, the Warhol image also illustrates an earlier discussion of photography. In “Diamond Dust Shoes”, Jameson points out that the style of this work refers to a surface being pulled back to reveal a black and white photographic negative. Here, in ‘Marilyn Monroe, he again uses the effect of a photographic negative to reveal death. The series of portraits were done after the star’s death, and the fading black and white photographs on the right panel suggest the death of the celebrity.

I guess I’m also just curious about whether anyone would like to comment on these images, especially those who were interested in architecture.