Examples Of Postmodernism In Fashion

Divine uses females clothing and beauty products in order to look like a woman; because in Pink Flamingos “(g)ender is made visible through the appropriation of highly gendered conventions for fashion and beauty” (Medock 213). In the film, Divine’s original gender is not revealed she is a female, a friend, and a mother, for this reason, the film “is thought to promote transgressive politics through the emergence of a humorous and provocative trash cinema which questions society’s gender roles” (Nunes 2).. According to Butler, There is no original sexual identity that men and women ought to perform: “we perform masculinity or femininity, heterosexuality or homosexuality according to a script already written as the cultural conventions of our society” (1993btlr 3). Furthermore, femininity and masculinity are associated with “certain bodies, dress codes, and behaviors”, but those are only “performances” learned from society and the reason they appear natural is because they have been repeated frequently, so they came to be seen as the norm. The aspect of gender performance is more apparent in drag shows because drug cannot be assigned to a “singular identity”, by displaying transgressive identities drag “reflects on the imitative structure of gender ” disclaiming and mocking heterosexuality´s views of “naturalness and originality” Butler, Bodies that Matter, 1993).

What he means is that one’s sex derives from one’s reproductive organs and genital configurations , whereas gender refers to the amount of stereotypical femininity and masculinity a person exhibits. Gayle Rubin, for instance, uses the term ‘sex/gender system’ in order to describe “a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention” (1975, 165). To inhibit one’s gender means having to learn behaviour, manners, gestures and attitudes that our culture deems appropriate to each sex. It is through learning these patterns that we become socialized and gendered, moving from our individual anatomical sex (being male or female) to a processed social product (behaving as a man or woman). From the social and cultural expectations for a man and the manner and degree to which he acknowledges and lives up to them we derive the concept of masculinity; those applicable to a woman, together with her compliance with them, we think of as femininity.

Richard Tuttle began his career with a strong influence from the Betty Parson and the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. One of his earliest works, Light Pink Octagon, exhibits this influence for a new art form not necessarily made to be understood completely in a symbolic or emotional aspect. During the 1960’, when this piece of art was completed, a new root from expressionism emerged to further challenge the boundaries that artists constantly fought to expand. Tuttle forced critics and viewers towards the eradication of such boundaries and humbly demanded an open mind for the acceptance of art in its simplest and purest form. Minimalism sought to emphasize attention to the physical properties of space and materials as being the artwork

The postmodernism approach analyzes both culture, and history, through critiques such as Marxism and psychoanalysis. The concept focuses on cultural representations exhibited through media, and the complications of our experiences of reality. Postmodernism also challenges traditional iterations of subjectivity as well as identity. It mainly functions to divide the bar between high art and popular culture. It may be drawn out and difficult to understand, but audiences accept the legitimacy of popular culture along with the pleasure it provides.

Poe describes: “The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. (…) But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His gesture was dabbled in blood – his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.” (433) Therefore, the guest Poe has described represented the Red Death itself. Since at the beginning, Poe has also stated that: “Blood was its avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of blood.

The topic I would like to introduce is Surrealism/ Surrealistic/ Surreal imagery and the significance of its movement and how it influenced many artist all over the globe in the past and still is today. My understanding of this style of art is basically having something out of this world but juxtaposed. Fantasy like objects, effects, perhaps hallucinatory quality of a dream or simply just something unreal. In this essay, the example I have chosen or artist work I found interesting is Sabina Nore, (a modern artist) her work, Divine Fury (Figure 1). I am also going to compare her work against Salvador Dali (historical artist) as his work influenced her.

They use bright colors and interesting shapes just for the sake of being interesting. Postmodernism rejects the strict rules set by the early modernists and seeks meaning and expression in the use of clothing techniques, shapes and stylistic references. This also can represent the idea of one postmodernism’s characteristic, which is pastiche, a technique that fuses a variety of styles to create a new

Postmodernism has quickly become a major focus in contemporary literary over the last decade. But how can it be defined? The term postmodernism lacks one concrete definition, as many critics, scholars, and authors disagree or vary on one sole way literature is categorized as postmodern. One way postmodernism can be described is “a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals” (Baldick 201). There are many aspects and qualities that can go into a story to make it postmodern, so it is understandable that it is hard to agree on one, single definition.

This essay will discuss the ways in which Angela Carter employs fashion as a thematic device that deconstructs rigid perceptions of gender roles in the short stories ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ with regard to Entwistle’s statement. Halpin writes, “The women of The Bloody Chamber are not simple or idealized feminist restorations. Instead, each is crafted from a dark and intricate human framework (the same from which Carter creates her male characters) that allows them to transcend conventional gender roles. Across the collection, both female and male characters have been depicted as cruel or kind, passive or possessive, victimized or villainous.” (2015:1). Before embarking on an analysis it should be noted that there is

This stems from the duality between “the cult of beauty and the self […] [and] the expression of profound pessimism, a tendency to focus on the imagery of doom, decay, and a society in decline”15 which prevailed in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The label “Decadence” has been, sometimes falsely, attributed to many works produced in the last decade of the nineteenth century. It is indeed a term that had been coined by the public of the time to label the works which shocked them, or as Dowling puts it, works with “sensational or lurid overtones.”16 It is such a problematic term because it implies that all the works perceived by the public as sensational can be gathered in one group thus reducing Decadence to mere perversity and indecency. The generalization on the part of the public, and consequently on the part of critics, undermines the diversity of art that was produced during the fin-de-siècle era. However, Symons’s article on Decadence is not to be entirely disregarded in favour of his book on Symbolism: in his article, he does mention that Decadence is made of two art movements, which are Symbolism and Impressionism.