Exhibit of ‘Post-Ironic Lull’ artwork, panel discussion this weekend
By American staff
This weekend Phil Robinson, associate professor of art and art history at
University of Missouri-St. Louis, will join his UMSL colleages, the artist Gred Edmondson and the art historian Minsoo Kang, in declaring the death of an art historical movement, namely, postmodernism.
Robinson was the lead artist in organizing “Post-Ironic Lull,” a multi-media art exhibit that takes its title and point of departure from an essay by Kang, “The Death of the Postmodern and the Post-Ironic Lull.” Kang begins by noting that artists and intellectual oberservers have been in essence waiting around for postmodernism to die and another movement to take its place so long that this waiting itself deserves to be accepted as a subsequent movement, which he dubs the “Post-Ironic Lull.”
“Scholars in forward-thinking fields have been mulling over the lull and
waiting for its end with the arrival of a new system or methodology, not
realizing that this mulling and waiting are what defines our age, our
intellectual scene,” Kang writes.
Obviously having fun with his argument, Kang claims that postmodernism died on June 18, 1993, when the Arnold Schwarzenegger film The
Last Action Hero premiered.
“Its status as a postmodern artifact is heightened by the very fact that
its fame rests on its failure rather than its content,” Kang writes of the film. “And in the U.S., there’s no surer sign of an intellectual idea’s final demise than its total appropriation by mass culture.”
There is plenty of playfulness in the essay by Mang and the art exhibit Robinson helped to organize (and which features a great deal of his own work). This befits an attempt to topple postmodernism, which has itself been marked by the spirit of play and irreverence, in contrast to the more sober aesthetic that preceded it, modernism.
While the postmodern attitude was predominantly ironic, critical and
experimental, the post-ironic lull is positioned by being suspenseful,
tentative and anticipatory.
Following the ideas laid out by Kang, assistant professor of
history at UMSL, the artists featured in the exhibit will both mourn and celebrate the end of the postmodern period by exhibiting artwork associated with the Post-Ironic Lull.
Robinson brings a fascinating resume to this show. Born on the South Side of Chicago, he first came to St. Louis as a Des Lee endowed professor at Washington University, a position that includes a solo show at the Saint Louis Art Museum, the highest local art accolade available.
His past work has involved controversial investigations of racist imagery. One brilliant example were his “Jungle Bunnies,” which were casts of chocolate Easter bunnies with jungle patterns on their surfaces and sporting gold teeth. His colleague Edmondson remembered one show where Robinson played “Bigotry Bowling” by lining up these Jungle Bunnies as pins and knocking them down with a bowling ball inscribed with every racial epithet members of the crowd could conjure.
Other artists participating in the show include Edmondson, Mike Behle, Mike Cosgrove, Sharon Callner, Stephen M. DaLay, Gina Willard, Roberto C. Buitron, John A. Werner, Martine Stucky and Robert Goetz.
“Post-Ironic Lull” will show at UMSL Galaxy, 1227 Washington Ave., through Dec. 10. Hours are 2 to 7 p.m. Saturdays. It is free and open to the public. A reception for the artists will take place at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2 at the UMSL Galaxy. Kang will lead a panel discussion at noon Dec. 3 at the gallery.
Among those taking part in the panel discussion about the Post-Ironic
Lull will be: Bruce Clarke, professor of English at Texas Tech
University in Lubbock; Jeffrey Hughes, professor of art history and
criticism at Webster University in Webster Groves, Mo.; and Chris King, editorial director of The St. Louis American.
UMSL Galaxy is located in the former Galaxy nightclub space in downtown
St. Louis. The site was renovated as an art gallery in May by UMSL
students. Call (314) 516-6967 for more information.
