Some recent artists and critics have taken it upon themselves to demystify the notion of stylistic unity. Their task has included the historical reconception of a few “modernist” artists along “postmodern” lines, usually as precursors of current semiotic strategies.11 These artists may have used a set of incompatible styles to expose the artificiality of competing stylistic conventions, or even to challenge the myth that celebrates the authenticity of artistic expressiveness. Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, otherwise very different artists, have both (...) been seen as having “deconstructed” the concept of authenticity by problematizing basic means of artistic reference.12 But the desire to challenge conventions must not be misconstrued as an enduring element of an iconoclastic artist’s personality. Otherwise, the characterization is merely an updated version of the traditional argument for authorial unity. 11. The terms “modern” and “postmodern” are used in a variety of ways in contemporary criticism. Here, “modern” refers to nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists who embrace the notion of originality, and “postmodern” to those who would attack the notion by exposing the conventionality at its center. Although some critics who profess “modernism” do not mention “originality” by name, most subscribe to it in some form, often with the originality and self-sufficiency of the artist transposed to that of the work. This is especially true of the criticism of Clement Greenburg and Michael Fried.12. Rosalind Krauss rightly uses the semiotic complications of Picasso’s art to object to autobiographical interpretations of his work. In the course of the argument, she refers to Picasso’s semiotics as part of the “proto-history” of postmodernist art. See Krauss, “In the Name of Picasso,” The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths , pp. 38-39. Arguments for Duchamp’s protopostmodernism are much more common. For one example, see Krauss, “Notes on the Index: Part 1,” The Originality of the Avant-Garde, pp. 196-209. Margaret Olin is an assistant professor in the department of art history and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is presently writing a book on the theories of Alois Riegl. (shrink)

In this beautiful book, Margaret Olin explores photography’s ability to “touch” us through a series of essays that shed new light on photography’s role in the world.