Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Hassold, Cris

Keywords

Contemporary, Postmodernism, Human Body Art

Area of Concentration

Art History

Abstract

I argue that contemporary artists and their audiences focus on the unidealized, human body to move beyond the conceptual seriousness and vigorous deconstructing of the postmodern period into a constructivist cultural phenomenon identified as post-postmodernism. I have classified the featured artists as transfiguration artists: those who change the Western canon so as to glorify or exalt marginalized body types such as the aged, pregnant, adolescent, and abject; artists who personally change in outward form or appearance to espouse "other"-ed identities; and, artists who wish to transform global viewpoints by incorporating the audience and thereby encouraging constructivist collaborative elaboration, as influenced by Jean Piaget's theories. These artists clearly follow the post-postmodernist agenda to destabilize traditional social conventions that stem from the hierarchy of the Western canon. I frame this within the larger issue of globalization and the desire to accept all reality constructions and interpretations of reality as valid and truthful.

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