I have chosen 3 pieces by one artist to analyze - the artist is Rene Magritte (names of pieces and artist found here.)
The pieces are entitled "The Son of Man," "L'Homme au Chapeau Melon," and "La Chef d'Oeuvre ou les Mysteres."
All three images depict what is apparently a self-portrait of Magritte, none of them showing the full face and all of them in the same attire.
One thing that I immediately noticed when I found these images was the similarities between the three. In postmodernism, artists often do not believe that there can be total originality in art, and although Magritte's ideas may not be from other artists' work, he certainly replicates things throughout his own paintings. The hat in all three paintings is the same, as well as the black suit jacket (the tie however, changes color and is sometimes not visible). The paintings also lack something similar - the full face of Magritte. In one ("The Son of Man") it is blocked by an apple, in another by a bird ("L'Homme au Chapeau Melon"), and in the last we see the back of his head twice and a profile view ("La Chef d'Oeuvre ou les Mysteres"). Although it could be argued that the profile view disrupts this chain, I believe that it is rather difficult to know what someone will look like from a straight-on view based on the view of their profile sometimes.
I also noticed the traditional painting style Magritte uses that most would use for a still life - his paintings are very smooth and the colors are, for the most part, fairly realistic. However, rather than having an apple sit on a table, Magritte takes an old idea and puts it into a new context; the apple is floating in front of his face ("The Son of Man"). Similarly, in "L'Homme au Chapeau Melon," a bird that would usually placed up in the sky above a person's head just happens to be flying directly in front of his face. Although nothing is floating in his face in "La Chef d'Oeuvre ou les Mysteres," Magritte still takes an unoriginal idea - a landscape under moonlight or a person walking in the moonlight - and puts a new spin on it; there are three moons and three of the same people.
Those were the biggest postmodern ideas that I found in Magritte's art. The images are below.
Adios, amigos.
-Cati
The Son of Man
L'Homme au Chapeau Melon
La Chef d'Oeuvre ou les Mysteres
(All images linked back to source - AllPosters.com)
I think this is an interesting, yet problematic, choice. As we discussed in class, the boundary between modernism and postmodernism is vague and sometimes confusing. I can see how you are finding postmodern issues in this work, though Magritte and most Surrealists would typically be considered modernists, and they shared a modernist belief in science (specifically Freudian psychology) and progress. However, in many ways they don't fit with the concerns of canonical Modernism - certainly Clement Greenberg didn't believe they counted - and many postmodern works owe a debt to Surrealism. While postmodern artists are concerned, as you address here, with the critique of originality, or the belief that nothing new can be done, I am not sure that all artists who work in series are necessarily making that point. An interesting irony in these works is that in a Freudian reading they can be seen as exploring the artist's unconscious mind, and therefore very much about an interest in the individual self - but the figure seems so undifferentiated as to not depict a specific self.
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