The End of Modernity

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The End of Modernity The Transition to
Post-Modernity Silence and Emptiness
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Pop Art
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Ad Reinhardt Number 107 1952
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Ad Reinhardt Abstract Painting Red 1952
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Oliver Messian (1908-1992)Quartet for the
End of the World1941
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Morris Louis Beta Lambada, 1960
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Kenneth Noland Turnesole 1961
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Lasper Johns Light Bulb I and Light Bulb
II 1958
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Claes Oldenberg Floor Cake (Giant Piece of Cake),
1962
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Jeff Koons New Shelton Wet/ Dry Double
Decker 1981-1986
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Andy Warhol on Andy Warhol
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Andy Warhol The Transition to Post-Modernity
Fernando de Toro The work by Andy Warhol,
perhaps one of the most important artist of the
second half of the twentieth century, it is
characterized by a deconstructivism which allowed
him the Überwindung from Modernity, the
overcoming the barrier of the ex-novo, inscribing
himself in the repetition, the mundane and the
integration of the non artistic object within an
artistic status.
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Andy Warhol 210 Coca-Cola Bottles 1962
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Andy Warhol The Transition to Post-Modernity
Fernando de Toro Andy Warhols work it is
centered in serialism, repetition, and the
appropriation of styles and artistic practices
from the past and from Modernity. Warhol does not
recognize what one may qualify as plagiarism.
Art, for him, has no owner, and the ex-novo,
which characterized Modernity, is deconstructed
giving way to intertextuality and the
retrospective reflection. At the same time
Warhols art is a critique to consumerism and, in
architecture, as well as, in the mass production
of consumer goods the mass production of
identical objects which produces an
standardization of consumption and taste.
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Andy Warhol Marylin Diptych 1962
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Andy Wharhol The Transition to Post-Modernity
Fernando de Toro Warhols serial objects
anticipate the indeterminacy which will
characterized, from the late 1960s onwards,
Post-Modern art and culture, the Derridian
Pharamakon presence/absence, that what is at it
is not the same. This can be clearly seen in its
dollar bills, the Coca-Cola bottles, the
Campells Soup cans, Marylin, where it is the
light which make these objects indeterminate.
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Andy Warhol Campbells Soup Cans 1962
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Andy Warhol Mao 1973 - 1974
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Andy Warhol Campbells Soup Cans 1962
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Andy Warhol Campbells Soup Cans 1962
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Andy Warhol Self-Portrait 1964
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Andy Warhol Four Mona Lisas 1963
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Andy Warhol Tunafish Disaster 1963
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Andy Warhol Various Boxes 1964
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Andy Warhol Installation view Warhol 1964
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Jackson Pollock Stenographic Figure, 1942
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Joan Miró Painting, 1933
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Jackson PollockThe Leaf of the Artichoke Is an
Owl, 1944
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Jackson PollockGothic1944
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Wassily Kandinsky Watercolor (Number 13) 1913
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Jackson Pollock, Painting 1945
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Joan Miró Hirondelle/Amour, 1933-1934
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Jackson Pollock Untitled 4 1944-45
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Jackson PollockThere were Seven in Eight, 1945
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Pablo Picasso Girl with a Mandolin 1910
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Jackson PollockOne (Number 31, 1950), 1950
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Jackson PollockOne (Number 31, 1950), 1950
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Jackson Pollock Untitled 1951
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Jackson Pollock Untitled 1950
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Jackson Pollock, Summertime n. 9a, 1958
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The large barn was filled with paintings. A
dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor.
Blinding shafts of sunlight hit the wet canvas,
making its surface hard to see. There was
complete silence. I looked aimlessly through the
ground glass of my Rolleiflex and began to take
pictures. Pollock looked at the painting. Then,
unexpectedly, he picked up can and paintbrush and
started to move around the canvas. It was as if
he suddenly realized the painting was not
finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually
became faster and more dance-like as he flung
black, white, and rust-colored paint onto the
canvas. . My photography session lasted as
long as he kept painting, perhaps half an hour.
In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How long
could one keep up that level of physical
activity? Finally, he said, This is it.
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John Cage
The Transition to Post-Modern Art
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John Cage (1912-1992) Cages works of the early
1930s were chromatic contrapuntual studies, some
of which used a type of serialism learned from
the music of another of his teachers, Arnold
Schoenberg. Cages music from 1939 through the
1940s dwelled upon new sonorities and innovative
ways of organizing them. He was a pioneer in
the use of electronic gadgetry to produce musical
sounds.
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John Cage (1912-1992) Cage states In writing
for these sounds, as in writing for percussion
instruments alone, the composer is dealing with
material that does not fit into the
orthodox scales and harmonies.
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John Cage (1912-1992) It is therefore necessary
to find some other organizing means that those in
use for symphonic instruments. The sounds
cannot be organized through reference to an
underlying fundamental tone since such a tone
does not exist. Each sound must be considered
as essentially different from and independent of
every other sound .... If you considered that
sound is characterized by its pitch, its
loudness, its timbre, and its duration, and that
silence, which is the opposite and, therefore,
the necessary partner of sound, is characterized
only by its Duration.
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John Cage (1912-1992) You will be drawn to the
conclusion that of these four characteristics of
the material of music, duration, that is, time
length, is the most fundamental.
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John Cage (1912) Sonates and
Interludes (1940)
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John Cage (1912-1992) Cages music of the 1950s
underwent a radical change, as he brought
elements of chance into the composit- ional
process and, under the influence of
oriental philosophy, questioned the conventional
acceptance of art as a form of communication.
Both his ideas and music proved immensely
influential in the decade after the Second World
War.
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John Cage (1912-1992) Works for
Percussion (1939-1943)
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• Transition to Post-Modern Architecture

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Jean Renaudie Jeanne Hachette Centre Ivry,
France, 1969-1972
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Martin S. van Treeck Ilot Riquet Paris, 1972-1977
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Eller, Moser, Walter Landtag Building Düsserldof,
1981
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Hotel under construction La Grand Mottte, 1974
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Hans Banz Desing of a House 1973
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Hans Banz Desing of a House 1973
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Frank Gehry Edgemar Farm Conversion Santa Monica,
California, 1987-1989
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Mathias Ungers Messe Skyscraper Frankfurt-Am-Mai
n 1983-1985
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Michael Graves Fargo/Moorhead Cultural Centre
Bridge Fargo, USA, 1977-1978
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Ponte Vecchio Florence, Italy
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Foster Associates Hong Kong Shanghai
Bank 1980-1986
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Philip Johnson and John Burgee Transco
Tower Houston, Texas 1979-1983
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CBC Building Atrium Floor Pattern in
Terrazzo Toronto, Ontario, 1990
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CBC Building Toronto, Ontario, 1990
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CBC Building Atrium Floor Pattern in
Terrazzo Toronto, Ontario, 1990
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• Transition to Post-Modern Literature

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Samuel Beckett
The Trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, The
Unnamable
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The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one
may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to
speak of things of which I cannot speak, but
also, which is even more interesting, but also
that I, which is if possible even more
interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, not
matter. An at the same time I am obliged to
speak. I shall never be silent. Never.
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I, you must go on, I cant go on, you must go on,
Ill go on you must say words, as long s there
are any, until they find me, until they say me,
strange pain, strange sin, you must go on,
perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of
my story, before the door that opens on my story,
that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be
I, it will be the silence, where I am, I dont
know, Ill never know, in the silence you dont
know, you must go on, I cant go on, Ill go on.
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... They say they, speaking of them, to make me
think it is I who am speaking. Or I say they,
speaking of God knows what, to make me think it
is not I who am speaking. ... Well have to go
through it all again, in order words, or in the
same words, arranged differently. ... Where do
these words come from that pour out of my mouth,
and what do they mean, no, saying nothing, for
the words dont carry any more, if one can call
that waiting,  
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 ... But whats all this about not being able
to die, live, be born, that must have some
bearing, all this about staying where you are,
dying, living, being born, unable to go forward
or back, not knowing where you came from, or
where you are, or where youare going, or that
its possible to be elsewhere, to be otherwise,
supposing nothing, asking yourself nothing, you
cant, you youre there, you dont know who, you
dont know where, the thing stays where it is,
nothing changes, within it, outside it,
apparently, apparently.
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... they took away nature, there was never
anyone, anyone but me, anything but me, talking
to me of me, impossible to stop, impossible to go
on, but I must go on, Ill go on, without anyone,
without anything, but me, but my voice, that is
to say Ill stop, Ill end, its the end already,
short-lived, what is it, a little hole, you go
down into it, into the silence, its worse than
the noise, you listen, its worse than talking,
no, not worse, no worse, you wait, in anguish,
have they forgotten me, no, yes, no, someone
calls me, I crawl out again, what is it, a little
hole, in the wilderness.
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Allen Ginsberg
Howl (1955)
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I feel as if I am at a dead End and so I am
finished. All spiritual facts I realize Are true
but I never escape The feeling of being closed
in And the futility of all done and said. Maybe
if I continued things Would please me more but
now I have no hope and I a tired
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro
streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the
ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who
poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness
of cold-water flats floating across the
tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared
their brains to Heaven under the El and saw
Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs
illuminated,
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who passed through universities with radiant eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light
tragedy among the scholars of war,who were
expelled from the academies for crazy
publishing obscene odes on the windows of
the skull,who cowered in unshaven rooms in
underwear, burning their money in
wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through
the wall,who got busted in their pubic beards
returning through Laredo with a belt of
marijuana for New York .
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Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are
ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal
dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind
windows! Moloch whose sky- scrapers stand in the
long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose
factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch
whose smoke- stacks and antennae crown the
cities!
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Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and
unobtainable dollars! Children
screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in
armies! Old men weeping in the parks!Moloch!
Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless!
Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of
men!Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch
the crossbone soulless jail- house and Congress
of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are
judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch
the stunned governments!
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Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are
ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal
dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind
windows! Moloch whose sky- scrapers stand in the
long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose
factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch
whose smoke- stacks and antennae crown the
cities!
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Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland         wh
ere you're madder than I amI'm with you in
Rockland         where you must feel strangeI'm
with you in Rockland         where you imitate
the shade of my motherI'm with you in
Rockland         where you've murdered your
twelve secretariesI'm with you in
Rockland         where you laugh at this
invisible humorI'm with you in
Rockland         where we are great writers on
the same dreadful typewriterI'm with you in
Rockland          where your condition has
become serious and is reported on the radio I'm
with you in Rockland
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Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The
skin is holy! The nose is holy! The
tongue and cock and hand and asshole
holy! Everything is holy! Everything is holy!
Everywhere is holy! Everyday is in
eternity! Everymans an angel! The bums as holy
as the seraphim! The madman is holy as you my
sour are holy! Holy forgiveness!
mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies!
suffering! magnanimity!
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Modernity ended leaving nothing behind, but a
wonder and anxiety. How one could overcome the
void, the emptiness of the abyss? Where to go
after the silence in music, the emptiness of the
canvas, the failure of language and
communication? The answer will come from what
was called, some years later, Post-Modernism.